She rubs a thumb over one of her eyes. “You know what? Let’s not do this here. We can just drive for a minute.”
I don’t know if it’s what I want. I already got this list in my head of what I got for do next: get new clothes, burner or a pay phone or some other way to call Justice, then see what he can do or who he knows can help me with a place to stay.
“I’ll bring you back here,” she says.
Standing there looking at Khadeja I realize for the first time how tired I am, and how safe it is in her car, so I just get inside and lean back in the seat and let the car thump and glide through easy turns with the clouds sliding by the glass and the city just going and going until we’re at Noa’s apartment.
We park across the street, the lawn’s trimmed all nice and sharp and the big picture window in front got the curtains closed. There’s no light behind it. We sit in the car and stare at the apartment and don’t say nothing and I feel my brother gone by the weight of everything he was holding up that’s coming down on me: Mom and Dad going broke in Hawai‘i, all the shit our family went through to get us out here, to opportunity, everything we already owed before we even got started. I turn the radio up a little bit, nod along to the beats, no way I’m gonna cry in front Khadeja, even though all around my eyes is hot and stinging.
She wants to know why Noa left, that’s what she asks me now. I can’t figure out how for start, so I just tell her about everything I know about Noa, one big long rush of it, the sharks and him back home, kid like a legend, then from when we was at college and after, all I can talk about is whatever Noa told me on the phone or what I could figure out from talking with Kaui or Mom–them later. And all the while him having to figure out his abilities, the gods and what they wanted or whatever. The path he was supposed to take. The more I talk about it the more I realize he was probably way lonely. Lonely in a way that never made sense for me until I was in lockup.
“If the one thing you are gets taken,” I say—I’m not even really thinking when I talk, the words is just coming through me like they was always there—“if the one thing you are, the part you always figured would be your best, if that gets taken away, the next day…” I shrug. “The next day it’s like you’re carrying around your whole future like a dead body on your back. Right in that place on your neck, between your shoulders. Hard for anything to feel right, when you’re like that. For Noa? After the ambulance, the pregnant lady that he lost?”
I put a fist up against the car window, press the side of it on the glass. Cold and clean. I say, “It all had to hurt, something deep.”
“Did he tell you that?” she asks me.
“Nah,” I say. “Let’s just say me and Noa got some things in common.”
We just watch his apartment a minute. Like he’s about to come out the front door or something.
“I didn’t even know him that long,” Khadeja says. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself. But I can already tell he’s going to be stuck in me somewhere as long as I’m alive.”
“Yeah, well,” I say, “used to be I thought he was a asshole.” She turns at me looking all shocked. I’m like, “Oh, what, he didn’t never do that thing where you start talking and then he interrupts whatever you’re saying to explain the thing back to you all dictionary-style? Like he’s an online assistant ready with all the facts and figures you’re too stupid to know?”
She laughs. “Maybe once or twice.”
It’s good, doing this. Makes it hurt less. Plus, it’s all true.
“Once or twice, my left nut,” I say. “Shit was happening all the time when we was in high school.” I play with the switch for the car window, pushing and pulling just enough that the switch doesn’t start the window either way.
“I don’t mean to insult you,” she says, “and I know I’m not part of your family and family has its own way of working inside, where no one else really sees it. But it seemed like a lot was expected of him. Maybe too much.”
And I’m all, like, she thinks she’s better than us? Man, maybe her and Noa was meant for each other. “You’re right,” I say, “you don’t know nothing about my family.”
“I didn’t say that, I said—”
“I heard what you said,” I say. I’m about to blow up, part of me that right away wants to break things, make this a big fight. Same old Dean, Mom said. But I don’t this time. I fix myself.
“Used to be I thought like that,” I say. “How it was Mom and Dad that pushed Noa too hard and that was what killed him. Then for a while I figured wasn’t no one that pushed Noa like he pushed himself, and it was probably just because he got such a big head that he messed up in the ambulance. But now”—I shake my head—“maybe it was all of that. Probably little bit of everything. Mostly it was just shitty luck.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I grunt so she knows I heard her, but that’s all. A car goes by us in the street, haole lady with her hair all done up like a fancy vase and some toy dog yapping in her lap. The dog’s bow is the same sick bright pink as the lady’s jacket. When the car’s gone I ask if Khadeja seen it. She giggles.
“She does not live around here,” she says. The street is empty for a minute, but then this guy that’s maybe a plumber or something drives up and parks and keys into the apartment next to Noa’s.
“Long time I wished I had what Noa had,” I say. “You never knew what he was going for be in the end, you know? He was turning into, like, a superhero. Who doesn’t want that?”
She doesn’t answer. I keep going. “But he’s gone,” I say. “And the rest of us is still here and hurting. That means we gotta do what we need to keep living.”
She asks what that means, what I’m gonna do. I don’t tell her what I been doing since I been inside, how all the money I made was going back to the islands, straight into Mom and Dad’s bank account. And that was only when I was on the inside. Now that I’m out here, and can put in work with Justice for real? “I need to get to a phone,” I say.
“You can use mine.” She digs her phone out her purse and hands it over toward me. I look at it a long time. Once this phone calls that one, there’s a record of it somewhere. “I better not,” I say.
“Oh,” she says, and takes it back. She checks her watch. Clears her throat. “I should pick up Rika.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Better you let me get going.”
* * *
SHE DRIVES BACK to the big-and-tall, pulls up to the curb.
“Are you gonna be around?” I ask her.
“Around for what?” she says.
“If I wanted for give you something. College money for Rika or whatever. Like how Noa woulda wanted.”
She’s just thinking, staring at the street in front of us. Then she says she’ll be around, I can find her if I want. She leaves it that way and I let it hang.
“Alright,” I say. “I guess that’s good enough.”
While I’m sitting, I been thinking. I figure there’s no way my credit cards is still working. I’m nobody, is what that means. I dunno what I do now, but I know I can’t stay in this car anymore.