by Cameron Lund
I think about my conversation with Myriah, how quickly she had assumed Kai and I were in love. I’d told her we were meant to be, that we were written in the stars. But love? That word feels a little too much to say out loud.
“Well, you could have been more subtle about it,” I say. “Instead of shouting it out to the whole beach.” We’re in my neighborhood now, houses spread out between the trees, redwoods casting long shadows across the road.
He laughs again, a harsh, unfriendly sound. “I was trying to help you.”
“Yeah, well, now I’m stuck with you!”
“I’m stuck too, Penelope! You’re not exactly a picnic. You think that was fun for me? Proclaiming my love to you like in some Shakespearean tragedy? That was scary as shit. I went out on a limb for you. All that stuff Olivia said. I just . . . I wanted her to know someone cares about you.”
His words make me feel like I’m going to cry. It’s the fact that he’s only saying it to be nice. That Olivia is right. I don’t want Kai to have real feelings for me—that’s not what hurts. What hurts is that he’s the only one who stood up to Olivia, and he was telling a lie.
“If I say I love you back, it might push Jordan away.” There’s a mosquito bite on my thigh, and I dig my fingernail into it. “I want him to be jealous, not hopeless.”
Kai pulls into the driveway, turning off the engine. It’s so quiet in the car all of a sudden that I can hear my ragged breathing as I try to stay calm.
“Fine,” he says. “You don’t have to say it. You don’t love me. I get it.”
“Well, obviously I don’t love you.”
“Okay, so rule number one: you don’t have to say you love me.”
“Rule number two,” I say. “No kissing.”
“What? But we’ve already kissed.”
“Yeah, and look how that messed everything up. If we kiss again, we’ll probably set off a nuclear winter or something.”
“Fine,” he says. “No kissing.”
“It’s for the good of the planet.”
“We’re environmentalists.”
“Rule number three,” I say. “You have to apologize for Pukey Penelope.”
“But that name is so much fun,” he whines.
“Kai.”
“Fine. You know I’m sorry about it. I was a stupid kid. I didn’t think it would be so catchy.”
“Rule number four,” I say. “If either of us wants out at any time, we’re done.”
“So the second dreamy Jordan gives you a dreamy smile. Got it.”
I bristle at his words. Of course he would try to get one last barb in; even though we’re on the same side right now, we’ll never really be a team. “If you’re going to be mean like that, I’m not doing this.”
“Okay, how about this?” he says. “Rule number five: we stop hating each other.”
“I don’t know about that one,” I say, opening the door. “You’re way too easy to hate.”
“No kiss good night?” he asks.
I slam the car door in his face.
NOW
KAI AND I TEXT LATE into the night, trying to hash out the details of the plan. We confirm we’re going to stage our big breakup at Disneyland—somewhere memorable so the story will travel fast.
How about on the top of Splash Mountain? I suggest. It’s more of a joke, really, because I don’t want to go on a water ride that will force me to be soggy when I’m supposed to be celebrating my eventual freedom from him.
But when Kai refuses, it makes me want to go through with it, just to be combative. You’ll never get me on anything that high up, Penelope, he says. It’s barbaric.
Kai explains his theory that it’s possible for the logs you sit in to flip upside down and plummet you to your death. He won’t listen to the laws of physics.
Maybe that’s a reason we can break up, I suggest. Because you’ll refuse to go on that ride with me.
Maybe, he says. Let’s workshop it.
But until then, we have lots more to figure out. We make a tentative plan to have dinner one night at his house, taking lots of pictures of ourselves cooking, which I know may end in bloodshed but will be worth it for the gram. And next weekend is the Fourth of July. We’re all supposed to be spending the night at Romina’s family cabin on the other side of the lake. Kai and I need to go there together, have to show up as a united front, as if spending an entire night with each other isn’t going to be a nightmare.
We’ve got to carpool to the cabin, I text him. And we have to be sickeningly adorable together.
Sickening sounds about right, he says.
We have to touch each other a lot.
Unfortunate.
And say nice things about each other.
Torture.
I’m serious, Kai!
I know, he says. I will rave about your beauty in front of Jordan, okay? Don’t worry.
The thing is, we can make all the plans in the world, but I don’t actually know if we’re still invited. I text Romina to find out, crossing my fingers that maybe our scheme and Myriah’s thumbs-up on the beach will mean everything is fine. Are we still on for the 4th of July?
The three dots appear indicating she’s typing; then they disappear. She’s taking her time formulating a response. Finally, they appear again and her text comes through. Well now that Olivia and Jordan are a thing, it’s not as weird, right? If you guys are down, it’s cool. Lots of new couples!
I stare at the words on the screen: now that Olivia and Jordan are a thing. Before I can help it, I’m picturing them together at the cabin, snuggled up under a quilt on the couch, making out beneath the fireworks, frolicking together in the stupid water, taking adorable sun-drenched photos.
Well if all the couples are going, I text back, biting hard on the inside of my cheek, Kai and I wouldn’t miss it.
* * *
• • • • • •
The next morning, I get an email from Scoops saying I’ve been offered a job, and they want me to come in and start training. I’m surprised for a second that Sarah didn’t throw my application away—if I were her, I would have tossed it the moment I left.
It feels great to have a new purpose: this plan with Kai, and now the job. For the first time in days, I’m feeling tentatively optimistic.
I take my time getting ready in the morning, watching a video on YouTube to learn how to do a crown braid. If I can channel some of my energy into looking my best, maybe I won’t have to think so much about how screwed up last night was.
Then I hear voices downstairs—my mom laughing a little too loudly about something—and my stomach sinks. There’s another guy here.
I’ll just have to sneak past them. I’m especially not in the mood to pretend right now—not when I’m currently faking everything else in my life.
I tiptoe down the stairs, climbing deftly over the one that creaks, and make my way toward the front hallway. The voices are coming from the kitchen, and when I get to it, I try to run past, but my mom calls out to me.
“Penelope, come meet Steve!” Steve. It’s such a middle-aged-man name. I can picture him immediately—probably balding or divorced with three kids. My mom is still in her thirties. She’s way too hot for this.
I go into the kitchen and there he is. I’m not far off. He’s wearing a jacket and a white button-down, and although he’s got a full head of hair, it’s going a little gray. Mom is at the counter pouring some coffee, and even Seb is here too, sitting at the table, eating forkfuls of pancakes. When he sees me, his eyes widen in a help me expression.
“Steve made pancakes,” Mom says.
“Hey, kiddo!” the man—Steve—says like I’m a child.
“I’m not hungry,” I say. And then, “I’m going out.”
I turn away from the kitchen and head
toward the front door. I really don’t want to play happy family with some guy my mom probably won’t ever see again. And I don’t want to watch her pretend everything is okay with all of us—this charade with Steve as if we usually eat breakfast as a family instead of grabbing coffee to go on the way to wherever else we’d rather be.
I escape outside, letting the screen door slam shut behind me. Then I realize the car is missing. All that’s parked in the driveway is a black Ford Focus that must belong to Steve. I can’t believe I completely forgot Kai dropped me off last night. The car is still at the lake. It’s too long to walk to Scoops, and also way too hot already. There’s heat radiating off the driveway, so the air almost looks like it’s shimmering, and it’s only ten a.m. Today is going to be brutal.
There’s a creaking behind me as the screen door opens, and my mom is standing there. “Been wondering where my car went. You’re lucky I don’t have work this morning.”
“I got a ride with someone last night,” I say. “Sorry. I’ll bring it back.”
“Well, maybe Steve could take you. It would give you two a chance to get to know each other.” She turns and calls, “Steve!” behind her and he appears in the doorway before I’ve had the chance to object.
“I don’t want to get to know him,” I say.
“It’s no skin off my back,” Steve says with an infuriating smile. “We could all go together. Where’s it parked?”
“No,” I say, and then feel a little guilty when I see Steve’s smile falter. But there is no way I am getting into a car with him. “A friend is coming to get me, okay? It’s fine. You can finish breakfast.”
“Penelope,” Mom says with a tired smile. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”
“I bet we will.”
My mom and Steve disappear back inside, and I realize with a painful lurch that there’s no one I’m on good enough terms with to ask for a ride. Well, if Kai and I are—whatever we are, then he can come get me. He’s the one who forced me not to drive last night anyway.
My car is still at the lake, I text him.
He responds a few seconds later. Yeah, and?
I growl and punch a reply into my phone. Yeah, and you’re taking me to get it.
So pushy, he replies. But then: Be there soon.
* * *
• • • • • •
A few minutes later, his Jeep pulls up my driveway. He’s got a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses perched on his head, a green T-shirt, and swim trunks patterned with whales.
“Hey, crumpet,” he says as I climb in. “Miss me already?”
In the time I’ve been standing in the sun, my makeup has practically melted off my face, and I’m self-conscious about all the places sweat is pooling on my body. But there’s no way I was going to go back inside to Mom and Steve.
“Just drive,” I say for an answer. He laughs and accelerates, and then we’re zooming down the street. The wind feels so good, like finally I can breathe again.
“You’re in a chipper mood this morning,” he says, his voice flat.
“Yeah, well, I had this crazy dream that you and I were dating.”
I think again of Jordan’s face as I took Kai’s hand, how he stormed off into the dark and Olivia followed him. Everything about last night is so messed up.
“You’re always having dreams about me,” Kai says.
“Don’t get too excited,” I say.
We cruise through town then back down the winding road toward the lake. It really is a beautiful day, now that we’re driving. I catch a glimpse of the water through a break in the trees, and it’s sparkling and silver in the morning light. I’m so relieved to be out of that house, away from Mom, even if it means I’m here with Kai.
“You’re quieter than usual,” he says after a pause. “Are you having doubts about the plan?”
“Obviously, I have doubts about the plan,” I snap back at him, and then I feel bad. He’s actually trying to be nice. “And it’s my mom.”
“What Olivia said to you last night was way over the line,” he says.
I let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, it was. My mom means well. Things between us are just . . . complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
And for some reason I tell him. Maybe it’s because he was the one who stood up for me last night when Olivia was tearing me down.
“My dad left when I was two,” I say. “Right after Seb was born. And I don’t think she’s ever recovered.”
My dad was a guest lecturer at the university where my mom got her degree—much older than she was when they met and, it turns out, already married. She didn’t know until it was too late. And once his wife found out, he bailed on us completely. Major dick move.
“She always talks about how he was the love of her life,” I continue. “Even though, it’s like—how could you love someone who does something like that to you? I want her to grow a backbone, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Kai says. “My mom has a backbone, and I’m not sure it’s any better.”
I turn away from the lake and look at him. “Your mom is amazing.”
I feel myself flush as soon as I’ve said it, because even though it’s true, it’s too honest, too vulnerable, and he might tease me for it.
“Did I ever tell you why we moved to the mainland?” he asks.
“No, we didn’t exactly . . . hang out much back then.” I think back to the first time we talked, on the playground in the winter of fifth grade a few days after Kai arrived. I had actually liked him at first—had actually thought we were going to be friends. I was still quiet and invisible and lonely back then, spent most of my time at school reading—the Song of the Lioness, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings. I liked series, stories I could sink my teeth into, characters that could stay my friends for as many pages as possible because I didn’t have any friends yet in real life.
We’d all noticed Kai immediately. January in our part of California doesn’t exactly get that cold, and he showed up in a full snowsuit, like that kid from A Christmas Story—puffy coat and pompom hat. It was so embarrassing. It made me like him more.
A few days later, he talked to me. “How come you’re sitting over here all alone?”
I didn’t notice him walking up to me on the playground because I was so absorbed in my book. When I looked up at him, I blinked a few times, adjusting to the brightness of the real world. He had a knit Patagonia beanie pulled low over his black hair, not the embarrassing pompom hat from his first day; already he was learning to blend in.
“I’m reading.”
“Oh.” I liked the sound of his voice. It was well-rounded, like he’d probably be a good singer. “You’re not gonna play tag with everyone?”
He motioned behind him to where Olivia, Myriah, Romina, and Katie were running around on the field. I could see Jordan in the distance standing at the top of the big slide with Danny Scott. I didn’t want to tell him I wasn’t invited to play, so I shot his question back at him. “Well, how come you’re not over there?” I pointed to Jordan and Danny.
Kai shivered. “Too high up.”
“The big slide is not even that high.”
“Everything is too high up,” Kai said. “Even the little slide.”
“You’re scared of the little slide?”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” His face went a little pink, like maybe this wasn’t the first impression he was trying to make.
“Nope, it can be our secret.”
“Cool.” He sat down next to me on the bench. “What are you reading, anyway?”
I was reading The Giver, and I held it out to him. “It’s about memory. It’s this world in the future where nobody can remember anything.”
He turned the book over in his hands and looked at the back. “Is it good?”
“Yeah. Do you want to bo
rrow it? I’ve already read it before. Like three times.”
“Really?” He pulled the book a little closer into his chest. I’d never seen someone else treat a book like it was a precious object. Usually, the other kids in class threw them, ripped and broken, into the bottom of their backpacks, complaining loudly about how they hated to read. “I’ll bring it back,” he said.
And for the first time since elementary school started, I’d had a glimmer of hope. All I’d ever wanted was a friend—a real one, who wasn’t just a character in one of my books.
Then we all learned that Kai moved here from Hawaii, and suddenly everyone came at him with questions: Do you know how to surf? Have you hiked a volcano? Did you ever swim with sea turtles? He became the center of attention so quickly, became the coolest, most interesting kid in our class and stayed that way. From then on, he’d ignored me—until, of course, he’d made up the nickname that had ruined everything.
Obviously, Kai never returned my book.
“My dad is still back on Maui,” he says now. “He cheated on my mom with his fucking assistant. It’s a small town, and everybody knew.”
We’re at the lake now, and I see my car parked up ahead. Kai pulls up next to it. Olivia’s car is missing, which fills me with both relief and dread. A part of me wanted them to catch me alone with Kai. Another part felt sick at the thought of seeing them together.
Kai turns off the car and faces me, continuing his story. “Then my mom decides she wants a divorce. So they split, but we’re still on this small island and everybody knows, and everyone is giving her these awful, pitying looks everywhere she goes. So she just has to get out, get as far away from there as she can.”
“Your mom was brave to leave like that and go somewhere totally new.”
“I mean, I get why she had to do it, and why she took me and my brother with her, but it made everything so much harder, you know? I had to leave all my friends and my dad and my community behind, and I know it’s so unfair to be mad at her for it because my dad is the one who did something fucked up, not her. But I kinda wish we could have stayed there. I wish she could have forgiven him.”