“I’m not exactly the best catch at school.” It sounds like I’m trying to fish for compliments, but Kendele could have snagged any other guy in school—and definitely one without my stellar reputation.
She shrugs. “I’m not sure why to be honest. But sometimes, I feel that you actually like and even encourage people to say odd things about you. Because it makes it easier for you to push people away. And in your own way, I think you’re a bit dangerous.”
“Me?” I ask, disbelieving. “Kendele, a jock just almost knocked me out with one punch.”
“I think you could have done worse to McNeil if you really wanted to, but you held back. You’re not the type of guy to show off, because you don’t care what other people think about you. I kinda like that.”
I stay silent, a little shaken that she’s figured me out so well. We pull up by her house, and she hops out.
“You know all this from being my lab partner?” I ask.
“And being tutored by you. Don’t forget that. Incidentally,” she adds, making her way to my side of the car, “you were supposed to ask me if I was right.”
“If you were right about what?”
“About you kissing as good as you look.” She bends to peck me on the lips. “Very dense,” she says, laughing, before skipping up her driveway and letting herself inside. I stare stupidly after her before remembering that I am not alone in the car. I clear my throat several times before I find my voice again.
“Okiku?” She stares at me with the strangest expression, looking almost perplexed. I pat the passenger seat and she complies, drifting over, and I drive back to the intersection.
I’m not entirely sure how to explain Kendele to her—I don’t even know how to explain Kendele to myself—but Okiku doesn’t express any interest, so I decide to let it pass for now. In fact, she’s the one who takes the initiative and starts talking after we stop at a red light.
“He is one of them.”
“What?” That throws me off for a bit. I figured she wanted to tackle the Kendele issue first.
“The boy with the brown hair. The boy with the dead eyes. He is one of them.”
“Wait. Being a serial rapist is one thing, but you can’t tell me that McNeil is planning to kill—”
“One of them.” She makes the statement the way a judge would pass a death sentence.
“Okiku, there’s no way McNeil has ever killed anyone. People would know. I would have seen him covered in those—”
“He has not. But he will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I know. He feels like the others.”
Sometimes Okiku’s ambiguity can be irritating. “Okiku, if he hasn’t killed anyone, you can’t just go and do whatever you want with him. There are rules.”
“Not my rules.”
“Look—I know he’s done some terrible things. But we agreed to go after the people the law can’t touch, remember? Believe me, I want McNeil to pay too. But we can’t do it your way. We have to go through the law first.”
“Not my rules.”
“I forbid you to do this, all right? You can’t—” I break off. Okiku is looking at me with real anger sparking out of her dark eyes, and the occupants of the car next to us are looking at me, puzzled at why I am conducting an impassioned argument with my car seat. “We’ll talk later,” I finally add as the light turns green.
We don’t talk later. Okiku is silent all the way home and disappears shortly after I enter the house. She’s never been angry at me before, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.
I can feel Okiku somewhere above me when I enter my room, invisible but—I suspect—sulking. I call out to her, but she doesn’t answer, and I sigh. I feel too exhausted to attempt reconciliation.
Maybe tomorrow when the world doesn’t feel like it’s steamrolling over my back, I decide, crawling into bed. When that frozen look on Okiku’s face, Kendele’s kisses, and that little girl crying out for her father finally stop preying on my mind.
***
The irony is that the rest of the weekend passes smoothly.
I go to the game with Dad. We stomp our feet, jump out of our chairs, and holler ’til our voices grow hoarse. Dad doesn’t notice anything amiss with me, and I’m glad. I’ve squirreled away secrets for years, too many for a father to forgive.
I spend the rest of Sunday puttering around the house, mostly in front of my laptop, doing all the homework I’ve been putting off and telling myself that I won’t have to cram like this again until college starts in the fall.
Okiku keeps her silence. I call out to her when Dad isn’t around to hear, trying to entice her to listen, but in the end, I’m left baffled by her stillness.
Sunday evening, I receive a call from Kendele. Not entirely sure if she is going to ask me out again, I answer, nervousness hiding underneath a thin veneer of bravado.
“If you’re planning on slumming it with me at the food truck, Kendele, I really think that you should—”