Taylor Before and After

by Jennie Englund

  “Those are exactly the people you have to watch out for,” Brielle said. “NOBODY has it all together.”

  WINTER

  Prompt: How does Scout change in To Kill a Mockingbird?

  Scout.

  I can’t honestly remember how she was before.

  I used to be able to remember anything, without even trying. I was getting an A in Latin, because memorizing was no big deal. Now, I can’t keep a single thought in my brain. Numbers make no sense at all. I’m pretty sure my brain got damaged by the airbag, even though the doctor said I’m okay.

  I had to go see Sister Anne again.

  It wasn’t Miss Wilson who referred me. I’ve been using class time wisely every single day. It was Mrs. Whipple. I’m failing math. And to make up for the F I got on the test, Sister Anne assigned me two weeks of afternoon sessions at the math tutoring center.

  F, D, C, B, A.

  We’re all reduced to a single letter here. It’s all we are.

  It’s been almost month since Mom has picked up a pen. Or a toothbrush. Yesterday, I heard Dad telling her, “Julia, you need to get it together here. Your sick leave is running out. You need to get up and get yourself dressed and TRY to go back to work, because this isn’t helping anybody. We all need to get through this.”

  Dad, MLK—everyone thinks it’s possible to get through it, to move forward.

  If I knew for sure how long it would take, if I had an end date when this would all be behind me, I might be able to get through it, to move forward. But there’s no end date, no way to know how long it’s going to take.

  Back in Oregon, I had my first babysitting gig. The Greens’ mom had to take one of the kids to the dentist, and she asked if I could watch the others for two hours. I was excited. It was my first job, and I was going to make real money. For those two hours, the kids were bad. They kept saying, “Our mom lets us ride the skateboard inside,” when I knew she really didn’t. They said, “We don’t have to do what you say” and “We’re going to tell our mom you were mean.” It was rough, keeping those kids in one piece, keeping the house in one piece, too. But I told myself over and over and over that I could do it. Because their mom would come back after the dentist.

  I never babysat the Greens again. We moved pretty soon after that. But it stuck with me, how I got myself through two hours because I knew it would be two hours.

  This isn’t like that.

  Mom only eats, I’m pretty sure, when I come home from school and make her something, and even that’s only a bite or two of toast. Yesterday, I tried making the macadamia cookies she’s always loved, but they turned out thin and flat, and Dad yelled at me for making a mess in the kitchen, then went to his office to grade.

  There was a time, only a month ago, when we sat—all four of us together—in the rattan chairs around the table, with something in the middle, like teriyaki chicken and rice and little Mānoa lettuce heads straight out of Mom’s garden that we each got our own of.

  At lunch today, the table near Brielle’s group was open, and I sat there with my baggie of Cheerios. Li Lu was eating salmon roll—you could tell by the pink slab on top. Li Lu always hated salmon, but she was telling everyone how amazing it was. Do people really change just like that? Is it possible to hate salmon one day and the next it’s your new fave? Did Scout change like that?

  I watched Brielle and Li Lu and Soo talking to each other about going to the beach or to P. F. Chang’s after school, and how much fun they had at the talent show they had all already gone to together, and about how they saw Henley with Jasmine Fukasawa at the mall. Brielle said that part extra loud and looked right at me.

  Henley was with Jasmine? I thought she was into Elau Parks? After she was with Kevin Loo. She obviously moved on fast.

  Henley moved on fast, too. He’s over me. I wasn’t anything to him.

  Then Brielle said, “This is boring, let’s go.” And they all got up to talk trash in the courtyard.

  Li Lu looked down at me for a second, her shoulders slumping a little—I saw it—but Brielle grabbed her arm and told her, “Come on.”

  And I was back to sitting by myself, wishing it was me with Henley, sharing a Cinnabon, extra frosting.

  WINTER

  Prompt: Describe an old photo.

  Before Dad went around the house and took down all the family photos, I grabbed one off the shelf from between Freakonomics and The Tipping Point and stuck it in my nightstand drawer.

  The photo was taken when I was about five and missing a few front teeth. We were at Evergreen Christmas Tree Farm; Mom thought it would be fun to go out in the snow and cut down our own tree instead of buying one from the Boy Scouts in the Elks Lodge parking lot like we usually did.

  In the photo, Mom, Dad, and I are all squished together by the tree, and a couple steps away from us is Eli: arms tucked all the way into the short sleeves of his Boba Fett shirt, nine, thinning out from the baby fat years, stringy hair, lips blue, mouth upside down. He had made a deal with Mom and Dad that I could pick the tree, and he’d cut it. He wanted to use the saw. He’d always had a thing for sharp stuff.

  I picked a good tree—tall and full—and Eli made Mom comb through it to make sure there were no spotted owl nests inside.

  “Cut it straight across, straight across,” Dad had said.

  Eli was belly-down in the snow. “It’s hard,” he said, slapping at the bottom twigs. “There’s all this crap in the way.”

  “You don’t need to use that word,” Dad told him. “It’s low class, uneducated.”

  “Okay now,” Mom said.

  And Dad said, “Just cut the thing.”

  Three minutes later, he added, “What’s going on there? I thought you wanted to do this? I thought it would be easy.”

  And Eli, his teeth clenched, grunted, “The saw’s stuck in the stem.”

  “We can get a different tree,” I suggested. “A smaller one.”

  “It’s a trunk, not a stem,” Dad said to Eli. “For Christ’s sake, just come out. I’ll cut it myself.”

  “John,” Mom told Dad, “let him figure it out. He’s doing okay.”

  “You’re always making excuses for him,” Dad told her. “There’s nothing to figure out. The kid got the saw stuck in the trunk.”

  Dad pulled Eli from under the tree by the boots. Eli got up and stood there, shivering, his long track of footprints in the snow, while Dad grunted and sawed until the tree toppled over. On our way out, we paid the guy, and Mom asked him to take a picture of us. We took the tree home, and Mom and I decorated it.

  After that year, we went back to buying from the Boy Scouts.

  FALL

  Prompt: Labels.

  Today, before class started, Miss Wilson was out in the hall talking to Tae-sung, and we were supposed to be writing, when Brielle showed me a list.

  “It’s for the party,” she whispered. She has to start the list now, she said, because they’re only inviting two hundred people, and their parents will KILL them if they get fined again.

  The list wasn’t the kind a person writes out for Christmas. It was the opposite—a copy of the entire student body here at OLR, alphabetized, with parents’ names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and an F, R, or W. The title on top was “Full, Reduced, or Waived Tuition.”

  My chest felt like it was caving in. I couldn’t breathe. How did Brielle get this list? What would happen if she showed the wrong people, people who didn’t care about other people, people who would hurt?

  F R W E.

  A B C D F.

  We really are just letters here.

  I looked for my name first. What if I had W, or even R?

  Puakea Keahi was R. That was a surprise. She had all those amazing parties.

  Fetua Tanielu was E. E didn’t have a meaning.

  And along with F, R, W, E was another system, too. Colin Silva (F) was highlighted in yellow. So were Brielle and Sophia (F, F). And the new boy Henley Hollingsworth (F). And Eli and Koa and Tate
. But not me. And twenty names had been crossed off all the way through with black marker. Isabelle Winters (R) was crossed off with one fierce swipe, like Brielle did it when she was annoyed.

  “Really?” I whispered, so Isabelle wouldn’t hear. She’d gone to the Bransons’ Heaven and Hell party last year. What could possibly undo someone from getting to go again?

  “It’s all over—” Brielle flashed me her phone showing Isabelle’s timeline: pictures of Isabelle and Hailey that were just like the ones Li Lu and I used to post—“See, total lesbos.”

  I was sick. That was mean. And even if it was true, it didn’t matter. Isabelle was nice to everyone. She was so chill. I couldn’t get why this meant anything to Brielle.

  “She’s totally into volleyball,” Brielle said. “Like, SUPER into it. OBSESSED.”

  So, what did Brielle have against volleyball? I should have said something. I wanted to say something. I hated myself for not knowing what to say.

  “You can tell by their sports bras,” Brielle went on. “They wear them EVERYWHERE, all the time, and those skanky booty shorts.”

  The whole volleyball team wore sports bras and booty shorts. It didn’t mean anything. Did the way you dress matter for getting on the Carnivale list?

  Was Isabelle crossed off because of spandex? If so, the whole volleyball team would be out. But it wasn’t. Ellie Miller, Oliana Rivera, Halia Smith, and Allie Wong weren’t crossed off. In fact, the only crossed-off volleyball player was Isabelle.

  It was going to feel horrible, being the only one on the team not invited.

  Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe Brielle would change her mind.

  “Isabelle is completely out?” I whispered to Brielle.

  “Yeah, for sure.” Brielle didn’t pause. “Later, I’ll tell you about it, the game.”

  WINTER

  Prompt: Think first: What is your favorite movie right now?

  Then look back at September 27. Has your favorite movie changed, or is it still the same?

  Movies.

  Writing about them seems so … unimportant. And I’ve always hated look-backs. I’ve always thought they were pointless. What are we even doing here, at OLR on O‘ahu? What’s the reason for writing and memorizing and solving for x? What’s the purpose of our existence?

  What does it matter when you can’t even watch your favorite movie the same way anymore? Since December, I’ve tried watching The September Issue a hundred times, and all I see are swirling colors and people talking but not making any sense.

  I used to have Anna Wintour’s quote all over the place—“Fashion is not about looking back. It’s about looking forward.” Even after everything, I still think Anna Wintour has that right. The thing I wish she talked more about was HOW to look forward, exactly.

  I see The September Issue differently now. It still proves that Anna Wintour’s a fashion genius, but she’s also skeevy and mean to the real artist, Grace Coddington. I don’t know how I watched this film so many times before without noticing it was really about Grace, and how amazing her art is, and how hard she works, and how she has to deliver Anna’s perfect vision when Anna doesn’t even know what she wants.

  In the entire documentary, Anna only smiles about four times. She goes around all day worrying about how important scarves and shoes and boots and belts are, which is all wrong. She doesn’t even drive herself anywhere—other people chauffer her. Anna has it easy. She doesn’t have anything to worry about. She doesn’t worry about how she’ll survive.

  And the designers are obsessed with her. They don’t have anything to worry about, either, just fabric and feathers and sequins.

  There’s all this drama. Over clothes.

  I used to think it was so real—fashion, friends, Latin, math. Now, I know that none of it is.

  None of it can bring back Mom or Li Lu or Koa and Tate.

  Everybody is going away.

  FALL

  Prompt: What is your favorite movie?

  What is my favorite movie of all time, ever?

  People would think it’s Legally Blonde. It’s kind of old but really funny, and Elle Woods has some amazing looks: low-rise pants with a midriff blouse and beanie, or faux fur and bikini top. Brielle LOVES Legally Blonde—she says she’s big on the justice system—and I love it, too, it’s just not my FAVORITE. And what game is Brielle talking about anyway? And when is she going to tell me?

  There’s Leap Year, which is really romantic (and set in Ireland), about Irish tradition and all that, but it’s not my favorite, either.

  Girl-war movies are always good, like Bride Wars, Sorority Wars, and This Means War.

  But here it is—my favorite movie of all time—The September Issue. When I found out about it, it had been out on DVD for a few years already. It’s actually a documentary about Anna Wintour, while she puts together the Vogue September issue, the single most important piece of print on Planet Earth. Anna talks about how everyone in her family did “important” things, and how she’s doing something just as important—art—which she definitely is.

  She says, “Fashion is not about looking back. It’s always about looking forward.”

  I mean, that’s genius!

  Anna always knew she wanted to become the editor of Vogue, and she did it. This movie is about more than fashion—it’s about making your dreams come true and fighting for what you believe in.

  Also, the whole time, you think that Grace Coddington, the creative editor, is not going to come up with anything good enough for the issue. You’re on the edge of your seat and biting all your nails, waiting to see if Grace will come through or not. But Anna finally finds some amazing treasures and picks the perfect picture of actor Sienna Miller for the cover, and the issue ends up being absolutely BANANAS.

  The Devil Wears Prada is pretty great, too. It’s not better than The September Issue, though.

  The September Issue is pretty much everything.

  WINTER

  Prompt: Something new in a familiar place.

  Last summer, we went to a Bon Festival, Eli and me. Well, we kind of did. Mom was on shift, and Dad had a dinner at the president’s house, and I totally said yes when Eli asked me if I wanted to grab a burrito with him. I couldn’t remember the last Friday night we had done something together. So unless he was going surfing, which started way too early and took forever, I always went with him whenever he asked me to go.

  It had been so long, and awkward at first, being somewhere with him on a Friday night. He had hurt his shoulder from a big wave at Sunset a few days before and had to wait a while before getting back out on his board again.

  So, Eli and me, we were getting rice-and-bean burritos from Down to Earth on King Street, and he parked on the second story of the garage beside it because there’s never any parking on the actual street itself. When we got out of the truck, we heard the festival going on—the bamboo flute, the lute, the koto. It was late July, and a Friday, so of course there was a Bon.

  Eli and I had been around Bon Festivals thousands of times, but we had never stopped to really check them out. That night, though, that Friday in July, we got our burritos and ate them inside, and when we were back in the garage after, Eli leaned against the rail and looked down at the little bit of Japan right in the middle of O‘ahu.

  We watched that Bon—the dancers raising up their arms as they floated around the red-and-white tent, calling the spirit ghosts to come visit, honoring their ancestors. Lanterns bobbed over them—pinks and greens, yellows and reds—and the flute and lute and koto plinked on.

  The sun set out over Diamond Head, and Eli and I watched those dancers float.

  A shave ice sounded so good, I thought, lychee. My palms were sticky and sweaty on the rail.

  But Eli was just watching the dancers, like it was the first time he’d ever seen it, and if I had told him, “Let’s go get a shave ice,” he would have said, “Nah, let’s just head home,” because he wanted to party at Tate’s, even though Dad told him, “You
better not be drinking while you’re on those pain pills.”

  This was it for me, my whole night. I had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go after. Li Lu’s mom was making her stay home to study because she was getting a B+ in math, and Eli would never take me to Tate’s with him, no way.

  The air filled up with Okinawa dango fresh out of the oil, and the smell made me thirstier and dizzy, even. But Eli wasn’t going anywhere, and who knew the next Friday night he would take me anyplace. So I stayed right there beside him at the railing, blinking the heat and mascara away from my eyes.

  The dancers danced and the lanterns bobbed—pinks and greens, yellows and reds—and the flute and lute and koto plinked on. It was beautiful, the dancers floating around the striped tent. I watched their arms wave slow and soft. I was thinking about Pearl Harbor, ten miles leeward. So much conflict here, so much pain.

  Eli, he was watching, too, and I was watching him watch, but he wasn’t really seeing, and after a while I noticed he wasn’t even thinking. There was literally nothing on his mind. How was that even possible? I didn’t realize it then, but I was annoyed by that, jealous even, how he could just be. What was that all about?

  Eli took in a sharp breath of the heavy dango-scented air: “Swells come in two months,” he announced, more to himself than to me.

  We were right in the middle of the city, above something so beautiful and complicated, and that’s what Eli was “thinking” about. I remember his words, the air, my hands sticky on the rail.

  What I’ve forgotten is my own brother’s face.

  FALL

  Prompt: Describe a memorable field trip.

  I really want to know about Brielle’s game. Like who’s in on it, and can I be in on it, and what do you win at the end. Was Isabelle part of it? But she’s not now? Is that why they aren’t friends anymore?