The bedside clock reads 5:18. I nestle my body against Kai’s warm back, hugging my arms around him, breathing him in. I wish I could fall back asleep and hold him forever. I wish I could freeze this minute on the clock so we could stay like this. I wish that time wasn’t so merciless, so fiercely intent on marching forward, forward, forward.
But I don’t have the luxury of falling back asleep. There is so little time left. I kiss Kai’s back and gently extricate myself from the bedcovers. Then I slip on my fleece pullover, tiptoe into the bathroom, and ease the door shut. I think back to that night so many nights ago, when I was staying in a hotel room like this one, and I snuck into the bathroom to get ready before I crept out to meet Kai at the lava tubes. I remember being so nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. In some ways, it was a reckless decision. A giant leap of faith.
I’m so glad I took that leap.
Lines from a poem we read in a long-ago English class flit through my mind: ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I wish I could remember who wrote those words. I never realized, before this moment, how agonizingly true they are. Saying goodbye to Kai is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But the joy of loving him is worth the mountain of pain to leave him. Given the choice to make again, I would venture out to those lava tubes every time. I would keep choosing him and choosing him and choosing him. Even knowing how it all has to end, I would still take the risk of loving him. I only wish I had been brave enough to jump off that cliff sooner.
I flick on the light and pull the notepaper from my pocket. I have a letter to write.
You know that final-day-of-vacation feeling? Your trip is quickly coming to a close, and you are uncomfortably straddling two worlds: the magical, relaxing vacation one and the everyday-life one waiting for you on the other side of the calendar page. Soon, you’ll be heading to the airport. Soon, it will be back to reality. You try to soak up every last minute of vacation time, but it’s already tainted with the knowledge that it will be gone before you know it. Like the last dregs of Kona coffee—still there, in the bottom of your cup, but it won’t be long before you swallow those final sips and the taste disappears from your tongue.
Today is like the last day of vacation. Only a million times worse.
Kai and I make a valiant effort to pretend like this vacation isn’t ending. After I finish writing his letter, I climb back into bed and snuggle up with him. Somehow I fall back asleep, a shallow dreamless sleep, and then Kai is waking me up with kisses, and then we’re making love again, and my mind goes there—the Last Time, this is the Last Time—and when the tears flood my eyes, I tell Kai it’s because I love him so much. Which is the truth, and yet also a lie. Because he doesn’t know what I’m planning to do later.
Afterward we shower and get dressed and head out, walking hand in hand down the hall to the open-air veranda, where the hotel serves breakfast. We sit at our table looking out at the glimmering blue ocean, and Kai orders scrambled eggs, and I order the macadamia nut pancakes with homemade coconut syrup, just like I remember from my childhood, and when they come, I swallow bite after bite of sticky sweetness, even though I’m not hungry, not at all. I smile at Kai and whisper, “Your pancakes are better.”
After breakfast we still have some time—checkout isn’t until noon—so we change into our swimsuits and splash around in the pool. We’re surrounded by children and families, but I feel entirely alone. Time is somehow moving in slow motion and fast-forward at once. My smile is brittle, cracking across my face. I feel like I’ve been hollowed out. I feel too much to feel anything at all.
In the pool, Kai lifts me in his arms like I’m a damsel in distress, swinging me around. “I am the Hulk!” he shouts, so enthusiastically that some kids glance over with curious eyes, wondering if this is a new game they can join. I reach up and kiss him, which makes the kids look away in boredom.
“Hulk love you,” Kai grunts.
“I love Hulk,” I say, feeling a sudden rush of desire to tell him everything. But I don’t. I can’t. If he knew, he would try to stop me.
Kai thinks we’re both going back to his house tonight after the manta snorkel. We’ll curl up in his bed together and talk. Or we’ll just lie there quietly, listening to each other’s breathing. Maybe he thinks we’ll stay up all night like that, until eventually morning comes, and the last grain of sand trickles through my hourglass tattoo, and … what? A blinding white light? Oblivion? Or maybe he thinks we’ll drift off to sleep together, and I simply won’t wake up. The End.
What that sounds like to me is a long, drawn-out, heartbreaking goodbye. And Kai knows I’m terrible at goodbyes. I can’t bear the thought of him waking up on Monday morning to find me gone. Or, even worse—what if he wakes up to my still, silent body beside him? No. I refuse to put him through that. I remember what he said, back when we first reconnected in the lava tubes, about putting his dog Makana to sleep. About how he couldn’t escape that final image of his beloved dog as a lifeless shell. That is not how I will leave Kai. No way. I want to choose how our last goodbye unfolds.
So I haven’t told him my real plan. My secret plan.
The truth is, I’m not coming back from the manta snorkel.
I’ll be the last one out in the water, the last one clinging to the raft. And then I’ll disappear. I’ll let myself sink down, down, down into the water. Into the land of the manta rays that I so desperately yearned to visit as a little girl. I guess dying means I’ll finally get my wish.
It will be best, for both of us. It will be easier to simply slip away.
After checking out of the hotel, we walk around downtown Kona and hit up Kai’s favorite local Mexican restaurant for a lunch of fresh fish tacos. We laugh about old inside jokes and memories from when we were kids. Both of us carefully avoid mentioning anything about the future, about what is coming—the train barreling toward us, unavoidable. On the drive back to Kai’s parents’ house, we lapse into silence. I’m grateful to stare out the window and let the fragile smile fall from my face. Only a handful of hours left now.
In Kai’s room, I rummage through my floral suitcase for what I’ll need for the manta ray snorkel: bathing suit, shorts, T-shirt. The tour guides will provide wet suits and snorkel masks. I duck into the bathroom to change. My reflection stares back at me with numb acceptance. The sand in my hourglass tattoo has nearly run out. I look completely different from the giddy-eyed girl who twirled in front of this mirror in a new red dress before her first date with Kai at The Blue Oasis. I’ve aged centuries since then. I feel … tired. I’m so tired of dreading this Last Day.
I step out of the bathroom as Kai is returning from the laundry room with two beach towels, Olina at his heels. She comes up to me and whines, licking my hand. Does she know what is coming? Kai hands me a beach towel, and something brushes against my bare leg. I look down, and my heart splinters.
My neon-green gecko bracelet is on the floor. It fell off my wrist. Maybe I snagged it on something, or maybe it’s a cheap bracelet that wasn’t made to last.
Kai bends down and picks it up. “Do you know what these are called?” he asks. “These bracelets made from a single thin thread?”
I shake my head.
“They’re called ‘wish bracelets.’ When the thread breaks, and the bracelet falls off, your wish comes true.”
“I like that idea,” I say. I like that idea much better than what I was thinking a moment ago. Which is that the bracelet broke, which means I’m no longer protected by the magical mo’o, which means I’m not safe. I’m not special. This is really, truly, my Last Day.
Kai pours the bracelet into my palm, and I look down at it, a tangle of neon-green thread and one tiny silver gecko charm.
“What’s your wish?” he asks softly.
I lean against the wall, attempting levity. “You know I can’t tell you that, or my wish won’t come true.”
“Oh yeah. Good call, T. I really wa
nt your wish to come true.”
“Me too.”
We stare at each other. We both know what my wish is. We both share the same wish. Just one more day, one more week, one more month, one more year …
Just one more, one more, one more …
There is such sadness in Kai’s eyes, it breaks my heart.
I hate goodbyes, and this one is the worst ever.
“Here.” I hand the bracelet to Kai. “I want you to keep this for me.”
“What? No. It’s yours.”
“Please, I want you to have it. Let me tie it on you.” I reach for his wrist and loop the thread around it. But my heart sinks. The bracelet is too small—it won’t reach around his wrist.
This is my real wish: if I can’t have more time, I want Kai to live all of my unlived days. I want the mo’o to protect him.
I remember the carved wooden box that I noticed on his bookcase that first day in his room. I walk over and slide it off the shelf. It’s my Last Day. I don’t care anymore about being a snoop. I just want to know.
“What’s this box?” I ask Kai.
He doesn’t seem upset that I’m holding it. “It’s my box for special things.”
Perfect. “Did you make it?” I ask, already knowing his answer.
He nods.
“It’s beautiful.”
The box’s lid is carved with a crisscross pattern, bordered by intricate flowers. Vines creep along the sides. If I can’t tie my bracelet around Kai’s wrist, at least I can leave it with him. This box will be the perfect place for safekeeping.
“Can I open it?” I ask.
“Sure. Nothing in there you haven’t seen before.”
His words reach my brain as I open the lid, and for a split second I’m confused. How could I have seen the contents before? Does he think I secretly opened this box while he was out of the room?
And then I see what’s inside, and my insides leap with recognition. Memories pour out of the box, overflowing like gushing water.
The tiny pink seashell he gave me after the wave ruined my sandcastle. Dried-out Popsicle sticks imprinted with knock-knock jokes—we would read them to each other by the resort pool, dissolving into giggles before the other person even finished the punch line. Postcards I sent him from the lake and notebook-paper doodles from when I was bored in class. My wallet-sized school pictures. A pressed flower from my garden. The sea glass I found in the school parking lot and mailed to him ensconced in Bubble Wrap. There’s even that photo I sent him last year, of us as kids—a little blurry and off-center, but perfect—taken by my mom with a disposable camera.
This box is brimming full of us.
“This is amazing, Kai. I can’t believe you kept all of this.”
He shrugs. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed, or proud, or something else. “Memories are all we really have, right?” he says. “Memories with you are my treasure.”
I carefully place everything back inside the box, setting my thread bracelet on top. The silver gecko charm gazes up at me, like it knows a secret, but it’s not telling.
Please keep him safe. Please, mo’o or God or whoever might be out there listening—please protect him for me, okay?
Gently, I close the lid and set the box back on the shelf.
“Ready to head out?” Kai asks. “We need enough time to sign in and get our wet suits and everything.”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there. I’m gonna run to the bathroom—meet you out at the Jeep?”
“Sure.” Kai kisses my forehead. Then he leaves, whistling for Olina to follow. She leaps off the bed and trots after Kai.
Feeling like a thief, I step around to Kai’s side of the bed. Only, I’m not stealing anything. I’m leaving something.
I pull the folded sheet of paper out of my pocket. Bring it to my lips and kiss its smooth, flimsy surface. Press it gently onto Kai’s pillow.
It seems so light, so insubstantial. What if it blows off his bed? What if he doesn’t find it? I need something to weigh it down. An anchor.
My hand retreats into my pocket, touching the rock I picked up from the lava tubes when I first woke up here in Hawaii, when I didn’t even know where I was. Slipping this rock into my pocket was an instinctual act—but, then again, maybe not. Maybe it was more than that. Could it have been the first piece of a puzzle? Perhaps a deep place within me knew that I would need this lava rock for exactly this purpose.
I close my fingers around it, squeezing hard, as if this rock can contain all of my wishes and hopes—for me, for Kai, for this life and the next one. I press the lava rock onto the paper, securing my note to Kai’s pillow. Where he will find it tonight. When he returns home. Without me.
Blinking away tears, I gaze around Kai’s room one final time. His posters. His photographs. A wooden snowflake ornament he carved hangs in the window, casting diamonds of shadow onto the floor. I say goodbye to my floral suitcase, grabbing my mom’s gray sweater and slipping it over my shoulders. Then I open the door and step out into the hallway without looking back.
Dear Kai,
I want to say thank you. Thank you for being my best friend, and for loving me, and for teaching me what it means to trust someone enough to fall in love. You are my anchor and my limitless blue sky. You are my hot malasada and the perfect halo-halo. Loving you is as steady and easy as the waves crashing endlessly onto the shoreline. I hope you know this already, but in case not, I’ll say it here: I loved you in my heart long before I admitted it to you, or to myself. I’ve always loved you.
I know you won’t understand what I’m choosing to do, but remember that this is my choice. This is how I want everything to end. The mantas will take good care of me.
Please don’t miss me for too long. Please don’t ever stop making your beautiful artwork. Know that it is okay to smile, and laugh, and be happy. I want you to be happy, Kai. I want you to live freely and fearlessly and joyfully and without regrets. And I want you to fall in love again. Whoever she is, she will be very lucky.
Thank you for the Best Week of My Life.
Love,
Tegan
Kai parks at the docks as the sun is setting, rivers of pink and orange streaming across the sky. Such a gorgeous sunset makes a fierce ache bloom in the middle of my chest. I guess God or the universe or whatever you want to call it is giving me a proper send-off.
I follow Kai down the ramp to where the boat waits. Its name is painted in blue letters along the side: Lucie in the sky with diamonds. The same boat from when I snorkeled with the mantas as a girl. I remember my mom humming the Beatles’ song and my dad pointing out that Lucie was spelled wrong, until my mom suggested that maybe Lucie was how the boat owner spelled her name, and then my dad thought it was clever. A constellation of blue stars decorates its hull.
“Who’s the boat named after?” I ask Kai.
He bites his lip hesitantly. Then he says, “My mom’s sister.”
“Sarah?”
“No, her younger sister.”
“I didn’t know your mom had another sister.”
“I never met Aunt Lucie. She died when my mom was in college. Car accident.”
“Oh my god. That’s terrible.” The next words come rushing out of me before I can stop them: “I wonder what her Best Week was.”
“Maybe she spent it with my mom,” Kai says. He looks like he might start to cry. He pulls me in for a tight hug, kissing my hair. We stay like that for a little while, the dock swaying softly beneath our feet. Eventually, a man calls us over. Time to go.
The boat deck is already half-filled with sunburned tourists struggling into their wet suits. Kai greets the captain and crew—guys he’s worked with many times before—and signs us in, handing me a wet suit and a snorkel mask.
I climb into the cramped below-deck bathroom to change into my swimsuit. Stripping off my clothes, my fingers brush against the chain of my puka shell necklace. I can wear it underneath the we
t suit, but then it will be lost with me. I want Kai to have it when I’m gone. I unclasp it and slip it into the pocket of my jean shorts. Then I fold the shorts and place them carefully back in my bag, along with my T-shirt and sandals, my underwear and bra, and Mom’s gray sweater, all pressed into a neat stack and waiting patiently for my return after the manta snorkel. They don’t know I’m not coming back either.
Up on the deck, I take my seat next to Kai. The boat slowly pulls away from the dock, winding through the narrow harbor and out to the open sea. A crew member comes around and sprays a clear liquid into our snorkel masks. “Antifog,” Kai explains. “It keeps your mask from fogging up underwater.”
Another crew member explains what will happen when we reach the raft, in the middle of the ocean, where the manta rays flock at night to feed. Under the raft, bright lights shine down into the water, illuminating the plankton. Dozens of handles jut out from all four sides of the raft. When we reach the spot, we will swim the twenty meters from the boat to the raft and each grab on to a handle. Then our only job is to duck our heads into the water and peer down through our snorkel masks at the giant gliding mantas swooping up to eat the plankton right beneath us.
The boat rocks in the current as we motor through the shadowed water. I breathe in the cold salt spray and look out at the horizon. Nearly all color has leached from the sky; the pinprick stars blink awake. Kai squeezes my hand. I squeeze his back.
Soon. Very soon now.
Eventually, we spot the small raft floating in the ocean like a miniature wooden island. The boat stops and drops anchor. One by one, we waddle in our swim fins to the edge of the boat. One by one, we fit our snorkel masks over our eyes, and then one by one we dive off the edge into the cold water.
The Best Week That Never Happened Page 23