Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  But more than anything, Ash was just looking for something to distract her from the palpable void Eve’s death had left in her life. Rose’s death too, even though she’d barely known the girl. In just a matter of months she’d found a sister she never knew she had and won back another sister who had for years been nothing more than a silhouette in her life.

  Then she’d lost both sisters in a single night. Now she was left struggling with the memory of Eve, trying to reconcile all the different facets of her inconsistent personality. Who was the true Eve? The girl who’d started petty, brutal fights at school? The girl who’d run away from home and broken her parents’ hearts—broken Ash’s heart? Or was she the penitent, selfless girl who’d given her life to save her family that night on the lighthouse?

  Now Ash found herself staring at a stranger’s house in Honolulu, wondering what comfort could be provided by a distant relative who, other than shared blood, she probably had nothing in common with.

  Still, she had to try.

  When Ash finally worked up the courage, she crossed the street, marched up the front walkway, and pounded on the door before she could chicken out. While she heard footsteps approaching inside, she held on to the rusted, flaking metal railing for support. It was too late to run now.

  When the inner door opened, a girl only a few years older than Ash stood inside, peering out at her through the screen. Even though Ash knew it was a stupid thing to think, she’d pictured Kalama as an uncanny cross between herself and Colt—maybe with the gentle curve of Ash’s jawline and the jewel-facet cheekbones that made Colt so handsome.

  In reality, as far as Ash could see, Kalama bore absolutely no obvious resemblance to either of her deity ancestors . . . which made sense, since after nine generations Colt and Pele made up only a small percentage of the girl’s ancestral blood.

  “Can I help you?” the girl asked, squinting at Ash.

  Ash looked away in embarrassment, suddenly realizing she’d been intensely gawking at the girl’s face. “Are you . . . Kalama?” Ash managed to stammer out. The girl nodded, so Ash went on. “I’m Ashline Wilde, from New York. I was doing research on my family ancestry for a summer project, and part of my assignment was to track down a member of my extended family that I’d never met. According to my research, you and I are . . . distant cousins.” Mostly lies, but enough of the truth that Ash wouldn’t feel bad.

  At first the girl continued to squint, so Ash wondered if the story she’d concocted was too transparent or ridiculous . . . but then the girl broke out into a wide grin, the kind of real, deep smile that Ash wasn’t sure she’d learn to do again.

  “Well, aloha then, cousin,” Kalama said. She popped open the screen door and held it open, a gesture to invite Ash inside. It was only when Kalama turned in profile that Ash caught a detail she’d missed, studying her through the screen door.

  Kalama was pregnant.

  Very pregnant in fact—from the size of her baby bump, she looked like she might go into labor if she sneezed too hard.

  Ash smiled and pointed to Kalama’s belly. “My research was pretty extensive, but it didn’t pull that up. Congratulations.”

  Kalama chuckled and clasped her hands over the bump. “You came here expecting just to meet a distant cousin, and within a minute you find out you’re going to be a distant aunt to a baby girl as well. It’s a two-for-one deal.”

  A few minutes later Ash was sitting out on the small patio overlooking Kalama’s backyard, which was overgrown and turning a crispy yellow. Hawai‘i was going through something of a dry summer—it had only rained twice in the entirety of Ash’s visit.

  These days Ash prayed for rain. Prayed for storms, and lightning, and the roll of thunder. Prayed for echoes from the thunderclouds to remind her that Eve was somewhere out there in the cosmic expanse, watching over her little sister.

  Kalama emerged from the house holding a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses. “Is this your first time to Hawai‘i?” she asked Ash as she poured the iced tea.

  Ash nodded. “I feel a bit embarrassed that I’m only revisiting my heritage now. My parents adopted me from Tahiti, but from what little I know about my past, my roots also lie here.”

  “And does being here stir those roots in you?” Kalama handed her a glass, on which condensation was already starting to form. “Does being here feel like home?”

  Ash thought carefully about this, because it was something she’d wondered herself. Walking the beach at night when the libraries and town halls had closed. Climbing Kīlauea, then Haleakalā, up the volcanoes that Pele had given rise to. Standing ankle-deep in the crystalline pool beneath Waimoku Falls, where she’d consummated her love with Colt Halliday two centuries ago. All that, and she’d expected it to stir in her some sense of belonging, something buried in her heart or her memories. “No,” Ash finally answered. “I wanted to, but . . . Honestly, no place feels like home right now. I guess I’m just adrift.”

  Kalama gave her an exaggerated mock frown. “I believe that’s a very serious medical condition called being a teenager.”

  Ash had come there to pick Kalama’s brain, to find out all about her and what sort of ancestors she and Colt could have given birth to, for better or worse . . . yet, in her easygoing and gently prodding manner, Kalama somehow turned the entire conversation to Ash and her past. Thirty minutes later Ash had spilled a detailed account of life growing up as a Polynesian girl in New York, her volatile relationship with Eve, and her transfer to Blackwood Academy. Even though she was omitting the supernatural elements, and just about everything from the last two months, it felt good to just tell a real story for once.

  In fact as Ash waxed on about life in Scarsdale and her parents, she felt this profound sense of relief. While she was happy to be done with cults of evil gods, and bloodthirsty god-hunting millionaires, and especially Colt Halliday, she’d been harboring this secret fear that when all that bad stuff was over, it would be impossible to return to a normal life. More than anything, she feared that living among mortals again would feel boring and trivial by contrast. Sure, she wouldn’t have to endure the harsh agonies of watching her loved ones die violently anymore, but there was an excitement to her life when she was fighting for something, when the fate of the world hung on her shoulders.

  It turned out to be just the opposite, however. She had more longing than ever to return to Scarsdale and accept the challenge of resuming her old life. Ash hadn’t had the smoothest childhood. But she’d been so busy running from the ways her upbringing hadn’t fulfilled her that she’d never appreciated the ways that it had.

  Ash finally managed to steer the conversation back to Kalama. “Now that I’ve practically vomited up my personal history to you,” Ash said, “do I know you well enough to ask about the baby’s father?”

  Kalama gestured to the patio seat next to Ash, and for the first time she noticed the five-by-seven framed picture sitting in the seat. In the picture, a handsome Hawaiian boy in a naval uniform stared out. Even though the photograph was static, Ash got the impression that the boy had the same chipper personality as Kalama and probably had struggled not to smile for the picture.

  “Don’t worry, he’s still with us,” Kalama assured Ash when her expression clouded with panic. “He’s just overseas for another eight months. And then alternating years after that,” she admitted grudgingly.

  “It must be hard,” Ash said, “living half your life without someone.” Strangely, even though she didn’t want to feel sympathy for him, her mind gravitated to Colt, inheriting all his old memories, then spending two decades away from his beloved.

  “Everyone says that.” Kalama stared thoughtfully at the lemon that was floating in her iced tea. “But picture the man you love. Now ask yourself: Would you rather live half your life with him? Or all of it without him, with someone else instead? When you look at it that way, the choice is much easier than you think.”

  This time it was Wes’s face that blossomed into Ash’s mind
, the image surfacing and then dissolving like a drop of ink in water.

  Eventually the conversation wound down, and Ash didn’t want to drag it out—she’d barged her way into the girl’s life as it was. And for better or worse she’d gotten what she’d come for: Something good had come out of her multi-lifetime affair with Colt. Not just Kalama, but the husband who could think lovingly about his wife and child while he was overseas. And the child who would hopefully grow up to find that love too, and the same for all the generations that would follow.

  After Kalama had walked Ash out of the house, the two of them shared a hug so tight that Ash almost forgot they were still basically total strangers, despite their shared blood. Where the swell of Kalama’s belly pressed into Ash’s stomach, she felt a crackling electricity—the power of possibility.

  “I forgot to ask if you’d picked out any names,” Ash said.

  Kalama laughed tersely. “Oh, we’ve got a laundry list of them. But it’s hard to pick something out for a person you’ve never met, you know? We can’t even decide whether we want to choose an English name or something more traditional. My husband’s even pickier than I am.” She shook her head at the space next to her, as though he were standing right by her side, preparing to argue.

  Ash cleared her throat. “Well, I’m sort of the outsider in these parts, but I have spent a lot of the last few weeks looking through names and looking up their translations to see what they meant. I came across one girl’s name that made me smile: Ualani.” Ash paused, then added: “It means ‘rain from heaven.’ ”

  Kalama’s eyes lit up. She seemed like she was actually considering it. “Ualani . . .,” she repeated. “It’s beautiful. Kind of a funny image though. You always think of heaven as this sunny place with immaculate, island weather.” She shrugged. “But then again, heaven is a very personal thing. I’m sure it rains in someone’s heaven.”

  Ash lifted her eyes to the sky, where the beginnings of gray clouds were finally starting to coalesce. “It does in mine,” she said.

  Six hours later Ash sat on the beach as the rain hammered down on her. She’d discarded her soaked towel and was resting in the sand, hugging her knees to her chest and staring out at the Pacific. Only a few brave beachgoers remained, mostly surfers who probably figured they were here to get wet regardless. The rest of the tourists had fled when the storm failed to relent after ten minutes.

  She’d done what she’d come here to do, and tomorrow she’d return to New York, to try to put her life back together. There were decisions to be made. For starters, should she return to Blackwood Academy in the fall, or give life at Scarsdale High a second chance? But the biggest adjustment was going to be the relationship with her parents.

  When they’d woken from their sedated, nightmare-plagued state in the shattered stone lighthouse, Ash had struggled to fabricate a story that would explain how they’d both lost consciousness in Scarsdale and woken up on the California coast thirty-six hours later. In the end she decided the easiest solution was just to tell them the truth.

  All of it.

  Sure, they might have thought she was high at first as she launched into her story about Colt, and the gods of Blackwood Academy, and the bicoastal saga that had unfolded from California to Miami to Boston and back again. But when they watched as their daughter spontaneously combusted into a volcanic-plated fire monster, right in front of their eyes, the rest of the wild story must have been a little easier to swallow.

  The supernatural stuff was a breeze to explain. It was trying to explain what happened to Eve that nearly snapped Ash in two. She’d grappled with whether she should write Eve completely out of the story, or at least the final chapter of it. Was it better for her parents to think that their daughter was somewhere still out there, alive, riding her motorcycle from town to town, but always having to wonder why she wouldn’t come home? Or was it better for them in the long term to know that their daughter had loved them, had sacrificed everything so they could live . . . but had died in the process?

  There was no end to the crying when Ash told them. They wanted to lay their daughter to rest, but there was nothing left to bury but her memory and a room full of stuff she’d outgrown at home, items that really no longer had anything to do with the girl who’d climbed to the top of that lighthouse and given her life for her family.

  Or maybe those items had everything to do with her.

  She heard the footsteps in the wet sand, but didn’t know they belonged to Wes until he dropped down behind her and wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. She’d recognize those biceps anywhere.

  “You know,” Wes said, leaning his big, square chin down on her shoulder, “it’s cheating to hold a wet T-shirt contest when you’re the only contestant.”

  Ash laughed despite herself. She leaned back and craned her head around to kiss him. Kisses between them these last few weeks on the islands were partially for pleasure, yes, but also to put off all the questions they’d yet to answer about their future. Would he come back with her to Scarsdale? Would he follow her to school in the fall, or return to the lifestyle he’d abandoned in Miami? And would their love for each other flourish without the death and cataclysm to hold it back . . . or would it feel strange and foreign now that things had quieted down?

  It was sort of like meeting somebody in a loud nightclub, Ash realized. You hear only the tinniest edges of their voices over their music, see the sultry, uninhibited side of them with their faces shrouded in darkness and laser lights. Then at the end of the night you step out under the streetlamps, and without the noise to drown each other out, you think: So that’s what he looks like, what he sounds like.

  Even if it would take some time to readjust to the silence, even if they didn’t know whether the future might separate them, Ash realized that she felt the same way Kalama did: Given the choice between half her time with him or none of it at all, the decision for now felt easy.

  Ash didn’t realize she’d been sitting silent the whole time until Wes said, “I can’t see your face from back here, but even the back of your head looks pensive.” Ash elbowed him in the ribs, and Wes faked a wheeze. “What? You have a very sexy back side to your skull. Some men are boob guys, and others are butt guys, but I’m a skull guy through and—”

  Ash spun around and flattened him into the sand, pressing her whole body to his with another kiss. Once she pulled away, she let her dripping hair drape around him like a weeping willow. “Sometimes I think you run your mouth just so I’ll kiss you to shut you up.”

  He smirked. “Am I that transparent?”

  Ash rolled to the side of him, and they lay there, backs coated in sand, letting the rain paint their faces. It was dying to a drizzle, so at least they weren’t drowning in it.

  “I . . .,” Ash started finally. “I want to feel this sense of victory, this sense of closure. But I just keep thinking: This is only really a temporary victory, isn’t it?” Wes went to interrupt her with some optimistic bullshit, but she just talked right over him. “Colt’s dead, but in eighty, ninety years, all of us will be reincarnated again, and that bastard will be the only one to remember any of this. He’ll be able to walk right up to me, pretending to be a stranger, and I’ll be none the wiser. What if he works his way back into my life? What if he does succeed in melding my sisters and me back into one goddess? What if I fall for the guy and I let him? Just the thought of him touching me like that, as lovers . . .” Ash shuddered.

  “Hey.” Wes rolled onto his side, propped up on his Herculean elbow. “You’ve got a chance for a fresh start here. Yeah, Colt’s got a few cards stacked against you for when you come back next time around. But he started with the upper hand this time too, and look how it turned out for him.” Wes gently tapped the side of her temple, then let his hand linger there. “You’ve got tools up here that are far more powerful than lighting things on fire. The truth is, you have a whole lifetime to enjoy now, and if you don’t because you’re constantly worrying about the future, t
hen Colt will have taken the present from you too. Then what would be the point of all this?”

  He was right, of course. And if she was going to forge a new life, then there was no better time than sharing a beautiful Hawaiian beach at sunset, in a rainstorm, with the goofy but charming Mexican boy she was falling for all over again.

  She cocked an eyebrow and traced her fingers seductively along his arm, from his wrist up to his elbow. “Remember that night in Miami? On the beach, as we waded half-naked in the Atlantic Ocean, and I heated the water to make us our own private steam room . . .?” Where her fingers went, the rain evaporated off his skin in small puffs of mist.

  He inched closer to her. “I hope that’s a rhetorical question. I’ll never forget that night.”

  It had been the last carefree moment they’d shared until now. Everything descended into hell after that. But if they could just find their way back to that little bubble of steam, that pocket of serenity . . .

  “I was just thinking,” Ash went on, “that now would be a very good time to see how the Pacific Ocean compares.” Her eyes darted playfully down the beach to the waterline.

  He cupped his hands around her face. “I hear the water’s just right here,” he offered. “I hear . . . that it’s paradise.”

  She jumped to her feet, and before he could even rise next to her, she was tossing off articles of clothing haphazardly into the sand, leaving a trail down to the water. Her sandals, her shirt, her jeans, until she was down to only her bikini. She splashed in up to her knees and then dove into the Pacific with a graceful dolphin arc.

  Wes was hot on her heels, deceptively fast for his size, and just as he surfaced, he threw his arms around her and lifted her up out of the water. He let her linger up there so she could look down at him for once. Her hips pressed into his bare chest, and he slowly lowered her so that the contours of her curvaceous body slipped down the hard angles of his.