Other Echoes

The rain let up by the time school ended, but left in its wake the sweet, loamy scent of wet earth. Emi breathed deeply as she walked across campus to her locker. The smell reminded her of Larry’s little backyard garden. The last time she had visited, she’d volunteered to help him weed the flowerbeds. With the sky clear, and the air fresh and moist, she felt inspired to make good on that offer.

  She was careful to wait fifteen minutes after her last class was dismissed before catching the bus. It was a coward’s move, but she didn’t want to run into Kainoa and Natalie on their way to dance class. Another blowout confrontation was not what she needed.

  But as the bus rumbled down King Street, all she could think about was Kainoa and Natalie. For all the space they occupied in her brain, they might as well have been on the bus with her.

  Emi was so distracted, that she chose the wrong place to disembark and found herself standing right in front of Madam’s dance studio!

  The habit of getting off there was so well engrained that she had unconsciously landed herself in the one place she wanted to avoid.

  Standing outside the studio, she could hear the muffled piano music playing within. She started to walk away, but changed her mind mid-step and shuffled sheepishly to the side of the building. There were big windows on the west-facing wall that gave her a view inside the room.

  Peeking around the side of the building, she inched closer to the glass. Sure enough, there were the usual suspects inside, warming up. Some were at the barre, but Kainoa was in the middle of the room practicing his jumps, no doubt showing off for the other girls in the class. Emi smiled despite herself. Why did he have to be so conceited? And talented? And good-looking?

  It was odd watching the class from this new perspective. She was an unnoticed observer, an outsider, and yet so intimately familiar with everyone inside, their gestures, their habits. Even the shadow patterns on the walls were known to her.

  With a jolt of nostalgia, she realized she missed her dance class intensely. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  Oh, come on. Buck up, loser! Emi thought to herself fiercely.

  She retreated from the window, full of self-hatred for quitting, for not being good enough, for her own emotional weaknesses. She jogged the rest of the way to Larry’s house and arrived at his doorstep a sweaty mess.

  She knocked at his door, and he appeared a moment later.

  “Emi. What a surprise.” He looked at her face, obviously noticing her red eyes and sniffly nose, but not choosing not to comment.

  “I came to help with the garden,” she said a little gruffly.

  No questions asked, he brought her around back and set her to work hacking away at the overgrown clusters of long grass choking the fence-line of his yard.

  As she ripped out all the nasty weeds, she found herself channeling anger into her work. Stupid weeds. Stupid, ugly, pestilent weeds cropping up where they didn’t belong. As the pile of discarded sandburs grew higher, her disgust with Kainoa and his rotten friends grew with it.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Larry’s voice floated down from above. “Before you tear my whole garden up by it roots.”

  She realized with embarrassment that she had tugged up a few non-weeds in her vengeful state of mind. She had also lost track of time, and the shadows in the yard were growing longer. “I guess I was getting a little overzealous,” she said sheepishly.

  She followed him back to his lanai, stripping the gardening gloves off her hands and leaving them on the armrest of his wooden porch bench. He disappeared into the house and reappeared a moment later with a tall glass of ice water.

  “You seem preoccupied today,” he observed. “Something on your mind?

  She shook her head. “Just typical teenage angst.”

  She could tell from his expression he didn’t buy it for a minute.

  He looked at her with bright eyes, and after a moment he said, “The work you did today was very appreciated, Emi. Because it’s not merely aesthetic. If we let the weeds grow, they sap nutrients from other plants. It could turn into a bigger problem.”

  Emi finished her water and set the empty glass on her armrest, too distracted to respond. She found his voice soothing, though.

  He continued speaking. “It’s not too different with emotions, I’ve found. You neglect them long enough, and they assume an insidious power that can be quite a challenge to uproot.”

  “I think I’ll be okay,” she said, catching on to the metaphor. “This is just a silly school thing.”

  “And you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “Oh…I don’t know,” she said.

  And then, for some reason, she found herself tearing up again. Right in front of old Larry!

  He handed her his handkerchief, which was such a quaint, considerate thing to do that it made her tear up even more.

  “I’m sorry! I’m not even sure why I’m crying,” she blubbered. She blew her nose. It felt weird to deposit snot into something that felt expensive. “I’m just so angry.” She dropped her arms helplessly into her lap. “And so angry that I’m angry that it makes me angrier. Does that make any sense?”

  “Of course. It’s human nature,” he said. “It’s easy to be held captive by anger. To not know how to lay it down. A person can become very identified with her anger if she doesn’t let it go.”

  “I’m going to turn into a bitter old fart,” Emi sniffled.

  Larry laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about that quite yet.”

  She looked at him in exasperation. “You must know what it’s like.”

  “To be angry? Certainly.” His expression was always comfortingly the same: placid, smiling, as though nothing could faze him.

  “Angry about what?” she asked. She was having trouble imagining Larry as anything other than cheerful.

  “I spent several years in jail during the Cultural Revolution for my political affiliations,” he said. “I had a lot of time to struggle with anger and heartbreak then.”

  “Oh God, that’s awful!” she exclaimed, covering her mouth. “Way worse than what I’m dealing with. Oh, this is so embarrassing.”

  Larry pressed his lips together, resisting a smile and patted her on the shoulder. “You can’t quantify anyone’s suffering, Emi, and you aren’t responsible for judging your own. Though you should learn to tend to your emotions, the same way you might tend to a garden.”

  Emi was digesting what that meant when, to her dismay, she saw Josh walking up the sidewalk, casually swinging his house key from a carabiner. He was wearing running shoes and shorts, and his sandy hair was wet, like he’d washed it after cross-country practice. The way it was combed back made him look especially handsome.

  Emi pressed both hands against her face. “Can I use your bathroom?” she asked.

  Larry nodded towards the door. “First door on the left.”

  She snuck inside before Josh could see her. The house smelled like camphor. There were chipped green tiles on the bathroom floor, and an old-fashioned basin sink made of porcelain. She splashed cold water on her face and scrubbed it dry with the hand towel before returning outside.

  Josh was leaning against Larry’s lanai railing, his chin propped on his fists. He looked up when Emi appeared.

  “I hear you were a big help with the yard work today,” Josh said.

  “Yep.” Emi lowered her head. She didn’t want Josh to see her face, which still bore the swollen aftereffect of her tears. She turned to Larry. “I should go. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  She hurried down the steps.

  “Hang on,” Josh called. “I’ll walk you to your bus stop.”

  “No! I mean…you don’t have to.”

  “But I want to.”

  Emi could think of no good way out of it. She and Josh strolled in silence past the hole-in-the-wall restaurants and mom and pop retail stores. There were dinner smells in the air. Women on the street toted yoga mats and children sat on the curb with their skateboards.

&nbs
p; Emi peered at Josh through the corner of her eyes. The afternoon light was hitting his face straight on and the effect was dazzling, as if he were haloed in light. His eyes redefined the color blue.

  He stopped walking.

  “Emi.” His voice was quiet. “You’ve been crying.”

  “Don’t ask,” she warned. “I’m not in the mood for sympathy.”

  He regarded her searchingly but kept his mouth shut. They reached the bus stop, and she kept waiting for him to finally get bored and move away, but he didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving.

  “I didn’t know you had this side to you,” he said, breaking the silence.

  “What side?”

  He paused to weigh his words. “Vulnerable.”

  She flushed. “What did you take me for, a robot?”

  “No.”

  She turned away from him slightly, wishing he would leave her to enjoy a self-indulgent moment of self-pity on her own.

  Cars swam by in a blur of headlights. It was that milky, diluted time of evening when everything on the streets melted together in the half-light.

  Across the street, Emi spotted one of her old ballet classmates, Mackenzie, walking towards the coffee shop on the corner. It was 5:30 and Madam’s class had just let out. Emi watched in silence as Mackenzie disappeared through the store’s glass doors, followed shortly thereafter by another of their classmates, Sam. Both reappeared moments later bearing iced coffees. They sat across from one another at an outdoor bistro table, waiting for their parents to pick them up. Cars flashed back and forth in the road that separated them from Emi, like a veil of glinting steel. At some point, though, Mackenzie finally spotted Emi through the gaps in the cars. She must have said something, because then Sam was turning to stare.

  In the back recesses of her consciousness, Emi sensed the rumble of her bus making its way through the traffic to her bus stop. That sound, paired with an intense awareness of Mackenzie and Sam’s watchful gaze, led Emi to do something so bold it astonished even her.

  Not stopping to think twice, she leaned forward and kissed Josh hard on the mouth. She made it count, holding him as long as she could before yielding to his resistance.

  Josh pulled back and stared at her breathlessly. “What was that?”

  “You didn’t like it?” Emi asked.

  “I…” Josh was at a loss for words. He almost appeared angry.

  As expected, Emi’s bus came roaring up to the curb in a billow of exhaust and she rose quickly to her feet.

  “Bye,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Grabbing her backpack, she climbed up the steps, heart still pounding with adrenaline. She pushed her way to the right side of the bus and looked down at Mackenzie and Sam through the graffiti-scratched window. She couldn’t make out their faces very clearly, but she was pretty sure they had seen the kiss.

  The bus door protested creakily and snapped shut. As it pulled away from the curb, Emi spotted Josh through the big back window. He was still sitting at the stop, staring down at his feet. Then the bus turned a corner and he flashed out of sight.

  Chapter 11