2008

"Eh, Kanani's sister. Howzit!"

I waved at the unknown guy before dragging my plastic lunch tray off the counter and making my way quickly out of the cafeteria. Sitting inside had only lasted about a week before I traded it for the windy outdoors instead.

Kaiser High School sat on a slight slope, so no matter where I sat, I could usually get a good view of something. And while there wasn't as much outdoor seating as I would have liked for there to be—I'd have one less bug bite on the back of my leg—there were plenty of grassy areas for me to sit in. Kaipo even played nice and ate lunch with me sometimes. Since eating inside the cafeteria more closely reflected being a bloody piece of raw steak tossed inside the lion's den, I appreciated him keeping me company as I designated myself as a reject in the outlands.

Kaipo was already sitting at a table near the parking lot with his face buried in his book when I walked over.

"Since when do you do work?" I asked as I slammed my tray onto the concrete table top.

He barely spared me a glance, too busy scrunching his face in studious contention. "Since when do you socialize with anyone other than your sisters?"

Touché. "Ouch."

A quick peek advised he was working on a paper for social studies. That explained the bite. We didn't have it during the same period, but we shared the same teacher who had an easy-going personality but harsh grading practices. Scoring poorly on even one assignment would prove detrimental to our final grade, and Kaipo needed to keep his up for his extracurriculars.

"Truce," I said after a second. I grabbed the juice carton and shook it before opening it and taking a sip. "Isn't that due next week? Why are you working on it now?"

Kaipo answered surprisingly quickly for someone who looked like he was seconds from tearing every single strand of hair out of his scalp.

"It's due on Monday for my class and we have a game and practice this weekend so I need to get it done early," he answered. I should have figured that since he had his sports duffel on the ground next to him.

I eyed the bag like it was a snake hissing at me. "Practice and a game? Disgusting. Why do you even do that shit?"

Kaipo discarded an amused scoff. "Says the girl who willingly stays late almost every other day for band practice."

"Band doesn't require me to risk getting a concussion or smelling like I've walked through a sewer." I made a show of picking at his shirt, one of many that wore a display of permanent grass stains and dirt marks. If it wasn't for the smell, I would have suggested he not even bother washing the damn thing every single day. Once a stain was removed, it was easily replaced the very next time he wore it.

He leaned toward me. "No, you just come play at our halftime shows."

"Oh, you little—"

Kanani found us a few seconds later when she surprised us with a visit. To say she looked disappointed watching us arm wrestle to mess up the other's hair more would have been an understatement. Regardless, she lowered her tray down next to us and quickly began shoveling somen noodles into her mouth.

"Is that what you guys do every lunch?"

Once Kaipo wrangled himself free of my grip, he turned to her with a pained expression. (I had won.)

"It's cute you think I can be around her that much."

If I wasn't so hungry, I might have flicked him again.

My sister laughed and for a second, catching a hazy vision of her through the rays of sunlight that peeked through the trees above us like a mirage after searching for water in the desert, I almost forgot that I was mad at her.

It was the only reason she ever purposely sought me out during lunch. For someone like her, it was a prime socializing hour, and wasting it to talk to her little sister was bad optics. When I had ditched eating in the cafeteria for outside instead, I couldn't pretend like she wasn't one of the reasons.

I didn't like being reminded that I was the runner-up in our family. I also didn't like that whenever she deemed me worthy enough to talk to during lunch, it was followed up by a laugh whose hidden meaning I couldn't decipher. Worse, it was often echoed by the nameless hyenas that always surrounded her.

There was a good chance none of them were laughing at me. Kanani was the kind of person that made everyone within a six-foot radius of her laugh. Whatever she'd said, mixed with whatever poorly timed glance in my direction, likely contributed to the whole thing looking worse than it was. But that didn't mean my insides didn't shrivel up every time it happened. I wasn't sure if Kanani ever realized.

"Whatever." Kanani tossed her napkin onto her lunch tray after wiping it across her mouth. "You two will probably end up getting married when you're thirty-eight and spend the rest of your lives traveling the world."

"Did you forget your keys at home or something?" I asked.

Kanani didn't look at me as she replied. "No. Just wanted to eat lunch outside."

"Maybe you forgot the car keys then."

Sensing where this was going, Kaipo tensed up. He had heard all about the lame incident last week that irritated me so much I still hadn't had a normal conversation with my sister since. Or, more accurately, he had read all of the

She sighed and pushed her tray forward in preparation for the argument that was about to ensue, assuming I wasn't petty enough to just get up and walk away. I wasn't above eating lunch in the bathroom if I had to, or behind H Building since my pottery class was next. I had already done it more times so far this year than I cared to count.

"Are we really still doing this?"

When I asked my mom about it that night—she had heard me slam my door in Kanani's face and eventually followed me out to the beach when I snuck out around nine thirty—she wouldn't tell me if she thought I was overreacting even though I knew I was. She had just said I should do something that made me smile before I went to sleep because going to sleep angry wasn't good for the soul.

I wished I was better at taking my mother's advice.

"You literally left me here last week because of a fucking guy and you expect me to just have lunch with you?" I whipped at her, words sharpened after going to sleep the last few nights angry. Maybe forgetting to pick me up from band practice wouldn't have been as big of a deal if I hadn't been forced to walk almost an hour home because the bus into Waimanalo had stopped so the closest I could get was Kalama Valley, all of which happened after the sun had gone down.

"I thought Dad was supposed to pick you up!" She threw her hands in the air. "How many times do I have to say that, God."

"You're so full of it. You just don't like having to drive me around even though Dad told you the only way you'd get his old car was if you did it."

Kaipo cleared his throat. Kanani glared at him and he stopped fidgeting.

"Please, get over yourself," she finally responded. "You're not the only one with a life. And it's not my responsibility to pick up after you just because Dad doesn't know how to coordinate with me."

Deciding I didn't want to bother with her anymore, I crumpled my napkin and trash from the food I had barely touched, moving to grab my bag from where I had placed it near my feet. "Nobody would ever mistake you for not having a life. You make that very clear every day."

...

"Are you okay?"

My head whipped up at the sound of my teacher Mrs. Westcott coming up behind me. I hadn't even realized she was here, assuming she was eating lunch in her husband's classroom across the other side of the campus. She had a bad habit of leaving her classroom open so I had snuck in after leaving Kaipo to fend for himself with my sister.

I did my best version of a smile. "Yeah, I just wanted to sit somewhere quiet so I could finish my paper for English."

"Is that why you've been staring at the same page for the past fifteen minutes?" She laughed and turned away, stepping back toward her desk.

My cheeks flushed a coral hue upon realizing how long she had been there without me knowing. While Mrs. Westcott was one of my better teachers and I tried not to worry too much about what other people thought of me, I still hated being caught. It was easier to deal with being alone when I was invisible. I was used to that feeling; slipping away from reality until I seemingly existed on a plane all on my own.

Embarrassed, I slowly closed the tattered book, running my finger along the ripped pages with doodles from past students. Shared textbooks were like a time capsule passed along each year. "I didn't realize."

"It's okay. Your mind is somewhere else." Mrs. Westcott lowered onto her desk chair. It was big, brown, and made of leather with worn spots from where she had sat repeatedly over the years. The armrests were shiny from where the oils from her hands had smoothed it away. "Anything I can help you with?"

Although we had a good fifteen minutes until the end of the lunch period and no other students had walked by so I could safely assume nobody would intrude any time soon, I also debated just not telling her anything, even if I had been caught. In my experience, while I understood bottling things up just about damn near served no one, I was also childishly naive enough to believe I could be the exception to the rule if I believed in it hard enough.

In the end, after spending a few seconds filtering through the different options, including but not limited to running out of the classroom I would need to return to in fifteen minutes with my tail tucked between my legs, I decided to take my chances. I had already dumped my lunch out of spite when avoiding Kanani. I didn't need to give up my favorite seat either.

Sensing the incoming admission, Mrs. Westcott lowered her pen back onto the desk and took a calculated sip of coffee instead.

"I probably shouldn't even be making a big deal about this but—"

"You don't need to dismiss yourself already," she interrupted. "Just tell me what's on your mind."

I swallowed. "My sister forgot to pick me up from band practice last week when we got out really late 'cause we were practicing for a show at Kahala Mall, and her excuse was that she had to go help a friend with something so she was busy but that our dad didn't even tell her she needed to pick me up even though she definitely knew."

My teacher hummed thoughtfully like I imagined a fake TV therapist would. I, the main character in this scenario, would be required to reply something along the lines of can you say something other than hmm and she would just comically repeat herself.

Maybe that would have been better. People in TV shows always seemed to work things out by the end of the hour.

"And you're still mad at her?"

"Yes."

"Did she apologize?"

I shrugged. "At first. But since I didn't accept it, she's back to giving me an attitude."

Mrs. Westcott hummed again. On second thought, maybe I didn't want to have the TV version of a therapist. The sound of her humming just made me want to crawl out of my skin, second-guessing every word I said.

"Is there something else you would like her to do to make up for it?"

I was taken aback by the question I hadn't considered before.

After a few beats, she accepted my silence as an absence of an answer. "Or is there some other thing that's bugging you and that's why you're still upset about this? Not that you shouldn't be. I don't have all the context, so I won't say how you're responding is right or wrong. And however you're feeling is valid. I'm just curious."

Some of my bad habits included biting my lips until they bled or ripping my nails so they never extended past the end of my finger. I read once that a certain disorder could be the reason for it, and then read about a different disorder the next day, and then another. Reading about all of it never made me feel any better about these habits, but I continued doing them anyway. They always seemed to flare up whenever I was in a stressful situation, or when I felt like I had lost the reins of my own life, which in itself felt incredibly silly considering how young and lacking in responsibilities I was.

I picked at the nail of my right thumb.

Kanani always told me she wished I would let my nails grow out so she could practice nail art on me. She wanted to go to cosmetology school one day.

Maybe it wasn't just forgetting to pick me up. Maybe it was a lot of pent-up frustration over something neither of us dared to discuss.

"Think about it," Mrs. Westcott said before I could respond. "You can talk to me about it after."