by Edie Claire
Maddie smiled at her weakly and rose to carry her dirty noodles to the trashcan. Her thoughts were in a muddle. There was more to her frazzled nerves than a little embarrassment, innuendo having been her constant companion since puberty. The real problem was that she was angry with Kai. Never mind that she had no good reason, no logical right to feel that way. The emotion consumed her nevertheless.
She stepped on the trashcan opener and the lid flew up. Kai’s taunting six-year-old voice rang in her ear. Haole girls don’t talk Pidgin!
She flicked the noodles into the liner and lifted her foot. The lid slammed closed again.
The stinking little rat!
She sat back down at the table. The family were discussing something about someone Maddie didn’t know. She tried to focus, but her thoughts kept drifting.
Just because other haoles did bad stuff ages ago doesn’t make it MY fault! Maddie had defended after a particularly bad day at school. Her status as a perpetual “outsider” was something she had always accepted without argument, but when Sammy or one of the other truly spiteful kids in her class framed their jabs in more personal terms, she could not deny that it got to her.
Forget them, Kai would say calmly. They’re idiots. You want to go over after school and see the horses?
Someone at the Nakama table said something funny, and everybody laughed. Maddie faked a smile, but when her gaze accidentally caught Kai’s, she felt nothing but ire. She looked away.
Forget them? She thought to herself, her teeth gnashing. That was the best he could do? Not Gee, I know just how you feel, Maddie? Or, wow, guess what we have in common? No, indeed. He’d kept his little lips zipped tight, hadn’t he? For almost five years.
The table went quiet. Maddie looked up to find five expectant faces staring at her. “Um… Excuse me?”
“I asked how you were planning on spending your weekend,” Aki said politely.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Maddie apologized. “Well, there are a lot of people I’d like to visit with eventually, especially some of my teachers. And I’d like to drive everywhere I couldn’t go when I couldn’t drive. And I definitely want to get to the beach for a swim and a hike up to the Sweetheart Rock—”
Maddie stumbled over the last few words, but managed to get them out. She grabbed for her glass and took a drink of water. The chaos such a simple statement spurred in her mind was ridiculous, and her face reddened all over again at the thought of anyone reading her mind. She’d had so much fun at that beach with Kai when they were kids, and she’d secretly been looking forward to reliving a healthy chunk of it this weekend, but now…
Her eyes involuntarily locked with his across the table. He looked back at her with undisguised concern. She set her glass down and cleared her throat. “But I don’t know if I’ll have time for everything,” she finished shortly, stabbing her chopsticks at what was left of her noodles.
“Well, we’ve only got the one truck, but we’ll be happy to offer a ride wherever we can,” Aki said pleasantly.
Maddie cringed with shame. “Oh, no, I hadn’t meant to assume. I’ll beg, borrow, or steal rides from somewhere. Or I’ll walk. Don’t worry about me.”
She dropped another load of noodles. This time they landed on top of her cleavage.
This time they stuck there.
Malaya and Nana promptly covered their mouths with a hand, smothering snickers. Aki and Kai politely averted their eyes. Gloria just stared at her.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Maddie said with a good-natured groan. “Just go ahead and laugh, will you?”
The Nakama family obliged.
Maddie finished the rest of her meal, which proved blissfully uneventful, with a fork. And when a tired-looking Nana announced immediately after the table had been cleared that she was ready to head home, Maddie’s relief was undoubtedly visible. She grabbed her pack and headed for the door. “An early night sounds good to me too, Nana,” she agreed.
“I’ll drive you,” Kai said, pulling the keys off the peg where his mother had hung them. “It’s still raining a little.”
“Thanks, love,” Nana said warmly, throwing an arm around her grandson’s waist as he passed by.
Maddie followed them out, trying not to let her continuing inner turmoil show as she thanked Malaya and Aki for their hospitality.
It wasn’t that big a deal. What was her problem?
You’re a haole.
Kids had called her lots of names when she was growing up, both here and on the mainland. So what?
Haole girl!
Kai had never made fun of her for being a haole. Kai never made fun of anybody. It wasn’t his fault.
Look at the haole, thinking she’s so hot. Thinking she belongs here.
What had Kai said all those times? What had he been thinking when they taunted her?
Kai’s hanging out with the haole again!
I’ll hang out with whoever I want to hang out with! Get over it!
Within three minutes, the truck had reached Nana’s house and Kai was outside and opening Nana’s door for her. He helped Nana step out and onto her walk, but when Maddie got out, he blocked her path. “Wait,” he said firmly, making sure to catch her eyes. He held open the front door of the truck for her. “Can you hop in the front seat a minute? There’s something I want to show you.” Then without giving her a chance to reply, he bounded off to help Nana up her front steps and into her house. “I’ll have Maddie back before too long,” he assured.
Nana threw him an approving, knowing look. Thoroughly irked, but seeing no less socially awkward option, Maddie jumped into the truck’s front seat and slammed the door behind her. She didn’t look at Kai as he restarted the engine. He said nothing, and neither did she. But when she realized he was headed north out of town, she could hold her temper in check no more.
“Where are you going?” she asked sharply.
“Somewhere you can yell at me without half of Lana'i overhearing every word you say,” he replied.
Maddie decided to look at him. He seemed even taller driving a truck, something which she’d never seen him do before. In the dim glow of the console’s lights he also seemed even better looking, which was especially galling when she was furious. How dare he turn out to be so damned hot? None of the other girls were interested in the old Kai. He was short and shrimpy and shy and didn’t even like the girly girls, and she’d had his attention all to herself. She didn’t even want to think about how many women had woken up in this Kai’s bedroom.
“What makes you think I want to yell at you?” she asked, attempting a neutral tone.
He threw her a look and shook his head.
They reached the pastures by the Lodge at Ko'ele. Kai pulled the truck off to the side of the road near the fence and parked. There were no horses visible now, probably because they were sheltering in the rain. But she and the old Kai used to come here often. She had never ridden one of the horses and never particularly wanted to, but there was something about sitting quietly in the grass and watching the regal beasts toss their heads and twitch their tails that had always soothed her.
Had he remembered that?
He turned in his seat and faced her. “Maddie,” he said heavily, his brown eyes beseeching. “I’m sorry I never told you that I was half haole.”
She sucked in a breath. How could he know that? He and Malaya hadn’t been alone for a second!
He exhaled roughly. “I saw the album open on the couch. You’ve been staring daggers at me all evening. Come on. I was going to tell you the whole story this weekend. And I was getting to that part. I swear. I was just… taking it one chunk at a time.”
He looked so earnest. So sincere. Adult Kai was being perfectly rational. And what else should she expect? Even child Kai had been rational most of the time, rarely letting his emotions override his common sense, at least with other people. Well, she was just as mature, was she not? Just as above it all? “There’s no reason you should have to tell me anything,” she said eve
nly. “It’s none of my business.”
“But you’re mad at me anyway,” he asserted, the smallest of smiles playing on his lips.
“No, I’m not,” she lied. “It was ages ago. It doesn’t matter now.”
Kai’s smile faded. “I would understand if you were upset,” he said softly. “We did share a lot, and it is a big thing to keep from you, particularly when so many other people knew.”
“I told you,” she repeated stiffly. “It doesn’t matter.”
He was quiet a moment. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped. She had thought that she was special, dammit. That the kids they’d been had had a connection. A bond. Something that maybe, just maybe, could translate into adulthood. But he’d lied to her. She thought she’d known him so well — better than anybody. She was sure that he would never lie to her. She was positive of it.
Molten lava bubbled up in her chest.
“Right,” he said sarcastically. “And you think I believe—”
The volcano blew.
“You are such a liar!” Maddie accused hotly, whirling in her seat to face him. “Were you lying in the whale game too? How many of those lobs and spy hops did you fake? Once you had me fooled, how many other things did you lie about? How many times did you get me to defend you to everybody else? Oh, no, Kai would never lie! Kai would never lie to me!”
Her voice escalated to a near screech, and she watched as his eyes widened in surprise.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he insisted. “I left a lot of things unsaid and unexplained, but I never lied.”
“Are you kidding me?” Maddie railed. “What kind of legal hair-splitting is that?”
He bit his lip in frustration, and Maddie felt a sharp pang of… something. Child Kai had bit his lip, too. Not very often. Only when he was really upset.
“Listen to me, Maddie,” he said calmly. “I honestly cannot remember ever lying to you. You never asked me anything about being adopted. You never asked me anything about my relatives in Utah, and I did mention them. You never even asked if I was Japanese or Filipino or whatever. You never seemed to care. And if you didn’t ask, I wasn’t going to bring it up, because I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You intentionally didn’t let me meet your grandparents!” Maddie accused.
Kai’s eyes flickered with guilt. He breathed out heavily. “I didn’t let anybody meet my grandparents. I had some issues back then. I’ll admit it. I didn’t like being half haole, and I didn’t want everybody in town reminded of it. I wanted to be a Nakama. I wanted to be Aki’s son.”
Maddie’s blood heated again. “You stood there while the other kids gave me all kinds of grief and you knew you were half haole and they knew you were half haole and you never said a word to me!”
“That is so not fair!” Kai fired back, his own voice rising for the first time. “I never just stood by! I always defended you! I always defended anybody when the kids were piling on like that!”
“But I didn’t know!” Maddie cried, her voice reaching a crescendo as her eyes welled up with tears.
“Why did it matter?”
“It mattered because it would have made me feel better to know that it was something we shared, you miserable rat!” Maddie shouted. Her arms flew up from her sides, and in a gesture practiced countless times before, she laid her hands on his chest and delivered a playful shove.
Maddie froze and sucked in a breath. She looked at him in horror. So much for mature and rational. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just did that.” She looked down at her hands, which were still resting lightly on his shoulders. She couldn’t seem to move.
Kai’s chest shook suddenly beneath her fingers.
He was laughing.
Maddie searched his face. It was close to hers, and the brown eyes that twinkled back at her looked, for the first time, like the eyes of the boy she knew — despite their modified packaging. Her next apology died abruptly on her lips.
“Oh, shut up!” she groused, delivering another shove as she righted herself. “You deserved that and you know it.”
He kept on laughing. “Now, there’s the Maddie I remember!”
In a blink, the myriad images in her memory overlaid themselves on the adult face before her. “Is that what it takes for us to feel like old friends again?” she asked, still reeling a little. “Violence?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Don’t be silly,” the deeper voice said. “You never hurt me. You were merely… an expressive child.”
Maddie raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you liked me better when I pushed you around and yelled at you all the time?”
“Well, not exactly,” he chuckled. “I’m just saying that… well, at least we kept it real. Right?”
Maddie was quiet for a moment, and so was he. It was tough to put into words, but they both knew that some invisible barrier had been broken. Whatever they were to each other now, at least they were no longer strangers.
They sure as hell would no longer be polite.
“Well, Nakama, I hope you weren’t too attached to this veneer of mature sophistication,” Maddie said flippantly, slumping down in her seat. “Because unfortunately, real Maddie is just as impatient and impulsive as she ever was.”
“Surely not,” Kai mocked. “And does she still hate to lose?”
Maddie slid her eyes slowly toward his. She smirked.
“Try me.”
Chapter 14
Maddie sank into the less stable of the two wicker chairs on Nana’s porch and swished her guava juice around in her plastic tumbler. She smiled serenely. She had never liked guava juice. Its flavor was bland and its texture did not appeal. But ever since she had left Lana'i, the beverage’s taste and smell had become inextricably bound with warm memories of her time in Nana’s house. Therefore, she loved it. She had sought out its soothing powers at some of the lowest points in her life, and it had always comforted her.
She looked up to see a promising stretch of blue sky gaining ground on a patchwork of dissipating clouds. Her feet started to itch again. She was dying to get in the ocean. Only a little more time to kill, and she could walk up to the Nakamas’ house. Kai had promised to take her to the beach this morning, and Kai always kept his promises. Her smile broadened.
She couldn’t wait.
“I found it!” Nana crowed, pushing open her screen door and coming to join Maddie on the porch. “I knew I had it. Just had to look in the right box.”
Maddie leaned forward and took the dog-eared snapshot from Nana’s hands. It was a photograph of several children taken on the porch they currently occupied. Three little ones sat on the steps, licking at bright yellow popsicles. Nana stood behind them, holding a baby. A toddler, its face turned away from the camera, clung to her leg. One older girl rode the porch railing like a rodeo bull, her own popsicle held high in one hand.
Maddie squinted, taking a closer look. “Holy crap,” she murmured.
The chubby little girl on the railing appeared to be seven or eight years old. Her voluminous red hair had presumably been tied back in a ponytail, or a braid, or something, at some previous point. But when the picture was taken the hair consisted of three frizzy, tangled clods, one at the base of her neck, and one roughly on either side of her head. Her faded shirt was too small and showed her midriff. Her shorts looked like men’s track shorts and were baggy and ill-fitting. Both her face and her legs looked dirty.
Maddie felt a twinge in the pit of her stomach.
“Something wrong, child?” Nana asked. She had settled herself into the other chair and now watched Maddie with concern.
“I just…” Maddie stammered. “I didn’t…” She drew in a breath and blew it out again. “I don’t know. I’m sure I never paid any attention to what I wore or what I looked like. And I did pretty much run wild all over the island. I shouldn’t be surprised. Still, I look awful. I look like something social services needs to come investigate, you kn
ow?”
Maddie ended her statement on a laugh. She was a willful child. It was hardly her parents’ fault if she got dirty all the time. At least it looked like she’d been made to wash her hands before she ate! But when no answering chuckle came from Nana, Maddie’s stomach suffered yet another twinge.
She looked up from the photograph to find Nana’s expression not only serious, but sympathetic. “I didn’t mean to upset you, child. But I’m pretty sure it’s the only picture I have.”
“Oh, no, of course!” Maddie said quickly. She had asked about pictures, had wanted to see what she looked like, and to remind herself what Kai had looked like, since she had never had a picture of him. Her years on Lana'i were greatly underrepresented in her own family’s album, a fact that had always bothered her, and she was hoping that Nana or the Nakamas might have some pictures she could make copies of. Maybe even a picture of her and Kai together.
But the girl in the photograph was not the Maddie she expected to see.
She said nothing for a moment. She tried to think of other things, but neither her mind — nor her stomach — would settle.
“Nana,” she asked finally. “Did I always look like that? I mean, did I always look so… unkempt?”
Silence.
Maddie’s heart began to pound. “Nana?” she repeated, the squeak in her voice betraying her angst.
The older woman smiled gently. “Well now, I suppose that’s the Maddie I remember. What do you remember, child?”
Maddie’s face reddened, and she quickly lowered her head to stare at the picture again. Her hair looked as if it had not been brushed in days. She tried frantically to remember a time when her mother had brushed her hair. She could remember her father doing it. Nana. Herself.
And if you want a French braid, you do it like this, see?
A woman’s voice arose in Maddie’s mind, soft and sweet. Her touch was gentle, her smile kind. She had not only brushed Maddie’s hair, she had taught her how to shampoo and condition it. She had taken her out shopping for nice-smelling soaps and girly deodorant and comfortable underwear and bright-colored new clothes. She had understood what Maddie needed without her having to ask. Without Maddie even knowing herself.
