The Best Week That Never Happened

by Dallas Woodburn

  Only it’s different now. If we were kids—or even if this was another reality, and I was here in a life that wasn’t ending in two days—then this moment could be light and airy and giddy. A sparkling placeholder for some future possibility. But now, it’s like staring down a dark tunnel at a future that is never going to happen. Kai on bended knee. Asking me a real question, for real life. Asking me about forever.

  The moment stretches out, heavier now. Kai looks up at me, a smile still wide across his face, but a deeper question in his eyes. He’s thinking it too. Imagining.

  I want this moment, right now, to be more than itself. I want it to hold both the present and also the future that might have been. In Kai’s face, I try to imagine an older Kai, with a few wrinkles around his eyes. I imagine him down on bended knee, asking me a very similar question. I can almost see it. The impossible-future, the never-future, glimmering, superimposed over this moment unfurling right now.

  “Will you?” Kai asks softly, in his normal voice.

  “Yes.” My voice comes out croaky. “Yes.”

  There’s true happiness in his eyes, and my heart swells. He pumps his fist in the air and rises up to kiss me. “I love you, girlfriend.”

  “You’re cheesy, boyfriend.” I smile at him. “I love you too.”

  This is it, I remind myself. This moment. This is what you’ve been given. You need to let this be enough.

  As usual, Kai drives with the windows down. The morning air is cool and damp. Mist obscures the mountaintops. We successfully managed to sneak out of the house before the rest of Kai’s family got up, and now, driving through the quiet morning, it seems like we are the only two people on Earth. As if this world—the sky and the trees and the lava rock and the road stretching out like a black snake before us—as if everything exists just for us. And maybe it does. Not in the real world, but in this world, whatever it is. What if all of this is here to guide me to some crucial wisdom? What if all of this is a puzzle designed for me?

  If so, where are the pieces? How do I fit them together into something cohesive and whole, something that makes sense?

  Even though I told Kai that we need to accept my fate and not waste time trying to change it; even though the majority of my brain believes that this week is nothing more than a dream; even though my scars are gone, and I have an hourglass tattoo over my heart that is changing by the second; even though I know that in real life, I died, boom, end of story; even though most of me believes all of this, there is still a tiny defiant place deep within that refuses to give up hope. What if Kai was right? What if there is some sort of clue at Akaka Falls? What if Okalani and Keone weren’t only using the o’opu alamo’o as a metaphor—what if the fish hold an answer?

  With every mile that takes us closer to Akaka Falls, my nerves clench tighter. And my expectations heighten, despite my efforts to tamp them down. As hard as I try, I can’t give up my desire to live. I can’t hush that niggling question in the back of my brain: What if?

  One reason I’ve always loved math is that, in a math problem, you always know what you are solving for. And the answers don’t change. Three plus three equals six, every single time. Three plus three will always equal six. No two ways about it. But now, I can’t shake the feeling that there is something I should be looking for—only I don’t know what it is. How can you solve for x if you can’t even figure out what the equation should be?

  “You hungry?” Kai asks, breaking me out of my reverie. “Ready to stop for breakfast?”

  I’m not hungry, but Kai must be. Besides, I don’t want to pass up an opportunity to see whatever he wants to show me. “Sure,” I tell him. “That sounds perfect.”

  A few minutes later, we pull off the highway into a small shopping center. Kai parks in front of a restaurant called TEX Drive In.

  I’m confused. “Tex?” I ask. “Like, Texas?”

  Kai shrugs. “Nobody really knows. My best guess is that it refers to the size of their portions, which are huge. In any case, this place is the best. Puts all other malasadas to shame.”

  “Mala what?”

  “Malasadas. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  He leads me inside the restaurant, which is an order-at-the-counter-style place. This early in the morning, only a handful of guests are seated in the wide sea of tables and chairs. Giant menu boards hang above the counter. I stand back, studying the menu, still confused what exactly it is that we’re going to eat, when Kai grabs my hand and tugs me across the room.

  “Where are we going?” I ask. He’s leading me away from the counter where you order. “I thought we were eating breakfast here.”

  “We are. But first, I want to show you something.”

  We approach a big glass window—not facing the parking lot but looking deeper into the building. I peer inside and see an industrial-sized kitchen, with pristine countertops and gleaming steel appliances. A woman in an apron and hairnet stands under a sign: Malasadas. Next to her rests a giant slab of dough; she fries a large basket of round golden shapes.

  Kai flings one arm out dramatically. “I give you … malasadas!”

  “Those things she’s frying?”

  “Yep. Deliciously fried golden dough. You might know them as doughnuts.”

  I laugh. “All this fuss for doughnuts? You’ve been acting like this is the holy grail of breakfast foods.”

  “Malasadas are not just doughnuts, T. They are the best doughnuts you’ll ever taste.”

  I’m skeptical. I’ve eaten some pretty amazing doughnuts in my life. There’s a place called Unc’s in my hometown that makes the best apple fritters. Supposedly, the secret is potato flour. Unc was Irish.

  I needle Kai with my elbow. “What are you willing to bet?”

  He strokes his chin thoughtfully, then points at me. “Loser carries the pack on the hike.” We have a small backpack filled with water bottles and sunscreen.

  “Deal.”

  We shake on it. Then Kai pulls me in, and we kiss on it, too, for good measure.

  Up at the counter, Kai orders us a variety of malasadas, filled with plain custard and chocolate custard and apples and mangoes. I grab napkins, and we go sit at a picnic table outside. In the distance, the mist has burned off the mountains, and around us the air has turned warm and humid.

  “Careful, they’re hot,” Kai says, handing me a malasada wrapped in wax paper. The golden dough is covered in sugar granules. When I take a bite, chocolate custard oozes out one side.

  “Ooh!” I say, trying to cool off my bite before I swallow. “You were right! These are hot malasadas!”

  Kai watches me in amusement. “Tegan,” he says, “you want to know something?”

  “What?” I ask. I blow ferociously on the fried dough, waiting to take another bite.

  “You’re my hot malasada.”

  He winks. I burst out laughing.

  How am I ever going to say goodbye to him?

  “Okay,” I admit. We’re back on the road again, the taste of chocolate still on my lips and a sugar high buzzing in my blood. “You were right.”

  “What?” Kai shouts, though I’m pretty sure he heard me. The breeze isn’t that loud.

  “You were right!” I shout back.

  “What?” He grins, and I know he heard me.

  “You were right! Those were the best doughnuts ever!”

  His hand finds my knee. “I’m glad you liked them,” he says in his normal voice. “We can get more tomorrow, if you want.”

  Tomorrow. Just like that, it’s back—The End, lurking.

  “Okay,” I say. “Maybe.”

  We’re mostly quiet for the rest of the ride to Akaka Falls, each of us wrapped up in our own thoughts. Even though I’m willing to bet we’re both thinking about the same thing.

  One thing I love about being with Kai is that we don’t always need to be talking. Even when we were long-distance, sometimes we would sit on the phone in comfortable silence,
just being present with each other. He doesn’t feel the need to rush in and fill a silence, and neither do I. At least, not with him. Sometimes with other people I get awkward and anxious when the conversation lapses, and I stumble over my words to say something, anything. But with Kai, that’s never been the case. He has an easy openness that makes you feel comfortable letting your guard down and relaxing into yourself. Maybe I can say something about that in my letter to him.

  When we pull into the entrance for Akaka Falls, it is after 10:00 a.m. The parking lot is already half-filled with SUVs and minivans. Mothers smear sunscreen onto kids’ faces, and vendors stand beside ice chests, selling bottles of coconut water. I reach for our backpack on the floor of the Jeep, but Kai grabs it first.

  “I lost the bet,” I remind him. “I’ll carry it, fair and square.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll carry it.”

  “Kai, don’t be ridiculous. It’s not even that heavy. I can carry it myself.”

  “Please, T,” he says, and his eyes are serious. Pleading. “Let me.”

  This isn’t really about the backpack. I imagine what it would be like if our roles were reversed, if I had to stand by and watch Kai’s time tick away, knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it. That would be torture.

  “Okay,” I say, relinquishing the backpack. “Thanks.”

  He slings it over his shoulders, locks the Jeep, and takes my hand. Together, we walk through the parking lot to the start of the trail. The posted map shows a loop that will take us down to Akaka Falls, and then over to the smaller Kahuna Falls, and then back up to the parking lot. According to the map, the entire loop is only a mile or so.

  “Ready?” Kai says.

  “Ready!”

  A neon-green lizard scuttles across the asphalt. I point as it disappears into the undergrowth.

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “The lizard!”

  “They’re everywhere, if you know where to look,” says a voice behind us. I turn, and a middle-aged woman with flowing silver hair is smiling at us. At her feet is an open ice chest, full of bottled coconut water. I smile back uncertainly.

  “The geckos,” she says. “They’re everywhere, but did you know they are not native to the islands?”

  I shake my head and catch Kai’s eye. He shoots me a look like, Don’t let this lady suck you in …

  “The geckos were introduced here,” the woman continues. “They have flourished on the islands over thousands of years. Sometimes life, like love, springs forth where you least expect it. Isn’t that right?”

  She winks at me, as if we are in on some joke together. Kai tugs at my hand, and while part of me wants to turn away from this strange woman and follow him down the path to the waterfall, another part of me is intrigued. What if she knows something important? What if she has information that can help me? What if, what if, what if?

  I step toward her. “You seem to, um, know a lot about the geckos,” I say lamely.

  “Oh, I have lived here all my life. The geckos are our guardians, and I’m not just talking about bugs.” She laughs, throwing her head back. Her laughter is unrestrained, like a child’s, and I relax into trust. Maybe she’s just an overly friendly woman, or maybe she has a message specifically for me. Whatever the case, I want to listen.

  “Have you ever heard of the mo’o?” she asks, brushing aside a lock of her silvery hair. Her earrings jangle.

  “No,” I admit. I turn to Kai, who still seems impatient. I wonder if, despite his promises, he really does have a plan to spend the day searching for the o’opu alamo’o, hoping to find some magic ingredient that will keep me here beyond this week.

  “Have you heard of the mo’o?” I ask him.

  “Old legends,” he says dismissively. “They’re supposed to be evil spirits.”

  The woman shakes her head sadly. “Good and evil, life and death—they are intertwined, no? Impossible to separate one from the other. The contrast provides truth. We would not know what light is, without the darkness.”

  She looks down at the ice chest at her feet, filled to the brim with bottles of coconut water. For a moment, I think that our conversation is over. I expect her to reach out her hand for money, trying to sell us some of her wares.

  Instead, she leans toward me, her bright eyes sparkling.

  “Legends are stories,” she says. “Stories that carry wisdom. But sometimes, years pass, and the wisdom gets distorted. Do you want to know the truth?”

  I nod, spellbound.

  “In truth, the mo’o is not evil. The mo’o is a great magical dragon, powerful and benevolent, protecting us from harm. The gecko is its representative on this earth. Some believe that the great mo’o manifests itself inside the body of a gecko.”

  My heartbeat quickens. Maybe the gecko, not the o’opu alamo’o, is the answer I have been searching for. Maybe the gecko can protect me. But how?

  The woman reaches into the pocket of her jean shorts and pulls out a bright-green string. “May I?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Hold out your left wrist.”

  I do as instructed, and she ties the string onto my wrist. A bracelet. In the center is a small silver charm: a gecko with a tiny tail curled up like a spiral. “This will keep you safe,” she says, tying a triple knot. “Do not worry. The mo’o will protect you.”

  “How much is it?” I ask.

  “No charge,” the woman says, smiling so wide I glimpse a crown on one of her back teeth. “You just seemed like someone who would understand the mo’o. Take care, Teacup.”

  Teacup. I do a double take, staring into the woman’s face.

  “My mom used to call me Teacup,” I say.

  The woman smiles but doesn’t say anything more.

  “Thank you,” I say. And then, surprising even myself, I throw my arms around her. It’s instinctual—a reflex, a muscle memory. The woman hugs me like she expected this all along. Her palm rubs circles on my back. My mom used to rub my back like this when I was a little girl and had trouble falling asleep. I feel warm and comforted, and very close to tears. Goodbye, Mom, I think—the first time I have let myself think these words. I love you infinity.

  And then I feel a sob building ferociously in my chest, and no matter what world this is—a dream or alternate reality or third dimension or Heaven or nowhere but my own mind—I do not want to be sobbing in a stranger’s arms on the edge of a parking lot surrounded by gawking sunburned tourists. I sense that once I start crying, it will be a long time before I’m able to stop.

  Time is already seeping away so quickly, minutes and hours dripping out of my pockets like loose change. I don’t have any time to spare. I don’t have time for a breakdown.

  Pulling away from the woman, I wipe my eyes and do my best to swallow the gigantic lump in my throat. I push away the memory of my mom rubbing my back. I push away the image of her round cheeks, her warm smile, her voice saying, I love you infinity, Teacup. I push it all away, and I take off down the path, away from the woman, past Kai, not looking back.

  I’m not aware of Kai’s voice or presence until I feel his hand on my shoulder. It is as if I am underwater, swimming alone among the undulating currents. All I hear is the buzzing in my own head. All I feel is the frantic beating of my heart. My entire being is focused on not falling to pieces. Let it go, it’s okay, let it all go …

  It’s not like my life was perfect. I had problems and worries and stress. My mom wasn’t perfect either. We argued sometimes. She annoyed me and drove me crazy. So why does it seem like saying goodbye to her is the same as saying goodbye to myself? Why is letting go of my imperfect life so utterly, painfully impossible?

  Kai touches my shoulder, and I jerk around, yanked out of my reveries, back to this time and this place. I must look stormy-eyed, because he holds his hands up like he’s trying to calm a wild animal.

  “What happened back there?” he sa
ys. “You okay?”

  Let it all go …

  You don’t have any time to spare. You don’t have time for a breakdown.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” I release a big breath. “I just—I miss my mom, you know?” On the last word, my voice quavers. I bite my lip, trying to steady myself.

  “I know,” Kai says, and then his arms are around me, and I’m breathing in his Kai scent. I think about how my mom seemed disappointed when I canceled my trip to visit Kai. She would be happy to know that I am here, soaking up this week with him. Doing all of these things I kept putting off until later.

  I lean back, looking up into his face. “My mom really liked you.”

  Kai laughs. “She hasn’t seen me since I was eight years old! I was easy to love then.”

  “You were a pretty adorable kid,” I agree, smiling. “But I’m serious. She always told me how lucky I was to have a friend like you. She saw that I was truly myself around you. No judgments, no pretentions. She was disappointed in me when I bailed on our summer plans.”

  Kai pulls me in and kisses my forehead. “Your mom was crazy proud of you, T.”

  I close my eyes, letting my forehead rest against his chest.

  “And not just for all your awards and accolades,” Kai adds, as if reading my mind. “She was crazy proud of the person you are. You know that, right?”

  I do know. I love you infinity. Mom and I still had a million words left to say to each other. But at the same time, when you get down to it, there were no words left unsaid.

  “Thanks,” I say. I give him one more squeeze and pull away, ready to put this behind us. To keep moving down the path, toward what’s left of today.

  Kai reaches for my hand. The sunlight catches the gecko charm on my new bracelet, and it shines like it could light up this whole rain forest.