What to say? Where to start? Bree lingers to hear my next words, the most important words I’ll ever utter. There’s no time left and no excuses.
“It’s all my fault, Kei,” I whisper to the top of her bent head just like Mama used to do when we were Koko. “I’m so sorry. It was me.”
Rising
Kei
There is light on the other side, now. I see it.
There is moonlight. A half circle. Everything black and white along the winding road. I can see the gnarled ohia trees, the ones that are pocked and gray even in the daytime. Petrified trees, against a petrified landscape. Their red pincushion flowers disappearing against the tufts of rock.
On this road, the weather changes, bend after bend. The rain drifts. The mist moves in from between the trees like an eerie forward army. It flits from one side of the road to another, hovering just above the pavement without leaving a darker footprint. The stars above are bright.
I can see all of this, and more, under the moon.
You and I are in the back of the pickup truck, Hana. All of us pressed against the cab to stay out of the wind. I don’t know the name of the driver, though I’m sure I recognize him. He’s one of the guys who got suspended in high school for breaking a door. He’s a big guy, with a struggling goatee and a flattop buzz cut, and Missy tosses her hair more when he’s around. Missy and Lorna are in Eddie’s car. Charlene is here with us, and Russell. Until tonight, I never noticed how soft he looks, with his curling hair and thin arms.
You and I left the house together, but you shrug off my warnings. Since I came to the beach to save you, you haven’t once allowed yourself to be alone with me. I know there’s a plan, though Missy scoffs at my suspicions. I know that smile, which she can’t keep off her face. It’s not much proof. It’s not something anyone else would notice. That’s why I don’t say more, not that you will let me. All I can say to you is: These aren’t your friends.
I have followed you to the beach. I have watched you in the water. I made sure I planted myself on the shore right in front of you where I could grab anyone racing back onto the beach with your skirt. I didn’t know which of them might do it: Missy or Russell. They were both flittering around you, but I knew I could outrun either one. I could tell that you didn’t know what to do with all Missy’s attention, but with Russell, you suspected nothing. I saw you flush as he got close. I could feel it. I watched how you kept your bodies under the surface of the water so no one could see you touch.
That was then, and nothing happened. I had guessed wrong. But tonight is the dance.
Mama got into the truck with Arnie to drop us off at the theater. It was the last senior dance, and the first one we had ever been to together, and she said she wanted to see us off. Arnie teased her, told her not to worry. “She’s with Hana. Hana won’t let anything happen.” Mama smiled and patted your hand as we got out. “Good girl,” she said. And then, “Have fun.”
Even then you ran to Russell and wouldn’t let me speak to you. Once everyone gathered, we headed out of town. Back up the hill, past our house, where we all lay down in the back of the flatbed. That road runs for hours through the saddle of two volcanoes, all the way to the other side of the island. And in between there is rain forest, lava fields, a military camp, and, sometimes in the middle of the winter, a glimpse of snow on the peaks.
But we are not passing over the saddle. Eddie’s car pulls over barely a mile past our house, and then we, too, are bumping along gravel and grass. Across the road from where we park is the cave.
The cave was an underground lava tube until the roof fell in. Now it’s two caves accessed at the bottom of a pit, some thirty feet or so below the surface of the earth. On one side, it opens like a huge mouth: Fangs of ferns and long, hanging roots drip softly onto the moss-covered rocks. The opposite entrance is small, more secret. I have been here before with Arnie. We stopped on a whim that day, and walked in only until we couldn’t tell if the chills we felt were the result of the cold or the ghosts. As we sat and looked out at the glowing portal to the green world outside, he told me the cave snakes along for miles. It dips and drops and squeezes through holes, but it keeps going.
When Arnie and I came here, we weren’t prepared. Even so, he could reach under the seat to grab the flashlight he kept there, the one that banged back and forth in the well of the floor and was almost never used. It cast a brown-tinged light, ringed by the concentric circles of low batteries.
It is one of Arnie’s mantras: Never go anywhere without a flashlight in your car. Never get into a car without flares, and a jack, and a lug wrench. The truck he dropped us off in was equipped like that.
Where is Arnie when you need him?
I know you hate caves. You’ve always hated close spaces, and more than that, you hate the dark. When we were two girls growing up, you couldn’t sleep with the curtains closed. You needed the light in the eaves outside so there was no mistaking a dress for an old straggly-haired obake appearing at the foot of your bed. I would like to take comfort in the fact that this cave is one of the two places I can be sure you will never enter.
Except that the other was the ocean.
Don’t cross the road, Hana. We could stay right here. We could walk home together, you and I. It’s not so far. If they won’t take us to the dance, we’ll make our own fun, together.
But you are too happy that Missy and the others have included you.
You are wearing a yellow spring dress you made yourself. A tiny, hand-sewn line of white lace edging the round, open collar. That’s my sister—so much more beautiful than the flower Russell has pinned on your chest. Your arms are bare beneath your cap sleeves. I try to give you my sweater, since my sleeves are longer, but I think you’d rather have a reason to shiver under Russell’s arm.
I took him aside at school before the beach trip. He seemed oblivious, but you never knew. I told him, “You better watch out for Hana. If anything happens to her, I will make you pay.”
Now, as we walk down the steep steps into the pit, Missy’s chattering about how this is “our hideout.” I don’t even know who “our” is. She has never mentioned the cave to me before. Who do I know here? Charlene, Missy, Eddie—who do I really know? There’s no one I can trust, nothing I can say that might be safe, but I still venture a single word. “‘Our’?”
“It’s no fun being left out, is it?” Missy asks me.
You almost nod, as if Missy’s truth is undeniable, but then you just pull Russell tighter. You don’t know Missy and I are having a different conversation, beneath the one everyone else can hear.
“Let’s go this way,” I suggest, pointing to the smaller entrance once we reach the bottom. This side is just tall enough to walk into without crouching but it leads down. I am counting on the fact that you will refuse to sit on the wet rock to slide inside. “Scared?”
“Nah,” Eddie says, tsking like I’m the one who’s trying to pull something. He takes the group into the root-hung, cathedral-sized chamber Arnie and I sat in, hugging our knees and looking out.
It’s cooler down here in the bottom of the pit. The air is clingy. There’s no ducking in this end of the cave, not for a while, not past many lengths of the light of the two flashlights. Eddie and his friend are the only ones who brought lights—the rest of us are dressed for the dance, not prepared for a cave hike. We are at their mercy, down here in these unhinged jaws.
At first, the lights are strong enough, slicing into the darkness at random. They catch flashes of walls and a ceiling—black, white, and broken—and a floor that shivers with brick-red ridges. On one side, the cave is a pile of loose rocks, but there’s a natural path along the right wall: It’s like a mouth with the tongue pressed down, and the sides curl over to form a ledge that will catch our calves if we aren’t careful. The cave sucks up all the chatter we came in with. I can hear breathing, an occasional comment, but our voices shrink instinctively to whispers. As we move in deeper, there are smooth reddish bands on c
ertain ledges, into which names have been carved. The rock is rough, pocked by air holes and bristling with buds and filaments of black glass.
The flashlights stay ahead of me, forcing me to keep up. I nudge my feet forward, trying to slide the soles of my flimsy sandals along the ground, knocking my toes on rocks and sudden steps. It’s getting more rocky and harder to maneuver. We are going around a bend.
As quickly as that, I lose track of you.
“Can we have a flashlight back here, please?” I don’t like how high my voice sounds, how strained in the thickness of the dark.
“Watch your head!”
The ceiling is still high where I am. He must be warning of more ledges ahead. But it’s Eddie’s voice, and when I hear it, I know which light is his. It’s hard to judge distance with the lights always moving, but he’s closer than I thought. I keep my eyes trained on his light, moving as quickly as I can manage with my hands straight out in front of me. I’ve made up some of the gap between us when his light blinks off. The flash of it, there and then gone, imprints itself green on my retina. Then I see him. He’s holding the light beneath his chin. Laughing. Pleased with himself.
The light goes out again. With all the switching on and off, my vision, or lack of it, is a patchwork of yellow-edged shadows. “Hey, quit it!” I try to keep my voice light, joking. I can hear the others laughing, too—no one seems concerned. I have to feel my way forward with my hands out in front of me, but Eddie’s still enjoying his joke and is not moving away.
“Give me the flashlight!”
“Get your own!” He was not expecting me to grab him, but he’s still much stronger, and my fingers slip away before I can get a firm hold.
“We need one in the back.” I have lost his arm and the dark rushes in between us.
“Turn them both off,” Eddie orders. His voice comes from off to my left when I was sure he was on the right of me. Sound and light pinballing in a space I can’t make sense of, except that every time I think I have my bearings, I get turned around.
We are still walking. The two lights go on and off at whim, lighting the way only for those near them.
“Careful!” Hana, hear me. “Hold your hands out in front of your head.”
I feel like a fool. It’ll only egg them on if they think I’m frightened. But I know you must be terrified, and I need to know where you are. “Everybody look for the lichen. It glows in the dark.”
“Ooh…lichen!” Eddie mocks. “Don’t get eaten by the lichen!” He sounds much farther away.
I try again, sounding as casual as I can. “Everyone all right?” I am willing you to reply, but Eddie’s cackle explodes against the cave walls, drowning out any other sound. Is it my imagination, or is he zigging and zagging to throw us off? In the dark, it would take more skill than I would have credited him with, but he’s proving impossible to follow. He is climbing, or is he holding his occasional flashlight above his head? “Last one to the clubhouse is a rotten egg.”
There is no clubhouse, Hana. No one hangs out here. Surely you have figured that out by now.
I make one last attempt to close the distance between me and Eddie, but manage only to smash my toe. I can feel the end of it slice open and begin to burn. Eddie wasn’t faking. I have hit a steep pile of rocks. I know the cave continues, because the lights keep blinking on and off ahead of me, and also above me, so there must not be a way around. I keep going: climbing over the pile on all fours, testing each rock. It’s so slow; I don’t know how I’m going to reach them. It’s ridiculous that I’m still trying to go deeper but I am. It’s better than being in the dark alone.
That’s when my hand grabs an ankle. I pull on it before I realize what it is, and pull her body down into me.
Hers is a soft body, balled up in front of me. My fingers slide through her hair. My other hand, as I reach out to keep myself from pitching forward, lands on her back.
“Hana?”
“Kei? Oh, Kei. Thank God!”
The voice is trembling, both of us whispering. It takes me a minute to place it.
“Charlene? Are you okay?”
“No. I mean…no.” Charlene’s voice is low, yet I’ve never heard her so close to wailing. “What the heck are we doing here?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. It sure wasn’t my idea. I hit my knee so hard!”
“You don’t have a flashlight?” I don’t know why I asked. “C’mon. We have to keep up, then. We can’t lose the lights.”
My sister is in the cave, Charlene. That’s what I don’t say. She’s not safe with them. “They’re leaving us.”
“I can’t. I’m so…I’m scared, Kei. I feel like I’m burning up. Feel my head.”
I put my hand out and fumble for her forehead. She is hot, and sweating.
“I have to get out of here. Please.”
We’re both whispering. I have lost my bearings. I can hear the clatter of rocks ricocheting as the rest of the group continues somewhere ahead, but much farther now, and I’m having a hard time identifying the true direction of the sound.
“They have to come back this way,” I say at last. “Let’s just wait. We’ll hear them coming. They’ll stumble right over us.”
“Please, Kei. Get me out of here.” Charlene is crying now in earnest, though she is still trying to choke back her tears so no one hears. There is no response from our so-called friends, if they can even hear her. “I can’t bear it. I have to get out.”
“Okay, then.”
There is nothing else to do. The lights have disappeared altogether, but I know from the slide of the rocks which way is out. We sit, facing the direction we think we need to go in, and crawl like crabs. Feet first, then butt, then hands. The rocks tip and roll under us, smashing my fingers. Every step seems so tiny compared to the distance we have to travel. Charlene is still whimpering and I have to stop occasionally to hold her hand so she knows I haven’t left her. We are so close we can hear each other breathing, and yet it is still so easy to panic. Even her tight squeeze on my throbbing fingers feels much better than being alone.
At last I feel the ledge, and the path that leads out to the entrance. Here, we can get to our feet, and we can almost see. Even though the night is dark, it’s a different kind of darkness.
“There it is!”
The moon is higher in the sky. When we step out into the open, Charlene throws her arms around me and squeezes her full body against mine. She is so short, her cheek rests on my clavicle. I hold her for longer than I’ve ever hugged another person, feeling the adrenaline pass through both of us, leaving us shaking and drained.
At last, we break apart and Charlene sinks down on a boulder. Her right knee is mottled black and red with blood, the edges what Arnie would call “quite a strawberry” puffy. Even though we’re both banged up, this is the worst of our wounds. Still, she circles it with her thumbs and index fingers, pressing into her knee as if to corral the pain.
“Thank you, Kei. I was so hot, I couldn’t even think.”
Her body is cooler. Clammy, but no longer fevered. “I don’t know what happened. Suddenly, I was so dizzy and I just couldn’t move.”
“You’re safe now,” I assure her. “You’re okay.”
But I am not, though I can’t say that out loud. Hana is still in the cave. I came here to save my sister, and I saved someone else instead.
Call her. Bring her back.
That’s what Mama said. But Hana never listens.
Call Koko. Keep calling her until she answers. Look up her address, then. Get her back here.
A long time later, five of them emerge. Eddie’s bodyguard friend, whose name I refuse to remember, comes out first, then Lorna and Eddie himself. They are laughing and shoving each other and swinging their dark flashlights. Next come Missy and Russell.
Russell seems confused by the fact that it’s Missy who’s hanging on to his hand. He stops and tugs away, looking around her and then right at her, as if she might turn int
o you. Missy is making Ooh, you’re so brave cooings to distract him, but no one else seems to notice that there is no sign of my sister.
“Where is Hana?” I ask Eddie first, since I’m sure that whatever he did, it was his plan. He swings his head around with extra extravagance, then shrugs.
“Where. Is. Hana?” Three words. Unmistakable. I give up on Eddie and deliver them directly to my best friend, the girl I have given everything to for the last four years of my life. Standing in plain sight, without Russell’s hand to protect her, she’s having a hard time finding something safe to look at. “Missy?”
She doesn’t answer.
“What is she, your babysitter?” Eddie steps into the fragile space between me and his sister. “Who’s the baby now?”
“I thought…” Russell is looking around, still trying to put together what he’s seeing. “When we did that switching thing in the circle…” It’s clear what he thought. How stupid he is, how easily duped.
“What thing? What did you switch? What did you do to her?” Now I’m just broadcasting, hoping someone might be shamed into an answer. “Where is my sister?”
Missy has spotted Charlene and rushes over, as if a scraped knee is the worst thing in the world. “We should probably get her to a doctor,” she says, keeping her eyes on a tight line from the knee to Eddie.
Look at me, Missy, I think. Tell me what you did. I remember the first time I saw Missy’s onyx eyes staring right at me. I remember thinking how otherworldly she was then, possessing secrets no one else was special enough to know.
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