by Hester Young
“Just do it.”
The light in Rae’s phone winks out. I wait, let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I think about being blind, learning to navigate the world with your other senses, how they get stronger when one is disabled.
I need to use my senses. All my senses. But how?
Marvel said that it’s like surfing, choosing your wave and riding it out. But I don’t have any waves to choose from. I can’t focus my impressions, can’t choose what I tune into—I’ve tried. My visions always come unbidden. The more I try, the less I get.
I focus on Kai, the way it felt to occupy his body, to stand gasping at the edge, two hands urging me over. Slow and silent, I wade through the vog. Listen for any sounds to indicate we’re not alone. Nothing. Just the occasional whisper of fabric as I move and Rae’s soft, labored breathing beside me. I scan the shadows for movement, some sign we’re close. There are any number of trails leading off the path to the rim, trails of tamped-down ash and grass with nothing to distinguish them. How will we possibly know which one to take?
I clear my head and keep listening. Our padding shoes. Car key rattling in my pocket when I pat it. Rae’s breaths, quick and shallow in my ear.
I pause, giving her a chance to rest, wondering when she got so out of shape. But instead of improving, her breathing worsens. There’s a distinctive whistling noise when she exhales, a wheezing sound I recognize from the handful of asthma attacks Micky’s had over the years—a reaction to the vog, maybe?
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Me?” Rae sounds surprised. “I’m fine. Why are we stopping?” Her voice is perfectly normal. For the first time it occurs to me that it’s not her I’ve been hearing at all.
Kai, I realize with a jolt. Sage mentioned that the vog aggravated his asthma. I wave my hand through the thick, wet air, imagining what the sulfur dioxide content might be doing to his weak lungs.
“Do you hear that?” I ask Rae. “That breathing?”
She goes silent, listening. “No . . .”
Perhaps my senses aren’t quite as useless as I thought. Perhaps I’m learning.
There’s no way Jocelyn could’ve predicted the vog. She must’ve just lucked out. One thing’s for sure: if Kai’s wheezing like that, falling isn’t the only danger he faces.
“Go back to Kai’s car,” I tell Rae. “Quick. If it’s locked, break a window, I don’t care how you get in.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re looking for an inhaler. If you can’t find that, then look for a joint. I’m sure Kai has a stash in there. Please, Rae. I think he’s having an asthma attack.”
Rae hesitates for a second. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll keep going. I think we’re close.” I give her hand a quick squeeze. “Hurry.”
As I proceed down the path, the wheezing sounds intensify in my ear. The labored intake, the whistling exhale—they’re the only sounds I hear as I press through the creeping vog. Loud. Louder. The struggle to breathe.
And suddenly, like the unplugging of a headset, silence.
I stop. Let the stillness wash over me. Feel a wave of dread as I consider what it might mean.
To my left, the grass and brush part, forming another dirt pathway to the rim. Then, rising from the vapors like a miracle, coughing. Voices with a familiar timbre. A back-and-forth, male and female. I’ve found them.
I take a few tentative steps toward the caldera. Tilt my head, try to catch the wind just right.
“You’ll be fine,” Jocelyn’s saying. “It’s just down this path.”
“No,” Kai puffs. “I need . . . to rest.”
“You already had a rest! Come on, we’re almost there.” She sounds preoccupied, terse.
“We should . . . go back.” Kai coughs violently. “I need my . . . medicine.”
As I move closer to the rim, the vog thickens. Between the mist and the dark, I can see almost nothing, but the emptiness of the caldera is palpable, a change in the air, a sense of oblivion looming before me. Though fairly sure I’m still a good thirty feet from the edge, I test the ground carefully with my foot before each step, make sure it’s solid. Easing toward the rim, I follow the sound of their voices.
“It’s a long walk back to the car,” Jocelyn says from somewhere in the ether. “All the walking would make you worse. Just stick with me. The wind will change in a minute.”
She’s got him where she wants him, I think. Weak. Vulnerable. So close to the edge.
“I wanna . . . go,” Kai says with difficulty. He takes a particularly ugly, gaspy breath and his voice turns pleading. “Joss.”
“Okay, okay,” Jocelyn says, and in that moment the vog parts so that at last I can see them, see their silhouettes against the night. Her smaller shape moves alongside his, nudging him forward. “We’ll get you back.”
For a second, I think I’ve misjudged the whole situation, think she might truly intend to return to the car. But there’s something wrong about the way she’s guiding him, one hand on his shoulder, the other nudging his hip, something off about the angle they’re moving in, closer to the caldera rim, not away from it.
Kai knows something is off. “You’re going the wrong—”
When her hands move swiftly to the center of his back, I know exactly how it feels, the fingertips pressing, pushing.
“Kai!” His name explodes from my mouth. “Sit down!”
There are two kinds of people in life: those who obey and those who question. For better or for worse, I have always been the latter. If my life depended on following a simple instruction without stopping to ask why, I would be dead. Kai, thank God, is cut from a different cloth.
He drops to the ground. Looks around in a daze for the person yelling at him, still fighting for a breath.
Jocelyn pulls away from him in alarm. “Who’s out there?”
I dash across the tall grass, droplets of dew soaking my legs, an unexpected branch raking my arm. I must look like a ghost, the Romantic-British-novel kind that haunts desolate landscapes and wanders the night bemoaning her sad fate. Who knows? If I hadn’t escaped that freezer, maybe that’s exactly what I would’ve become.
I place a protective hand on Kai’s shoulder and urge him away from the edge. Jocelyn watches him scoot to safety, completely paralyzed by the arrival of another person. For once, she has no contingency plan. This was her contingency plan.
“Hey there, Jocelyn.” My voice does not betray the tension in my body, the blood coursing through my veins. “Remember me?”
thirty-one
What—what are you doing here?” Jocelyn addresses me in utter panic. “I don’t—were you following us? How did you get here?”
Ignoring her, I lead Kai away from the vog-filled rim.
If I were Jocelyn, all my crimes unraveling before my eyes, I’d bolt. She must know I’ll expose her, that the game is up. Lise has been found, I’ve escaped, and her rash plan to silence Kai has failed. What option is left to her but flight? Yet instead of taking off, Jocelyn remains glued to the spot, gibbering at us. The night has gone way off script, and she is out of ideas, unable to do anything but yell.
“Charlotte?” she shouts. “Where are you going? Stop! Come back! You have to tell me why you’re here. How did you get here?” When I don’t reply, she goes still, as if trying to regroup, and eventually comes trotting after us.
“Back off,” I warn her, trying not to stumble under Kai’s weight. His wheezing has grown too intense for him to speak. I don’t think he understands what his girlfriend just tried to do to him, and that’s probably for the best. Right now he needs to concentrate on every ragged breath.
“But . . . but I can help you,” Jocelyn says, all her vinegar now turned to honey. “I can help you get Kai back to the car.” She moves to shoulder some of her boyfriend’s weight. As if we’re all o
n the same team. As if she didn’t just lock me up with her frozen sister or attempt to shove her boyfriend into a volcano.
I shunt her away. “You think I want your help?”
“Kai’s heavy,” she tells me. “You need my help. We can’t let him overexert himself.”
It’s insulting, her aligning herself with me, pretending that we both have this boy’s best interests at heart. I assume this whole innocent act is for Kai’s benefit—she can’t think I’ll be fooled. I know what she is. I know what she’s done. But Jocelyn is so rattled, so desperate, I’m no longer sure how rational her thoughts are. Maybe she truly believes she can still talk her way out of this one, ingratiate herself to me.
Either way, no point in challenging her on it, I decide. Animals are most dangerous when cornered. I let her support Kai from the left, aware of every movement that she makes.
“I’ve already called for help,” I say. “They should be here any minute.” In truth, I have no idea if the police will respond to Rae’s call or dismiss her as a crackpot, and even if they do show up, they’re unlikely to do much for Kai. I’m banking heavily on that inhaler. Still, the threat of “help” arriving should prevent Jocelyn from hatching any more spontaneous plans to exterminate us. One hopes.
“We’re lucky you showed up when you did,” Jocelyn says, clinging to the part of Good Girl. “I was trying to show Kai this cool spot on the rim, but then his asthma got bad and who knows what he did with his inhaler . . .”
Kai’s airway whistles mightily in response, and I shudder. His medical crisis is frightening enough, but Jocelyn’s trying to pretend the last two hours of my life didn’t happen is all the more disturbing. This girl is the Meryl Streep of underage killers, so credible I’m tempted to doubt my own experience. Part of me wants to succumb to the comforting illusion that this night was all a misunderstanding, that she’s just a scared kid trying not to get in trouble with Mom and Dad. But that scared kid was willing to take down anyone and everything in her path. I can’t forget that.
“Kai,” I say, “do you have a rescue inhaler in the car?”
“I . . . unhhh . . . dunno . . .” His helpless wheezing does little to quell my fears.
“We’ll get you out of here,” Jocelyn says, soothing him. “It will be okay, Kai, I promise.”
I can’t see her face in the dark, can’t make out her expression of faux concern as she helps me support her woozy boyfriend, but I know it’s there and I hate her for it. A hundred unspoken accusations burn in my throat. I force them down. Like it or not, Jocelyn’s right. I need her now.
We lug Kai’s wobbly frame down the path, through wisps of vog. In the midst of a full-fledged attack, Kai seems to be losing the battle for air. Though Jocelyn and I do our best to support his weight, his body goes increasingly limp as his oxygen level decreases and his tortured whistling far exceeds the severity of anything Micky has ever experienced.
After hauling him along for a few minutes, I stop. Exercise of any kind will only exacerbate his condition. The kid’s in serious danger of passing out. I sit in the middle of the path and help him to lie down. His forehead is clammy.
“I can run ahead,” Jocelyn offers. “Maybe I can find his albuterol in the car.”
“No,” I snap. “You stay here. We both stay here.” No way am I letting her get her hands on Kai’s medicine—she could chuck it into the caldera in a hot minute. “I told you, help is coming. Just sit tight.”
I hope that I’m telling the truth, that help is coming, but if Rae can’t find Kai’s inhaler somewhere in that Corolla, Jocelyn just might get her way tonight. People die from asthma attacks every day, and who knows how far we are from the nearest hospital?
“So . . . who exactly are we waiting for?” Jocelyn asks. “When did you call them?”
Jocelyn’s not just questioning my tactics for crisis management. She’s trying to assess who I might’ve told about what happened tonight, to better fashion her defense.
I make no reply. The less information she has, the better.
My hand skims Kai’s rapidly rising and falling chest. His heart beats much too fast, and though the temperature keeps dropping, Kai is sweating. Should I really just sit here, pinning all my hopes on Rae? If he goes into cardiac arrest, the kid could die in my arms.
“Hang on, buddy. Hang in there.”
As I search the park for signs of life, someone, anyone who might help us, I keep a cautious eye on Jocelyn’s shadowy figure. She seems committed to playing innocent, but at this point, I wouldn’t put anything past her. She’s like the glowing Halemaʻumaʻu crater, with all the heat that one can’t see by day on full display at night. Victor was wrong about her. Jocelyn was never the cooling ocean to her sister’s fire. She has always been Pele, a cool black surface concealing molten rage.
In the distance, a tiny beacon of light catches my eye. Rae’s phone. Glowing, bouncing, up and down, up and down. She sprints toward us, a slim shape loping through mist and moonlight.
I call her name and wave frantically.
She pauses. Races toward my voice. Reaches me faster than I ever would’ve thought possible.
Panting mightily, she hands me Kai’s inhaler.
I position the plastic in his mouth and squirt some puffs, praying it does the job. “Breathe, Kai,” I tell him. “Breathe it in.” If effective, it will take a few minutes to start working. I hold his hand. Listen to the awful, high-pitched sounds he makes as he seeks oxygen.
Rae calls emergency services and speaks impatiently with the dispatcher, who seems to instruct her to do things we’re already doing. She explains the difficulty of getting him back to the car and asks about the nearest hospital. Leaving Kai collapsed against her, I pace around in anxious circles, waiting for some indication of how I might help.
“How did she know?” Jocelyn draws close to me, too close for comfort. “How did your friend know to bring his inhaler?”
I stop walking, use my body as a barrier between her and Kai. “I told her.”
“But . . . how did you know?”
“I know lots of things, Jocelyn. As you’re aware.” I can’t hold it in any longer, can’t pretend this girl is anything resembling normal. “It’s why you tried to kill me, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t!” she says quickly. “I just . . . I saw Lise and I freaked out. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”
“You locked me in a goddamn freezer and left me to die.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.” I’m no longer sure if Jocelyn is lying to me or to herself. “I know you’re afraid. You don’t want to disappoint your parents, don’t want to jeopardize your future, I get it. But you can’t keep hiding what you did. You’re just making things worse, don’t you see? Digging a hole you’ll never get out of.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jocelyn.” I grab her by the shoulders. “Your sister is dead because of you.”
She shrugs out of my grasp. “No. That’s not true. I can explain everything.”
“You knew where Lise was,” I persist. “You had her key to the restaurant. You took her sweatshirt. How are you going to explain that all away?”
“The key doesn’t prove anything,” she insists. “I—found it, that’s all. Tonight, in our bedroom. I knew Lise spent a lot of time working at the restaurant, and I thought . . . I thought I should check it out. Maybe she’d left some clue about where she went. It was . . . twin intuition. That’s why I went over there.”
“Right. And you just happened to bring garbage bags.”
Jocelyn doesn’t speak for a moment. Her hands have begun to tremble. She stuffs them under her armpits and begins to rock back and forth, yet she refuses to break. “Eco Day,” she whispers. “Those were in my bag because of Eco Day.”
“You were going to move h
er body.”
“No.” She won’t look at me. “No. I discovered what was in that freezer exactly when you did.”
God, I want to shake this girl. If Rae were getting any of this, she’d give her an earful. But Rae’s still on the phone, embroiled in logistical discussions about what symptoms Kai is currently displaying and whether or not to send him an ambulance. Losing my temper with Jocelyn would only hurt me later, discredit me when I have to face investigators.
“And that screwdriver you jammed in the freezer door?” I say. “You think you can spin that? That’s intent, pure and simple. A calculated choice.”
She turns on me slowly, eyes flashing in the dark. “Intent?” she asks. “No, I think that’s a pretty clear case of self-defense. You’ve been dogging me for days, harassing me. My father even called to demand you leave me alone. And then you followed me into the restaurant tonight. I was scared of you—who wouldn’t be? When I saw Lise in that freezer, I thought you’d put her there and I was next. So I tried to protect myself.”
“Nice try, but that story won’t fly.” I shake my head. “Lise has been dead six weeks. I couldn’t have killed her. I wasn’t even on the island when she died.”
“It doesn’t matter what you did,” Jocelyn informs me. “It matters what I thought you did. State of mind is paramount when establishing self-defense. And who can blame me if I wasn’t thinking clearly? I’d just learned that my sister was dead.”
Her voice turns shrill at the end, causing Kai to roll over in Rae’s lap.
“Dead? Did you say . . . Lise’s dead?” He sits up slowly.
Only then do I realize that his breathing has improved, that his whistles have lessened in speed and intensity. My heart lifts just a little.
“You sound better,” I tell him. “The albuterol’s working.”
Rae looks up from her endless back-and-forth with the dispatcher. “Can you walk back to the car now?” she asks. “We should still get you to a hospital.”
Kai pays Rae and me no mind whatsoever. “Is Lise dead?” he asks again, still wheezing on the in breath. “Please. You have to tell me. Did they find her?”
