by Piper Lennox
I wait until they’re gone before I get out. Not wanting any doe-eyed sympathy from Clara and Georgia just yet, I leave my stuff—a paltry box containing two sodas I left in the break room mini-fridge, my name badge, and the coffee can of crayons I brought for kids to use in the waiting room. It felt petty to take it, but right.
When I peel back the lid, the warm smell of wax billows through the car. It’s like a kindergarten classroom, that permanent smell of craft-time. I pick up a green crayon and think of London, coloring up a storm the day Buttons lost his ear.
My heart’s doing cartwheels as I cross the parking lot and climb the stairs to Orion’s unit, the coffee can rattling under my arm. I don’t know what I’m more afraid of: his sudden return and what will happen if he spots me, or going undetected altogether. Nothing but crayons in my wake.
I set it on the welcome mat, then use the green to scrawl London’s name and a little heart on the plastic lid. It’s hardly visible, but if you look at it from the right angle—crouching down to about three-foot-eight—the wax shines enough to make it out.
“You were fired? Oh, Colby.”
I shut my eyes against Mom’s combination pity/scold. “Dr. Aurora said she’d give me a good recommendation when I apply for something else. It’s not a big deal.”
“Have you found something else?”
Out in the living room, I hear the twins exchanging their mildly-famous banter for a new video. Today is stockpiling day, their usual Tuesday routine: film three videos in a row, complete with different clothes, to post throughout the week while they meet up with other bloggers or work on marketing. Right now I can hear Georgia defending her favorite dry shampoo, while Clara patiently waits to offer a rebuttal.
“It’s been twenty-four hours, Mom.” I don’t add that I’ve spent nearly twenty of those hours applying to every vet’s office I can find, and a few retail stores for good measure.
“I really think you should move home, sweetheart,” she tsks. I hear paper crinkling: lemon Starbursts. As much as I don’t miss her lectures, I do miss the sweet, citrusy smell of her breath when she yells at me.
“Mom. Don’t.” My bed squeaks as I fall back. “You’re kicking me while I’m down.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she says, in a tone that’s anything but apologetic. “I’ve just never understood why you left Kona in the first place. There were good schools here. And you know your dad and I would have given you a position at the clinic.”
My brain is melting. When I sit up, there will be a pool of bubbling gray matter eating through my mattress.
“That’s why I left. One of many reasons. I don’t want things just handed to me.”
“Yet here you are,” she bites, “calling to ask us for more money.”
“You think this feels good, Mom? Having to beg you for rent and my car payment because what little bit I worked my ass off to save is already going to bills? Yes, I just love this. Highlight of the year, this phone call.”
“I’ve kept my mouth shut about your choices for years now—”
No, I think. You’ve done the exact opposite, from the minute I told you I applied to undergrad programs anywhere but Hawaii. Everywhere but Hawaii, actually.
“—but I’ve got to put my foot down, now. We indulged it long enough, you got a fair chance to make things work out there—it’s time for you to come home.”
“I’ve been out of work a day! I’m just asking for a little help, here. I’ll...I’ll pay you guys back this time. Okay?”
“It’s not up for discussion. I’m tired of paying your rent when you could live here for free and earn more money working for your father and me than out there. What’s even keeping you out there, anymore? What does California have that Hawaii doesn’t?”
Freedom. New faces I haven’t seen from the moment I opened my eyes. A chance to earn success for myself, instead of having it handed to me—even if I have to swallow my pride and beg for help to make it happen.
The reasons are all still there. They’re the same ones I’ve given Mom for years, met with eye-rolls I can’t see but can practically feel across the ocean. Only now, I don’t even care about them, anymore.
Orion and London. That’s what Kona doesn’t have.
And now, neither do I.
“I guess...nothing,” I whisper, trying not to cry. I’m so done with crying.
“Then it’s settled. I’ll book your flight home. When’s a good day for you?”
“I don’t know,” I mutter, feeling numb. Actually, I do feel one thing: utter defeat. “Whatever’s cheapest, I guess.”
Her keyboard clacks like Ginger Rogers. She’s probably booking me a ticket right this minute, before I scrounge up a job and some of my old pride again.
“I’ll wire you the money for August’s rent, so we don’t leave your roommates high and dry. You’ll have to figure out the car situation, though—find out the payoff and line up a buyer.”
I make vague listening noises as she recites her plan. Our plan.
After Mom hangs up, I drop my phone and watch the singular ray of sunlight on the ceiling draw back with the sunset. Slowly, I let myself think about it: life back in Kona.
The same people I’ve known forever. Working in the clinic alongside my parents, the way they always wanted. Sleeping on the pullout sofa in the living room with my shit in boxes, half of it lost in transit, while Aunt Rochelle keeps falling to pieces in my bedroom and inventing new ways to dredge up the past, every time I start to move on.
Then something scary happens: I start to see Mom’s point.
No rent to pay, no bills. A steady, decent-paying job while I go to vet school online in Honolulu, then finish the classes at a distance center. I could save up my money and move back to the mainland when I’ve got a nice buffer built up, maybe buy a house somewhere and open my own practice.
I roll out of bed and look through my blinds at Orion’s unit. The crayon can I left there on Monday was gone last night, but he didn’t stop by or call with a thank-you. For all I know, some neighbor kids swiped the can before London could even see it.
You’ve got options, I tell myself. Hitting up the mall and every restaurant in a thirty-mile radius, begging for work until I find something that’ll train me fast and pay me faster. The twins have savings; they wouldn’t mind loaning me what I need. If I have the will to stay in Santa Barbara, I can surely find a way.
But there’s nothing here for me, anymore. Maybe there never was.
So, yeah: there are ways. It’s the will that’s missing, now.
Orion
The day before Mom left, she bought me crayons.
It was one of those giant boxes with the sharpener built in. Maybe five bucks, at most, but I held that thing like she’d given me a case of gold bars.
“Can I draw you a picture when we get home?”
“Sure, baby.” She wasn’t listening. We were in the car of the guy who lived above us in the attic. Years later, I’d realize she was distracted more than usual, maybe planning her escape with him even then.
The coffee can on the doormat reminds me of that crayon box and the last afternoon with my mother the second London peels back the lid. It’s the smell that gets me, in a way no other sense can.
“Wonder who it’s from,” Walt mutters, stirring the alfredo sauce simmering on the stovetop while London dumps every single crayon onto the dining table.
I start on the garlic bread. “Getting real tired of the sarcasm.”
“I’m so sorry.”
London vanishes into my room, then clatters back with a stack of printer paper from my desk. It’s brand-new, most likely right out of the paper tray, instead of the mock-ups and test pages I set aside for her to scribble on. I don’t have the heart to scold her.
That night, after we eat and put London to bed, Walt and I stoop to pick the crayon nubs from the carpet. I turn the lid in the light and study Colby’s handwriting, the tiny heart she drew.
“Cassandra ca
lled earlier.” Walt flicks an aquamarine my way and sits, his back against the footrest of the recliner. “Wanted to know which weeks in August work.”
I look up from the smeared wax I’m scraping off the table leg with my thumbnail. “August?”
“For London’s visit. Remember?”
The letter Cassandra wrote filters back, line by line. I sit back and breathe, “Shit.”
“You have to let her go. She’s upset enough about Colby.”
I nod, but it’s forced. All I can think about is Cassandra losing London in the middle of a theme park. Parental paranoia tends to work from a place of most recent occurrences.
“Nervous about tomorrow?”
It’d be easy to get annoyed at Walt taking on the role of my PDA...if I didn’t so desperately need him to do it. Truth is, the biopsy was even further from my mind than London visiting her grandmother.
“A wreck. So I’m pretty much expecting the worst.”
“That’s a shitty way of thinking.”
“No, it’s realistic.”
Walt drops the last of the crayons into the coffee can, presses the lid into place, and puts it on the shelf of the entertainment center with London’s snow globes. “One of these days,” he says, heading for his bedroom and, apparently, leaving me to deal with the dinner dishes by myself, “you’re going to learn the real definition of that word.”
Twenty-Five
Colby
“You can’t leave.”
Gently, I pry Georgia’s hands off my suitcase and finish zipping it shut. “My mom already got the plane ticket, the dealer agreed to buy back my car, I’ve got no job and literally no leads—if you’ve got a better idea, let me know.”
“We’ll give you the money.”
“Or loan it to you,” Clara revises. She’s cut from a similar cloth and understands my stubborn pride better than Georgia, who frequently forgets her wallet on grocery runs and never minds borrowing from her sister. “Either way, we’ve got you covered.”
“Thank you, guys, but....” I perch myself on the edge of the bed and eye the window. Orion’s apartment isn’t visible from this angle, not that I have to see it to feel the pang run through me. “I think it’s time I go back. Start fresh.”
“You were right,” Georgia whispers to Clara, but, being that it’s Georgia, the sound still echoes through my room.
My eyes snap between them. “Right about what?”
“Why you’re leaving. Clara predicted it as soon as we found out Orion ended things with you.”
“I said she’d probably move so she didn’t have to be around him,” Clara says softly, correcting her sister again. “I didn’t think she’d move to another state.”
“For what it’s worth?” Georgia flops across my bed, chin propped on top of her hands. “It doesn’t sound like you were the problem. I mean, it’s definitely Orion’s hang-up. The whole ‘mom material’ thing.”
“How do you even know about that?”
“Walt,” she says, in the tonal equivalent of duh.
I shrug and try not to think about the unanswered text I sent Orion last night, when the girls convinced me to drink my troubles away. Not only did it not work, but it created an entirely new problem: feeling hopelessly pathetic when my message got left on Read. PROBABLY SHOULDN’T SAY THIS...BUT I MISS YOU. No response.
“Walt’s been yelling at him all week,” Georgia continues. “He’s pretty pissed at him for letting you go. If that helps.”
My smile’s weak, but there’s some real feeling behind it for the first time in days. “It does. Even if it doesn’t actually help anything.” I fall back on the bed beside her; she sits up and rubs my temples.
“It’s gotta be the kidney thing,” she says, a few minutes later. When I open my eyes, she’s talking to Clara, not me.
“What kidney thing? You mean the transplant he had?”
“No,” Georgia says. She raises her eyebrows like I should know this. “He had to get a biopsy this week, to see if it’s rejecting..”
My veins feel like ice. I roll to the foot of the bed and stand. “So...so his transplant didn’t work?”
“It’s too early to tell or something. I don’t know.” Georgia waves her hand. It sends a tendril of new perfume my way, a free bottle some French company sent her in exchange for a blog feature. “Walt said Orion told you all this, though. Or he said he was going to tell you.”
“He didn’t.” I feel for the bureau behind me and lean against it. The snow globes wobble; I pick up the one from Mission Street Zoo that Orion bought me. My hands turn it back and forth. The flakes tumble loose, swirling above the tiny paths and exhibits. I press my finger to the plastic dome, directly over the tiger enclosure.
“Walt and I have a theory,” Georgia announces, while Clara keeps a careful watch on my expression, ready to rephrase her sister’s words whenever necessary. Georgia’s luckier than she realizes to have a walking, talking filter at her side. “Orion was thinking, ‘Huh, maybe Colby will be a good mom,’ until—”
“Until I lost his kid,” I finish. The snow globes rattle when I put the Mission Street Zoo one down too hard. “Not a theory. Fact.”
“Until,” she says, practically shouting over me, “he found out about his kidney messing up again. Which is probably why he got so angry at you about losing London. Maybe he would have gotten just as mad anyway, I don’t know, but that’s what Walt and I think. Bad timing.”
The universe’s timing, I correct her, silently.
“If Orion wanted you to stay...would you?” Clara asks.
I watch her. She’s doing her tai chi in the doorway, halfway in the hall. I’d love to be half as calm and centered as she seems to be, at any given moment.
“Yeah,” I confess, “but it feels stupid to say that, because then it’s like saying him dumping me is the reason I’m leaving. Which it isn’t. It’s...more like a nudge.”
More like a shove. More like a heat-seeking missile, launching me into Kona and my parents’ plans faster than you can say aloha.
“He needs to get over himself.” Georgia hops off my bed and runs her finger along the spines of my books. “If he gave you a fair shot, he’d see you’re in it for the long haul. Not just with him, but with London, too. “
“Yeah, well. That’s the whole problem. He won’t.”
“Then prove it to him. In some way he can’t possibly ignore.”
Surprisingly, it’s not Georgia who issues this bold declaration. It’s Clara. We both stare at her while she does some knee rolls, waiting for her to elaborate. When she doesn’t, I prompt, “Such as...?”
Clara shrugs, gliding down the hall like a saint in transcendence. I guess even a girl with all the serenity and enlightenment in the world can’t have all the answers.
Orion
“You’re just going to let her go?” Walt braces his hands on the dining table. My coffee sloshes.
I steady the mug and barely glance at him before returning to my cereal. “You said she lost her job. It sounds like she would’ve gone back to Kona, anyway.”
“Why are you doing this?” He swats my spoon down into my bowl. “How many perfectly fine women are you going to chase off because they aren’t immediately loading up the Volvo?”
“Which ones were perfectly fine?” I ask, voice flat. “Lissa? Jill? Or were you referring to Niecy, who called London ‘Dakota’ even after three weeks?”
Walt stares me down. His nostrils flare. Shit—I’m really in for it.
“How long have we been best friends?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Don’t start with the guilt trip, man.”
He pulls out a chair and crashes down into it. “Answer me.”
I set down my coffee without sipping, humoring him after some quick math. “It’ll be...eighteen years, this September.”
“Eighteen years,” he stresses. “In all that time, have I ever done anything that wasn’t looking out for you?”
“Uh, the food
fight, the lock-in, the—”
“When it actually mattered.” Walt lowers his voice, as if just now remembering London’s still asleep mere yards away from us. “Look, I get wanting to find the perfect mom for London. Actually, I...I really admire you for it.”
“You do?”
He nods. “A lot of people don’t think about that. Like when my mom married Gene—talk about not being parent material. Remember my twelfth birthday party? How he just sat on the porch getting drunk? Didn’t even help my mom bring out the cake.”
I remember. Gene had a long history of dragging down or flat-out ruining Walt’s birthdays. On his eighteenth—the day Walt officially came out to his family—Gene gifted him with a black eye. Walt’s Mom and I tackled him with enough force to put the NFL to shame.
“My mom’s apologized to me, like, a hundred times,” Walt goes on. “She didn’t think about how Gene would be as a dad. She figured, once they were married, he’d just suddenly care about me like his own.” He quiets, but only for a moment. “She thought him caring about her made caring about me automatic.”
“That’s exactly why I’m so—as you put it—picky about who I date. It’s not like I don’t think anyone’s good enough. It’s just hard to get someone to take the package deal when....”
“When you’re trying not to damage the most adorable part of that package?” he finishes, holding up one of London’s paper dolls. “The point I’m making here is that it’s good you’re not doing what my mom did: finding someone you like, getting serious, and then seeing if they can handle the stepparent gig.”
“Then we’re in agreement.”
“But it’s not good,” he continues, flipping the doll at me like a throwing card, “that you go to the other extreme, too. Ignoring a real connection because the girl’s not a perfect parent, right off the bat. How’s a girl supposed to prove her commitment to London unless you commit to the girl?”
