Common’s “Drivin’ Me Wild.” I have heard it. But I don’t tell her that and I let the snare snap and Lily’s high and slippery voice run against Common’s verses. I start nodding to it, lean over sideways in my chair so I’m in Van’s atmosphere, right? I close my eyes; I don’t need them. There’s her smell and the headphones hugging the music to my head. That’s it. When it’s over, I say, “Good song.”
“I have the whole album,” she says. “You remember the one before?”
“I do.”
We go back to our classwork, scribbling pens and tapping keys and the flap of textbook pages. Neither of us put our headphones back up. When I’m done I stand and go to the mini-fridge under my lofted bed. Get the milk I stole from the cafeteria and pour it out over the last of my cheap bulk cereal and sit, cross-legged, in the middle of the carpet.
I’m crunching the first bites of cereal when Van leaves her desk and joins me on the ground. She nods her head to the bowl. I pass it over. She takes a bite and then passes it back, our fingers glancing when we exchange the bowl. I scoop again and crunch and swallow and pass the bowl back. She cups it in both hands, has another bite, passes it back. The spoon rattles in the ceramic. I scoop again and when I bring the spoon to my lips I can still taste her there. Her warmth. Her flavor. I swallow it all down, the milk and the cereal and her. It feels like we’re praying.
“Okay?” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
I’d never felt Noa’s death, really. Not the way I thought I was supposed to, heavy and dramatic. Until right now. It comes down on me like a wave jacked up to its full height and me the shore. Jesus Christ, he’s gone. He’s completely gone. No more phone calls with his hyper-intelligence that pissed me off. No more living link between how we were in our hanabata days, giggling and reading on the couch together. No more is there the idea that we could get back to that or something like it in the future, something bigger and richer. No more bright pride from Mom and Dad—if not for me, then at least I could still live off the warmth even if I wasn’t the firestarter. No more no more no more. Someday I would be the same. And everyone I loved. Nothing.
I’m dumb with impact. When I almost drop the bowl Van reaches out to grab it, and our hands meet. Strong and steady.
“Oh,” is what I say. I’m not sure Van hears it. I don’t want her hands to move.
And they don’t.
* * *
THE FEELING SETTLES. The loss becomes as much a part of me as anything. There’s no time for it to take me over. I’m locked back in my work, climb back out of the hole of last semester, top of my class in thermodynamics, swing a few climbing sessions indoors with Hao and Katarina and Van. A weekend comes a few weeks further and we’re out on beach bikes after dark, the four of us. Mist sticks to our cheeks and eyebrows. The road pulses up through the handlebars. We cackle and whoop and blow down the street like we just came off our leashes. I guess we did: a little bag of coke that Van came up with and a few pre-party beers at Katarina’s place and then the idea of a bike ride to the house party we heard about. We swerve through the hours at the house party, thick boom of music and rusty voices cackling in the cramped angles of a house, hours where I’m above my bones.
The house is full of people we don’t know but plenty of people we do. At least their faces. But even if the faces are ones we know the people underneath are—I don’t know—there’s a sameness to so many of the people at these parties, desperate to get the right stance, the right clothes, the right picture. This idea of a perfect night they have and can never live up to, so they do it again, right? Over and over.
We bump against all these people and find our spots, inside the house and out. We dance and nudge each other’s elbows and hips and drink what we brought in our backpacks and stumble in one pour out the back door.
There was some sort of idea to all get back to Katarina’s place together, see what damage we could do to ourselves there with more beer, some movies. But they left without us when a designated driver emerged. Now it’s just me and Van again, okay, our skulls whirled with booze. The way she was right after the wine festival, the bathroom—when she said she didn’t feel about me the same way I feel about her—that feels like it was a mistake, that what’s happening now is really what we are. Yes, I think I’m emerging, just a little. From whatever storm rolled in with my brother’s death.
I take Van’s hand. I’m surprised when she holds mine back.
“Your hand’s warm,” she says, drifting in her drunkenness. And I’m not sure which of us does it or if both of us do it but then we’re moving back into the house party, together.
Back inside, the smells: mint and the leftovers of cigarettes. Fresh-cut lime and steamy beer. The halls are crowded and people might be staring at us like they know what we are, what our holding hands really means, but I don’t care, okay? We’re on the dance floor again in each other’s arms. Then we’re in the kitchen, where a ripped bag of tortilla chips is leaning into a puddle on the Formica counter. We scrabble two shot glasses from behind the sink and slip ourselves a vodka each. I don’t taste it—there was blow earlier. Off the top of a bathroom counter. We’re dancing again, each with a thigh in between the legs of the other. Then we’re on a set of groaning stairs that lean us into the walls, the railing. Three or four people coming down as we go up but we just push past. A hall we find an empty bedroom in, the sheets and comforter half poured from the mattress. An obvious wet spot in the middle of it.
We stand and stare at the room, turn around to all the walls. Like it’s an observation deck.
“That last shot,” Van says. “I can’t feel. I can’t feel me it.” She giggles. Pokes her own cheeks, her lips, and when she touches her lips they bend and I can see the lines and curves and how pink they actually are. I laugh and poke her cheeks, too. In the half-light see my brown hand against her paler skin. Then I lean over and lick her lips. They’re cracked and salted, they’re curved, they stink. But she opens her mouth just a little and accepts me. Our mouths are wet with each other. I hold the taste, and tell myself, This is how you will remember.
“Mmm,” she says.
My head is heavy. Freighted with all the things I’ve done to it. I lean in to Van, who’s just as unstable, and she leans back into the wall. I feel all the places we’re connected, the same, the density of us.
She rocks with me for a second, but then she goes stiff and pulls back. “Nope,” she says.
I pull away. “What?”
“It’s gross, Kaui,” she says. Her eyelids droop but there’s something in there, something hard and mean. I tell myself I don’t recognize it. “I told you.” She laughs. Her hand comes up and pushes into my face. “You’re so gross.”
Everything in me falls off a cliff. I don’t move, right. Try to think of something to say. Van moves to the bed like it’s taking a lot of concentration to operate her body. She collapses on her back.
“Van,” I say.
I back into the door and strike my funny bone on the handle. The hit sends a metal, buzzing echo along the nerves of my arm. I fumble open the doorknob and step into the hall and the bright headache of light. I can feel the hot shame coming to my eyes already.