But the tourists didn’t want the flower pins. They wanted information. Like how to get to the Haiku Stairs.
“Try Mānoa Falls instead, or Makapu’u Point, or Diamond Head.” Li Lu was relentless.
If she’d just told the tourists what they wanted to know, we would have made at least some money. But they left, frustrated, without buying anything. We left, too. We stuffed the fabric flowers into a big pickle jar and went over to Icing anyway to get the “Friends Forever” lockets.
WINTER
Prompt: Have you kept your New Year’s resolution?
I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution.
It was sixteen days after the party at Ehukai. I was hiding in my room, trying to watch The September Issue or read People or listen to the Aquabats. I was trying to stay out of everybody’s way. I was trying to survive.
If Brielle knew that, would she have said what she did? If she knew that I was barely holding it together already?
Or maybe that’s why she did say it. “You’ll never get past this.” Maybe she knew it would ruin my life.
We didn’t even have Christmas. Could Brielle even imagine that? Could she fathom getting up in December with no presents, no stocking, no tree?
Dad spent the day on the phone, Eli had gone away, and Mom went to bed.
And if no Christmas, and no more Koa and Tate, and no more best friend, and Eli causing so many problems, and Mom in bed wasn’t enough, Brielle couldn’t stop herself from making it all so much worse.
If I made a resolution right now, it would be for Brielle’s life to be wrecked as bad as mine was because of her. For her to lose everything, like I have. For her to know how it feels.
* * *
“Santa Cruz, huh?” Brielle asked me after school, back in October.
I was standing at my locker, looking at the floor for the “Forever” locket that had just slipped off from around my neck.
People were all talking about who was applying where. Sophia was California. Macario was Oregon.
“UCSC,” Brielle said.
“Yeah,” I said. “He isn’t even applying anywhere else.” I picked up the locket and put it back on.
“What’s he going to major in?”
I wanted to know that, what he was going to major in. Why didn’t I?
I thought I knew everything about Eli. I should have known what his major would be.
“Let’s go to your house,” I said instead.
Finally, I was going to the Bransons’ huge house. In Kahala. With the closet everyone said was ginormous, complete with a velvet ottoman right in the middle and a whole wall just for shoes.
People said there was a movie theater with a popcorn machine. I could see it for myself, the Blue Room, and where Hayden Jones jumped from the roof into the pool.
“You know,” Brielle said then, “my house is boring. Let’s hang out at yours.”
It made me a little panicky, how my house was boring, small.
But before I could try to convince her to pick her house, she said she wanted to tell me something.
FALL
Prompt: Secrets.
Brielle said she wanted to tell me something. But she got all sidetracked by the damselfly first, then by the perfume.
My whole life, all I’ve ever wanted was a good shell and one perfect friend. Someone I could tell everything to. Who knew everything about me, who I knew everything about, too. Maybe that friend was Brielle. On the walk home, even our steps were in sync.
I told Brielle about the shell, the best one I ever found, a big triton at Shark’s Cove. It was perfectly patterned with tan and cream, like someone had spent hours painting it. It was as big as my hand, its scallops perfect and sharp, the grooves smooth, with zero cracks and zero holes and not a single coral attached to it. It must’ve come from deep, deep down and would have been everything on the sill between the conch and the sunrise. But the spiky little creature was still living inside it, so Eli forced me to put it right back where I found it.
Brielle was fascinated. She liked talking about Eli.
I told her he had been writing something.
“What is it?” she asked.
I told her I had no idea. I hated saying that.
“Well if you don’t know something, you should always find out,” Brielle said. “You should see for yourself.”
“He’ll kill us,” I said, “if we go in his room. Let’s make popcorn and look at Vogue. What did you want to tell me?”
“Let’s try his computer. Is it here?” Brielle headed toward Eli’s room anyway, where towels were scattered all over, and bowls of cereal were left out, and hats and wax and rash guards and leashes were everywhere. I was completely humiliated for him.
“It’s probably just something about surfing, definitely about surfing,” I said, regretting telling her about Eli’s new obsession. I just wanted her to trust me. So she would tell me her secret.
Eli’s password was easy. I got it on the fourth try. Sunset.
But the document I pulled up, that was different. Random. Weird.
“Perched upon an alien strawberry guava leaf,” Brielle read, “one of O‘ahu’s most striking species is among the last one thousand on the island. This year, the endemic blackline Hawaiian damselfly—pinapinao in Hawaiian—fluttered to the top of the endangered list. At one to two inches long, the insect is found only in O‘ahu’s high rain forest, along its cleanest streams, its rainbow eyes reflecting the hypocrisy of hope and promise.”
“This is boring, bugs and guava,” Brielle said.
Me, I was stupefied. I didn’t know Eli could write like a real encyclopedia. And I wanted to know more about the damselfly—what was happening to it, and why, and why Eli cared about it.
But Brielle opened Eli’s dresser drawer.
“Let’s get out of here.” I shut the laptop and said to Brielle, “This room’s a disaster, let’s go look at Vogue.”
A few pages in, notes of gardenia, wood, and lilies lifted up between us. We looked at each other, her eyes wide, the damselfly completely forgotten.
Square bottle, silver top … We rubbed our wrists all over the sticky strip, held up our wrists to each other’s noses.
“That smells SO good on you.”
“Even better on you.”
“No, seriously, it was literally, like, MADE for you.”
The perfume is from London.
“Candy.”
“Summer.”
It sold out after Kate Middleton wore it to her wedding. It’s on back order. But Brielle is getting it. She’ll wait, she said. If there’s one thing she’s good at, she added, it’s at playing the long game.
WINTER
Prompt: Should states be allowed to file bankruptcy?
Bankrupt.
To me, that means beyond any hope.
* * *
“Here’s the thing I don’t get,” Dad ripped into Eli on one of the days he was home between Eli getting out on bail and going to the program. Dad didn’t get why Eli was driving Koa’s Jeep. “So why was it, why were you the one driving?”