And even after the letters and donations, things didn’t stop. I talked about the sharks in my Kahena Academy application, the selection committee had probably heard of me, too. So I got into the best prep school in the state—a full scholarship, the same as it was for all Native Hawaiians—even if the school was full of kids far beyond what James and Skyler were.
And my family, especially Dean, could see all the other things happening to me, that I was getting smarter, quickly, that it might as well be magic how my brain was vaulting me past my classmates. And the ‘ukulele, too—the songs I could play—He’s some kind of prodigy, the teachers were saying, and Mom and Dad like the sun when teachers talked about me. They’d started to say I was something special. Even right where Dean and Kaui could hear.
All that happening and my brother here with James and Skyler, then me. They all knew what they’d heard.
“So what, Dean,” Skyler said, “I get a turn with him or what?”
Dean stared at me, started to smile, but I swear underneath I saw a flinch, maybe he didn’t want it to go all the way, he was still after all my brother. But then the grin spread. “Everyone gotta take a turn, Noa,” he said.
Illegal aerials—the type of red and blue and gold explosions only hotels were supposed to launch—boomed in the black above us, tossing our shadows against the stucco walls of Skyler’s mansion.
“You’ve got a hundred pounds on me, easy,” I said to Skyler. Like that would help, like anything would help.
“No be like that,” James said. “Fairy.”
“Get some bloody knuckles,” Skyler said, stepping closer, punching hand still twitching. He aimed it at me, made a fist, the clench was slow and stiff and I could see the flaps of skin on his knucklebones, the bits of blood. Around the corner came the murmur of the party, the sparkling crash of beer bottles piling up, then the firecrackers, pop pop pop.
“Cut it out,” Kaui said, her voice smaller than all of us, she actually put her hands on her hips. We all froze, every boy, we’d forgotten about her, standing at my side, little sister three years under me.
I looked at Dean again, I wish I hadn’t; it shames me now to remember it. How I was thinking he might still step in, say it was a joke, of course a teenager with the body of a man shouldn’t be pounding on a middle-schooler.
“Come on, mahu,” Skyler said to me. “What, first time punching? Hold your hand up.”
I raised my fist. Dean leaned back lazy on the wall, crossed his arms.
Kaui said, “Noa, don’t.”
“Go away,” I said to her. “It’s between us.”
Skyler put his fist up. Six inches from mine. Our knuckles: his already chewed with punches, mine all smooth and thin, even I saw the ending. Then Skyler moved to punch me; I flinched. “No flinching,” he said, punched my shoulder with his other fist, soon there would be a bruise like the day after immunization. “We gotta go again,” he said.
So we did, set our fists in the air facing each other. I tried to make my wrist lock, tried to think of what I could be that wouldn’t break or bend, statue or train or rock wall, but then he punched into my knuckles. There was a bony slapping sound.
Pain shot to my elbow, I yelped, Skyler hooted. “Gotta go one more time if you cry like that, pussy.”
I looked at Dean again, but he made like he was only watching the fireworks, burning in the air above.
“He not gonna save you,” James said. “It’s big-boy time, sack up, bitch.”
My teeth were clenching so hard my whole jaw was a balloon of hurt, something like my knuckles were, don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. “All you retards can do is punch,” I said. “You’ll be praying for McDonald’s jobs while I’m graduating from Kahena.”
James’s feet shifted in the grass, I heard the hiss and crackle. “You guys hear this smart-ass?” James said to Skyler. “Maybe we both get a turn for the second round.”
“No,” Skyler said. “Only me.”
My hand was shaking then, all my fingers and my palm whumping with my pulse, but I closed the fingers, felt the pain stretch and burn across my bones. I put my fist six inches from Skyler’s again. He punched, harder, like a heavy door slamming closed, my hand still in the doorjamb. An explosion in my hand bones so big it blew through my eyes, everything white for a second, I fell back on my ass in the dirt. When I landed I made an awful wet crying sound, like a puppy.
James and Skyler both laughing, Skyler flapping his punching hand, and out front on the lawn someone must have told a good joke, because all the adults were laughing, right at the same time.
Kaui moved in front of me. “Cut it out, botos,” she said.
“What?” James laughed again. “Wait, what?”
“I said enough,” Kaui said.
“Maybe it’s your turn, then, yeah?” James said to her. “You and me.”
Dean stood up from his lean. “James, no be stupid,” he said, his pidgin dialed up since he wasn’t with Mom and Dad.
“Do it,” Kaui said to James.
“Both of you shut up,” Dean said.
“Too late,” Kaui said. Then to James, “Do it, scaredy cat.”
“Watch your mouth,” James said.
“You gonna watch it for me?” Kaui said, all ten years old of her. “Do it, pussy.” She put her fist out, just as mine had been, her hand so much smaller and rounder, there almost weren’t any knuckles.
James set his fist in the air, six inches from hers.
Kaui’s face like something carved from koa, little brown sister, bushy hair pigtailed. I didn’t know what to say—part of me wanted her to try it, because she was always thinking she could keep up with me and Dean, even though she was five years younger than him and three years younger than me, she should know her place … and then part of me didn’t want her to try it, because I knew the only way it could feel when it was over.
“Kaui,” Dean said.
“Do it,” Kaui said to James. She kept her fist out.
James shrugged, locked his arm, pointed his fist at hers. He twitched a fake at Kaui, she didn’t flinch. He shifted his weight and threw a punch from his shoulder, but when his fist met hers it wasn’t a fist, he opened his hand and grabbed her wrist, laughed. Patted her hand. “Come on, I not going hit a girl, specially not Dean’s sister.”
Dean laughed, too, he knew he had won, James and Skyler liked him enough, probably because of what he let them do to me. I chose it, I wanted to say. I matter, not you. But the three of them shifted their positions, just a bit closer to each other, me and Kaui outside their loose circle.
“Go,” Dean said, waving us away like bees at a picnic. They were all three laughing. I turned, I walked away through the trimmed bright grass, I heard Skyler’s voice, dimming—“I got some fireworks,” he said—and then I was out of earshot.
“I hate that stupid game,” came Kaui’s voice next to me, and I jumped a little.
“I didn’t know you were there,” I said.
“Well, I am,” Kaui said.
“You shouldn’t have come back there,” I said.
“Why not?”