The Popsicle hit the asphalt behind them in a frozen, quiet thump.
They made out there, in the alleyway, every Wednesday for the next three weeks. The fourth week, it rained. They moved into the backseat of her grandmother’s car. This additional barrier of privacy led to the next natural stage.
“Hands,” she explained later to her friends. “Not mouths.”
“Could you make it sound any more disgusting?” Darby said.
“But it’s an important distinction,” Alex said. “They got each other off, but their clothes were still on. And their heads were still above sea level.”
Makani made a face. “Never mind. I’m not even sure why I told you.”
On the fifth Wednesday—the last before school began—the sky was clear, but Ollie slid into her car anyway, and she drove them someplace private.
It was a cornfield, of course.
They had sex, of course.
“Are you guys ever gonna go out? You know, for real?” Darby asked her that night. “Or is this just going . . . to end?”
It ended the next week. Before the first bell on the first day of school, their eyes locked across campus. Ollie’s expression was unreadable. That purposeful, standoffish blankness. The truth hit Makani like an ugly slap. No, they had never discussed going out. She didn’t even have his number. This summer had been a secret thing, a dateless thing, which meant that one of them—or both of them—was ashamed of it.
Makani wasn’t ashamed. Confused, yes. But not ashamed.
So, it was Ollie, then.
Makani narrowed her eyes. Ollie narrowed his. Did he know? Had he somehow found out about that night on the beach? Now he’d act as if they’d never known each other. Shame returned to Makani full force.
So did humiliation. And rage. She refused to look at him anymore, and she never returned to Greeley’s. She pleaded for her grandmother to resume grocery duty, claiming that school took up too much of her time. It didn’t. Makani had been judged and put back in her place, but she was still bored as hell.
As she pointlessly rechecked her phone, battling two measly bars of pitifully weak service, Makani wondered if boredom had also contributed to her reapproaching Ollie at lunch. Had she really sunk that low?
Probably. Shit.
“Oh, shoot,” Grandma Young said. A spinning circle blocked the television screen, and Olivia Pope had stopped talking mid-sentence. “I called the cable company just last week, but they said we’re already getting their highest-speed package.”
Makani pictured her beachside bungalow in Hawaii, where the internet only went out in the worst tropical storms. Where her phone always had full bars. Why couldn’t landlocked Osborne figure this out? Why was everything so damned difficult here?
They turned off Netflix, and Makani grabbed her shoes and trudged upstairs to do homework. When she returned downstairs at five, Creston Howard said nothing new in a way that reassured Grandma Young but made Makani want to punch him in the jaw. It was all very unsurprising. They’d both already seen the footage online: the Whitehalls’ crime-scene taped farmhouse, Haley’s father stumbling, head down, into the police station for questioning, and Haley herself, flying around the stage last year as Peter Pan.
“Tonight, Osborne grieves for Haley Madison Whitehall,” Creston said, ending the segment with a solemn head tilt. “It’s a sad day for a sad community.”
Grandma Young nodded as Makani’s nose wrinkled with distaste. Neither her grandmother nor Creston seemed to realize that he’d insulted the entire town. At least he wasn’t wrong. Sad did describe it.
But then she felt bad again, because a girl was dead, and it really was sad.
CHAPTER FOUR
Makani’s mind churned with restlessness as she helped her grandmother cook dinner. It was one of her daily chores. When Makani moved in, Grandma Young had posted a list of daily and weekly chores on the refrigerator under a magnet that read: YOU CAN’T SCARE ME. I TEACH HIGH SCHOOL. She claimed Makani needed structure. This was true, even Makani knew it was true, but it still sucked. Sometimes she felt like a child. Sometimes she felt like a caregiver. She didn’t want to be either of those things.
Tonight, they prepared a heart-healthy meal of baked turkey meatballs and a simple salad with vinaigrette. It was beyond depressing. Makani lusted for flavor and fat. Lime-topped papaya. Kalbi ribs. Poi with lomi salmon. If she could, she’d spend her every cent on a plate lunch—steamed rice, mac salad, and an entrée. Chicken katsu. Teri beef. Kalua pig. Her mouth watered, and her soul ached.
Sometimes dinner was the hardest.
They’d only just sat down at the table when her phone dinged. Grandma Young aimed a lethal sigh at the heavens. Makani yanked the phone from her pocket to silence its ringer, and a text from an unknown number lit the screen: I could say the same thing about you. Her chest cavity froze into spiny shards of ice.
A second text appeared: What did you mean when you said that?
“How many times do I have to tell you? No phones at the dinner table.”
Makani’s head shot up. “Sorry,” she said automatically.
But her grandmother was taken aback by her expression. “Who was that?”
“Mom,” Makani lied.
Grandma Young examined the bait. She would have never okayed a dinnertime chat with Makani’s father, whom she’d never particularly liked, but she remained hopeful that her daughter would make amends with her granddaughter. “Do you need to call her now or can it wait?”
“I’ll be right back, sorry.” Makani stumbled from the dining room into the kitchen, where her grandmother couldn’t see her, and reread the texts. Her heart floundered, trapped in the narrow space between fear and hope. She couldn’t imagine this was him, but . . . it couldn’t be anyone else. Could it?
who’s asking?
The reply was instantaneous: Ollie.
Her heartbeat exploded into a race. She stared at the screen, waiting for him to say more. Finally, she texted: don’t remember giving you my number
Another quick reply: Tell me what you meant.
It figured that Ollie was the sort of exasperating person who would text in complete sentences and ignore her question.
what do you THINK I meant??
I think you feel slighted, which means there’s been a misunderstanding.
Slighted. Seriously, nobody normal talked like this. But he had her attention. Makani texted back a single question mark. She watched the three dots appear and disappear on her phone as Ollie typed, paused, and then resumed typing.
The text arrived: I thought you were ashamed of me. And I’m guessing you thought that I was ashamed of you.
Makani’s eyebrows shot to her forehead. Directness like this was rare. Admirable, even. The eternal question reemerged from the gloaming. Does he know what I did? It was impossible to tell without more information, but a disconcerting inkling crawled through her gut, prodding her forward. Maybe he knew. But maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe, out of the two of them, she was the one who had cast judgment.
Makani replied: why did you think that?