San Diego
After me and Van at the Creek, I was moving like a bullet train on fresh rails. I started telling all my engineering professors that gave out group work that I didn’t want to be part of a group—boys after boys after boys and always the same, me fighting each one of them for a voice—so I’d do all the work myself, even if it was four times as much, okay? I did all the work and stood at the top 1 percent of all the hard classes.
Me and Van (and Hao and Katarina) would climb buildings at night if we couldn’t get away from campus. Sometimes me and Van would sit on the floor of our dorm room with our backs to each other, right, while we scribbled in our notebooks, read and highlighted our chapters, our shoulder blades running over each other the way I wanted our hands to. But we didn’t go as far again as we had at the Creek. It was like we were at the top of the diving platform, eyeing the water far below that could soak us, could cool us, but we didn’t leap. We were back to something less, but not nothing. I could feel myself run to a fever by it, fighting to keep myself from flat-out begging for all of her.
One night there’s a call from Mom. It’s about Noa, of course. Only this time it’s different.
“What do you mean he’s missing?” I say. The only thing I knew was that he’d had some sort of accident at work. Someone had died on his watch and maybe it was his fault, so he was getting space and time to deal with it, gone back to Hawai‘i. But home should be safe, right? That’s the point of home.
Mom explains the trip Noa had taken to the Big Island. A walkabout it sounded like. Hiking all the remote and sacred spaces in the valleys near Honoka‘a.
“He was called there,” she says.
“Called?” I ask. Not this bullshit again, I’m thinking.
“The ‘aumakua,” she says. “He was feeling it strong once he got home. The valley was where he needed to be.”
“You’re searching for him now?”
“We’re flying out tonight. Dean’s coming in soon. The county has a search-and-rescue team started up.”
“I’ll come home,” I say.
“No,” Mom says, “you’re not leaving school.”
“But you just said Dean is coming home.”
There was a sigh from her, like I was being stupid. “He’s not in school anymore, Kaui,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, stripping all emotion from my voice. “This is that you’ve-gotten-an-opportunity-we-never-had speech, isn’t it.”
“Watch it,” Mom says.
“It’s like you know what I want, and then force me to do the opposite,” I say.
“Everything that got you to where you are, the mainland, a university,” Mom says, “it’s not just you making your life happen.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “It’s the only thing that is.”
I figure that does it. Let’s go, yelling or maybe cold quiet fury, Mom can do both. But she says the strangest thing, I’m still thinking about it later, when it’s all done.
“Oh, Kaui,” she says. “I know you. I was you. Stay there. What happens if you’re here, and don’t finish the semester?”
“I don’t know,” I say. But the more I start thinking the more I see she’s right. It’d take another semester to get caught up on whatever classes I missed, at the very least. Which means another five digits of debt. It would hurt. I could do it. But I knew what would happen in Hawai‘i: Noa would come back from the valley, probably flying on a unicorn that was farting rainbows, and he’d shower more miracles on the family, news stories and donations flooding in and another round of perfect golden light. If I went home I’d be nothing but a spectator, at best, okay? I wasn’t worried about my brother.
And what hits me then is relief, big and strong. I’m not going home. They don’t want me. Relief relief relief. What sort of shitty sister does that make me?
I TELL MYSELF this is what everyone wants and not just me. And actually, does it matter if it’s only me that wants this? I get back to work. Days with just my books and classes, all platonic with Van, wondering where and how we’ll finally jump. If it’s my move or hers.
But something about that call changes everything, I swear. A curse or something. It all stops. Van stops coming back to our dorm room, and she doesn’t answer when I call. We’d scheduled ourselves to take one of those bullshit requirements together, Christ and the Crusades or whatever. I figure I’ll see her there, ask her what’s up, right? But she doesn’t come to class. I send her one text message and make myself not send another.
I go itchy with want, thin on sleep. I feel her fingers in mine. The jolt of her laughter. The way we could be both hard and soft on each other. Her sandy voice calling out as I climb one exposed cliff after another. Up, up, up. All night this all goes through me, the four hours of sleep I get. I slip up on my latest Structural Designs homework set, score a 70 percent, barely on the curve.
Not like you, the professor notes on my exam.
When I talk with Hao and Katarina, ask about Van, they shrug and say she’s acting different, won’t talk to them, either. Two days after the call from Mom, I wait in the student union, just around the time Van normally comes by for her coffee. I fold myself into a corner love seat, across from the announcement corkboard. Okay, she comes along soon enough, backpack hooked over both broad shoulders. Hoodie navy blue and logoless. She has a wide, lazy stride, her bob tangled and unbrushed, her small overbite peeking out between sips of coffee. When she gets closer, I stand up.
She stops. “Kaui.”
“Hey,” I say.
“What’s up?” she says. Glances to the side. “I’ve got class.”
I should take it easy, right? I know. Find the gentle words. But my heart is too strong. “Bullshit.”
She scowls. “What?”
“Something’s going on.”
“I have class,” she repeats. She starts walking. I don’t say anything right away, just start following her out of the union, into the parking lot.
A skateboarder rumbles by. His wheels grinding over the rough concrete. We both watch him go by. His white cotton boxers muffining out of his slouched jeans, the burred outline of his wallet wearing through his pocket. We watch him like he’s the best skater in the world, following his passage with our eyes, saying nothing.
“How come you haven’t been coming to the room?” I say.
“I just needed a break,” she says. She sips her coffee. So many times she’s done it I’ve followed the liquid through her body: around the pink warmth of her mouth, down her freckled neck, into her chest, spreading behind her navel. But now when she takes a drink it’s just a thing she’s doing while not looking at me.
“My brother’s gone,” I say. “He went down into a valley and he hasn’t come back.” I don’t know why I’m saying this, except that it feels like it might bring her closer to me. Just a little bit. “Like, we don’t know how much food he has, or if he has a map or anything.”
She jams a hand in her pocket. The skin pressed bloodless where it meets the jeans. “Sorry,” she says. “I guess we never really talk about our families, do we? He played the ‘ukulele,” she says. “I remember that.”
“Plays,” I say. “Van, fuck, this isn’t helping.”
“Sorry,” she says again. “I don’t know what to do.” She starts to move toward me, right? With this stiff and uncertain opening for a hug that makes me want to puke.
“Quit it,” I say.
She starts kneading her own neck with her free hand.
I figure I might as well just say it, okay? I’m not delicate and can’t pretend it, especially not with Van. “Don’t act like you weren’t in the car with me coming back from the wine festival,” I say. “Don’t act like you haven’t been in the tent with me. Our dorm room.”
I watch her. To see what she’ll do now. She keeps kneading her neck, then sets her mug down on the curb. She ties her hair up. She bends and grabs her coffee. “I was drunk at the festival,” she says. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It was just a thing. Connor’s such a douche and when I spit on him…” She laughs. “Everything after—it was just—I’m done with guys for now. But that doesn’t mean I’m gay.”
And I think: Is that what we are? The sour-stinking nights crushed in dorm rooms and hallways with all the other coeds, five beers deep and spinning but always staggering off together. Right. Joking about other people, sharing our headphones and snacks, slouching into each other’s shoulder in front of the television. Then the rock climbs, the mountain treks. One of us leading on the sharp end with the rope dangling down behind. Up, up. Taking the long falls, right. Her coming out of the shower naked, us changing in our room with no hesitation all the times after. The way our bodies found their way to each other, again and again, that moment in the Creek when we dove into something hungry and basic. It’s not like I spend all my time thinking of Van’s body, our sex, the physical mechanics of us, okay? It’s how there’s a bright burst when I see her, how everything is all of a sudden coated in this anxious, hopeful warmth. We own each other. Gay? It’s just a word, a syllable, a checkbox. Whatever I am I don’t fit inside it.
“I’m not gay,” I say.
“Oh, Kaui.” Van smiles a sad smile. “It’s okay.”
“It’s okay yourself,” I say. “Jesus, you should see the shit I’ve done with boys. Don’t act like you know me better than I know me.”
“You’re probably right.” She reaches out for me, then stops. “Sorry,” she says. “I should have quit this all sooner. I don’t know. It felt good, because it was you, but it’s not—it’s not who I am.”
I go cold all over. I rub my arm and turn away from her just slightly. “Fuck,” I say. Just the one word.
“Kaui,” Van says. And I hear it all even though she doesn’t say it, right: Kaui, don’t do this. Kaui, you sound pathetic. Kaui, we don’t talk about love. You do that with someone else. You and me wreck the world, not the other way around. Kaui, get your shit together. I hear her say all that, but she doesn’t move her mouth.
“Listen,” she says. She has a look on her face I’ve never seen before. It’s sad, and—and—
Oh. Is it pity?
My guts are about to unkink completely. I’m afraid I’ll shit or puke or both. I have to get away. I turn to go. One step. Then another. Then another. Don’t run, I say to myself. Don’t run. But get away.
“Hey,” she calls out. “Come on, stop.”
But I don’t stop or speak or turn. I keep going. Past the mission arches with their tall, swooping shadows. Past the yawning glass façades. The quads and sand and stairways. Sometimes you know when a day is going to stay inside you for a long time. And I feel the morning chill that is way too cold for the season.