THE WIND CAME BACK AND, ALONG WITH IT, RAIN, which is rare in Kahala. I miss the rain in Kailua, the way it cleans the slate and makes it okay to stay inside. In Hawaii you always feel you have to be outside doing something.
The sound of the rain is faint. In the cottage, we are too sealed in to really hear or notice it. There are no glass jalousies that let the outside in. I can see the rain, though, through the kitchen window, and a rectangle of night sky softly illuminated by light from the coconut trees.
I tried to read in my room, which is to say, I had a book open and was looking at the words and reading sentences over and over because I couldn’t focus. I looked out at the main house, wondering what Will thought, if he even thought anything at all. I was straight-up mortified right after everything happened, but now that time has passed, I find myself smiling at the memory, smiling at my mortification, smiling at the event of it all, the way he touched me. The script was an alibi. Whatever happened I chalk up to Samantha, so it was all a wonderful fiction. I think of his hand. I would like more fiction. I close my book because it’s not nearly as good as my own story.
I go to the living room and switch on the TV, which is giving me something to look at, but I’m not really hearing what anyone’s saying, and when my mom comes out from her room and asks what I’m watching, I tell her, “I don’t even know.”
She stands by the couch, watching.
“You’re not grounded anymore, you know,” she says.
“I know,” I say. I guess I’m grounding myself. Friday night of spring break. Girl gone wild.
“Want to watch this Netflix?” she asks, and I see the envelope in her hand. Her face is so open and eager. She’d be so disappointed if I said no.
“What is it?” I ask, moving my legs, inviting her to sit.
“A documentary about African lions.” She walks up to the TV as if she’s been waiting to do this all night.
“Really? Why do you get every animal documentary ever made?”
“I love them!” she says, and the thing is, once they get started, I usually do too. Still, now I’m adding documentary to the list following Friday and first night of spring break. I am so punk rock. Just when I thought I liked my own story, the reality settles in. I am home with my mom. And yet, the residue of today still lingers, and I realize no matter what I’m doing I have the memory and the sensation in my reserves. My face warms, and that string pulls, and I feel like I can’t move. I’m like a wildebeest near a lion; my mom will find me. She’ll detect something new and awful about me, like alcohol on my breath, something she’d be able to smell. Breathe in my face. She’ll sense dirtiness, inappropriateness, or maybe just something adult. I want to be an adult, but not with her. The things in my reserves that are making my body pulse are mine.
“Popcorn?” she asks, after setting up the movie.
“Yes!” I say, feeling kind of spoiled that she’s making it for me, even though I know she wants to.
After she pops the corn, she sits down with the bowl, puts the blanket over our legs, and we move into a broad shot of the Sahara.
We reach into the bowl at the same time, grabbing our handfuls. I feel that this will always be what I think of when I think of home. This is something we do together and have always done. I can remember the movies we had when I was little, all on rotation—The Sound of Music, The Parent Trap, Whale Rider. There were The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Emma and Clueless, Annie and Fantastic Mr. Fox. And of course, animal documentaries. I know everything there is to know about penguins.
The cubs are playing, pawing one another. The mother licks a cub, lifting it off the ground with her tongue. We both laugh. “Love it,” I say, feeling so myself and absorbed. When the film nears its heartbreaking conclusion (one of the cubs taken, devoured), both of us cry, but that’s what happens out there in the wild. Why can crying feel so good? I’m happy to feel something, sad and tunneled out, convinced it makes room for something else.