Well. We never exactly talked, did we?
didn’t think you were the talking type
I didn’t think you were, either.
Makani paused. Her grandmother cleared her throat—a little too loudly—in the next room. Makani texted: so . . . you want to talk
I want to talk if you want to talk.
She should be annoyed, but she wasn’t. Not in the least.
“Makani,” her grandmother warned.
“I’ll be right there. Almost done.”
“You aren’t even talking!”
“We’re texting.”
“That’s not talking. You need to talk to your mama.”
Makani grinned as she sent another message: texting isn’t talking
Her phone rang, and she jumped. “Shit!”
“MAKANI YOUNG.”
Makani winced as she answered. “This isn’t a good time. I’ll call you later, okay?” She hung up before Ollie could respond and slunk back to her dining room chair.
Grandma Young tracked every movement. “That wasn’t your mother.”
Makani shoveled an entire dry meatball into her mouth. Like a child.
“Give me your phone.”
Makani stiffened in alarm. “Why?” she asked, muffled through the ground turkey.
“You heard me. I want to see who you were texting.”
“Fine, it was Alex.” She swallowed. “I was texting Alex.”
Her grandmother held out her hand, palm up.
“Fine! It was a guy, okay? Are you happy now?”
Her grandmother paused, considering her options. “What’s his name?”
“Grandma—”
“Don’t Grandma me. What’s his name?”
“Ollie. Oliver Larsson.” Makani already knew to add his last name. People in this town always wanted a last name.
Her grandmother frowned. “Larsson. Isn’t he that young cop?”
“That’s his brother, Chris. Ollie is in my grade.”
Grandma Young considered this, and Makani prayed that she’d never heard the rumors about Ollie. Prayed that being the brother of a cop was a good thing in this town. At last, her grandmother relaxed. The slightest bit. “He was my student, Chris. A nice young man. It’s such a shame what happened to their parents.”
Makani also relaxed. The slightest bit.
“If you want to continue seeing Oliver, I’ll have to meet him.”
“Grandma. We were only texting.”
“And then your phone rang.” She pointed her salad fork at Makani, a statement and an accusation. “That boy is after you.”
Makani sent the text after her grandmother had gone to bed: is now a good time?
Curiosity fed her anxiety. The prospect of talking to Ollie was the first exciting thing that had happened to her since, well, fooling around with Ollie. She stared at her phone as she paced the carpeted floor, willing it to make a noise. Who didn’t keep their phone beside them at all times? But it stayed silent on her dresser.
The dresser and the rest of the furnishings had once belonged to her mother. Makani had moved into her mother’s childhood bedroom. The matching set of bulky oaken furniture was an unappealing shade of golden orange. The bed was too tall, its bedposts too severe. They spiraled toward the ceiling like sharpened tusks. The dresser was heavy and long, and the mirror was equally large and repulsive. But the desk. The desk was a behemoth. It made Makani’s laptop look avant-garde, as if the wood had been joined together so long ago that it had never before known a personal computer.
It was the opposite of how her mother lived now. Despite the laid-back beach environment, her house was streamlined and stainless steel. Makani had always felt that her mother’s tastes left something warm to be desired, something comforting, but this wasn’t any better. It was completely void of personality.
Her grandparents must have selected the furniture, and in the years since her mother had left, they’d removed any pictures or posters that might have provided insight into her mother’s teenage years. In their place were framed elementary-and middle school–aged photographs of Makani and bland paintings of prairie lands. The solitary lingering trace of her mother was an old carving inside the desk’s top drawer: SOS.
It wasn’t often that Makani understood her mother, but she certainly understood the quiet desperation behind this lone act of vandalism.
Since moving in, Makani had taken down the photos of herself—hideous—and shoved them under the bed. Only a few items from her former life were on display. She kept a pretty bowl of coral pieces and cowrie shells on the desk, her stuffed bear and stuffed whale on the bed, and her jewelry on the dresser, neatly hung on a stand that looked like a tree. But mainly she kept things in drawers. Hidden away.
Makani checked her phone again, in case she’d temporarily lost her hearing. Still nothing. It was getting late.
A sudden rustling outside disturbed the quiet night.
She moved to her window and peered down into the shadows. The next-door neighbor’s sleek tomcat—not the neighbor who’d lost the tip of his nose, the one on the other side—often hunted in their yard. Makani had never been allowed to have a cat or a dog. Someday, when she had her own place, she’d have both.
More rustling. Makani squinted through the darkness.
The sound was coming from the overgrown viburnum below her window. She craned her neck, trying to see the bush, trying to see through it. A burst of furious, quick agitation startled her. And then . . . silence. The cat must have found a vole.
Makani pressed her face against the glass, cupping her eyes with her hands like binoculars, shielding them from her bedroom light. She waited for the cat to trot across the lawn with its prize, but the lawn, illuminated by a triangle of orange streetlight, remained empty. It held nothing more interesting than falling leaves.
She returned to her phone. Nothing had changed there, either.
Makani glanced back at the window. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt an unsettling tingle of exposure. She crept toward the glass and peeked out from the side.
The neighborhood was still deserted.
Hello, paranoia, my old friend.
She closed the curtains, grabbed her phone, and carried it to bed, where she laid it beside her on the ivory-colored eyelet comforter, another relic from her grandparents. She tried to study for a Spanish test, but she was distracted. Why did Ollie think that she’d be ashamed to be seen with him? Because of those rumors? If that were the case, then he probably didn’t know about her own transgressions, otherwise he would have known that she wasn’t in a position to point fingers.
Maybe they stood a chance. Maybe they’d even have a real date. After all, he’d been desperate enough to hunt down her phone number.