Thankfully by the time we actually reach Hawaii, Afton and I are both in better moods. It’s hard to maintain a foul mood in Hawaii. It’s too beautiful to sulk.
“This hotel is ah-mazing!” I exclaim as we drag our suitcases through the door of our suite. The room has all the major amenities: big-screen TV, mini refrigerator, bar. Tropical but tasteful decor. Fluffy white comforters on the queen beds, which sport high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Granite countertops in the spacious bathroom. A walk-in closet. A Keurig. A large mahogany desk. It’s definitely a contender for one of the best rooms we’ve ever stayed in, and we’ve stayed in some epic hotels.
But what makes it ah-mazing is the view.
The far wall is one big window—well, a sliding glass door that opens to the balcony and one big window. Palm trees frame the glass, their silhouettes dark against the bright sky. The water shimmers blue and silver in the distance against the rich green of the hotel lawn.
Right away I go out on the balcony. Our room is on the sixth floor, and far below me there’s a long stretch of close manicured grass and a twisting stream (part of a golf course?), then a paved path that leads to the beach and a gentle hill topped by two benches and a large statue of Buddha that gleams white in the afternoon sun.
My fingers itch for the brand-new set of watercolors I brought along.
“We should go rub his belly.” Afton steps up beside me. She tilts her head back and breathes deeply, taking in the fragrant sea air.
It’s all going to be okay now, I think. The trip will be what we both need. I’ll get some distance between me and Leo, spend some time in the sun, paint a bunch of landscapes, relax, eat, drink, and be merry, and yesterday’s humiliation will fade away like it never happened. Afton will forgive me for the offensive thing that I didn’t actually say, and we’ll go back to normal.
“I don’t see any cute boys I want to have sex with,” I say with an exaggerated sigh.
Afton’s perfect forehead creases in the middle. I hold my breath, waiting to see if she’ll take my comment for what it is: a tentative peace offering.
“Well, we only just got here,” she says after a minute. “There’s still time.”
Of course she doesn’t mean it. I certainly don’t mean it. But we act like we do.
Satisfied that I’m making progress with her, I go back inside. The connecting door to Mom’s room has been flung open, and Abby is jumping between Afton’s bed and mine.
“This . . . is . . . nice,” Abby gasps.
I nod. “You’re right, bug. This is nice.”
“Dinner’s in an hour,” comes our mother’s voice from the other room. “We need to get cleaned up and head right over.”
I go to the door of Mom’s room and watch her unpack. She’s spent the entire day in grimy airports and on bumpy airplanes and in a less-than-stellar taxi, but she manages to look completely put together, the top half of her bobbed blond hair pulled back in a tortoiseshell barrette, her sweater set and khaki pants still crisp and unwrinkled. She carefully hangs up a row of her expensive, tasteful blouses in the closet, two pairs of pressed black slacks, a little black cocktail dress, and a black formal gown for the awards night at the end of the week. There’s a lot of black in my mother’s wardrobe, because it matches everything so she doesn’t have to give it too much thought.
“Do we have to have dinner with the entire group?” Afton protests from behind me. “This is supposed to be a vacation.”
“We always have dinner with the entire group the first night.” Mom crosses back to her suitcase and withdraws a silk robe I’ve never seen before. It’s white with a red-and-black cherry blossom pattern on it.
“That’s pretty,” I say.
“What’s pretty?” Afton comes around me and over to inspect the robe. She strokes the fabric down one of the arms. “Ooh, shiny.”
“Thanks,” Mom says stiffly, and hangs the robe up with her dresses and shirts. She has never been good at taking a compliment, even about her clothes. “Ruthie found it at Nordstrom’s last week.”
“We could get room service,” says Afton.
I don’t even know why she’s trying to get out of dinner. It’s like she doesn’t know Mom at all.
“No,” Mom says flatly.
See.
“You could say I wasn’t feeling well,” Afton suggests.
“We always have dinner all together the first night,” Mom says again.
“Will there be ice cream?” Abby inquires.
“I bet there will be pineapple,” I say. Pineapple is Abby’s self-proclaimed favorite fruit. “And there might be—I don’t know—some cute boys for us to assess at dinner,” I direct at Afton.
“Cute boys?” Mom frowns at us. “But don’t you both have boyfriends?”
I stopped trying to keep Mom up to date on the current happenings of my life a long time ago. I don’t enlighten her this time, either. I’m not in the mood for a speech about how heartbreak is a natural part of life, or about what a strong and capable woman I am, and how I don’t need another person—a boy, especially—to be my awesome self. Mom is great at those kinds of speeches, and it all sounds wonderful and encouraging if you feel like you really are those things, strong, capable, independent, but otherwise it feels like you’re even more destined to fail.
The corner of Afton’s mouth turns up in the ghost of a smile. “Okay, fine, if there will be cute boys there,” she says, like I’m doing her a favor. “I’ll get dressed.”
The Hilton Waikoloa Village is so large they have a tram for the guests to ride from one part to the others, and a little boat, too, that you can get around in. Our family is staying in the Ocean Tower at the far side. We take the tram to where dinner is supposed to be—the “Grand Staircase,” an outdoor space at the bottom of some impressive marble stairs. The room is like a giant garden trellis that sticks out into the lagoon, a waterfall cascading in the background and soft, indistinguishable ukulele music floating through the air. The sun is going down when we arrive, a flare of orange against the distant indigo ocean.
I take a quick photo on my phone to re-create later in watercolor.
“Oh my dog,” breathes Abby—her curse of choice. She gazes in wonder at the row of buffet tables off to one side. “Look! There’s pineapple and ice cream.”
“Hello! Good to see you!” Mom starts calling out to her colleagues before we are even halfway down the stairs. “How have you been?”
I brace myself for awkwardness. I’ve grown up seeing these people every year—the same faces, the same voices, the same air kisses and hugs. Mostly the group is composed of older couples who’ve been coming to the conference since forever, their children already grown. At forty-six, Mom is one of the younger members of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. This means that Afton and I have been cooed over and had our cheeks pinched a lot over the past—I do some quick math—eleven STS conferences. You just kind of have to grin and bear it.
“Oh my goodness!” a lady exclaims as Mom ushers us down the rest of the stairs. “Are these your girls?”
“I mean, who else would we be?” Afton mutters under her breath.
Mom gives her a look that’s a warning shot. Afton and I both step forward, pushing Abby out in front of us like a sacrificial offering. “Hello,” we say in unison. “Good to see you!”
The next half hour is pretty much this process over and over ad nauseum, until everyone separates into their smaller circles—those colleagues they hang out with every year. Mom’s inner circle is made up of the following:
Jerry Jacobi, who is supposedly a brilliant doctor, but inevitably drinks too much at these events and starts talking too loudly, and then his wife, Penny, starts giggling nervously and making excuses for him, and then their daughter, Kate (a divorcée in her late thirties) starts rolling her eyes like she wishes she were far, far away from her mortifying parents.
Max Ahmed, the chief of surgery from somewhere on the East Coast, accompanied by his wife, Amala, and their eleven-year-old granddaughter, Siri, who never stops talking about her YouTube channel.
Marjorie Pearson, an eighty-nine-year-old badass single lady who was one of the first black women ever to study heart surgery at Princeton. I kind of want to be her, minus the cutting-people-open part. She retired years ago, so she doesn’t really participate in the conference-y part of the conference so much as she comes to hang out with old friends and go on all the excursions.
And finally there’s Billy Wong, his wife, Jenny, and their kids: nine-year-old Peter and six-year-old Josie. We know Billy and his family well because we see them all year round; Billy practices cardiology at Stanford with my mom. He and Mom did their residencies at UC Davis at the same time. Mom calls Billy her “work husband,” and she technically spends more time with Billy than she does with Pop. Or us.
I like Billy. He’s upbeat and funny and nice. He’s one of the good ones, Mom says.
We spend about a half hour chatting and catching up with Mom’s circle. Everyone expresses surprise and dismay that Pop isn’t here. Mom explains why Pop had to stay behind so smoothly, and with real regret in her voice, too, that it makes me feel instantly better about the Pop situation. Mom’s not a liar, or any kind of amazing actress.
Maybe things at home are fine.
Afton and I could simply be paranoid.
Finally Dr. Asaju (the surgeon in charge of the conference) calls everyone to order, and we take our seats.
“I’d like to welcome the members of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons to our thirty-sixth annual conference,” Dr. Asaju begins. “I hope this week will be informative, restful, and most of all, inspiring. I look forward to seeing you all bright and early tomorrow morning at the conference center directly behind us. Please pick up your name badges, your schedules, and your tote bags first thing. There will be pastries and coffee available in every room for the morning session. Lunches will be provided in one of the ballrooms, but you’re on your own for dinner until awards night at the end of the week.”
Afton heaves a sigh, and I have to agree. Awards night is the worst. We all have to dress in formalwear and sit through like a dozen awards for things we don’t know anything about. It’s the most grueling part of the trip, every time.
Dr. Asaju presses his hands together in a prayer-like gesture. “Now I’ll stop talking, because I know you’ve all traveled a long way today and want to get settled in. Enjoy the conference,” he concludes. “Let’s eat!”
“Yay!” cheers Abby, and I’m right there with her. I haven’t eaten since the plane.
We beeline for the buffet. There’s so much food I don’t know where to start: Three different salads, pasta, rice, and potatoes. Beef. Chicken. Fish. Hawaiian-style pork. Piles of dinner rolls and giant bowls of fruit salad. And the dessert table stacked high with cheesecakes and pineapple upside-down cakes and a Hawaiian type of coconut pudding and cookies and brownies and parfait.
“You’d think none of these doctors ever heard of a heart attack before,” Afton says as we make our way through the line.
“Right?” But we’re both secretly thrilled. Mom and Pop have always been woefully inadequate parents when it comes to dessert.
We load our plates and eat like we’re starving, go back again for multiple desserts, and then sit making small talk with our bellies way too full.
“Hey, where’s Michael?” Afton asks out of the blue.
I’d almost forgotten about Michael—Billy and Jenny’s oldest child. Michael is in college. He’s also a carbon copy of Billy the way Afton is a replica of Mom—tall and slim, with the same dark hair and friendly smile as Billy. Afton had a crush on Michael off and on over the years, but a crush from afar, of course, because he’s so much older than she is.
Billy smiles regretfully. “I don’t think Michael’s going to make it this year. I booked him a ticket, but he just graduated, and he’s got his hands full with a summer internship.” He glances around the table like, These kids today, right?
“I always thought he was a bright young man. What now?” Marjorie asks.
Billy’s face breaks into a proud smile. “Med school.”
The whole table practically ejaculates at this utterly foreseeable news. “Following in Papa’s footsteps, eh?” beams Max.
“Not entirely.” Mom is the one talking now, waving around her forkful of cheesecake. “Michael wants to be a family practitioner.”
“Oh dear.” That’s obviously the incorrect career path for Michael.
They all discuss better possibilities for a while: if not surgery, because of course not everyone is born to cut, then something specialized, oncology or podiatry or prosthodontics. I tune out until the topic suddenly shifts to how Afton has recently graduated, too, from high school.
“With honors,” Mom adds. “Top of her class.”
“Congratulations,” says Max. “Where do you intend to go to university?”
Afton glances up from where she’s been texting someone under the table. Probably Logan again. “I’ve been accepted to Stanford,” she answers demurely. We’re lucky that way. Because Mom teaches as well as practices medicine at Stanford Hospital, getting into Stanford is kind of a given.
“Ah, so your mother will be able to keep her eye on you,” says Marjorie.
I try not to smile at the idea of Mom ever keeping her eye on Afton.
“Do you also want to get into medicine?” asks Marjorie.
Afton frowns, still texting. “No, I’m thinking pre-law.”
“And how about you?” Marjorie turns her attention to me.
“Oh.” I hate this question. I like a lot of things, and it’s so much pressure to try to choose just one. “I want to be an artist?” I say finally. “I mean, I am an artist. I work in charcoal, mostly, but I also sculpt and do watercolors and some oils and . . . So in college I think I want to study art, obviously, and maybe history, which is my other great love, so maybe that will turn into some kind of academic form of employment . . . but I also love reading, so maybe literature? I’m also thinking about getting into writing comics.”
“She’s only sixteen,” Mom interjects. “She has a few years to pick a respectable profession.”
By which she means a job that could make me some decent money. Like not-art, or anything creative or fanciful or that I actually care about.
“I want to be a diplomat,” chimes in Abby, and the whole table melts at her utter precociousness, and then the spotlight is blessedly off me.
I scoot my chair closer to Afton, who puts her phone away with a sigh. She looks bored. “See any cute guys?” I ask quietly as the conversation at the table moves on to medical topics again.
She drops her chin into her hand. “No. I’m sorry Michael’s not here.”
I’m not sorry. The last thing I need is Afton suggesting that I sleep with a much older college boy who happens to be the son of my mom’s closest colleague. Not that such a thing would even be possible. Michael Wong’s way out of my league.
But then, I think, so was Leo. Maybe that was the real problem all along.
“I thought you didn’t approve of college boys,” I remind Afton.
She tugs her hand through her long waterfall of pale hair and settles it over one shoulder, her expression neutral. “He just graduated, so he’s not a college boy anymore. And have you ever taken a good look at Michael Wong’s ass?”
“Uh, no, can’t say that I have.” It feels wrong, reducing a person to the state of their backside.
“It’s perfection. Too bad for you, Ada. Michael would be the perfect rebound.”
“Uh-huh.” She’s definitely still messing with me. But I’m determined to go along with it. “Yes, it’s terrible that he couldn’t make it this year,” I say fake-mournfully. “He might have been just what the doctor prescribed.”
We peruse the other tables. There are, quite simply, no eligible males our own age.
I sigh. “This is pathetic. You’d think there’d be a hot guy on the waitstaff, but no.”
“Poor, poor Ada,” Afton says, patting my shoulder. Then she spots a familiar face a few tables back. “Oh, wait. Look, there’s Nick Kelly. But isn’t he, like, twelve?”
“He’s the same age as me—well, a little younger,” I correct her. “He always has his birthday at the conference, remember? He’ll be sixteen this week.”
She smirks. “Do you remember when Nick got lost in Rio?”
“Yeah.” I was ten that year, and Nick going missing in the middle of this enormous city in a country where none of us spoke the language and the adults all losing their shit over it had been a welcome piece of drama in my life at the time.
“Where is he?” I look around.
“Two tables over, one down,” Afton directs, staring at him over my shoulder. Then she seems to come to some kind of decision. “No,” she concludes. “He’s not fuckable.”
“Hey, that’s not nice,” I protest, although I’m not surprised by this verdict. When Nick was thirteen, he smelled funny and was so thin I worried that he was starving to death—“a beanpole” is how Marjorie Pearson labeled him, as in “Where’s the beanpole? Better keep an eye on that kid”—but Nick’s not so bad. “When did you become a mean girl?” I ask Afton.
She actually looks mildly ashamed now that I’ve called her out. “You’re right. I guess we shouldn’t judge the book by its cover.”
I sneak a peek at Nick Kelly. He’s staring at his phone below the table, probably playing a game, though, instead of texting. Nick and I are the same age, but ironically I don’t know him as well as I know Jerry or Marjorie or any of the other grown-ups. I consider myself a shy person, an introvert, but Nick is worse—or maybe not shy so much as too preoccupied by his own thing to bother getting to know anyone else. No matter where we go in the world, Paris or New Orleans or Shanghai, Nick mostly stays in the hotel room playing video games.
He looks like it, too. Look up the word gamer in the dictionary, and there will be a rough approximation of Nicholas Kelly. His skin is pale, like he’s never been touched by the rays of the sun. He’s filled out a little since the beanpole days, but he’s still too thin—too thin can be a thing with boys. Undernourished is the word I’d use. His Adam’s apple sticks out like it’s trying to poke through the skin of his neck. We’re supposed to be dressed up for this dinner, but he’s wearing khaki shorts and a faded old T-shirt that has something Fortnite on it. His red-brown hair is uncombed and so long it almost covers his eyes. His shoulders have a weird hunch.
Afton’s right. I can’t imagine sex with Nick.
For all of two seconds I get a flash of Leo on the virtual movie screen in the back of my brain. His red face hovering over mine. “I love you,” he whispers.
“Fuck you,” I whisper back. I’ve never been big into swearing before the past twenty-four hours happened. At least not out-loud swearing. But now it’s like that word won’t leave my brain.
“Looks like you’ll have to spend this vacation in celibate self-reflection, after all,” says Afton sympathetically.
“Yeah, I’m very disappointed.” I try to shove thoughts of Leo away. It’s hard to stop thinking about someone when you’ve done nothing but think about them for the longest time. “I’ve heard rebound sex is awesome. Wait, have you ever had rebound sex?”
“Well, no,” she admits. “Not yet.”
“So how would you know?”
“What are you talking about?” asks Abby then, loudly.
“Yes, what are you two scheming over there?” asks Mom, her mouth pinched up. She must have heard me say an inappropriate word or two. She disapproves, of course, but she doesn’t like to parent us in public—Mom relishes the idea that her children are well-behaved without being threatened or bribed. I think she’s proud that we’re so self-governing. Even if she had very little to do with it.
“Nothing,” Afton says swiftly.
“Yeah, it’s nothing,” I concur.