by Hester Young
“Uh, no thanks,” I tell her. “I’m really not here about . . . that.”
“I know,” Marvel says. “You want to talk about Lise.”
When my eyes bug at her accuracy, she laughs.
“David Kalahele said you’ve been asking about her,” she explains. “He suggested I talk to you. Said you’re a journalist, and you might be able to put some pressure on the police.”
“David said that?” I had no idea my gracious proprietor even knew what I was up to, let alone that he was urging people in town to help me.
Marvel studies me with intelligent eyes. “I’ve tried talking to the police myself. They aren’t interested in what I have to say. Maybe a journalist could get things done.”
“A journalist with an amazing ability,” Rae pipes in. “If the police follow your visions, then maybe—”
I cut her off. “I’m here as just a journalist, Rae. Poking around at what could be a story. The rest of it’s irrelevant.” I don’t know why I feel compelled to lie. Marvel’s the last person to judge me for my dreams, yet I feel exposed in front of her, embarrassed.
Marvel sits down on a stool behind the counter, leaving Rae and me to remain standing. “This story—what’s your angle?”
“I don’t know yet.” I pick at a yellow thread on my shirt. “Elijah Yoon, maybe? I know a lot of people around here think he killed Lise, but Sue Nakagawa is convinced they’re wrong.”
“Then Sue and I agree on something, for once.”
I ignore her animosity toward Sue. “I heard Lise was going to work for you. Were you two close?”
“Close?” Marvel tries to smile, but it’s obvious that Lise is not an easy topic for her. “I like to think so. She came into my shop a couple of years ago, and then—she just kept coming.”
“Did she get readings with you?”
“No,” Marvel says. “She bought a pack of tarot cards, and then she’d come by after school, wanting advice on how to use them. Eventually we got to talking, and it was clear she was just looking for a place to get space from her parents. She’d buy a little something and then hang around for an hour or two. I always liked her. We got on well.”
I remember the collection of crystals and gemstones in Lise’s bedroom and imagine, with a pang, her selecting one each time she visited Marvel. “What did you talk about?”
“Whatever was on her mind, really. School, her friends, her family—they’re a piece of work, let me tell you. I told her about the restaurant I always wanted to open for the students, and she had lots of ideas, ways to make it the kind of place that young people would like to spend time in. She convinced me to buy the place, really. Her enthusiasm rubbed off on me.”
I dip a finger into a basket of cheap gold angel pins that Marvel keeps by the register. The pins are on sale for $9.99, which seems like a real rip-off. “So Ono Place . . . you were in it together, you and Lise.”
“Yes.” Marvel turns away, busying herself with something behind the counter, but not before I see her dark eyes glistening. “We had this plan. Lise would work for me once the restaurant opened and become the manager once she finished high school. When I died, the whole thing would be hers. We talked about it for months—Elijah, too—and then I finally got the lease next door.” Marvel pauses. “I didn’t realize she hadn’t told her parents any of it. Soon as they got wind of the whole thing, I started running into trouble with permits.”
“You think her parents were responsible?”
“Of course they were.” Marvel doesn’t bother to disguise her scorn for the Nakagawas. “Victor never liked how close I was with his daughter. It drove him crazy that someone else might have some influence with her. He and Sue, they had their girls’ futures planned from the moment they were born. They didn’t want any options on the table for Lise but college.”
“You never felt like you were interfering?” I can’t help myself. I don’t excuse Sue’s sabotaging Marvel’s business, but if some strange woman started talking Micky out of higher education, I might react badly, too.
Marvel sees that I’m not on her side and grows defensive. “Look,” she says with irritation, “Lise was gearing up for a showdown with her parents long before I entered the picture. They were on her constantly about her grades, her activities, her friends. If it wasn’t the restaurant, it would’ve been something else.”
“But Victor and Sue blamed you.”
“Ugh, Victor.” Marvel shakes her head darkly. “He comes in here one day, hollering about how he’s the parent and I just better stay out of family decisions that aren’t mine to make. I told him where he could shove it. Said if he really wanted her to go to college so badly, the best thing he could do was stop fighting her so hard. A kid like Lise is always going to do the opposite of what you push for, any amateur knows that.”
“Ooh.” Rae winces. “I can imagine that didn’t go over too well.”
“Look at my empty restaurant next door, and you see how well it went over. I’ll never get that place open now. It’s a huge financial loss for me, and I can thank Sue for it.”
As topics of conversation go, the Nakagawas have proven quite the minefield. I move away from the counter, wandering the dusty shop. “It’s been six weeks. What do you think happened to Lise? I mean, you must have tried to find her. To use your . . . your powers.” I flush at the words “your powers.”
“I try to reach her every day.” Marvel touches the tip of her thick gray braid. “Sometimes she feels so close, but when I try to get a sense of place, I get nothing. Cold. Darkness. That’s it.”
I swallow. “What does that mean to you?”
She hesitates. “I’m a psychic, not a medium. I don’t speak to the dead, but . . . I think she’s gone. I think someone killed her. A man. Not Elijah, someone older.”
Half-hidden behind a rotating display of incense sticks, I freeze. “How do you know? Did you . . . see something?”
I’m not sure how Marvel’s powers are supposed to work, if she uses tarot cards, consults a crystal ball, or if her methodology is as vague as my own, but in that moment, I want to believe in her. Maybe our impressions align. Maybe she, too, has seen the guy in the woods. Maybe I’m not alone in this.
“I haven’t seen a damn thing,” Marvel says, dashing all my hopes. “God knows I’ve tried. No, I’m basing this on what Lise herself told me. Before she went missing, she gave me some . . . clues.”
Rae and I wait, transfixed, while Marvel collects herself.
“It started in August, I think,” she says. “We were getting the restaurant ready, her, Elijah, and I, still thinking we might open soon. Lise had always shared things with me, but that began to change. I could feel that she had a secret, something troubling her. An ugly thing,” she adds. “I visualized it as a black oil, something that coated the skin, left her feeling soiled. Then one day—in early September, I think—we were stocking up the freezer, just her and me. And she started asking questions. Some very disturbing questions.”
“About . . . ?”
“About rape.”
The word falls hard and heavy in the little shop.
I have a flash of the guy in the woods, watching, waiting, obsessing over this girl. When he emerged from those bushes, advanced on that girl, I thought that was the end of her. In my heart of hearts, I thought she died that night. But what if I was wrong? What if that was not the last night of Lise’s life at all, but the moment that changed everything?
“What did she ask you, Marvel?” Rae prods.
The woman’s answer surprises me. “She wanted to know about statutory rape.”
“What?”
Marvel hunches forward on the stool. “She asked if statutory rape was the same in the eyes of the law as other forms of rape. If someone convicted had to register as a sex offender, that sort of thing.” She takes a breath. “Lise was speaking in the abs
tract, but the more she asked, the more personal it began to seem. She kept talking about the age of consent.”
“Which is how old, in Hawaiʻi?” Rae says.
“Sixteen,” Marvel informs us. “And Lise had just turned sixteen the month before.”
“So she was trying to figure out if it was legal for her to have sex with an older partner,” Rae guesses.
“No,” says Marvel. “It wasn’t like that. She wanted to know if an older partner could still be punished once the underage partner reached the age of consent. If there was a statute of limitations.”
“She’d already been having this relationship, then,” I murmur.
“Apparently. It sounded consensual, but she didn’t give me any details.”
I frown. This isn’t what I expected at all. “All these questions—what did you tell her?”
Marvel shrugs. “That I’m not a legal expert. That we could look it up on the Internet together. I regret not pressing her on it now, of course, but at the time . . . she said she was all right. That she could handle things.”
There’s no need to point out Marvel’s colossally bad judgment here. She knows. She will live with it the rest of her life.
“You really don’t know who the older person was in this scenario?” Rae asks. “Not even a guess?”
“No.” Marvel rubs the space between her eyebrows as if trying to stave off a migraine. “But she obviously had someone in mind.”
My thoughts turn to Frankie. On our way to South Point today, Frankie bragged that he liked his girls “barely legal.” He knew Lise, and by his own admission, he liked her. I could imagine a rebellious teenage girl going for a guy like Frankie: older, damaged, the kind who drags around his volume of Neruda poems to read on the beach.
Could he be the guy?
Rae plants herself cross-legged in the middle of the store as if no longer able to stand. “So you think Lise was threatening this older guy with statutory rape charges, and then he killed her?”
“Yes,” Marvel says. “It didn’t sound like a healthy relationship. I don’t know if they were still involved or if this was something in the past, but . . . it’s like she was trying to figure out what kind of power she had over him. Trying to find out how bad she could break him, and whether or not she really wanted to.”
“You’re sure the person in question was a man?” I ask, and Marvel balks.
“I don’t remember her actually saying ‘he’ or ‘she,’” Marvel admits. “But I don’t think Lise was a lesbian if that’s what you’re asking.” Her voice drops at the word “lesbian,” as if such things should not be discussed at full volume.
“Just checking.”
“Look, it’s clear enough what happened, isn’t it?” She bows her head, and I can almost see the guilt that weighs upon her shoulders, a crushing stone built of should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. “At some point before she turned sixteen, Lise had a sexual relationship with someone older. Maybe she regretted it later. Maybe she felt that it had been coerced, I don’t know. But for whatever reason, she was upset with the man. She wanted to make trouble for him. And he . . . he didn’t let her.”
I run a hand through my hair, trying to process all of this. “You said you’ve tried to talk to the police?”
“Of course I did. I’ve been to them several times. They don’t want to hear anything that contradicts their theory about Elijah.” She gives a brittle laugh. “Big, bad Elijah Yoon. Have you spoken to that boy?”
“Just saw him that day in town,” I say. “But I’ve met his brothers.”
“Elijah isn’t like his brothers,” Marvel tells me. “He knows there’s a world out there he’s missing, and he wants to be a part of it. Lise’s always been his connection to that world. They’ve been friends since they were kids, long before they were a couple. He wouldn’t give up that friendship for anything. It’s all he has.”
He doesn’t have even that anymore, I think.
“Did you know Lise was planning to break up with him?” Rae asks.
“No,” Marvel says, “but I knew his family was wearing on her.” She puts her hands on her hips, frustrated we are back on the Elijah track. “So she broke up with him. So what? That doesn’t mean he hurt her. I’m telling you, you need to be looking at this other man. You say you’re a journalist? Then write something. Tell people the truth.”
“Marvel.” Seeing her passion, I now feel guilty for concocting an imaginary article. “You know I can’t substantiate any of this.”
“But I bet someone could.” Rae dusts off her butt and rises to her feet. “Lise couldn’t have kept this older guy a secret from everyone. She’s sixteen. She had friends. Who would know, Marvel? Who did she confide in?”
“Well,” Marvel says doubtfully, “I don’t know if she’ll talk to you. But if anyone knows who Lise was seeing, it’s her sister.”
* * *
• • •
BACK AT KOA HOUSE, I pace Rae’s bedroom. “How are we supposed to get ahold of Jocelyn?” I grumble. “Even if she talks to me, there’s no way Victor doesn’t hear about it. And he won’t like it. At all. You heard what he and Sue did to Marvel. I can’t afford to get on his bad side.”
“Relax.” Rae lies in bed playing a Tetris knockoff on her phone. “You’re just doing what Sue told you to do. She asked you to get involved.”
“Yeah, behind her husband’s back.”
Rae doesn’t look up from her game. “I’m sure Jocelyn and Sue are used to doing things behind Victor’s back. This is not a big deal. We’ll find a way to bump into Jocelyn when her parents aren’t around and see what happens.”
“Bump into her how?” For the umpteenth time, I wish I had my phone. “You think she broadcasts her whole life on Twitter, too?”
“No,” Rae says, already several steps ahead of me. “She doesn’t have an account. But she’s on the Free Thought swim team, isn’t she? I bet they meet every day. We’ll just snag her after one of her practices. Tell her you need to interview her for the Outdoor Adventures piece. Victor won’t object to that.”
I stop pacing. I could legitimately use a few quotes from Victor’s daughter to pad the piece, and it’s the perfect excuse to approach Jocelyn. Rae’s good at all this maneuvering.
“We could probably arrange a run-in with her tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll just have to figure out how to bring up her sister without being too obvious.”
I drop onto the bed beside Rae and watch a gecko dart up the curtains. Compared to my room, the Tree Fern Room is dark and claustrophobic. Instead of warm yellow walls, the wallpaper is a leafy green forest. Here, the low-wattage lamps seem to cast more shadows than light, and the large potted ferns at the foot of the bed remind me of the Wakea Ranch woods.
Rae lets a couple of colored blocks drift to the bottom of her screen, a little dreamy. “Do you think the Nakagawa girls have one of those special twin connections?” she asks. “Like, if Lise’s dead, would Jocelyn feel it in her bones? Would she just know?”
Once, I would’ve laughed at all that metaphysical crap; now it’s my life. I sigh.
“I don’t know, but you should’ve seen their bedroom. So much for identical DNA. It was like college roommates, two strangers smooshed in a single room.”
“Identical DNA can express itself differently.” Rae returns to her phone, trying to clear the mounting Tetris blocks. “You’ve got factors like environment, diet, physical activity, drug and alcohol use . . . all those would lead to variations over time. And family dynamics. Maybe Victor and Sue needed them each to play a certain role.”
“They sure did look alike.” I shiver. “All those pictures on the wall at the Nakagawas’ place . . . I didn’t even realize that they were two different people.”
Rae scrunches up her nose. “Yeah, that was weird how the girls never posed in photos together. Always individuals,
never a team.”
“Maybe Sue was trying to help them differentiate.”
“Or maybe she was trying to inspire competition.”
Having met Sue, I could believe that. Those girls have borne some high expectations all these years, especially Jocelyn.
“When Jocelyn first walked in the other night . . . I really thought it was Lise.” I shake my head. “For a few seconds, I thought she’d come home.”
“Hey, maybe she never left.” The words GAME OVER flash on Rae’s screen. She sets her phone down with a pout. “Like I said before, Jocelyn could be the missing one. Maybe Lise stole her identity. She got tired of living in the shadows and . . .” She raises her arm and makes a stabbing gesture. “That would be a hell of a Lifetime movie, right? ‘Twin Swap: The true story of a girl who stole her sister’s boyfriend . . . and her life.’”
“It’s not funny, Rae.” Though I know her callousness is a defense mechanism, a way to protect herself from feeling Sue’s pain, it still pisses me off. “These are real people, not characters on a soap opera. Twin swaps are not an actual thing.”
“You don’t have an identical twin. How would you know?”
“People would notice!”
“Would they?”
“Of course they would!” I can’t believe I’m dignifying her theory with a response. “Lise’s a lousy student. You don’t magically acquire good study habits overnight. And Jocelyn’s on the swim team. She’s in peak physical condition. If there was a sudden change in her academic or athletic performance, people would notice.”
“Well, maybe they have.” Rae rolls onto her stomach. “Have you checked her report card?”
“Yes, actually. Sue said Jocelyn got a D on a math test right after Lise went missing, and she’s been fine ever since. Academically, she hasn’t been affected at all.”
“Not at all?” Rae frowns. “Well, that’s cold-blooded. You’d think she’d struggle a little. Maybe Frankie and Brayden are right about her.”