* * *
I DIDN’T HAVE much time to think about it right away, though. What happened was the next day a man turned up at our house. It started with him pounding a fist on the door. Noa was in his room but for sure he heard.
Dad was the one to open the door. The man came pouring in, almost landing on his face.
“Where is he?” the man asked. His whole body was moving. Eyes blinking. Him turning his head toward his shoulder and doing this weird dance-shrug. His hands all butterflies, flapping open and closed at his sides. It was like he was getting gently electrocuted.
“I gotta see him,” the man said.
“Yeah, no.” Dad crossed his arms so the guy could see the cables of muscle. Dad is, like, surprise strong, usually looks all like a doughy dad body, until he does things like that.
“It’s not getting better,” the man said. Then he realized he knew where Noa was, started to walk toward Noa and Dean’s bedroom door. Dad put a palm against his chest. The man didn’t even try to push it off. Just leaned into the hand, like it was a strong wind he could push through if he just kept going. But his body was still doing that same electric wiggle and shake, and Dad’s hand stopped his steps.
“Come out,” he called then. He yelled it toward Noa’s door: Come out, come out, come out. Until spit frosted the sides of his mouth.
Dad started to wrestle the man back. To the same door he came in. But, okay, just like that, the man and Dad both stopped their surges. Separated and stared down the hall.
Noa had come out and was standing there. A bald Korean woman with no eyebrows and her face all stretched tight was standing next to him.
“You shouldn’t—” the man started. He raised his palms, still shaking. “You didn’t stop nothing, see? It’s still coming.”
He tried to take another step toward Noa, but Dad grabbed him again. “I’m already dead,” he said. “Do you understand?”
He shook Dad off him. Then he left, screen door slapping on its hinges. Yelling from outside until his hoarse voice disappeared.
Dad was still in the exact same position. One hand halfway up like he was going to make a point. Or defend himself. Anything. He let his hand fall down. “Maybe we take a break, a little bit,” Dad said. Mom was there, too.
But the part that mattered most was what came later. When Dean came home and heard the story. He went into his and Noa’s room and closed the door after and of course I went and listened, the cool sludge of the old door paint the only thing between me and my brothers.
“… I could call up Jaycee-them, we could go wreck this guy,” Dean offered.
“What is this, the Hawaiian Mafia?” Noa said.
“Just saying,” Dean said.
“No,” Noa said. “He has Parkinson’s.”
“Don’t matter if he’s got, like, Rolexes,” Dean said. “He can’t come in here—”
“It’s a neurological disorder,” Noa said.
“You fucking punk,” Dean said. “Even when I’m trying for help, you gotta go and be a dictionary.”
“Sorry,” Noa said.
They got closer to the door. How I knew is that I could feel their voices buzzing along the ridge of my ear, right through the door.
“But fine,” Dean said. “I’m supposed for protect you. You’re the one, right?”
His voice like he was tasting something he didn’t want in his mouth. Especially not anymore, now that he was flexing into a hot-shit basketball star and suddenly he could hear people talk about him, too, not just Noa. But there in that room he said it: you’re the one. And it was like all of a sudden that made it true. Like, we all saw what was happening to Noa, that there was something special. If it wasn’t really the gods of Hawai‘i doing something heavy, maybe it was a new science. Some sort of, I don’t know. Evolution.
Dean and Noa didn’t say anything else because Dean opened the door. Only I didn’t realize until the snappy click of the doorknob. Jumped back just in time to not dump at their feet.
Dean snorted. “How’s this, she was listening at the door.”
“Kaui,” was all Noa said. Like he was a million years tired.
“I couldn’t hear anything,” I said.
“Nothing worth hearing,” Dean said. He reached out to muss my hair, pushed too hard when he did it. My brothers split in the hall without another word: Noa with his ‘uke in hand, breaking for the garage. Dean to the front room, probably television, whatever game was on, right? And me still there in the hall. Feeling like—in my own house—there was nowhere to go.
* * *
EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT WEEK I went back to the rec center, listening for the chants and the opening of practice. Usually it was on the basketball court instead of the cafeteria, but either way, I could find it. Voices called. I’d watch from outside the door. When it was done: the girls squatting back on their shoes and then cracking into their cliques. Then the kumus opening their gym bags and slipping in their ipus and then rolling and tucking their mats, the ones they’d used for pounding and sitting. Then putting back on their shoes, too. All of them out the doors and then the shined gym floor, and the chants and the ipu stopped echoing in the rafters. All I could hear was the low buzz of the exit sign.
Whatever was there, in that air, I can say it fed me. I’d go there and listen and even dance just a little myself. And when it was over and I went home I’d push harder, fly through the pages of my textbooks. Extra-credit science, I’d collect tadpoles from the culvert near our house. Or extra-credit math, right, I’d calculate dice throws or card games. People would find me after class and ask for help on their homework or always want to be my partner in labs and quiz bowl. And this was Kahena I was doing this at.
* * *
STILL, SOMETHING WENT WRONG with Noa after that Parkinson’s guy had showed up. He suddenly stopped taking people in. Mom and Dad would have to go to the door when it knocked and apologize, Sorry, he not gonna come out today, sick or something, I think, all refunds and—after it went on for a few weeks—no extra cash. Mom and Dad at the table with their envelope getting empty, doing long division and subtraction. Always subtraction.
Noa wouldn’t say what, exactly. Just that he couldn’t.
“Let him alone,” Mom and Dad would warn, if they saw me sneaking around by the garage door. On the other side he’d be playing the ‘uke. Songs all sad and tricky, sometimes with so many notes and chords tumbling along at the same time, it was like he had an extra hand. Later they’d get him out of the garage and the three of them would smash together on the couch. Faces flashed with white and blue from the television. While me and Dean were the ones doing Noa’s chores, okay? Sweeping the floor or washing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom.
“Don’t do nothing,” Dean would say, suds to his wrists while he tried to find the last forks.
Only once I did. Dean in his after-basketball shower, Mom and Dad getting ready for bed. Noa was in the garage, but he wasn’t playing. Hadn’t been for a while.
When I went through the door he was at the far corner, by Dad’s bench, where Dad kept his hunting and fishing stuff. All his car tools and everything. Noa was hunched on a fold-out chair, pants pulled down to his knees. He was facing away from me.