Li Lu’s parents never fought like this. And Brielle could never, ever have imagined it in a thousand years.
Noelani missed out on everything.
Getting Cut was probably the best thing that ever could’ve happened to her.
WINTER
Prompt: Caught up.
Macario would be there. At Koa’s service. And his aunties and uncles and tutus dressed in white.
And Miss Wilson would go. Mr. Montalvo, all the teachers, Sister Anne.
Stacy would be there, in exactly the wrong thing: tight red dress maybe, off-the-shoulder, choker. And she’d completely forget how she made Eli drive back from Pipeline that night, how she was so sure he’d cheat on her with the line of winter girls just waiting to grab him.
She wouldn’t be the only one who didn’t fit there. Most of the people who were crying and hugging didn’t know Koa at all.
Would Li Lu go? She had a thing about borrowing other people’s drama. She lived for it.
Me, I wish I could go. Me, I would like to say goodbye to Koa.
But I can’t. I know. It isn’t right.
If I even needed a reminder, it was the look on Koa’s mom’s face, the look she gave me by the papayas in Kokua Market. She must wonder how I’m alive, standing right there by papayas while her son is only ashes. She must hate me for it.
Koa, low shorts, hair in his eyes.
Koa and Tate, they won’t ever go to Kokua Market again. They won’t eat another papaya, or graduate with the rest of their class, or vote for president, or get married, or have kids or cats or their own front yard.
Koa’s mom must be so unforgivably angry at Eli, at me. Tate’s mom, too.
I will have to say goodbye to Koa in my own way. I will remember him that first day here at OLR, hair in his face, the first person to say hi to me, warning me about the Detention Convention as he rushed off to get his day over with, so he could catch the lineup at Pipeline.
WINTER
Prompt: How many words is a picture really worth?
From the posts and messages, I could piece together a lot.
There wasn’t anything about Koa’s actual funeral. But there was information on the wake.
It was at Moanalua Gardens, so many people spilling out from under the big white tent.
The pictures were taken from far away—white lanterns hanging from the Hitachi tree, just like over the Okotos’ door.
I remembered when Mrs. Tanaka’s brother died, a white lantern hung at their door, too. Mrs. Tanaka said it was made from washi paper, fiber boiled out of shrubs, the same used to fold origami.
What would Koa have thought of all the white? White flowers were everywhere, not ginger ones, like I thought there’d be. Koa’s family was all dressed in black, juzu beads and white envelopes in their hands. Those envelopes were filled up with money for the Okotos. But that money wouldn’t bring back Koa.
Koa Okoto would never catch the perfect wave at Pipeline.
He had been cremated. Turned from a human being into char that could have once been anything. That’s where the pictures end, where his life ended. I couldn’t find out what happened to him, to the ashes he had become. Maybe nothing yet. Maybe the Okotos are still holding on to him.
Sophia was in a lot of the pictures. She was: black dress, knee length, flared hem, scoop neck, probably Stella McCartney, hair in a side part, swept back.
Brielle was: black wraparound dress, the kind Grammie Stella told me makes her look twenty pounds lighter but definitely not the kind I’d think of Brielle wearing.
I couldn’t stop myself. I clicked on her FB page. I told myself to be ready for the happy, beautiful Bransons, all four of them together, shopping in Sydney, hiking the Outback, snorkeling the Gold Coast, cozying up with kangaroos.
But there was nothing about that. The last thing Brielle had put up was from December 10—a repost: “The prettiest smiles hide the deepest secrets.”
That was random, even for Brielle.
Sophia didn’t have any Aussie pics, either. Her last post was December 10, too—a selfie at Sandys, her knees pulled up to her chest, no smile. Blue filter.
FALL
Prompt: What do the candidates for governor have in common?
If there’s one thing the candidates have in common, it’s how easy it is for them to fail. One fail, and they’re over. Out forever. For sure. Their past, their policy, their parents’ nationalities, their hair, the affair their assistant’s husband had—everyone’s destroyed till there’s no one left.
Miss Teen USA got voted off Survivor. She only lasted three episodes. At first, she had made a good alliance with Malcolm. But at Tribal Council, he was the one who threw her under the bus and voted her out. FOR NO REASON. And they let Russell stay. They kept the total bully.
This morning, I was looking everywhere for my math homework, and Brielle came up to my locker and asked what I was doing after school.
I told her I didn’t have plans yet. And she said we could hang out.
Out of nowhere, Li Lu appeared. “Tay, seriously,” she spluttered, “did you forget we were going to watch Gossip Girl at my house after school…?”
Gossip Girl. It was so seventh grade. Okay, we had talked about maybe watching it, not for sure. And we always did that stuff.
And Li Lu said, “Whatever,” and stormed off to honors algebra.
“Whatever.” Brielle said it the way Li Lu did. Then, “So, your house, then? Will Eli be there?”
Eli was never home after school. He was always at Sunset, or hanging out at Tate’s or Koa’s, or working, which I was pretty sure he was doing later. That’s what he told Dad when Dad told him to mow the lawn.
And that reminded me of Dad. He was going to bust an artery if I forgot my math. I could just hear him: “There are two kinds of people in the world, Taylor—people who keep track of their math homework…” I started looking for it again from the top, told Brielle that Eli would be working.
“Where does he work?” she asked, and I told her the board shop.
“Which one?”
The bell rang. I was trying to think if my math could be in my Latin binder maybe? “Which one what?”
“Which board shop?”
“Dave’s.”
I opened up my Latin binder and flipped through all the loose pages. The math was right there—thank you, mullet baby Jesus. The last thing I can deal with right now is Dad going off the deep end and our whole family falling apart.
Everybody was on me already—Li Lu more than anyone. She keeps making me choose between Brielle and her. It’s getting so annoying.
WINTER
Prompt: If …
Sophia’s blue filter. What does it mean, her selfie at Sandys?
And Brielle? “The prettiest smiles hide the deepest secrets.” Today, she is writing and writing. She hasn’t looked at her phone even once.
If …
If Dad finds out, he’s going to kill me.
Or
If I hadn’t skipped school yesterday, I wouldn’t have had detention today.
There is nothing even kind of Breakfast Club–y about in-school here at Our Lady of Detention. It is an all-out lockdown, with no life-changing relationships, no solidarity against a common enemy, no essay, even. It’s a room with no posters, no plants, no map, no globe. There’s just a clock that’s rigged to move five times slower than normal, a slice of glass that might be technically called a “window,” and the Detention Convention himself.