“In a minute,” Mom said. She touched a muddy finger to her tongue.
“Mom! Gross!” I screeched. Seriously, sometimes she does really weird stuff.
“This is what we are, Taylor,” she told me.
The peonies had made it through three winters. The last one was the worst—months and months and months of rain—and Mom had just moved the lavender along the side of the house, out of the shadows. Her friend Valerie from work came over sometimes for coffee, and she liked her day shifts in the recovery unit. If she moved, she told Dad, she’d have to start all over. With peonies. It had taken a long, long, long time to get them to bloom. She’d have to go back to working in the hospital. She’d have to take swing shifts, or maybe even nights, and she’d get stuck in the ER or ICU where all the gossip is.
But Dad told Mom she could use some sun. He promised the O‘ahu dirt was rich with minerals from volcanic ash. He said she’d have plumeria! Banana trees! Hibiscus! That we’d hike to a new waterfall every weekend, starting with Mānoa Falls the day we got there. ‘Ohana! Dad told us—that’s the Hawaiian word for family. He put his arm around Mom, pulled her close.
“The hard thing is the right thing,” she said, even though I saw her dirt-streaked cheek twitching. If it was a good move for the family, she would do it.
Dad said he’d get on the fast track to tenure. To Dad, “home” means his work at the college. This would be just the wind he needed in his sails—the weather, the people, the fresh papaya … Paradise! We had a garage sale and moved to O‘ahu—“The Gathering Place.” We rented a house in Kaimuki.
All on his own that very first day, Eli went out to try surfing. When he came back, I could tell he’d been crying. I could always tell when Eli had been crying. His eyes got red. Puffy. And his skin was all splotchy at the temples. But even after I asked him what happened a thousand times, he wouldn’t tell me a single thing.
Finally, last year I found out from Koa what all had happened. Back on that day we first moved here, Eli showed up at Canoe’s, without a board, without any skills. Koa lent him his shortboard, and all the guys laughed so hard when Eli crouched waayyy down, his feet wide. They walked around like that, crouching, wide feet, laughing. “Shark bait,” they called him. And “beach leech” and “haole.”
That first day Eli went to Canoe’s, he came back crying—I know he did. But he also came back hooked. The next day, he got his own board—a used Quintara for $125—and went back to Canoe’s. He went back again and again and again.
We’ve lived a lot of places, Eli and me. To Eli, “home” is also ocean.
* * *
“You are SUCH a fast writer,” Brielle just turned around and told me. She looked at my notebook. “You write SO MUCH. What are you writing about? Are you writing about your brother?”
“Yeah,” I told her, “I totally am.”
She thinks I’m interesting, I can tell. Also, she followed me on Instagram last night!
WINTER
Prompt: Collections.
What is he doing in there? All those hours inside his cell? Is someone in there with him? Does he ever go outside?
It came yesterday, the thick envelope, blue. CONGRATULATIONS in yellow letters. He got in. How? His GPA was barely a 3.0. Wasn’t it? What happens now? Now that he’s—
Collections.
Conch. Sunrise. Moonrise. Triton.
‘Opihi. Puka. Harp.
* * *
“Are you doing homework?!” It was October. I set my Pumpkin Spice Latte on the kitchen table, where Eli was typing like his life depended on it. He’d always said, “Who gives a rat’s *** about homework?”
The latte was still too hot. I had a cat’s tongue, Mrs. Tanaka had told me.
“Nah,” Eli said, not looking up from the screen.
I moved behind him so I could see. “What are you doing, then?”
Eli snapped the computer closed. “Writing.”
I was obsessed with why he wouldn’t let me see.
* * *
Thorny oyster. Cowrie. Cone.
Ni‘ihau. Shiva. Drupe.
Can he still go? To Santa Cruz? Will they let him, now, after … Will they know? Will he be out by then? How long will he be in there? Months? Years? The rest of his life?
Collections.
Eli and Mom have been collecting shells a long time. Mom used to get up early, and Eli could catch the best swells in the morning. They have found cowrie, conch, and even sunrise, which are going for $200 these days if they’re perfect and whole, and if the pickers don’t rake them up first and sell them off to Honolulu shops.
If you want a good shell here, Eli says, you have to buy it or dive for it yourself. Or you have to get up before the pickers.
My whole Hawaii life, I’d been trying to find a shell that fit in Mom’s and Eli’s collection. Mom was so happy when Eli came back with a cone, a bubble, a harp. She looked it all over, at every fleck and groove. She studied each suture, the lip. She’d tell Eli, “Good find,” and then she’d set it on the kitchen windowsill between urchin, drupe, and thorny oyster.
* * *
“Good find,” Eli told me.
It was late September last year, at Sandys. He looked over my chipped harp like Mom always did, his long hair dripping ocean on it. “Come on, Grom!” He ran back toward the waves, board under his arm, leash whipping at his calves, leaving me on the shore with a worthless shell in my hand.
FALL
Prompt: Influence.
Miss Wilson said she was in the Peace Corps! That makes sense because of her style. It’s definitely not my kind of style. But it’s a style, I guess.
Today, she is: long lavender blouse, long orange skirt, and same sandals. MAKE IT MAJOR: Make it a maxi! Tuck in the shirt, pull up the skirt for a high-waisted look, belt with a dark bow.
Miss Wilson taught English, she told us, in Lesotho, where the people wear grass hats and head scarves and blanket shawls in every color.
Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps someday.
Or I’ll start up my own charity. I’ll travel all over, to India, helping thousands and thousands of poor people, just like Angelina Jolie.
Brielle asked me to sit with her at lunch today! First, we talked about how Kevin Loo called Jasmine Fukasawa “thirsty” on Instagram because she broke up with him and is into Elau Parks now, and then we talked about last night’s Project Runway episode. The contestants all had to go out in the street and sell stuff to buy their own fabric. And nobody wanted to work with Elena. Her shirts came out really bad. Plus, she had an awful sales pitch. She should have been eliminated. But in the end, Alicia was out.
Honestly, sometimes elimination is just so random.
I asked Brielle why she isn’t friends with Isabelle anymore. Brielle shrugged and said it turns out Isabelle isn’t as straight-up as she pretends to be.
That was surprising. What I knew about Isabelle was that everyone liked her. She hung out with all kinds of people, not just her bestie, Hailey Iona, not just the volleyball team, either. You’d see her with the Hula Club, with GSA, Brain Bowlers, surfers, even.