Fierce as the Wind

by Tara Wilson Redd

  I hold my phone out again for Rei, but she’s watching Wyatt walk out of the garage.

  “You know what? You’re not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with you!” Rei shouts after him.

  “No, don’t go,” I say.

  “Stay out of this,” Rei says, but I’m already chasing after Wyatt.

  “Wyatt, please,” I say, but he’s still walking, already on the sidewalk. I grab his hand. “Hold up.”

  “Miho, I’m sorry,” he says. He gives me a hug. “Good luck.”

  “But we’re friends,” I say, his arms still wrapped around me.

  “Of course we are,” Wyatt says. “I’m not friend-breaking up with you, if you don’t want me to. I just thought, you know, because of Rei…”

  “Rei will get over it. I wish you guys could work it out, and I hope you get back together, but you don’t have to go because of her. No one thinks of you as just Rei’s boyfriend. You’re our friend, Wyatt. For real. You should stay.” He hugs me tighter.

  “Thanks, Mi,” he says.

  “Seriously?” Rei says behind me. I think she heard me. Wyatt releases me. Everyone else is in the garage staring. “You ‘don’t think of him as my boyfriend’?”

  “I said he’s our friend. Not just your boyfriend. Because he’s a person, not an accessory, and I like hanging out with him.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “Rei!” Wyatt tries to interject.

  “You’re so mystified by Scumbucket two-timing his girlfriend. Seems pretty obvious to me what he was getting out of it. They’re all the same. All they want is to sleep with you, and if they can’t, they get it somewhere else. That’s you: the somewhere else.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Wyatt says. I’m too stunned to say anything.

  “Shut up, Wyatt, this isn’t about you,” Rei shouts.

  “Then what are we fighting about?” I scream back.

  “I don’t care, you know. I don’t care about him. What I care about is that you would go behind my back, after everything I’ve done for you, and try to steal my boyfriend.”

  “I’m leaving,” Wyatt says. He stomps off, but Rei and I are too busy screaming at each other to process it.

  “I’m not stealing your boyfriend!” I say.

  “I literally just heard you. And I see you flirting with him. You got cheated on, so you think you get a free pass?”

  “No one is cheating with anyone!”

  “Ladies,” X breaks in.

  “Stay out of this!” we shout. He retreats back into the garage with Lani and Trinity.

  “I’m in love with him and he—”

  “Yeah, and he’s in love with you! Or he would be if you would stop acting like this.”

  “But he doesn’t want someone like me. He wants someone who knows what food stamps look like. Someone who has parents like his. He thinks I’m a spoiled rich brat.”

  “Because you are, Rei! You are a stuck-up rich brat sometimes!”

  “It’s not my fault my parents are successful.”

  “No one said it’s your fault! But, like, we can’t all walk on eggshells about how much the rest of our lives are broke bullshit just because it makes you uncomfortable that you’re rich. Suck it up!”

  “You think people with money are evil and so you have the right to take anything you want from them, because you don’t have anything. Well, just because life dealt you a bad hand doesn’t mean you get to take things that don’t belong to you.”

  “Wow. That may be the bitchiest thing you’ve ever said.”

  “You’re a boyfriend stealer. That’s what you are. You flirt and flirt and flirt, and you steal boyfriends because you think you’re entitled to it because your life is shitty.”

  “Screw you! If you think I’m such a boyfriend-stealing slut, why don’t you stop slumming it with me? Why do you even hang out with me?”

  “I don’t know!” Rei screams. And then she bursts into tears. She goes back into the garage, grabs her purse, and runs toward her car. She jumps in and peels off in that eerie Prius silence.

  “What the hell was that?” X asks. I burst into tears.

  chapter twenty-two

  “The Itinerary” looks like this, as far as I can remember.

  Midnight: Scumbucket climbs into Miho’s window for several hours of R-rated birthday canoodling in designated traditional lingerie, plus cake. 3:00 a.m.: Scumbucket and Miho drive to airport for 3:30 a.m. arrival. Park in long-term parking, shuttle to the terminal. Check-in, security, terrible breakfast. Flight at 7:00 a.m. Scheduled viewing: Love Crazy, Manhattan Melodrama, unless seat-back TVs have superior options. 3:30 p.m. California time, land in Los Angeles. One-and-a-half-hour layover. (No that’s not enough time to leave and come back for In-N-Out Burger Miho you pleb!!!) 5:00 p.m. red-eye to Amsterdam, mandatory sleep, PG snuggling. 1:00 p.m. arrival the next day.

  I can keep going. I know the whole five days by heart.

  I push it to the back of my mind, but I can still hear that alternate world ticking away.

  It’s 12:01 a.m. on my birthday, and even though I know better, I unlatch my window.

  * * *

  My friends and I blow off my training plan and go hiking all morning—flight to LA, watching Bill and Myrna, I take a nap on his shoulder—and Rei doesn’t complain about the deviation, because she still doesn’t respond to our texts. I don’t care, though I wonder if she regrets getting me my birthday present early. I mean, if she wants to be a paranoid plastic, so be it. Wyatt comes, but he doesn’t really talk to anyone. He seems sad.

  After what Rei said, I don’t know how to talk to him anymore either. I wonder if I was flirting with him. I didn’t mean to. I just wanted him to feel like he belonged, because he did. He does. It’s like there’s an awkward wall between us now, and no matter what either of us meant, it all means something different now.

  We go to Uncle Tua’s for lunch—layover, walking the terminal with his hand in my back pocket—and he makes me an ice cream cake with eighteen candles in it. We come home—finally taking off, he’s so excited by the way the buildings look like a tiny train set—and Dad cooks his famous barbecue for everyone. My neighbors went in together and got me some very, very nice yellow running shoes with big cushy soles, perfect for a marathon. Dad holds my present behind his back and reveals it with a flourish: 1001 Things Every College Student Needs to Know. Subtle. I roll my eyes, but I’m laughing. It’s still got the big clearance sticker on it, and in this moment I can see that we are exactly the same kind of stubborn, exactly the same kind of funny. Maybe it’s genetic.

  But then, with his other hand, he pulls out something I didn’t even know I wanted: swim paddles. “So I asked at the store what to buy a triathlete, and they claimed these are the best gift no one thinks of. They say they make a big difference, make you a lot stronger and faster.” They’re not the big flat ones with plastic ties for your fingers, but special form-correcting ones I’ve seen online. “If you don’t like them, we can return them,” he says.

  “I like them,” I say quickly. “I love them.” I don’t know if you can love swim paddles, but I love that he asked someone what to buy a triathlete. My own dad called me that.

  I am not lying when I tell everyone that I’m tired—we laugh about the gross airplane dinner, dream of rijsttafel—because I couldn’t fall back asleep after I woke up at midnight. Everyone heads home around eight. I thank my elders and close myself into my room. I can hear them head next door to Mr. Oshiro’s house, where they crowd into his tiny living room and put on a baseball game and shout at the television. I lie down, but it’s only nine and it’s still light out and I can’t sleep. After an hour—we are snuggling under thin airplane blankets—I pull out my PlayStation from behind the fortress of books and canvases I built to keep it out of sight and out of mind, and I launch Eldritc
h Codex. My fingers automatically check Scumbucket’s last log-in. He still hasn’t gotten online.

  I know I was secretly hoping he spent all day waiting for me in Themria. Like he was thinking about me all day, on his “favorite holiday,” and hoping I’d telepathically know he’d meet me online, even if he couldn’t be with me in person.

  But no.

  I don’t even want to talk to him. I just want to know that he remembered. That he regrets it, even if only a little.

  I notice, though, that Wyatt is on.

  I send him a gram. He’s unmuted me a second later. We’re in different parts of Themria, but there’s this weird fuzzy animation of him that shows up in the corner. He’s a Scholar, like me, with a pretty sweet wolf familiar.

  “Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”

  “Not much, couldn’t sleep.”

  “That sucks. Did you have a good birthday? Sorry if I made things awkward.”

  “You didn’t. I was super tired.”

  “Still overtraining.”

  “Probably,” I say. I try to think of a segue, but I can’t, so I just come out and say it. “Wyatt, can you do me a favor and keep it totally secret?”

  “Uh, sure,” he says, and I can hear him nervously laughing, even though his avatar is currently fighting off an owl.

  “Can you look up and see if this player is online?”

  I text him Scumbucket’s username from my phone. I hear his phone ding on the line, and his avatar pauses while he looks at it. Then some cursing, and some maneuvering to get away from the owl. His avatar hides in a cave while Wyatt is searching.

  Wyatt goes quiet for a minute. I already know what he sees.

  “Is he?”

  “No,” Wyatt says. “He was playing a few hours ago, though.”

  I look at my screen, where his username is still grayed out. He blocked me. That’s why it looks like he hasn’t been on since before we broke up. Because that’s when he blocked me. It was before he even told me.

  “It’s him, isn’t it,” Wyatt says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Clearly a Hanzo main. Want to go loot his ship?” Wyatt asks.

  There are tears rolling down my face. I keep my voice steady, speaking carefully.

  “No, I was only curious,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”

  But I don’t get off the line. My avatar stands staring at a wall because my hands are shaking too badly to hold the controller.

  I hear Wyatt clear his throat.

  “Look, I barely knew him. But I do know other guys. And, like, I know this doesn’t make it better, but I’ve wanted to tell you this for months, but I thought you might think I was hitting on you and then Rei is so…well, whatever. Anyway. I wanted to say, for what it’s worth…maybe the reason he ghosted isn’t because he didn’t think you were special, but because he couldn’t face what he’d done.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and my voice breaks, and I hate myself for it. “Sorry, I have to go.”

  “Good night, Miho.”

  “Good night. And thanks.”

  * * *

  I take his cruddy old PlayStation, wrap it in his stupid pink shirt. I take it outside and put it in the trash. It’s not even worth trying to sell it. It’s garbage. Crashes all the time anyway.

  Screw it, I always wanted a Switch anyway.

  I take a bath. It feels good to be clean. I haven’t been out of a sports bra in weeks. When I shower, I only have the energy to shave my legs or wash my hair, so I am always spiky or full of knots. I am missing two toenails. It doesn’t hurt exactly, but it looks super weird. I put on my favorite fancy lace socks, just for fun.

  When it’s almost midnight—we are over the Atlantic—I open the top drawer of my dresser and dig to the bottom, under all the practical, period-stained-but-still-wearable panties, under my flock of sports bras, to Rei’s hand-me-down lingerie.

  Why am I doing this? I wonder. My hands reach into the drawer and take out both pieces, top and bottom. They are almost weightless, and it’s like someone else is pulling the strings as I slip them on.

  I tell myself I’ll take it off in a second, that it doesn’t mean anything. I know I’m lying.

  The lingerie fits differently than before. Not better or worse, just different. My legs are weirdly big. My arms, though, put Michelle Obama’s to shame. I flex a bicep. I raise my eyebrows at the resulting wave from under my skin. I’m a badass—look at those biceps! I’ve been so busy training, I haven’t even had time to ponder this new eruption of abs, which are almost visible under a layer of fat. If I lean just right, I can see the muscles. When did these show up?

  But then he’s in my head again. Is this what he likes? I wonder. This tiny, tight body stripped of fat? He’s the only person who could say whether my body is as nice as hers.

  It shouldn’t matter.

  And it doesn’t.

  I force myself to look again. I shake out my 3C curls, which for whatever reason are drying perfectly tonight. They look cool and bouncy. I use my fingers to style them a little, throw in a few bobby pins and a bow.

  I take a step back, strike a stupid pose, hands on hips, giant biker legs standing strong. I look so much like me. There’s the bruise from this week’s ill-executed bike mount. I have superbad tan lines right where my bike shorts hit, and all over my back in crisscrossing patterns from my five different swimsuits. I look at the spot I burned being a dumbass, trying to get pizza out of Uncle Tua’s pizza oven without a glove for the billionth time. I never learn. I didn’t become someone else. Just another me. It makes me smile.

  I have the window open, and it’s oddly cold for July. Hawai’i cold, at least. I should latch it. I look out that window and think about Rei, about Satan. I think about who was supposed to come through that window at 12:00 a.m. on the dot. I look at my phone. I’ve been checking it all day. Not a word. Not a single word. Not even, I don’t know…“Sorry”?

  It’s 12:01.

  I lie down and stare at the ceiling.

  That’s it. It’s over.

  I wonder what I’ll be doing next year on my birthday. I’ll know where I’m going to college. I’ll have done an Ironman…well, a Miho-man. I mean, I sure hope so. One month to go. I hope I can pull this off. I’ve worked so hard. And I’m 100 percent confident I can finish. Okay, 97.6 percent. But I’m also so, so scared.

  Miho, age nineteen. Hard to imagine.

  Well, not that hard. It’s not like I don’t know what I wish for.

  I sit up.

  It seems so obvious at 12:01.

  I reach into my desk and grab a piece of paper. Right across the top I write, “The Itinerary.”

  Midnight, Miho’s 19th Birthday. Miho can’t sleep because she’s too excited. She’s all packed. She watches movies until 4:00 a.m.

  She gets a ride from her dad to the airport. Her dad is proud of her.

  She gets on the plane.

  She goes to Amsterdam.

  And I will. I know it. And I’ll stand there and see my crows, and I’ll be the person I’ve been dreaming of becoming my whole life. I’ll see things I never imagined for myself all by myself. I don’t need him for that. And I’ll do the things I want to do. And I will finish a freaking Ironman. And I will apply to art school and know all 1001 things every college student needs to know, and I will do these things because I am amazing. I am amazing. I am.

  I’m going to live the itinerary I am making today.

  chapter twenty-three

  It was only a matter of time. My phone lights up with a message.

  “Can you meet me somewhere?”

  I smile, and my heart feels so full, because real love is like that: it doesn’t disappear.

  “When?” I text. />
  “Tomorrow 9 a.m.”

  “Where?”

  “The Marriott downtown.”

  “The Marriott? The hotel? Upgrade to our normal trysts.”

  “The Marriott.”

  “Just making sure it’s not autocorrect.”

  “I missed you.”

  I text X that I’ll be missing my run tomorrow.

  I can’t stop smiling.

  * * *

  I wait in front of the Marriott because it’s kind of a nice hotel, so I don’t want to go in the lobby. It’s hot, and I’m nervous and jittery because I skipped my run, and biking over here doesn’t cut it anymore. I’ll make it up later. This is more important. I feel arms wrap around me from behind. I missed this so much.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I turn around and hug her.

  “No, Mi-kins, honestly. I’m sorry,” Rei says again, holding me by the shoulders. “Wyatt won’t even answer my messages he’s so mad.”

  “He has a right to be.”

  “I know,” she says. Part of me wants him to forgive her, and part of me wonders if he should. Wyatt and I, we’re not a thing, we never have been a thing, we aren’t going to be a thing. But when your friends aren’t right for each other, and you like them both, what do you say? Maybe you say nothing. Maybe you have to let them figure it out on their own, and try to love them both.

  “You left us hanging for a month, Rei,” I say, because it needs to be said.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says. “I needed some time to get my head straight. And then after that, I was too ashamed to say anything. It never seemed like the right time. And then finally I got this sign, like your ‘Anything Is Possible’ banner—”

  “I wanted to text you, but I wasn’t sure what you wanted when you stopped answering,” I say, cutting her off.

  “I know you weren’t sneaking around with Wyatt.”

  “You can still see my phone.”