Everything I Thought I Knew

by Shannon Takaoka

  Later, when my parents have gone to find more coffee and something other than hospital food to eat, I dig my phone out of the bag of clothes that one of the nurses left on the nightstand. I dial Kai’s number. It rings. And rings. I wait for the voice mail to pick up, but it just keeps ringing.

  I switch to text: Kai?

  I text again. Kai, where are you?

  And again and again and again. I’m in the hospital. What happened? Where did you go? WHERE ARE YOU?

  My blue text bubbles wait, unanswered. My eyes start to burn, stinging with tears.

  What is going on? Why is he not responding? He couldn’t have just disappeared. People don’t do that. Kai wouldn’t do that.

  I go over and over the previous day and night in my head. We surfed. We talked. We lay side by side on the beach under a kaleidoscope of stars. My skin still smells of saltwater. Sand sticks to my scalp. I remember his hands in my hair. His lips on mine. I remember everything.

  My parents return with coffee and sandwiches they picked up from a deli somewhere nearby. Kristen the nurse comes back in to check my vitals. Hours go by as I lie trapped, tended to, watched. Inside, I’m going crazy, but outside, I try to stay calm. I consider telling my mom then change my mind. I wonder whether, when I have a free minute, I should call the police. Maybe something happened to him too. After the ambulance came. Because otherwise, wouldn’t he have waited? To be sure that I was okay?

  I compose long, tortured, somewhat unhinged texts that I delete. I compose saner, more rational ones that I send. I lie awake that night listening, waiting for my phone to chime, to buzz, to do anything in response. But there’s only silence.

  The next morning, I am discharged from the hospital. My parents hover over me like eagles protecting their nest. One day goes by. Then another. And another. I keep texting. Calling. Checking messages. Staring at my phone. And then, on Tuesday night, it rings.

  I’m in my room and dive across the bed to grab it, knocking over the lamp. Please let it be Kai. Please let it be Kai. Please let it be Kai.

  But it isn’t Kai. Or Jane. It’s Emma.

  I take a breath.

  “Hi, Emma.”

  “Hi. Your mom left me a message about what happened. I just wanted to check in and make sure you’re okay. Like not just physically okay, but okay okay.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I feel fine.”

  “Good.”

  We are both quiet for a minute, unsure of what else to say.

  “I mean, no, I’m not fine.”

  “Tell me,” she says.

  And so I tell her everything. Everything that happened. Well, the abridged version, at least. I leave out a few things. Nearly crashing the motorcycle in the Broadway Tunnel. Getting drunk, and high, with Jane.

  “So let me get this straight. You were with this guy, Kai, you almost had a heart attack while you were making out with him, and now he’s not responding to any of your calls or texts? Are you sure he’s not just being a regular, run-of-the-mill asshole?”

  I force myself to seriously consider this possibility. Kai, who never once missed one of our meetings, who waited to be sure I was okay that day I recklessly went back out into the churning surf, who kept his head no matter what the Pacific Ocean threw our way — would that Kai have fled when I was in serious, possibly life-threatening, trouble?

  “He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would do that,” I say. In fact, he seemed exactly the opposite of the kind of person who would do that. Which makes the whole thing more, not less, distressing. How could he just disappear?

  “Well, don’t be so quick to underestimate how thoughtless some guys can be,” says Emma. “Like, half the girls in my dorm have hooked up with someone who they’ve gushed about being sooo nice and then they never hear from them again.”

  At first, I wonder if she’s enjoying being the voice of experience, which is funny because she’s only been a college student officially for a few weeks. But maybe she’s just being protective and doesn’t want me to get hurt.

  “How are things at Brown?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “Good,” she says. “I decided to switch back to English.”

  “Oh, Emma,” I say. “I’m so happy to hear that.”

  She fills me in on her new life as a college freshman. Her classes are challenging, a bit intimidating even, but she likes the vibe there. The hot guy she met at a party last weekend happened to be sitting behind her in Introduction to Creative Nonfiction and now they’re texting. Her roommate is from New York, and she is going home with her to visit the city next weekend. The Vampire Princess has been adopted by her entire dorm floor; on weekends she is moved from room to room as part of an elaborate party game known as “Pass the Princess.”

  “Nice,” I say. “I’m glad she’s being put to good use.” And I’m glad that Emma seems to be loosening her ponytail a bit. But her college stories seem as relevant to me right now as the ones my grandma tells about the ladies in her retirement complex. Or maybe I just don’t want to hear them because she has all these new friends and I have no one, since Jane doesn’t want to talk to me and Kai is MIA.

  Kai.

  I know what I have to do as soon as my parents relax enough to let me out of their sight. It’s the only thing I can do. Go to the beach. Surely someone there knows him. Might know what happened to him. But what if nothing happened to him? What if I find him there, coming in from the surf? That would be so devastating. Enough to break my heart.

  No. It won’t. I’ve already survived a real broken heart. I can take it. And knowing is better than not knowing, no matter what.

  I pretend I hear my mom summoning me for dinner. “I have to go,” I say. I’m too distracted to be much of a conversationalist at the moment, and I don’t want to make Emma feel bad.

  “Your surfer guy still might call,” Emma reassures me. “Maybe he just lost his phone.”

  “Maybe.” And as I say this, a little spark of hope flares up. He could have lost his phone. “Thanks for calling, Em. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I hold the phone for a while after Emma hangs up. Maybe he lost his phone. Okay. But that still doesn’t explain why he didn’t wait for the ambulance or show up at the hospital or try to reach me some other way to make sure I was all right.

  I reread the text conversation that I had with Kai when we listened to music as the moon lit up my backyard. Five days ago. Is there a clue here that I’m missing? Something, anything, that might help me understand what’s going on? “Come surfing tomorrow,” he’d said.

  There has got to be an explanation.

  I dial his number again. It rings three times and then a loud tone blares in my ear, followed by a message: We’re sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.

  No longer in service.

  What. The. Fuck.

  Luckily, my parents have jobs. And in a few days, their work commitments present the opportunity that I’ve been waiting for. Real school is now back in session, so my dad is occupied until at least four, and Mom has a meeting in San Jose, which means she’ll be gone most of the day. I wait until I see her car disappear at the end of our block, then grab my keys and jacket.

  Around noon, I arrive at the beach. As soon as my feet touch the sand, I scan the horizon for Kai’s familiar profile sweeping gracefully across the arc of a wave. There’s no sign of him in the water. So I sit and wait. It’s sunny but windy, so I pull on my jacket. Part of me hopes that he emerges from the dunes any minute now, board under his arm. Part of me hopes he doesn’t. The first option means he’s a huge jerk. But at least I’ll have an explanation. The second option is worse. Because then I’ll have to keep wondering what happened.

  As the sun moves across the sky, I watch surfers come and go, in singles and groups of two or three. They wax their boards, fasten the collars of their suits, paddle ou
t through the waves. Kai does not appear. I ask around. Has anyone seen him? Does anyone even know him? But I am met with only shrugs in return. One guy thinks he may remember someone like Kai, who offered private lessons, but says he hasn’t seen him recently. “I’ve been in Costa Rica for the last couple months,” he explains. “Maybe he has a website. Or, like, an Instagram?”

  Maybe he does, but I have no way of knowing — a fact that is making me shake my head in frustration and disbelief. Because after all these weeks, all the hours we’ve spent out in the ocean together, the night in my car, here’s the thing that is killing me: I don’t know his last name. How is that possible? I recall the scrap of paper I found pinned to the bulletin board in the surf shop:

  WANT TO LEARN TO SURF? I SPECIALIZE IN BEGINNERS. CALL KAI.

  But in the beginning, I hadn’t even thought to ask. And he was so quiet at first. Maybe because he was sad about his mom, maybe because he was just feeling shy. Until these last weeks of summer, when it felt like our orbits had aligned. When I sensed him moving closer and closer. Something was pulling us together. Something powerful. I’m sure of it.

  But I’m not sure what to do next.

  And then I think: the shop. The place where he posted his name and number. Maybe someone there will know him.

  The bell on the door rings when I step inside, and immediately I am reminded of the first day I came in, after all those hours I had spent watching the surfers from the beach.

  Watching one in particular. He was drawing me in before we even met.

  My plan was to buy a board. The guy working at the shop looked as if he’d just woken up from a nap and smelled a little like weed, but he seemed to know his stuff.

  “You’ve surfed before?”

  “No,” I told him.

  “You’re going to want a longboard then,” he said. “Something that’s stable and wide.”

  He pulled out a bright-yellow one from a rack at the back of the store. It looked enormous. I didn’t even know how I would carry it.

  “That seems kind of big,” I remember saying. I had thought, mistakenly, that small people got small boards, and taller people got long ones.

  “Trust me, you’ll be happy you have this. Until you get comfortable standing, at least. We’ve got a bunch of used ones. You probably don’t want to spend much until you’re ready for a better board.”

  He had been right about not spending much. About a month later, at Kai’s suggestion, I was back for a trade-in. Shorter boards are harder to balance on but easier to turn and maneuver. By that time, I was getting frustrated about not being able to pivot smoothly.

  The same guy was working that day, and he had seemed impressed.

  “Ready for a trade-in already, huh? You must be picking it up quick.”

  “I’m working on it,” I said. Was I really picking it up quick? Sometimes, I thought Kai was just trying to be polite when he told me I was doing great.

  But that first day, the guy in the shop had seemed dubious that I knew what I was doing. After outfitting me with a wetsuit, a leash, and the board, he’d asked, “Where are you planning to take that?”

  “Across the street?” I really hadn’t thought the whole surfing plan all the way through yet. Impulsive decisions had become another one of my “after-transplant” traits.

  He had laughed at me.

  “I would highly recommend surf school if you’ve never done it before. Or private lessons.”

  “Okay, where do I do that?”

  “Surf schools are two beaches down. That’s where you can catch some baby waves. For private lessons, check the board.”

  Did he say baby waves? I was looking for something more exciting than that.

  I’d decided to try my luck with the bulletin board. A bunch of flyers advertising lessons were pinned there, some professionally done and printed on glossy paper, others just handwritten notes. I zeroed in on Kai’s right away. Somehow, I had a feeling that he was the best choice, even if his no-frills advertisement, which included a fringe of numbers that you could rip off at the bottom, looked like it had been there for a while. He must be familiar with this spot, I’d thought as I put his number in my back pocket.

  Now, I almost feel like I conjured him out of thin air.

  The guy who sold me my first surfboard is perhaps the only person who works in this shop because he’s kicked back on a chair behind the counter again today, reading a magazine.

  “Oh, hey,” he says, standing up as I approach. “Don’t tell me you’re ready to trade in your board again?”

  He still smells like weed.

  “No, not today,” I say. “I’m looking for someone who gives lessons. I found his number on your bulletin board? His name is Kai.”

  “Kai? The guy who looks like he’s maybe Asian? Black hair?”

  My heart starts to drum faster.

  Finally. I feel like I’m about to start crying from relief. He’s not a figment of my imagination, at least.

  “Yes. That’s him. You know him?”

  “A little. He used to come in here and I’m pretty sure I’ve run into him out in the lineup a few times. Awesome surfer, if he is the guy I’m thinking of. But I don’t think he gives lessons anymore because I haven’t seen the dude in a while.”

  He’s wrong about Kai no longer giving lessons, but that’s not what I’m looking for. Not anymore.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get in touch with him, or his last name? Or maybe where he lives?” I ask. Nearby. Kai had told me he lived nearby.

  He makes a face like he’s thinking hard and then says, “Nah. He might have mentioned it, but I don’t remember. I didn’t know him, know him. He just used to come in here occasionally. But, like I said, I haven’t seen him in months. Sorry if he blew you off. Dudes can be dicks.”

  The backs of my eyes hurt. Sorry if he blew you off. Is that what happened? If Kai’s a dick then what does that make me, the girl trying to find him?

  Pathetic.

  “Okay, thanks,” I say as I turn to go. But just as I push open the door, the guy calls me back.

  “Oh, hey, wait up!”

  I turn around. He looks like how I feel when my brain finally connects with the answer to a math problem I’ve been struggling over.

  “Harris. I think his last name was Harris. He used to buy stuff here and I’m pretty sure that was the name on his credit card.”

  Harris.

  I stare at him for a second, trying to make sure that he’s actually talking to me. Maybe he is in on some joke I’m not aware of. Maybe I’m hallucinating. Maybe I’m unconsciously conflating this conversation about Kai with other conversations I’ve had about other people in the last few months — conversations that are careening around and getting mixed up in my mind. Maybe I didn’t hear him right.

  “I’m sorry, what was his name?” I need him to say it again.

  “Harris. At least I think so.”

  I feel dizzy again, like the day at the beach when that strange iciness had trickled through my chest.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “You look like you saw a ghost or something.”

  I shake my head.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Sorry. Thank you.”

  It’s a coincidence, I tell myself as I walk back to the beach parking lot. Harris is such a common name. I know this because I already searched for it when I was trying to find information about Sarah. There were thousands of people named Harris. It has to be a coincidence.

  The ocean wind sweeps across the lot as I approach my car, stirring up tiny swirls of stray sand. And soon enough, my senses, momentarily overtaken by the brine in the air and the roar of the surf, transport me back to the night of the full moon. The two of us looking up at the sky with our fingers entwined. Him handing me his jacket because I was cold.

  Kai Harris.

  Sarah Harris.

  He told me his mom died.

  He told me that’s why he got the tattoo on his arm, with the heart.<
br />
  What if it’s not a coincidence? What if . . .

  What else did he tell me?

  I think back to every conversation we had.

  He told me she used to surf.

  He told me he had a dog.

  So many details from the memories that have been haunting me about my heart donor and memories about my time with Kai are overlapping and merging into this messed-up whirlpool in my brain, and I can’t tease them apart. Until one detail in particular jumps out. The woman I see in my memories . . . the one who I’ve assumed must be Sarah Harris. Even though her hair is light and his is dark, her skin is fair and his is not, even though at first glance you might not notice: when they smile, they look alike.

  But it still doesn’t make sense.

  Because I also told him.

  I told him about my heart.

  And he didn’t react the way someone who knew his parent was a heart donor would react when learning that the person he was with had received one, did he? If Kai’s mom is Sarah Harris, and Sarah Harris is my heart donor, wouldn’t he have had some response when I told him about my transplant? Wouldn’t he, in fact, have been really, really freaked out? Even if he didn’t believe that she was my donor, just the fact of meeting someone who had received a heart around the same time that his mom ended up being a donor would have had to have been strange for him, right? Of course it would.

  I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with ocean air. It’s just a coincidence. It has to be. There’s no way he wouldn’t have said something or had some reaction to learning about my heart transplant that night.

  Unless. The thought hits me like a punch. The night of the full moon. Maybe, when we talked about it that night, he didn’t know about his mom being a heart donor. Maybe some other family member had signed off on it when she died. Maybe he hadn’t been told.

  But he knows now.

  Kai had to have been the one who called 9-1-1. And then, I think, he would have needed someone to pick him up at the beach lot. It was too dark to take his bike. Did he call his dad? Would he have explained what had just happened? Would he have told him about my heart?