If there was one thing Dean and I agreed on, it was that no one got to hurt Kaui but us. That was what it meant to be her brothers, but I knew what Kaui would say if I explained it that way, so I didn’t. Instead I said, “You got off lucky, they didn’t hit you. It used to be like that for me, too.”
We’d made it back to the sidewalk, two houses down, Uncle Royce’s party. Skyler and his family would have hated it here—which is why they’d gone to another party up the street the other way—people here were just in jeans and T-shirts, camo board shorts, the tarry smell of cigarettes, no decorations, beer in cans from half-gutted cardboard boxes. Then another rolling pop of firecrackers.
“If you’re tired of everyone picking on you, maybe don’t be such a smart-ass all the time,” Kaui said.
“You know,” I said, “just because you learned a few swear words, that doesn’t make you grown-up.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Bet they’d still be wrecking you if I didn’t step in.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Things like that with Dean,” she said, “it’s almost like you want to get beat up.”
She was right, that’s exactly what it was, but how could I tell her? She didn’t know, no one knew, how after the sharks I could feel Mom and Dad holding their breath so hard it was almost like they were holding mine, they talked about the ‘aumakua, how me having been blessed by the spirits, chosen, meant something. Already I was lucky for them, had brought them things, the donations they got from my story that made our move to O‘ahu so much easier, certificates and awards from Kahena Academy, shaka respect from every local that heard the shark story and felt the old gods in it, everything, it was me.
Dean saw it. And he heard, too, from Mom and Dad, could I be the new Hawaiian scientist, or some senator, or the whole renaissance. We all heard, and there were things growing in me that made me believe I could turn into those dreams.
Still I shrugged at what Kaui said. “He’s always mad at me. I figure maybe if I just let him get in a few good lickens he’ll get over it.”
She snorted. “Dean’s not so good at that.”
“At what?”
“Getting over things.”
Then there was an awful whimper, a human sound you just know is bad, me and Kaui both stopped talking. We saw Dean, dark skin shirtless, walking slow toward us on the sidewalk from behind Skyler’s house; Skyler was with him, their shoulders bumping. My brother had used his shirt to wrap Skyler’s hand and now cradled it. I noticed a new, black smell, almost like after firecrackers, burned paper, but more sweet and smoky, grilled pig maybe. And Skyler had his eyes clamped shut, tears squeezing out in between, him whimpering, my brother telling him that everything was going to be all right, James behind them looking sick.
All the parents and the party shut up.
Dean said, “He tried to let go but the fuse was too short.” Skyler was shivering like a horse coming up out of a river.
Dean whispered something to Skyler, Skyler shook his head. But anyway Dean started to pull the cloth back and showed us something like a hand, three fingers that wiggled white, two others that didn’t, there were yellow chunks and shreds of skin, then splinters of bone gone gray in the light. The sweet pork smell blew again across our noses. People hissed and turned away.
Then voices came up again, loud and urgent, someone’s keys jingling, while I stepped forward and touched Skyler’s hand, I didn’t know what I was doing, even Dean asked me that, What are you doing, but I didn’t answer because there was too much in me to speak: I felt the prickly growth of the grass in the lawns all around, as if it was my skin, the beat of the night-bird wings as if I was the one flying, the creaking suck of the trees breathing in the firework air as if the leaves were my own lungs, the drum of the hearts of everyone at the party.
I touched Skyler’s hand, my fingers traced the splinters of bone and shreds of skin. And in the space between our hands, something pulled, like magnets, and there was a warmth. But Skyler’s dad arrived, pushed me back, and closed the shirt over his son’s hand—it was better already, I swear, the skin closing back, the bones stitching themselves, I saw it was better—and suddenly my head felt fizzy, filled with helium, like after running too fast for too long. I stepped away, I tried to lean against the folding table with the mac salad and musubi, but my hand missed the tabletop, touched only air, I ended up on the ground, on my ass, for the second time that night.
From there I watched as two fathers took Skyler into a truck, the square sound of the doors closing, the chatter and roar of the engine starting, and, somewhere more distant, pop pop pop.
Kaui nudging my shoulder. “Wake up,” she said, and she said it again and again until I did. Who knew how long it had been. “What did you do?”
I wanted to say, but my eyelids were heavy, trying to make my mouth muscles open was like trying to open a refrigerator with a slug. I didn’t know what I had done, exactly. Only that there was a feeling from Skyler’s hand, a feeling of wanting to correct itself, and I was part of that feeling, made it larger, if only for a minute.
Dean arrived, looking down on us. “We gotta go.”
I could see something burning there behind his eyes. Scared and angry and shamed. This was when it really started, wasn’t it. “Sorry,” I said, hoping that would be enough, this time, and I think I was also saying it for everything since the sharks had first saved me.
“Sorry for what,” he said. “Not like you was the one grabbing a firework you couldn’t handle.”
I shrugged. “I know. But still.”
“But what, you thought you was going fix his hand or something, when you touched it?” Dean smirked and shook his head. “You didn’t do nothing.”
Mom and Dad were calling to us from across the street. “We gotta go,” Dean said.
We got in our dented blue Jeep Cherokee, me and Kaui and Dean in the back, Mom driving us home because Dad was four beers deep and, he said, didn’t want us to see him fondle a cop to get out of a DUI. His palm on Mom’s thigh and her fingers laced between. Headlights going past us the other way as we came down from Aiea, Dean looking out his side window and every now and then taking deep blowing breaths, all the signs and buildings along the H1. He looked even older, just since we’d got in the car, and I bet I did, too. Neither of us like the Dean and Noa from Big Island, before the sharks: I remembered us sprinting through Hapuna Beach big-wave advisories, surf booming to our knees, then our chests, we’d dive right under the foaming whitewater. We’d feel the rip pull us sideways along the beach, see who could get deeper under each wave, let the sucking current of the coming set drag us along, the grains of sand gathering and bouncing over our spines, and we’d feel the water start to bend and stand up, tugging on our board shorts, and when the wave crested and tossed its full force directly on top of us, we’d push deep and open our eyes and grin at the yawning curl of gold sand and blue ocean that couldn’t touch us. Underwater Dean’s eyes were as I think mine were, squinted with joy, and the air rushed from our noses and mouths in silver ropes as we swam back toward the surface, where we’d high-five at our bravery, at what we could beat. Now we were in the Jeep, coming home, Kaui in between us, both boys and our Bloody Knuckles hands, driving toward whatever would come next, while part of me kept checking the rearview mirror for what we were leaving behind.