by Hester Young
When Rae shakes me awake, every fiber of my being screams danger. My arm flies out, striking her on the shoulder.
“Ow!” She pulls away from me. “What’s with you?”
I sit up, push strands of sandy, windblown hair from my face. “Sorry. I was dreaming about the Nakagawa girls.”
“Ooh. What about?”
“I don’t know, but I’m scared, Rae.” I chug from my water bottle, eyes roving the beach. An older couple has just arrived and stand discussing the color of the sand. “Whatever happened to Lise . . . it could put Jocelyn in danger, too.”
Rae kneels beside me. “Oh my God,” she says. “You’re right. If some guy stalked and killed Lise, Jocelyn would be the next logical step. I mean, that’s textbook.”
I have no idea what textbook she’s referring to—is there a DSM-5 entry for homicidal stalkers who choose victims with identical twins?—but I nod anyway. “We need to keep an eye on Jocelyn.” The feeling of the breeze against my back makes my skin creep. “I think she’s been going out to the woods, the ones by Wakea Ranch. Remember the lights I saw last night? There was some kind of meeting.”
“Brayden did say she and Lise and Kai used to hang out there with Elijah. You think she met up with Elijah?”
“No idea, but I don’t want her in those woods. Not with these dreams I’m having. She’s not safe.”
I almost say, And neither are we. I almost tell her, These boys are strangers and we need to get out of here, but Brayden comes bounding across the shore, interrupting our conversation. His chest is a shade of Barbie pink, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “You ready for South Point?” he asks. “Gotta show you guys some cliffs!”
I stare at Brayden, wondering who he really is and what he wants from us. Can he hear my thoughts? Does he know that I suspect him? Behind us, Frankie has already begun to ascend the cinder cone, attacking its steep slope with admirable vigor for someone in flip-flops.
Rae grabs me by the hand and drags me to my feet. “Come on. I’m not going home until I’ve tried cliff diving.”
“Wait . . . what?” Standing has left me light-headed. I take a few steps, trying not to wobble. “No, Rae. No way. You’re not jumping off a cliff. We can’t trust those two. What if they’re trying to get rid of us?”
Rae doesn’t hear me. She’s already running after Frankie, waving at me to catch up.
“Stop!” I shout, but the wind and surf muddle my words. “Rae? I don’t even like cliffs. Rae? Wait for me, goddamn it!”
I struggle up the slope after her, afraid to be left behind, but also afraid to follow. I have the vague sense of being a teenager again, left in the lurch as a friend runs off to have her fun. Why does the party always move away from me? Even high, I’m not cool or funny. I’m just a raw nerve, uncomfortably alert, enshrouded in a cloud of dread.
Somehow Brayden’s jolting van makes it back across the dusty pastureland. Everyone’s talking, chattering, except for me. Like a turtle in my shell, I try to shut them out, to form a wall around my thoughts and fears so they can’t hear me. The vehicle bumps along, and my gaze settles on the blue strip outside Rae’s window. Water again. We can’t escape it. It’s always with us, always waiting.
Brayden turns left onto South Point Road, and suddenly the sea looms directly before us, our destination. “They say this is where the Polynesians first arrived,” Brayden tells us, gesturing to the ocean. “Kinda blows the mind, doesn’t it, going thousands of miles in a bunch of double-hulled canoes?”
As the road comes to an end and we all pile out of the van, my fingers can’t stop worrying at the hem of my shorts. Rae keeps talking to the boys like everything’s fine, but I don’t buy it. We should’ve brought our own vehicle. Instead we’re trapped, left at the mercy of two guys we barely know, and I don’t even have a phone. Bad things are happening here. Why can’t Rae see that?
The land only amplifies my fears. Brown craggy cliffs drop an abrupt forty feet into the raging ocean below. The rocks are sharp and cruel, ready to pierce flesh or shatter bone. To the west, rows of white wind turbines harness the power of such blustery heights and disrupt an otherwise stark display of nature. A lone fisherman sits perched on a rocky ledge, his line bouncing across the rough surf below.
I trudge behind Rae, watch the jarring movement of my feet across stone. We should just leave now, before they can get us. We should run. But I can’t leave Rae on her own. I’m all she has. I will follow her like a lemming to my doom.
The closer we get to the brink, the more profound my anxiety spiral. The chill breeze, the cliff’s edge, that sense of gaping space just beyond—they all carry an unpleasant sense of déjà vu. And then I feel a buzzing in my hands, my spine, a low-grade electrical humming, as if someone has plugged me in.
The vision comes in a rush.
Dark sky, grassy terrain, a mineral smell. I am standing not on the sunny cliffs of South Point, but in the blackness of Volcanoes National Park, gasping at the rim of the caldera.
I can’t breathe. Can’t resist the sudden pressure of two hands on my back, fingertips pressing, pushing, urging me toward the edge.
Fall.
“Charlie? You doing all right?”
I recoil from Brayden’s touch like a scalded cat. “Fine! I’m fine!”
The details of my vision flutter away in the wind. The sunlight hurts my eyes. I scowl at Brayden.
“Okay, okay.” Brayden puts up his hands like a hostage negotiator proving he’s unarmed. “You were breathing a little weird, that’s all. Just checking in. Weed can make a person kinda paranoid, especially your first time. You’ve got to remember it’s just the Mary Jane messing with you.”
“Maybe sit and take a few deep breaths, huh?” Rae says, but she’s too fixated on the cliff to worry much about my mental state.
“We’re all friends,” Brayden reminds me.
I lower myself onto a rocky knob and sit tensely, not convinced he’s right. Is Brayden a friend? Is Frankie? I don’t understand what this vision means, who or what it’s warning me of, but either one of these guys could’ve killed Lise Nakagawa. Are my fears paranoia or intuition? How the hell can one tell the difference?
Brayden approaches the cliff’s edge and points to a rickety piece of metal protruding from the side. “So that’s the ladder you use for diving,” he tells Rae. “The jump itself is no biggie, but if you’re scared of heights, going up that ladder afterward can make you a bit nervous.”
“I can do it,” Rae says, but she looks less sure of herself than before. “Where do you jump? Just off the side here?”
“Or can use da blowhole.” Frankie leads her several feet back to a break in the cliff’s rocky surface. A large hole drops all the way down to the sea. I can hear the sound of the ocean crashing below, and I gawp at Frankie.
“She isn’t going to jump in there! Who would do that?”
“You can’t see it from up here, but there’s a tunnel through the rock,” Brayden explains. “You jump while the water’s coming in, and the current sucks you back out.”
Rae peers down into the hole, her loose T-shirt rippling in the breeze.
“The blowhole isn’t for beginners,” Brayden says. “Stick to the cliff.”
“What if she can’t get back to the ladder?” I demand.
“She’s gonna do fine,” Frankie says.
“But the undertow!” I’m not at all sure of Rae’s swimming abilities. “What if the current catches her?”
“Dis South Point,” Frankie says with the faintest hint of a smile. “Da current catches you, you not coming back.”
Rae continues staring down the hole. “I’ve come this far,” she says.
“Oh no,” I tell her. “Nope. I’m not explaining to your husband and your daughter why I let you drown. Veto.”
“She can handle,” Frankie says. “What, yo
u wen come all dis way, might as well.” He strips off his shirt and steps down onto a small ledge inside the hole. “Watch.”
And with that, he jumps.
His body careens down the center of the hole as if in slow motion, avoiding contact with the surrounding rock wall. There’s a splash, but I don’t get close enough to the edge to see the results.
“Show-off.” Brayden grins in spite of himself. “Come on.” He heads back toward the rickety ladder.
I remain in a squat, fighting off a wave of vertigo.
After an excruciatingly long wait, the ladder begins to shake with the weight of a climber. Frankie’s dripping-wet head appears on the side of the cliff. He heaves himself back up onto solid ground and shakes off like a dog.
“You see? No sweat.” He nods at Rae. “Going, girl!”
She walks back to the blowhole and slides down onto the interior ledge, inspecting it. “Damn. I don’t know.”
“Rae.” I try to look stern and authoritative, like I’m not stoned and fighting off hallucinations in an awkward crouch. “Rae, this doesn’t look safe.”
“Dass da point,” Frankie says, shivering. “Make you feel alive.”
“But what if—”
“Hey,” Frankie says. “I wen see plenny people make dis jump.”
“Oh yeah? Like who? Someone our age?” I glare at Brayden. “You ever see Sage leap off this thing?”
Brayden whistles. “No way. She’d never.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
“Elijah Yoon,” Frankie counters. “He wen jump dis blowhole, and dat buggah scrawny.”
“You came out here with Elijah?” My arms have turned to gooseflesh in the wind. “Was Lise here, too? Did she jump?”
“No, but Jocelyn wen jump. She wen jump in da dark.” Frankie’s voice is tinged with grudging admiration.
“Jocelyn jumped in there?” I glance over at the ledge where Rae now dubiously stands surveying the water.
“At night, with a glow stick,” Brayden confirms. “It was insane. We were all shining flashlights down the hole, watching the water like, no way. We didn’t think she’d do it. She’s a really good swimmer, though.”
“Jocelyn?” This goes against everything I think I know about the Nakagawa sisters. “Why? Why would she do that? I thought she had a good head on her shoulders.”
Frankie points at my wrinkled-up nose. “Dat look on your face,” he says. “Dass why.” He smirks. “You da good-girl type. You know. Sometime you gotta break out, yeah?”
I search for a smart retort, something to remind him I’m a woman, not a girl, thank you, and fading into the background is underrated, especially when you’ve recently been featured in the Squealer, but before my addled brain can find the words, Rae makes a sudden, startling jump from the ledge.
Her leap is not nearly as graceful as Frankie’s—one leg bent in front of her, both arms raised above her head—and she hollers on the way down. Then her voice cuts out, and there is only water. I don’t hear the splash, just surf slapping against rock.
I turn to Brayden, stricken. “What happened? Is she . . . ?”
Eyes wide, he steps onto the ledge and gazes down at the water. “I don’t see her,” he says. “She must have caught the tide right.” The uncertainty on his face is far from reassuring.
I crawl over to the ladder. Lie flat on my stomach and peer over the side.
“Rae!” I call, but the wind swallows her name. I imagine her body getting dashed on the rocks, wonder if I should go in after her, wonder how I can possibly face Zoey if I let something happen to her mother. Were the boys plotting this all along? Did Frankie and Brayden want her to die? Am I next?
When her dark head pops up, my whole body goes slack with relief.
Rae looks around, spots the ladder, and begins swimming hard toward it. Though the distance is not great, the current renders her strokes largely ineffectual. It’s like watching someone on a treadmill.
“She’s not getting anywhere,” I tell Frankie, my voice rising.
“She’s gotta ride it,” he says, and sure enough, Rae stops fighting and lets the waves carry her in.
By the time she makes it up that awful ladder, I think I might cry. This could have gone so differently, could’ve ended so badly. I can’t reconcile my own fears with her broad grin, her curls glistening and uncharacteristically wild, the light in her eyes. The breeze must be cold against her sodden T-shirt, but she doesn’t care.
“Did you see that?” she breathes. “I can’t believe I did it! I can’t believe I made it.”
“That blowhole is no joke,” Brayden says. “That was pretty nasty.” He holds out his hand for a fist bump, which Rae returns so enthusiastically it resembles a punch.
“Aw, Charlie.” Seeing my disapproval, she hooks a damp arm through mine. “In five days, I’ll be a mom and a wife and a good little worker. I’ll play it safe again, I promise. Just give me this, won’t you? These few days. Because I don’t have psychic powers to keep life interesting.”
My eyes dart toward Frankie and Brayden—has she blown my cover?—but they aren’t listening. They’re digging through Rae’s backpack for snacks.
I huddle closer to her, feel her dripping shirt leave a wet mark on my own. There are many things I’d like to say about this day, about the boys and the weed and these petrifying cliffs, but right now all I can do is tug on her arm and beg, in a voice as small as Tasha’s, “Can we go home now?”
* * *
• • •
BY THE TIME we make it back to Kalo Valley, the pot cookie has worn off and I’m officially done with Frankie and Brayden. True, they made no attempts on my life, but on the ride home, I was subjected to alarming levels of Taylor Swift. Dining with them was no picnic, either. Knowing that Rae and I were footing the bill, the boys ordered two dinners apiece at the restaurant in Nāʻālehu. Frankie repeatedly hit on a waitress who could not possibly have been eighteen, and Brayden consumed an entire dish of loco moco while chewing with his mouth open. Even Rae rolled her eyes as the guys descended into braggy stories about big waves and boozy nights. I found myself missing Noah and my daughters, yearning for the unglamorous life we led pre-Squealer. In the Koa House driveway, Rae and I thank the guys and heave a sigh of relief as their old white van pulls away.
No more pot, I think. Ever, ever, ever. If I’m ready to curl up in the outdoor bath with a book, Rae has other ideas.
“Let’s go see Marvel Andrada,” she suggests before I can even make it inside.
I collapse onto the porch swing. “We only have a few days left on the island, Rae. Do we really need to waste time getting psychic advice from some eccentric old lady?”
“You are something else. After everything you’ve been through, you’re still skeptical about psychics?” She wags a finger at me. “Come on, Charlie. You really think you’re the only one out there, the only one with a gift?”
“Some gift.” I remember the sensation of hands on my back, pushing, pushing, and shudder. “Half of what I see makes no sense. Why would I want this Marvel woman confusing me further?”
Rae sits beside me and offers up a piece of unassailable logic. “Because she knew Lise.”
sixteen
One look inside Marvel Andrada’s crystal shop, and I can’t help thinking that Sue Nakagawa might not be the only thing standing in the way of her restaurant permits. The place is a cluttered, musty mess, with too many shelves crammed into a small space, each brimming with polished rocks and crystals, new age books, incense, candles, tarot cards, and other mumbo jumbo I don’t want to be associated with. Whatever Marvel’s talents may be, organization does not appear to be one of them.
Marvel has just finished a reading when we arrive. The client stands by the front register, teary eyed, still trying to compose herself, while her two hyperactive children bounce around t
he store, sniffing candles and examining crystals. The woman dabs at her eyes, trying to assimilate whatever Marvel has told her.
“Thank you, Auntie. I got a lot to think about now.”
“You have hard choices to make, Maile,” Marvel tells her, “but you have the strength to do it. Good luck.” She watches the woman leave and then turns to Rae. “Back again, eh? And you brought your friend, I see.”
“I did!” Rae beams, an eager little matchmaker for her two favorite psychics. “Charlie, you remember Marvel.”
“Rae tells me you’re quite a talent,” Marvel says. “That you’ve been recognized in national magazines for your skills.”
“Oh.” The wooden floor creaks beneath my shifting weight. “I wouldn’t say that I’m skilled. I can’t control it or anything.”
“Control will come,” Marvel says, “although not without some work. Like anything, you’ve got to practice.” She sounds like a piano teacher. “Have you ever been surfing? It’s a bit like that. You swim out into the waves and catch one. If you pick a good wave and time things right, you can ride it all the way back to the shore.”
“That’s what your visions are like?”
She nods. “I can’t control the ocean. But I can position myself to catch what comes.” She looks me up and down, assessing something, and seems to find me lacking. “I have some stones in the shop that can sharpen your sight, if you’d like. And I highly recommend tiger’s eye for protection.”
I squirm at the offer. The whole store makes me feel ridiculous. In contrast to Sue’s academically rigorous library, Marvel’s shelves feature titles that try to imbue new age concepts with a business feel: The Chakra Solution, Intuitive Finance, and Right Mind, Right Action: Meditate Your Way to Success.
