The Best Week That Never Happened

by Dallas Woodburn

  “You made it,” Kai said when I got close enough to see his face. He was wearing a collared button-down shirt and board shorts. There was a knot in my stomach, but then he smiled, and the knot relaxed. His smile was the same smile of the friend I had known before.

  “I was surprised how much I remembered from when we came here as kids,” I said. “Plus, your directions were good. Very thorough.”

  He laughed, and I laughed—it was good to laugh, even though what I’d said wasn’t particularly funny. The laughter helped ease the weird tension buzzing between us.

  “Come on in,” Kai said, gesturing for me to go ahead. I cautiously stepped forward, ducking my head under the low opening. I had forgotten how dark it gets inside the lava tubes. The hardened rock was black and smooth, with a richness that was different from the ordinary gray rocks back home. This rock was … magical. It had seemed that way when I was a kid, and it still seemed that way now. This rock had poured forth from the deepest recesses of the earth. Touching it was like touching the distant past and the distant future at the same time.

  Soon the cave roof sloped up enough to stand. I gazed above us at the hole I remembered in the cave ceiling—through it, I could glimpse a star-filled sky and the bright moon.

  “Gorgeous night, huh?” Kai said from behind me.

  “Yeah,” I murmured, turning to face him. A camping lantern and two beach towels were spread out on the ground. “What’s this fancy setup?” I asked, teasing, trying to sound more casual than I felt.

  “Oh, just a little something I had my butler drag out here,” Kai said, matching my tone. He bent down and switched on the lantern. A bright glow warmed the cave. Instantly, the surroundings seemed homier. I settled down onto the green-and-blue striped beach towel.

  “So,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah. Like, what have you been up to the past seven years?”

  Kai grinned. “Not much to tell. Surfing, school, working on my parents’ boat.”

  “Oh yeah—a fishing boat, right?”

  Kai eased himself down onto the other beach towel. “No, it’s a tourist boat. Dolphin excursions, manta ray snorkels.”

  “I did a manta ray snorkel, the last time I was here.”

  “I know. That’s how we met.”

  “What?” I laughed, thinking he was making a joke, but Kai looked serious. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “We met because you knocked over my sandcastle.” The moment was still so clear in my memory. Kai had washed up onto the shore in a giant rogue wave that completely destroyed my painstakingly constructed castle. He had seemed like a creature of the wild ocean—a mer-child, seaweed tangled around his legs and salt water soaking his hair. I had been angry at first; it was not the most opportune moment to begin a friendship. Soon, though, Kai won me over with his quick smile, his easygoing nature, and a pink seashell he’d found buried along the shoreline. By the end of that day, we were two peas in a pod, two hermit crabs sharing the same shell.

  “No, we met before the sandcastle, when you and your parents came onto our boat,” Kai said. “You had signed up for a manta ray snorkel. You were the youngest one there by far.”

  “That’s right,” I said, remembering that night: the dark water lapping against the boat, the salty smell of the wind, and the cold shock of the ocean, even with our wet suits on, when we dropped anchor and dipped ourselves into the water. “But, wait—how do you know that?” I asked.

  “Because I was there,” Kai insisted. “I had to convince my parents to let you do it. They said you were too young, but I promised I would watch you the whole time.”

  I scrunched up my nose. “You mean, like a babysitter?”

  “No, like—like a friend.” He flopped down onto his back. After a moment he raised himself up on his elbows. “You really don’t remember, Tegan?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember you being there.”

  He laughed a little to himself.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just—I obviously didn’t make as big of an impression on you as you made on me!”

  I blushed. I hadn’t meant to hurt Kai’s feelings. “So what did we talk about, this actual first time we met?” I asked. “Maybe it will jog my memory.”

  “We didn’t really have a conversation. I remember handing you the wet suit, but I was too shy to say anything.”

  “You, shy?” I nudged his foot with mine. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You’re one to talk! My mom thought you weren’t going to make it out there with those manta rays. ‘That little girl is gonna pee her pants,’ she told me.”

  I laughed. “Your mom said that?”

  “Yep. Listen, we’ve seen grown men freak out when the manta rays come. Total panic attacks. We all thought you would get scared and want to come back to the boat. But I can still see you, jumping right into that water without a backward glance. And when it was time to go, you came swimming back to the boat like you’d had the time of your life, without an ounce of fear or remorse.”

  “I didn’t want to leave. Those manta rays were magical.” I picked at a hangnail and sighed. “We didn’t make it out there this trip. I wish we had. My parents could use some magic right about now.”

  Kai’s brow wrinkled in concern. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, no, it’s not really fine; they’re getting divorced, I’m pretty sure. It seems inevitable at this point. This whole trip has been like a ticking time bomb.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Kai said softly. He was the first person I had told—the first time I had even really admitted the words to myself—which seemed strange, as I barely knew him. Maybe because I was on vacation, far away from my normal life, I felt comfortable talking to him about things I would never have voiced to anyone back home.

  “Thanks. Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about my parents right now.”

  “That’s cool,” Kai said, scooting up so his back was against the wall opposite me. His knees were bent, mirroring mine. “If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I could feel that tension settling in between us again, buzzing like electric sparks. He was looking into my face, his eyes deep pools of amber in the lantern’s glow. I looked away, at the shadows on the rock behind him.

  “Give me your phone,” Kai said.

  “What?”

  “Here.” He handed his phone to me. “Put your number in, and I’ll do the same in yours.”

  I pulled my phone out of my sweater pocket and slid it along the beach towel toward him. He typed in his number as I put mine into his phone, saving it under Your Old Friend Tegan. I don’t know what compelled me to reinforce the friendship component of our relationship. Maybe it was the romantic glow of the lantern, the tucked-away feeling of the caves, the flickering tension that sprang up between us out of nowhere, like flames that could leap out of control at any moment. I had that teetering-on-the-edge-of-a-cliff feeling—it would be so easy to close my eyes and let myself fall down into the unknown. But it was terrifying, that feeling. I preferred to be standing firmly on stable ground. So I did my best to pull back from the cliff’s edge.

  I cleared my throat and slid Kai’s phone back to him. “So tell me about school,” I said, changing the subject to the mundane. “What are your friends like?”

  “They’re cool. Funny. You’d like them. They all can’t wait to graduate and get out of here, always talking about moving to the mainland. I say they don’t know what they have right in front of them.”

  “You don’t want to move to the mainland?”

  “Naw, not really.” Kai grinned, the same grin I remembered from childhood slowly widening across his face. “Why move anywhere else when you already live in paradise?”

  “Hard to argue with that,” I agreed. “If I lived here, I wouldn’t want to leave either
. I’m gonna have a hard enough time tomorrow.”

  “I can’t believe you’re already leaving tomorrow. I wish I’d run into you earlier. There’s so much I want to show you!” Kai moved his leg over, just a little, so his foot brushed mine.

  I swallowed. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked abruptly, inching back toward the cliff edge I’d tried to avoid.

  Kai seemed taken aback by the question. Was he blushing? “No,” he said. “Flyin’ solo.” He paused, studying me. “What about you?”

  For a half second, I considered lying and making up a boyfriend. How would Kai ever know? But I’m a horrible liar, for one thing. And I didn’t want to lie to him. I wanted him to trust me as I did him, even if I never saw him again after this night.

  “No one for me either,” I said. “At least, not yet.” I bit my lip, realizing the words sounded much different—much flirtier—than they had in my head.

  Kai groaned. “I wish you weren’t leaving tomorrow!” he said.

  “I know.”

  We looked at each other. Kai’s eyes were strikingly familiar and new at the same time.

  “So … tell me about your family,” I said. “The last time I saw you, I think Theo was four? I remember we buried him in the sand, and he got upset.”

  Kai laughed. “He’s eleven now. He’s always following me around, trying to copy whatever I do. It can get annoying sometimes. My other brother is Paulo. He’s five. He can get away with anything because he’s the youngest. He’s super cute, and believe me, he knows it.”

  “I’m so jealous. I’ve always wanted siblings.”

  “You can have one of mine!” Kai said. “Seriously, though—you’re right. I’m lucky. My mom says my brothers and I will appreciate each other more when we’re older.”

  “I bet that’s true. And how’s Makana the Magnificent?” Makana was their grizzled boxer dog. I had met him once, when we were kids; he loved playing in the waves. He had raced over to us and licked my cheeks. I usually felt apprehensive around big dogs, but I hadn’t been the least bit scared of Makana.

  “Oh … ” Sadness washed over Kai’s face, and my heart sank. “He got sick—cancer—and he was too old for treatment. We had to put him down last year.”

  “Kai, I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard.”

  “The hardest part actually wasn’t the moment when he died. It was right after, when we were left with this shell that looked like Makana but wasn’t him anymore. I wish I could remember him as alive and vibrant, but it’s tough not to think back on that final image of him.”

  We lapsed into silence. It would have been natural for Kai to ask about my family, but I wondered if he was avoiding the topic because of my parents’ impending divorce.

  After a few moments, he said, “Sorry, don’t mean to be a downer. Tell me something you’re passionate about.”

  “Passionate?” The word intimidated me. “Um, I don’t know. School? I’m aiming to go to college, so school pretty much consumes my life.”

  “What’s your favorite subject?”

  “It used to be math, but now it’s science. My physics teacher was really awesome. She helped me see the world in an entirely new way. There’s all these hidden mysteries and magic lying beneath the surface of things.”

  My friend Andrea would have rolled her eyes if I geeked out like this, but Kai looked impressed. “I think science is really confusing,” he said. “I wish I could see it the way you do. ‘Magic’ is about the last word I would associate with science class.”

  “Here, I’ll give you an example,” I said, not even trying to hide the enthusiasm in my voice. Pretty soon, I would start waving my hands around as I talked—something my dad did too. He claimed it was “part of our Italian heritage.” My hands only started waving around when I was excited about something. I never even noticed myself doing it.

  “Did you know that trees talk to each other?” I continued.

  Kai shook his head. “No way.”

  “Yep. Scientists discovered recently that trees communicate with each other through tiny roots in the soil.”

  “What do they talk about?” Kai asked.

  “They send distress signals about drought and share nutrients with other trees. Like, a birch tree will send carbon to a fir tree, and then in the winter, when the birch tree doesn’t have any leaves, the fir tree will send over some carbon. It’s really amazing. We’ve always thought of trees as these independent organisms, competing against each other for water and sunlight, but actually they have this entire social network.”

  “Well, that is freaking awesome,” Kai said, genuine wonder in his tone. “I’ll never look at a tree the same way again. Tell me another one.”

  I laughed. “You make it sound like I’m telling stories.”

  “You are, in a way. True stories. I always thought science was memorizing formulas or studying diagrams in a textbook, but you make it interesting.” He spread his arms wide, as if to take in the entire world around us. “Tegan Rossi, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you just might make me fall in love with science.”

  Fall in love. My face grew hot, and I looked away from him, gazing out toward the cave entrance. Darkness. Nothing but darkness. Inside our cozy halo of light, in this secret hideout from our childhood, it was as if we were the only two people in the universe.

  “Tell me another one,” Kai said softly. “Please?”

  “Okay.” I crossed my legs beneath me. “Have you heard of Schrödinger’s cat paradox?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Basically, it’s a thought experiment. Imagine you put a cat in a steel box.”

  “Why? What’d the cat do?”

  “Just go with it. In the box there’s also a bottle of poison, a hammer, a radioactive substance, and a Geiger counter.”

  “A Geiger what?”

  “It measures ionizing radiation. So when the radioactive substance decays, the Geiger counter detects it. This triggers the hammer to smash the bottle, releasing the poison, which kills the poor unsuspecting cat.”

  Kai shrugged. “That’s okay. I’ve always been more of a dog person.”

  I nudged him playfully. “Anyway, the whole point is that until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.”

  Kai scrunched up his eyebrows. “Wait—what? That’s not possible.”

  “I know, it’s kinda trippy. The way my teacher explained it is that since radioactive decay is a random process, there is no way of predicting when it will happen. So there’s no way of knowing when the cat will die. You have to open the box to observe whether the cat is alive or dead.”

  “Okay … ” Kai said. “I’m still following … ”

  “Until you open the box, there’s no way of knowing which state the cat is in, so you have to treat it like all possibilities are correct. So the cat is both alive and dead. That’s the paradox. It’s like, my aunt had this breast cancer scare—and thankfully, she’s fine. The tumor was benign. But she said when she was waiting for the results, she was in this weird limbo state. She both had cancer and didn’t have cancer.”

  “I’m confused,” Kai said. “You can have cancer and not know about it, right? Just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

  “That’s true. And until my aunt got the test results, both possibilities existed at the same time. She both had cancer and didn’t have cancer. The cat was both alive and dead.”

  “Huh,” Kai said. “I’m not gonna lie—I still don’t really get it. But I liked listening to you explain it. You’re crazy smart. And it’s cute when you get all excited and wave your arms around as you talk.”

  Now I was definitely blushing. I crossed my arms, to rein them in. “I’ve been talking too much. So what about you? Tell me a big dream you have.”

  Kai tilted his head back, looking up at the small circle of starry sky. “I know it’s, like, impossible to do this as a ca
reer. But I want to be an artist.”

  My eyebrows shot up. I never would have pegged him for an artist. “Wow! That’s really cool. What kind of art do you make?”

  “I’ve done some painting and collage. Last year, I discovered wood carving, and it’s become my jam. My dream is to open my own art gallery one day.”

  “That would be amazing, Kai! I have no doubt you will. I remember your determination when we used to dare each other to do those silly stunts in the pool.”

  Kai laughed. “If only real life were as easy as doing a headstand or holding your breath underwater.”

  My phone beeped, and I glanced down. It was a text message from Andrea, about this new TV series she’d started watching and wanted me to watch too. I felt a pang that I’d be heading back to my real life tomorrow. No—today. I squinted at my phone, not believing my eyes: 12:52. I could have sworn only minutes had passed since I’d arrived at the lava tubes.

  “Crap,” I said, shoving my phone into my pocket. “I should probably head out soon.”

  Kai leaned back and groaned. “Ow,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his head. “Lava rock is unforgiving.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, pulling my right arm out of my sweater. “I still have the scar to prove it.” I stretched my arm out to him in the lamplight, and Kai scooted forward to study it. Our bodies were so close that I could lean forward and rest my forehead against his, if I wanted to. The scar was a narrow line, slightly raised, running parallel to the vein doctors had used the few times I’d gotten my blood drawn.

  “Oooh, that turned into a good one,” Kai said, gently running his thumb along my scar. I shivered. “Sorry,” he said, releasing my arm.

  “It’s okay,” I said. It hadn’t been a bad shiver. Part of me wanted him to lightly touch my arm again.

  “I think about that night all the time,” Kai said softly. “Most exciting night of my life, running away with you.”

  “Maybe we would have made it, if only I wasn’t such a klutz,” I joked. It wasn’t true—even if I hadn’t sliced my arm open, even if Kai hadn’t run for help, it wasn’t like we could have really hidden out in this cave forever. They would have found us in the morning.