I know my anger is misplaced, but I don’t care. I’m full of steam and smoke and fire, and that kind of anger has to go somewhere.
Aunty Ani’s eyes flit back and forth. She pinches her necklace, rolling the small shells between her fingers like she’s nervous. “I’m sorry, Rumi. I didn’t mean—”
“This is Lea’s,” I scream. “It’s Lea’s and it means something. You don’t throw away things that mean something. You don’t abandon them like they were never important to begin with!” My voice becomes hoarse quickly; it feels like I’ve been yelling for hours. And maybe I have. But maybe it took everyone a long time to hear me.
Mom abandoned me. She left me to figure out how to say good-bye to Lea all by myself. I don’t know how to do this—I don’t know how to keep going. Lea’s dead, and Mom should’ve been here with me, telling me how I’m supposed to deal with that. I needed her to not be broken. I needed her to pick me over Lea, for once in her life.
I don’t know how to be all alone.
“Stop,” Aunty Ani says suddenly, her hands balled up tight. “Stop speaking to me like this. I’m your family, and I’m trying to help.”
The words that fly out of my mouth come from someplace so dark and poisonous that it sends chills up my arms. “I don’t have any family left!”
I put Lea’s guitar in my room, and at some point I’m puking into the toilet with my hair in one hand, wondering how I’m supposed to turn off this kind of pain.
CHAPTER TEN
For once it isn’t Poi’s barking that wakes me in the middle of the night—it’s music.
I sit up in bed, squinting at the door and wondering what would possess my aunt to have a house party after the nuclear bomb that went off in her living room. When I open the door, the hallway is completely dark. Aunty Ani’s door is shut tight. I pad carefully through the house, my feet sticking slightly to the floorboards, and I realize the music isn’t coming from here—it’s coming from Mr. Watanabe’s.
Rolling my eyes, I slip on my shoes and walk over to his house, ready to pound on the door and tell him to turn his music off.
But when I reach the top step, I pause. I hear the strums of a guitar, like the ocean swirling against the sand. It sounds the way mango tastes—soft and sweet, and just enough warmth to make you feel calm. It’s such a mellow sound, and before I know it, I’m sitting with my back against Mr. Watanabe’s screen door with my eyes closed, my feet tapping to the beat of the music.
I almost forgot what this felt like—to be lost in the music. To hear a melody that doesn’t break my heart over and over again.
Maybe it’s the absence of lyrics, or maybe it’s because the song has no connection to Lea, but either way it feels good. I’ve been so afraid that music was never going to be the same again that hearing something so beautiful and pure—it makes my entire body relax.
My heart, too.
I don’t know how long I’m sitting there—a minute, an hour—but eventually the door opens, and Mr. Watanabe stares down at me like he knew I was there all along.
I jump up, straightening my pajama shirt. I open my mouth to tell him his music is too loud, that I can’t sleep, that he needs to shut it off, but I can’t. Because I don’t want the music to stop.
He looks at me, opens the door even wider, and moves toward his living room.
I hesitate. Is this an invitation?
When Poi shows up yapping through the screen like she’s eaten batteries for lunch, I pull the thin door open and step inside.
Mr. Watanabe’s house smells like grass and old wood. I don’t know how anyone’s home could smell so much like a terrarium when there isn’t a plant in sight. Maybe it’s all the time he spends in his yard. Maybe the smell sticks to him, the way songs used to stick to Lea and me. Like they just couldn’t leave us.
Poi sniffs at my feet, barking and barking like she wants the world to know she’s found me.
“Is she going to stop?” I ask.
Mr. Watanabe is sitting in a deep red chair, an old record player near his right and a small table with a wooden box at his left. He doesn’t say anything—he tilts his head back and closes his eyes, listening to the scratch of the vinyl beside him.
I sit on the floor and hold out my hand to Poi. She comes closer, running her whiskers along my fingers, and then jumps away again, yapping frantically, like she can’t control herself.
Mr. Watanabe whistles once, and Poi skirts across the room and hops into his lap, content.
I roll my eyes. That dog has more things wrong with it than I do.
When the next song starts, I don’t move from the floor. I listen to the mango guitar and breathe in the earthy room, and suddenly I’m lying flat on the wooden floor watching the ceiling fan spin around and around and around.
And for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel like the floor has been pulled out from under me. I feel steady.
We listen to the entire record. When it ends, Mr. Watanabe looks at me and says, “You go home.”
When I’m standing outside the front door, I turn back to him. “Can I come back tomorrow?”
Maybe it’s a lot to ask of a stranger, but I don’t care. I found something familiar in a world where nothing is the way I remember it.
The music that exists in Mr. Watanabe’s house isn’t haunted by Lea. I feel safe here, and I want to hold on to this feeling for as long as I can. For as long as Mr. Watanabe will let me.
I need music not to hurt anymore, and I’ll visit Mr. Watanabe and his annoying dog every single day if that’s what it takes.
His face is dry and covered in sunspots, and sometimes he looks like he’s made of leather and not human skin. But after a very long silence, he blinks at me like someone at the other end of a job interview.
“Tomorrow” is all he says.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aunty Ani leaves for work before I’m even out of bed. I’m glad—having her hovering around me all the time only reminds me of what Mom should be here doing, instead of vanishing from my life like she somehow became Dad.
It’s not fair for people to grieve alone. The people who are left behind should stick together. They should want to stick together.
I try to think about lyrics for “Summer Bird Blue,” but it feels unnatural, the same way losing Lea and being in Hawaii feel unnatural. Summers are supposed to be about having fun and enjoying some freedom before school starts again, but I don’t feel free—I feel trapped and lost all at the same time, as if I woke up on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean and I can’t remember how I got there.
Summer, Hawaii, the world—none of it makes sense without Lea.
I know I need to write this song, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to do any of this without my sister and without my mom.
It’s not fucking fair.
I see Poi through the kitchen window, napping in the sunshine like she doesn’t have any cares at all. Either that or all the barking might have actually worn her out.
I decide I don’t want to wait until night to find out if Mr. Watanabe is going to play his record again. He said tomorrow, right? And it is tomorrow.
I knock on the door and set off the Poi alarm.
Mr. Watanabe appears and leaves the door open like he did last night.
When I step inside, I try to pet Poi. She runs around me a few times, looking like a giant rodent with too much hair, before scurrying onto the couch and growling under her breath.
I look at the empty record player and my heart sinks. “Where’s the music?”
He looks at me with tired, dull eyes before pointing to the bottom shelf next to the couch. It’s full of records, all neatly lined up against one another, their spines so worn away they appear fluffy. The rest of the shelves are covered in gold trinkets and a few photographs.
“Go, find one,” he says.
I kneel down next to the shelf and pull the records halfway out one at a time, until I find something with a violin on the cover. I look
up at him.
He makes a noise like he’s disgusted and waves the record away. “Dat one no good. Try da uddah one.”
I find a cover with a piano on it, and he gives a single nod.
I sit on the floor next to the record player while he writes something down at the kitchen table. We’re silent; neither of us interested in talking. It’s almost peaceful, even with Poi’s sporadic noises erupting every few minutes from the couch.
The piano music is like vanilla lattes and sugar cookies. Cozy. Homely. God, I miss the feel of the keys beneath my hands so much.
I don’t realize I’m mimicking the notes with my fingers against the wooden floor until I catch Mr. Watanabe staring at me, his nose dipped so his glasses fall right below his eyes. I pull my hands back and turn toward the speakers, biting my lip so I don’t let myself get too comfortable again.
* * *
Later that night I see Aunty Ani. She doesn’t ask for an apology, and I don’t give her one. I think we’re going to pretend nothing happened.
When she’s in the shower, I sit on my bed with Lea’s guitar in my lap, my back to the open window. I bring my hand to the strings, telling myself it’s okay—that the notes don’t have to be painful. They don’t have to hurt.
Listening to music next door was easy—why can’t this be too?
But as soon as I feel the pang in my chest, I let my hand fall back to the mattress. Maybe grieving Lea isn’t supposed to be easy.
Right now it feels impossible.
I close my eyes and take a breath, focusing on something other than my thoughts. The flutter of nearby leaves on the fruit trees. The chorus of tropical birds I’ve never seen before. I try to listen for Mr. Watanabe’s music, but I can’t hear it. Maybe he’s like me—maybe some days he needs to be heard, but most of the time he’d rather be hidden.
“That’s one big ukulele,” Kai says.
I spin around. He’s leaning into the window opposite mine. It’s not far—I could easily throw something straight into his house if I wanted to, and I’m not even remotely athletic.
“It’s a guitar,” I say stiffly.
Kai laughs. “Yeah, I know that.” He lifts his chin. “You play?”
I run my fingers over the stickers, some soft with age. “A little. But Lea was better. I was always the piano player.”
“Can you play me something?” he asks, his fingers tapping against the windowsill.
I look at him seriously. He’s so carefree, like he doesn’t understand the gravity of losing a sister—of death—and how it’s way too soon for me to even be thinking about playing an instrument again.
He smiles, his teeth white and his skin so tan, and I pull my eyes away before I forget what I’m trying to say. “No,” I manage to get out, putting the guitar back in its case and leaning it against the wall. When I get back to my bed, Kai is still at the window.
“Hey, I have a question for you,” he says.
“What’s that?” I ask, and my nerves rumble to life.
“You like go to the beach tomorrow?” he asks with a smirk.
I stiffen. “Why did you have to start it off like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“The whole, ‘I have a question for you.’ Like you were about to ask me something important.”
“It’s not unimportant.”
“Yeah, but you’re making it weird when you say it like that. Like it’s a date.”
“Do you want it to be a date?”
“No,” I practically bark.
He shrugs. “Okay, fine. You still like go?”
I make a face. “I thought your dad didn’t want you hanging out with me.”
“Eh.” Kai waves a hand. “I’ll act like you’re all depressed about your sistah. He’ll be fine.”
“I am depressed about my sister,” I say.
He shrugs. “Well, perfect then, yeah? I don’t even have to lie.”
I raise my eyebrows.
He laughs. “Come on. Goin’ hurt my feeling if you say no.”
“Your feeling? As in one?”
“I only have one left.”
“You’re so weird.”
“I have da kine—low self-esteem.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“No, it’s true. I hate myself almost as much as you hate the entire world. We can try bond over that.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Never, hapa.” He’s grinning wildly because he can’t keep a straight face to save his life.
Still, I almost smile. Almost. “Okay, fine.”
“Cool. Meet me downstairs tomorrow morning? At seven?”
“Seriously?” I say. “Seven in the morning?”
Kai laughs loudly, leaning away from the window. “Early bird catches the waves.”
I start to point out that he never said anything about surfing, but then he’s gone and it’s just me, musicless and motherless and sisterless, but maybe no longer friendless.
And I feel like that means more than I want to admit.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The water is still strangely warm, even in the mornings. Not Jacuzzi warm, but when the only ocean you’ve ever been in is the one off the coast of Washington State, the water in Hawaii feels like a completely different species altogether.
Gareth starts throwing around lumps of food wrapped in plastic. When one of them hits me in the chest, I study it like someone would study a fruit they’ve never seen before. It looks like a slab of rice and some kind of meat, all wrapped up in seaweed.
“Spam musubi,” Gareth says. “You eva try?”
“I’ve had Spam. My mom always cooks it with sugar and soy sauce. But I’ve never had it like this,” I say.
I glance around at the rest of the group. There’s Kai, Gareth, a girl named Hannah, who looks enviably perfect in a bikini, and her younger brother, Jerrod. They’re all eating the seaweed wrap hungrily. I take a bite out of mine and meet Gareth’s gaze with approval.
“Ono, yeah?” he says. “You like anuddah one?”
I shake my head and swallow. “One is fine. Thanks.”
He nods, falling into the sand next to Jerrod, who seems to have a cell phone surgically fixed to his hands. Kai is talking to Hannah with so much animation, I’m not sure he understands what seven in the morning actually means.
He catches me looking at him and winks. I shake my head slowly. Low self-esteem. What a bunch of garbage.
It doesn’t take me long to realize why Kai wanted to get here so early. They didn’t come here just to surf; they’ve also borrowed a bunch of equipment from the hotel. Boogie boards, a paddle board, a small kayak—and they want to use them before the hotel guests begin renting everything out for the day.
I watch Hannah bundle up her curly hair in a high knot. She has pretty hazel eyes, dark, earthy skin, and freckles covering both her shoulders. She grabs one of the boogie boards and heads out into the water, Gareth following closely behind her with a surfboard.
Kai motions over his shoulder. “You like try surf?”
I shake my head. “I’m still half asleep. Contrary to what everyone seems to think about my morbidly depressing situation, I’m not looking for a way to check out early.”
“Noted,” he says, and makes his way to the ocean’s edge with his own board just as Gareth dips his body below the water to miss an incoming wave.
Jerrod sits down next to me with a can of pineapple juice in one hand and his phone in the other. I watch him swipe his thumb against the screen, and a moment of frustration flashes across his face.
“No signal?” I ask tiredly.
He looks up at me like he’s only just noticed I’ve stayed behind. “Did you know the Great Barrier Reef is dying? It’s like eighteen million years old. How ridiculous is that? That you could live that long and still be at the mercy of mortality?” he asks.
Eighteen million years, eighteen years—it’s all a travesty to me. Life is nothing more than a flame. It
doesn’t get to decide when it goes out—it’s either time or an outside interference.
I shrug. “Pretty ridiculous, I guess. Why is it dying?”
“Bleaching or something. I’m still reading,” he says, scrolling down the article.
I look out into the water. Gareth and Kai are farther back, the pair of them sitting on their boards like ducks in the water, waiting for the perfect wave. Hannah is still fairly close to shore, her arms swooping low in a strong paddle as the crest of water appears behind her.
Jerrod snaps a picture of something in the sand. Maybe a seashell. Maybe his own feet. “So, how long have you known Kai?”
I shrug. “A week, maybe? But I don’t know him know him. He’s mostly hanging out with me because my aunt told him to, and I think I’m mostly hanging out with him because his dad told me not to.” It probably says a lot about who Kai and I are as people, to be honest.
Jerrod snorts loudly and stifles a laugh. “I don’t blame you. His dad is a douche.”
“Who’s a what now?” Hannah says, dropping her yellow boogie board into the sand and reaching for her water bottle.
“Kai’s dad,” we both say at the same time.
She rolls her eyes. “Our dad used to be on the same squadron as him, and even he thinks Kai’s dad is a jerk.” She sits down next to me, patting at the dark brown knot on her head, which is starting to come undone. “You a military brat too?”
“No. I’m visiting my aunt for the summer,” I say stiffly.
She nods and bites into one of the extra Spam musubis. “Where are you from?”
“Washington,” I say.
It’s strange how quickly the ability to converse with people comes back to me. People always compare picking up old hobbies to riding a bike, but it’s different from that. Socializing is like getting out of bed after you’ve been sleeping for weeks. Which pretty much sums up my life since I’ve been here.
They tell me how they used to live in Everett and how Kai is lucky because he’s never had to move—something about Palekaiko Bay being his mom’s second child—and that their own dad is getting new orders next year and they’re hoping to move to Italy. Hannah tells me how much she loves surfing but hates her school, and how everyone calls her “hapa” because her mom’s Japanese and her dad’s black and she’s sick of hearing it. Jerrod interrupts to point out they’re not really hapa anyway, and that if you google it, “hapa” is supposed to mean people who are half Hawaiian.
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