by Sarah Beard
“Okay, Kai Lennon.” I grab a black apron from a hook on the wall and hand it to him over the display case. “You’ll want to put this on.”
He follows me into the kitchen, and we find Sophie dipping pieces of dried mango into a vat of tempered chocolate, earbuds in ears and yelling, “Ich liebe dich!” There is zero embarrassment in her face when she sees us, and after laying the drowned mango on a sheet of wax paper, she eyes Kai up and down critically. “Who’s he?” she yells as if we have on headphones too.
“This is Kai,” I yell back. “Can I use those mangos for a big order?”
She yanks the earbuds from her ears and unties her apron. “Sure, take ’em. I’m leaving.”
“You can’t. You have to help me.”
“I’ll help you tomorrow.”
“The order has to be ready by morning.”
She gives me a withering look. “What happened to our forty-eight hour notice policy?”
“The woman begged.”
She lets out a loud sigh. “It’s not my fault you’re softer than ganache. You took the order, so do it yourself.”
“It’s sixty dozen pieces! That’ll take me all night!”
Kai nudges me. “I’m helping, remember?”
Sophie divides a weird look between Kai and me. “Who’s this again? And where did he come from?”
“Michigan,” Kai says, though we all know that’s not the answer she’s looking for.
“Whatever,” Sophie says, taking off her apron. “I have plans tonight, so if Michigan Boy is helping, I’m out. Auf Wiedersehen.”
She tosses her apron on the granite countertop and escapes out the back entrance before I can object. I stare after her a moment, then turn to Kai. “Sisters,” I mutter.
Kai smiles, but it’s half-hearted and short-lived, and leaves a strange nostalgic shadow.
“Do you have sisters?” I ask, hunting for an explanation for the longing in his face.
He looks away at the sheet of chocolate-covered mangos Sophie just finished up. “So—are you going to show me how it’s done?”
“Are you just going to dodge my question?”
He drops the apron over his head, ties it around his lean waist, and then looks at me. “When questions are like daggers, I dodge.”
I regard him for a long moment, wondering what he’s been through, and why a simple question about family feels like a dagger to him. But no matter how robust my curiosity gets, I won’t push him to tell me. Because I understand what it’s like to have secrets buried so deep that extracting them would shred everything on the way out. I nod. “Okay, then. Let’s wash our hands and get to work.”
I show him how to dip each type of fruit, how to enrobe the grapes and raspberries, how to avoid the chocolate “foot,” and how to drizzle colored cocoa butter for the finishing touch. We stand side by side in front of the chocolate tempering machine and work through one type of fruit at a time. Dried kiwis and oranges, pineapple and coconut, fresh strawberries and grapes, apples and pears. No apricots. The air is rich with nectar and chocolate, and every time Kai’s arm brushes mine, my intake of the decadent air surges.
He’s quiet as we work, and I find myself talking about chocolate, imparting all my confectioner’s knowledge as though he’s an eager apprentice. He humors me, nodding in all the appropriate places and asking questions when he senses a lull in my rambling.
“So what happens if the beta-prime crystals aren’t melted?” he asks after I explain the science of chocolate tempering.
“Then you get chocolate bloom.”
“And bloom is bad.”
“Yes—unless you like white blotchy film on your chocolate.”
We fill up sheet after sheet of chocolate-covered fruit, stacking them in bakery racks. When we finish the last batch, our aprons and hands are splattered with chocolate, and we move to the sink to wash up before packaging the chocolates.
As Kai runs his hands under the tap, I notice a big glob of chocolate on his ring. “Here,” I say, reaching for it. “Take that off. I have something that gets the oil off better than soap.”
But before I can touch it, he jerks away. “It’s okay. Soap will work fine.” He lathers up his hands and rinses them under the running water.
I’ve never seen anything like his matching ring and wristband, and I want a closer look. So when he turns off the water and dries his hands, I ask, “Can I see that?”
When he sees me eyeing his wristband, his expression turns wary.
“I’m not going to steal it,” I assure him, though that can’t possibly be what he’s worried about.
He seems to be weighing something, and finally, he steps toward me and holds out his wrist. I curl my fingers around his forearm. His skin is warm and smooth, and touching him makes something bloom just behind my sternum. I gently tug him closer so I can get a better look at the wristband.
It’s beautiful. The metal has an unusual satin sheen, and the stone inlay is so brilliant, it’s almost luminous.
“What is this stone? Opal?”
“Um … I don’t know.”
“Where did you get it? And the ring?”
I feel the muscles in his arm tense, like he’s been caught in the act of a crime and is preparing to flee. I look into his eyes expecting to see guilt, but the face I see isn’t that of a thief. It’s of someone who’s had something precious stolen from him.
“I got them from a friend,” he says simply, his voice low.
“Sounds like there’s a story behind them.” Maybe he shared the wristband or ring with a girlfriend, like those “best friend” hearts that are split in two. And maybe they broke up, and he wears them both now because he can’t let go.
He smiles slightly. “Everything has a story.”
“So let’s hear it.”
He glances at the clock. “It’s a quarter past eleven. If you want to make it to that party, we should focus on getting all this fruit boxed up.”
I release his wrist. “Did you take a course in the art of evasion, or are you a natural?”
“I’m not evading. I just don’t want to waste your time with a boring story when you have a party to go to.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go to the party.” I turn away and grab an empty gift box, mentally adding his wristband and ring to my growing Mysteries of Kai Lennon list.
He steps beside me and grabs a box too, and we start clothing the fruit in foil candy cups and filling the boxes with a dozen pieces each. After filling a few in silence, Kai pauses and turns to me with an earnest expression. “Were you happy with him? With Tyler?”
So it is about a girl, and now he wants to swap breakup stories. “Yeah. I guess I was.”
“You guess?” He raises a dark eyebrow at me, then goes back to boxing fruit. “Romeo and Juliet, eat your heart out.”
I knock him with my elbow. “Well, first of all, define happy.”
“That kind of sounds like a blind person asking someone to define yellow.” He slides a lid on. “Happiness is subjective. I can only define it for myself.”
“So what’s happiness to you?”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “Who’s doing the evading now?”
I sigh. “Fine. I was happier with him.”
“Happier? Happier than what? A rock? A sunflower? Ronald McDonald?”
I laugh, and then search deeper for a more complete answer. “Happier with him than without him.” I move an empty tray to the sink and grab a new one that’s filled with chocolate-covered grapes from the baker’s rack. I set it on the counter next to all the other trays we have laid out. “He was the only one with the guts to join me on my most extreme adventures. He made me feel … less lonely. And when I was with him, the things that weighed me down seemed easier to carry.”
“Like what?”
I shrug. “My parents’ marriage falling apart, my mom’s ups and downs, my sister’s anger, which was caused by my mom but directed at me because I was an easier target … you know�
��those kinds of things.”
He nods slowly, like he does know.
“Anyway, he and I would go surfing or free-diving, and hang out on the beach all day. If I wanted to talk, he’d listen. If I didn’t, he was cool with that. He was always sweet and adorable and …” I look up at Kai, and he’s watching me like he’s hanging on my every word. “I was happy with him. Does that answer your question?”
Something flickers in the depths of his eyes, the way a candle quivers in a gust of wind right before it’s extinguished. “So, if you were happy with him, what’s keeping you apart?”
When I don’t respond, he slowly gets back to work. Then he says softly, “You can tell me, Avery.”
The way he says my name is caressing and warm, the way you say something that means a lot to you. The way Dad says Guittard, or the way Sophie says German boys, or the way Tyler says Billabong. It makes me feel exposed, vulnerable. Because it makes me want to open up to him. But with that vulnerability comes a weight. The heaviness of everything I’m carrying inside that’s aching to be freed. It’s too much to bear when I’m as tired as I am, so I turn around and slide down the cabinet until I’m sitting on the floor. “My feet are tired.”
Kai sits beside me, resting his forearms on his knees and turning to look at me. “So what exactly happened with you two?”
My mind retraces the past few months, all the conversations Tyler and I have had, the words we’ve said and haven’t said, all stemming from one incident, one day. And then I’m thrown back to that afternoon, back into the ocean and the cold, roiling waves. I feel them around me, tossing me this way and that, pounding over my head like a stampede of wild horses. I feel the salt stinging my eyes and see the abyss below me in the moment I dove under to find the boy. I saw him there, motionless and suspended in the deep, just out of reach.
Just out of reach.
My face feels hot, and I can’t breathe. But I keep my panic cloaked beneath my skin. A violent earthquake rattles my insides, but I tense my muscles, holding it in, restraining it, refusing to let it show. I dig my nails into my arm, anchoring them there, anchoring me into stillness, and I focus all my attention on the present physical pain in my arm.
Kai’s hand reaches for mine. His touch stills my insides, draws out the tremors as though they’re water and he’s a sponge.
“Why do you do that?” he asks gently as he removes my hand from where my fingernails have left crescent indents in my skin.
My lungs expand, filling with air. “You say that like I do it all the time.” I force a smile, trying to make light of it.
He rubs a thumb over the indents on my arm and then looks at me, his brow creased with worry. “You did it at dinner last night too.”
I shrug. “I guess it’s a bad habit I picked up a few months back.”
“But why?”
With a weary sigh and a small voice, I say, “I guess it distracts me from the things I don’t want to feel.”
Kai looks heartsick, and he turns his face away, as though it hurts too much to look at me.
“I used to do other things to distract me,” I say. “I’d go out and do something crazy, like rock climbing without a harness, or free-diving alone at night, or surfing big waves. It made it easy to shut out the things I didn’t want to think about because I had to focus on surviving. But … I can’t bring myself to do those things anymore.”
“Maybe your newfound caution isn’t such a bad thing,” he says without looking at me. “Though, you seem to have gone to the opposite end of the spectrum.” He pauses. “Why the change?”
Maybe I should just let it out. Say the words, release the pressure that swells and rattles my insides anytime my memories are stirred. If I let them out, maybe I can be free of them, of the torment they cause.
“Last winter,” I say quietly, “something happened.” I want to tell him everything, to heave these memories out of me. But they won’t come, because I can’t seem to translate them into words. So I settle for the vague. “Something that was very traumatic, and it threw me into a sort of depression. And then … it was like all the fears and hurt I’d repressed for years came crushing down on me. I didn’t have the strength to push back anymore. It paralyzed me to the point that I didn’t even want to leave my house. And I guess Tyler got tired of dealing with me. He says he still loves me and wants to be with me, just not when I’m like this. He wants me to be the girl I was, but every time I try, I fail.” I release a shaky breath. “It’s hopeless.”
The air conditioner turns on overhead, blowing cool air down on us. It feels good on my skin and carries an airy fusion of fruit and chocolate.
He finally turns to look at me, his eyes holding the same tenderness I glimpsed earlier. But this time, it stays. “Nothing is hopeless.” He holds my gaze, cradles it, lulls it into a serene place I never want to leave. “I can help you get him back.”
Looking into Kai’s eyes, I’m not sure I even want Tyler back. But then Kai blinks and refocuses on the cabinet doors in front of us, and I remember that he sees me only as a friend. “How?” I ask.
Kai slides his feet out, straightening his legs, and picks at a fleck of chocolate on his apron. “Let me hang around. He’ll get a taste of what it would be like to really lose you.”
I have to admit that Tyler has been acting differently since Kai showed up, but I’m not sure I like what Kai is suggesting. “I don’t know. I don’t like playing games.”
He meets my eyes again. “This isn’t a game. It’s serious business. And your happiness depends on it.”
Kai is right. It’s what I’ve wanted ever since Tyler broke up with me, for him to realize that I’m much more to him than a partner in adventure. “You’d do that for me?”
He gives me a look that says, Of course, dummy. “Let’s wrap things up here and go to that party. I’ll make sure that tonight, he feels the loss of you.”
t’s closing in on midnight as we drive along a winding road toward Dillan’s house, the headlights of Avery’s car illuminating the endless tunnel of trees ahead of us. She’s at the wheel, her eyes focused on the road, so I’m free to sit in the shadow of the passenger seat and observe her. She’s brushed blue with the light of the dashboard, and her hair is a wavy curtain draped over her shoulder, hiding most of her face. The way she’s sitting—her back ramrod straight and her hands gripping eleven and one—reminds me of the way my mom used to drive in snowstorms. Tense and fearful, just waiting for the bald tires to let go of the road. But the roads tonight are dry, and I’m sure Avery’s anxiety has nothing to do with the weather.
She opened up to me tonight, not as much as I would have liked, but more than I expected. Enough to confirm my suspicion that it’s me, and my death, that’s keeping her apart from the boy she loves. I’m convinced more than ever that I can fix this. That I can restore the life she had before.
Her phone chirps. She grabs it from the console and glances at the screen. “Crap. I forgot to text my dad.” She hands me her phone. “Would you text him back? Just say I’m going to a party with Paige and I’ll be home by two.”
I do as she instructs and then return her phone to the console. “Don’t you have a curfew?”
She shrugs. “I used to, before my parents separated. But now … I don’t know. My dad has never really laid down an official curfew. He’s fine as long as he knows where Sophie and I are.”
“And your mom?”
Avery tucks her hair behind her ear, pulling back the curtain to reveal the rest of her profile. “She’s just glad to have one daughter speaking to her. She’d probably let me hitchhike across the country as long as I called her twice a week.” Her hands slide down the steering wheel to a more relaxed position, and her back curves, settling into her seat. “What about you? What do your parents think about you spending the summer across the country?”
Why does it always have to come back to me? Of course I can’t keep her in the dark about everything—if I want her to open up to me, I need t
o open up a bit to her. But how can I tell her the truth? Do I really want her to know that the last time I talked to my dad it was through a glass partition and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit? And that the last time I saw my mom she was wearing her only Sunday dress and lying in an open coffin? I’m trying to buoy Avery up, not weigh her down with all my baggage, so I simply say, “They give me a lot of space.”
My thoughts drift to my mom, and I wonder for the millionth time why I haven’t seen her on the other side. After I died, I looked for her. I called to her, but she never came. I asked about her, but no one could tell me where she was. I hope that she’s in Elysium, happy and at peace. I can’t think of the alternative, of her being in the Briar. Though with the memories I have of her, of her threadbare clothes, her callused hands, and the fear that was constantly in her eyes, it’s easier to picture her in the Briar than the pillowy heavens of Elysium. I’ve never seen Elysium, but I’ve watched spirits walk through the entrance—a shimmering, vibrant waterfall that’s probably only a hint of the beauty that lies beyond.
Avery takes a right turn into a beachside neighborhood situated on a bluff. It’s similar to her Dad’s—Spanish-style homes with manicured yards and big windows. Beyond the edge of the bluff, the black ocean stretches out, endless and foreboding.
We pull up to a unique two-story house that’s practically made of glass, and with all the lights on, it glows like a beacon on the otherwise dark and sleeping street. There’s no parking, so Avery drives down the street until we find an open spot on the curb. She parks and kills the engine, then looks in the rearview mirror and rakes a hand through her hair.
“You look great,” I assure her.
She lifts a piece of her hair to her nose, inhales, and tosses it aside. “I smell like work.”
I reach over and nab a lock of her hair. It’s soft and satiny, like morning glory petals. I put it under my nose and slowly inhale. She smells like cotton candy. I lower her hair but keep it between my fingertips. “At least you don’t work in a seafood cannery.”
“Good point.” She smiles, then takes a deep breath and yanks the keys out of the ignition. “Okay—let’s go.” She glances at my hand, which is still holding a lock of her hair. I reluctantly release it.