It was starting to sink in, Brielle’s agenda.
Brielle stared up at the fluorescent lights. “Everything’s fish-kicking boring at this trash school. Doesn’t anyone want to have any fun?”
“Taylor and I have fun all the time,” Li Lu snapped.
I glanced at Brielle. She cradled her face in her hands, popped her eyes like she had a stabbing migraine.
“’Sup?” Soo sat down.
“We’re talking about Colin,” Brielle said.
“Silva?” Soo asked. “What about him?”
Brielle said, “Taylor’s gonna ask him if he’s ready for the math test.” She paused before adding—to Li Lu, “But actually, there isn’t one.”
I definitely wasn’t going to ask Colin if he was ready for a nonexistent math test. That would send him into a complete panic. He’d die of heart failure, for sure. And I’d be responsible for that, no thanks. I was just going to let the whole idea fizzle out/go away.
“Oh my god, hilarious!!!” Soo was ruining that plan.
But then: “Taylor would never do something like that,” Li Lu blurted.
It was so embarrassing, Li Lu talking for me like that. Telling everyone what I would or wouldn’t do.
“Is that right, Taylor?” Brielle shrugged. “You wouldn’t ask Colin about a test?”
When Brielle put it that way, it seemed pretty harmless. Also, Li Lu didn’t have to know every single thing about my life before I even lived it.
I got up and walked over to Colin. “Hey,” I said.
Soo and Brielle moved to the edge of their seats, grinning. I didn’t look at Noelani or Li Lu.
“Hey,” Colin said back. He seemed surprised but also really, genuinely happy.
“So…” I coiled a strand of my hair around my finger. “Are you ready for the math test?”
Maybe it was the way I said it. Or how behind me, Brielle and Soo were whooping like hyenas. But Colin said, “I know what you’re doing, Taylor.”
My face flushed. I just could not stop that from happening. Also, my feet were somehow fastened to the floor.
“There isn’t a test,” Colin went on. “They told you to ask me.”
I looked back at the group. Li Lu was looking at me with actual scorn. She got up and tossed her whole bento box in the garbage.
Brielle was face palm, laughing with Soo. Noelani pushed her macaroni to the side.
Without telling Colin anything else, I went back and sat down.
“That was a better show than I even thought it’d be!” Brielle squealed. “A total, serious, epic fail! But A for effort, Taylor Harper!”
I felt kind of sick for a second. At first. Till: “Totes. It was RIDONCULOUS!” Soo snorted up some of her green smoothie.
The snort, the word, it was all pretty funny. Noelani laughed. I laughed.
“Brain freeze!!!”
“Ridonculous!!!”
Colin would live. There wasn’t a test. It wasn’t that big of a deal.
“Ridarfalous!!!”
“Ridonkadonk!!!”
RIDONKADONK!!!!!!
We all lost it. We were dying, dying, DYING of death!!!
Literally everyone was watching Brielle and Soo and Noelani and me laughing and laughing and laughing wildly. I had seen groups laughing like that, and I’d thought they were so lucky. I had wanted to be laughing with them, wondered what they were laughing about. And now, everyone was watching, and everyone was wanting that, and everyone was wondering.
Colin wasn’t looking. He was back on his Game Boy. He was never going to let me see his homework again.
But we had a thing, Brielle and Soo and Noelani and me. We had a word, a joke, a code. We had something only we knew, only we got.
WINTER
Prompt: Lunch.
Lunch.
Lunch is the worst.
It’s worse, even, than it is in the halls. Or in the classrooms.
When I walk into the cafeteria, everyone stares. All the loud talking turns into whispers, and everyone points like I can’t see them, or maybe they don’t care if I can, and they shake their heads at each other—even Colin Silva, who I never even really knew.
Brielle and Soo still have green tea smoothies and sushi for lunch, and sometimes Li Lu sits with them now, too. I watch her throw away the steamed bun, the little orange slice, even the almond cookie her mom packs up for her. I watch her buy green tea smoothies and sushi instead. I wonder if Brielle has told her the secret. Or about the game.
I wish I had a sister to sit with, like Noelani does. Or a team, like Isabelle. Was she trying to warn me, that day in fall in language arts? Was she going to tell me Brielle was bad news?
I wouldn’t have listened. I wouldn’t have believed her.
So now, I leave Latin just before the very last person leaves class, and I hang out at my locker until the hall is almost completely clear. Then I go into the bathroom and wash my hands for a really long time, then I head over to the lunchroom. By then, the basketball players have slammed their sandwiches and Doritos, and they’re in the gym shooting around, and I sit at their table. By myself.
Lunch used to be fun. We would sit there, my group and me, talking and laughing. It was the best part of school.
How has it all changed back for Isabelle? She sits with the volleyball group again—Allie, Ellie, Oliana, Halia. They talk and laugh, like Isabelle’s whole life never unraveled. Like Brielle never unraveled it.
Hailey isn’t around anymore, though. For a while, people were saying she had mono and was taking online classes from home now. Then everyone forgot about her. I wonder if Isabelle has forgotten about her, too.
Everyone’s forgotten about the war. The coverage lasted five seconds. Now CNN and Nightly News are all about gun control and background checks and waiting periods and assault weapons and mental health.
Sister Anne asked me, “Are you interested in any school clubs or sports?” when she pulled me out of Latin on that first day back from break. “There’s theater, swimming, knitting, the paddle club, Grief Group…”
I did appreciate how she just added Grief Group right in there at the end. Like it was just another option along with all the other clubs, even though it was the whole reason she called me in.
“I’m okay,” I told her. I had never needed any clubs or sports. I had my family—Mom and Dad and Eli. I had Grammie Stella. Nine hundred one friends on Facebook, 143 Instagram followers.
I had Li Lu.
We used to laugh, and go to Bamboo, and talk out our plan to sign up for the same horseback riding session at Camp Mokule`ia. After that, we’d plan out high school, then the whole rest of our lives.
* * *
“It’s closed off now,” Li Lu said at Waikiki last summer. “There’s a guard and a gate and a million dollar fine. And who wants to walk up four thousand steps anyway?”
That was her take on the Haiku Stairs. It’s been closed since before I was here, since before she was here, since before we were born, even.
Not a lot of tourists asked us about the Stairs, but when they did, Li Lu shut it down like a boss. That day last summer, we were into making hibiscus flowers from silky material to sell to tourists. They could clip the state flower in their hair or onto their shirt. We burned the edges and hot glued the yellow petals on top of each other, with a deep red center. Then we went to sell them on the beach for $5 each. If we sold them all, we worked out, we’d get $125, and after getting lockets, the friendship kind, from Icing, we’d still have tons left over for manis and mochas and malasadas.