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Part 1
Chapter 1
Kai, 12 Years Old
The waistband of my tight jeans dug into my lower back, slipping further and further over my hips as I shifted into the rigid metal chair. Positioned at the far end of the classroom, I was able to hide it by sitting sideways, facing my backside to the poster-covered wall, and planting my feet in the aisle. It was my hopeless attempt at keeping the other kids from knowing just how much I loved cachapas.
Five past the hour. Our teacher still hadn’t arrived.
These awkward, in-between moments were the worst for a new student, which I was, unfortunately. It was next to impossible to simply sit in my seat nonchalantly while everyone else chatted comfortably with the kids around them. Especially since it was a Spanish class, and I bet the teacher knew the new girl was fluent. She’d probably come in guns a’blazing to show off her own Spanish skills by having a conversation with me for all to hear. I cringed internally just thinking about it.
The entire last week of my life was spent moving across the country to this little California town by car with my chatterbox parents in the front seat singing and whooping the entire way. It was safe to say I never wanted to hear the language again.
Not that I wasn’t excited about the move. I was. Very. I was excited every day; something cool always happened. But in this particular moment, the word uncomfortable didn’t even begin to cut it.
I observed the two boys sitting adjacent to me to pass the time and avoid my own thoughts.
A small, pale boy with black jeans and even blacker hair was swung around scribbling on a piece of paper on the desk behind him. At the desk behind him sat a bigger boy with a plaid shirt and a warm complexion. The bigger boy looked down at the smaller one’s most recent scribble, scratched something back, and pushed the paper toward his friend, who immediately looked up and shrugged. The big one nudged the air with his chin. The small one turned to face me.
“We like your shirt,” he said quickly, glancing at my Boys Like Girls T-shirt which was conveniently pulled under my bum.
“Oh. Thanks.” I forced the most awkward giggle known to man and swallowed hard, plastering a smile on my face. I didn’t expect them to speak to me, but I was happy they did. Say more, Kai. Be friendly. “I, uhm… I got it at the town fair last fall.” I picked at the T-shirt with my bitten nails as my rubber bracelets rolled in the cotton, sticking in a fold to the right of my belly button. “They’re, uhm… They’re from the same area as me. The band. And they played…at the town fair.” Too much. Now you’ve said too much. Weirdo. You are so weird.
“Sick-nasty,” said the big one, nodding and pushing the sides of his mouth down thoughtfully. The small one nodded along as well.
They didn’t seem to think I was weird at all. No, as a matter of fact, it became more and more evident with each passing class that they might have even liked me.
So that was it. An alliance was formed. And lucky for me because, really, I should’ve been in the grade below. My birthday was past the cut-off, but I came to believe that was fate.
It turned out the bigger one was called Oliver and the smaller one was Jonah. They began coming to my house after school to do homework. When finished, on the sparse rainy days, we’d watch YouTube videos together. On nice days, we’d walk downtown and sit by the train tracks, waiting for hours for the train to smush the pennies we put out. My mom always hated that we did that, but the smooth coins were fun to play with. We found them hiding in jean pockets, backpacks, and junk drawers for years to come.
When summer rolled around, we spent days sitting on my front porch and nights camping in the backyard. We tormented our classmates’ parents with prank calls and were always the first to initiate neighborhood-wide manhunt games.
“I totally touched the base in time!” Jonah would always say as his hand gripped the trampoline in my backyard.
“Doesn’t count! I tagged you out!” I would insist, breathing heavily after grabbing his shirt just moments before his fingers hit the metal rim.
“Ugh!” he would groan, each and every time as I snickered at his loss.
When we grew up and got our licenses, we spent nights driving to the 24-hour McDonald’s drive-thru next to the mall and climbing the roof of the pharmacy downtown. It was nice up there. We could see the train tracks stretch miles wide.
Then, suddenly, it was graduation day.
Chapter 2
Jonah, Freshman Year of College
Things pretty much went downhill after graduation. I mean, god, high school was hard enough. But college? Jeez. And without Kai? I woke up every day hoping I’d get hit by a truck and sent into a coma until she returned. Truly.
I had no idea it was possible to find so many stupid people all packed into one place, but Oli and I decided to go to college close by in Los Angeles so, really, I should’ve expected it. If it wasn’t a devil’s advocate in English class, it was a frat boy trying to get a girl’s number in the dining hall. I could not, for the life of me, find the draw. I didn’t even want to fucking be at college, but that's what nineteen-year-olds do. Or so I’d been told.
I spent my days curled up in my dirty sheets which I had no will to clean, festering in the same pair of sweatpants and the same sweatshirt I wore daily. Oli continued living his life as usual. He didn’t love college either, but I was envious of the heart that still sounded in his chest.
He’d left about an hour before for his 8:00 a.m. class, and I sat wasting away yet another morning. I stared at the pile of clothes shoved halfway under my bed, knowing I should really pick them up, fold them, and put them away. But I couldn’t. In the simplest way, I couldn’t. Much like I couldn’t bring myself to take a shower or force my way downstairs to do laundry. The only thing my body allowed me to do was call Kai. Were I ever lucky enough to be sent into that coma, the only thing I’d really be upset about missing would be our video calls.
We spoke on video chat every other day, if not every day, and it was just enough to keep me alive. But as the weeks and months carried on, things simply got worse. She got farther away, somehow. Her life changed in ways I didn’t understand, and I felt I was reliving losing her over and over again.
At first, she’d call from her room, and we’d bond over how much we missed the old days and how much we wanted to be close. Then, she’d call while she was on her way out, telling me about her new friends, Ana and Rachel, whom she’d met in class. Then, she’d call me at 5:00 a.m. as she closed up the bar she’d suddenly started working at, her body clad in lace too scanty for my sanity. She talked about things that didn’t resonate with me. She told me of drink pouring and her lack of memory of last night, meanwhile all I had to offer was a description of the inside of my dorm room.
