Dad’s yelling won’t fix it.
“Come on, Julia! Pull yourself together here!” Dad yelled. He’s “been back at the college for two weeks!” What would happen if he just stayed in bed? He “can’t just cancel classes!” “Someone around here needs to keep the roof over our heads!” “We all just have to get through this!”
What if we can’t, though? What if we don’t get through it? What if Dad gives up and leaves us? Would I leave with him? Would he make me? What would happen to Mom?
On weekends, Mom and I used to go to the library or to Foodland or Curry House. We used to buy stalks of birds of paradise from Watanabe Floral, and do laundry, and read the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, but the paper hasn’t been around since Eli’s face was plastered all over the front page. Someone must’ve canceled the subscription.
There’s a little statue on Miss Wilson’s desk, the serious kind of Buddha, not the one who’s laughing. It is frozen midstep, one arm by its side, the other reaching out, palm forward, like when he’s telling someone to stop. That statue wasn’t there before. I wonder if Sister Anne knows about it.
Buddha. There’s someone I’d like to meet. He would know how I could survive my life.
Does Buddha count as a celebrity?
* * *
“Hey, Grom!” Eli was smiling.
I was in seventh grade, and we were waiting by the gate for Dad to pick us up.
Eli punched my leg. I said, “Ow,” and punched him back.
“What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?” he said.
“I don’t know. I don’t care. What?” I rubbed my leg where Eli punched it.
“Make me one with everything!” Eli was laughing. He was laughing and laughing into the sky.
FALL
Prompt: Looking forward.
Besides the Bransons’ party, there are also the ones up North—the famous Volcom House parties, the ones at Ehukai Beach. You can’t get into those exactly. They’re for the masters—pros and semipros like Koa—the best on all of earth who can charge the deathwish drop. Those parties aren’t for regular people. They’re for people who aren’t afraid of anything. They’re for winter fling girls and cool kids like Eli who know people like Koa.
But. The Volcom House parties—the winter ones—they spill out of the three stories, right into the streets and onto the beach, where the regular people can dance around the fire to actual live bands. That’s what Eli says. He loves hanging out at those.
Brielle asked me if Eli was going this winter, and I told her for sure, because he’s best friends with Koa, and he’s always at Sunset—he basically lives there.
And then Brielle asked if I was going. Which I totally am! Mom said I can go IF I go with Eli.
I asked her, not Dad, because Dad always tells Eli he doesn’t want him going to the North Shore, that Kamehameha is windy and narrow. “It’s not a good road,” Dad always says. “People drive too fast” and “There are potholes and chickens all over.”
Once, Eli’s truck got stuck in the sand. He’s gotten tickets, even towed. His truck’s been backed into and broken into and even stolen completely when he left the keys inside and the windows down. That’s all happened there.
Dad thinks the North Shore is too dangerous, too far, that the current is strong, that the waves are too big, that the water’s moody.
Those are the reasons Eli LOVES Sunset.
He tells Dad he’s going to Bowls, which is closer, safer. Boring. Mush. But really, Eli goes to Sunset, where the waves are big and blue, green, then white. They rise and fold, Eli rising and folding with them.
He says, “Come on, Grom, stop burping the worm.” He tells me he’ll take me to Ted’s after for donuts. And I say I’ll do it for a breakfast burrito AND a mocha, and if we don’t leave before ten. And Eli takes me up on it. He’s that desperate for an audience.
“Come on, Grom!” he calls out from the water when we get there. “Next wave has your name on it!”
He never gives up.
“No, thanks!” I yell back from shore, my red-nailed toes in the warm white sand, a Glamour beside me.
This winter, now that I’m in eighth grade, I am absolutely, definitely, for sure going to the party at Ehukai. That’s what I told Brielle.
The part I didn’t say is that Stacy better not ruin my chances. She’s causing all this drama about Eli not spending time with her, she wants him to work all the time like she does, and she’s been completely PARANOID he’s going to have a winter fling with some surfer girl from Ecuador or Australia or something.
Stacy’s the worst. If she knew one thing about Eli, it’s that he’s as loyal as it gets.
FALL
Prompt: What does “home” mean to you?
To Mom, “home” means good dirt. To me, “home” means Mom and Dad and Eli.
Before we moved to O‘ahu, we lived in Oregon. And before Oregon, we lived in Arizona. We’ve had a few homes: a little yellow one with a white porch, another one that was near a burrito place, and a cream-colored one with big windows and a cactus in the front.
Dad tells Eli if he would mow the front like he asks him to do, he wouldn’t have to pay Lono Lawn Care. But Eli never gets around to it.
Me, I was up for moving to O‘ahu. I was in fifth grade when Dad brought up the whole thing, and I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in Hawaii? Dad said we’d snorkel all the time—we’d see turtles and trumpet fish. (Side note: He did not say anything about eels.) And we’d go to luaus and eat pulled pork. It sounded delicious. He told me I’d love watching the dancers in their skirts made of grass. That there was a real royal palace on O‘ahu, and that pineapples grew up right out of the ground! He said there were submarine rides, too, and whale watching, and island-hopping to black sand beaches.
I was up for it for sure—sundresses in December, sandals in January, the beach! It wasn’t like I was leaving a whole group behind. In Oregon, I always just had one friend who had to move after a year or two. First it was Dakota, then Aliyah, then Jade. Maybe in Hawaii, I’d find the group I always dreamed of having.
Eli wasn’t the same as me though. He’d had his same one group the whole time. To Eli, “home” means friends. They were going into high school. He was worried about making new friends in a place he didn’t know.
I could tell Mom didn’t want to move, either. The peonies finally had their first buds in our Oregon yard.
* * *
“Come see.” Mom patted the ground beside her. Her glove was muddy. Her knees were muddy. Her hair was damp. Torn seed packets lined the row of unturned earth between the yellow house and the soggy lawn.
“It’s muddy,” I told her.
Mom took off her glove, ran her bare hand through the wet dirt. “It will take them three years to bloom.” She closed her eyes. “It’s alive.” She looked at me. “My second favorite smell in the world. Right after the smell of my kids.”
“We should go inside,” I told her. “It’s too rainy.”