Page 4 of The Wrong Side of Kai
I don’t need her to be awake, though. I have spent the night here at the Tates’ house so many times that I’m becoming a fixture. A part of the furniture, as permanent as the dining-room table or the TV. Sometimes it’s easier to stay here when I can’t bring myself to return to my own home. I quietly raid Chyna’s closet, grab one of her camp T-shirts from five summers ago and a pair of shorts, and get dressed. They fit me just fine – I’ve grown almost too comfortable here.
My stomach won’t stop growling so I leave Chyna to sleep while I head downstairs to the kitchen. It’s almost noon, but I pour myself a bowl of cereal and sit up on the counter, legs crossed, slurping up the milk.
The house is unusually silent today. I stare at the clock on the wall opposite, listening to each second tick by. It’s funny, how different silences can be. In my house, the silences are strained and full of unspoken grief and the absence of Mom, like the walls of my childhood home are about to implode on themselves. In Chyna’s house, the silence is a welcome relief – a safe haven. I relax, enjoying my few minutes on my own without that cloud hanging over my head, until I hear footsteps enter the kitchen.
Isaiah starts when he sees me, surprised to find me perched up on his countertop eating a bowl of cereal at this time. He flashes me a smile over his shoulder – his teeth are misaligned in the most adorable way – as he pulls open the refrigerator. “Morning, Vans. No hangover?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I focus intensely on a spot on the ceiling, tuning everything out so that I can decide exactly how I’m feeling. I’m still suspiciously okay for now.
“Lucky. I miss being seventeen and having a liver made of steel. That’s why I don’t drink anymore,” Isaiah grumbles as he grabs a Gatorade and a bottle of water, then kicks the refrigerator shut behind him. There’s something effortlessly attractive about Isaiah – maybe because he towers over me, all six feet, four inches of him – but he’s also like my brother, soew. I have adopted Chyna’s family as my own and, luckily, they don’t seem to mind. To me, the Tates are the perfect family – whole and complete.
“Was I drunk?” I ask, but given that I can recall all of last night’s events, I already know the answer.
“Not really, just mega annoying,” Isaiah answers, and his mouth transforms into a wide, sarcastic grin. “You kept leaning into the front of my car to change the music.No oneturns off Tupac, so you should be glad I didn’t kick you out.” He steps forward and hands me the bottle of water, damp and as cold as ice against my skin as I take it from him. “Drink this.”
Just then, Chyna slumps into the kitchen, her slippers scuffing the wooden flooring. She looks like she’s been hit by a truck at full speed on the freeway, yet she has miraculously survived to tell the tale. She can barely hold her head up. “I want to die,” she solemnly announces.
Isaiah’s shoulders shake as he cackles with laughter, but he does the right thing and passes his Gatorade to Chyna. The stark height difference between the Tate siblings is insane – Chyna is just a fraction over five feet, and next to Isaiah, it’d be easy to assume she’s still in elementary school.
“How come you seem fine?” Chyna questions, her eyes meeting mine. She gulps down the Gatorade as though her throat is on fire. “Surely you drank way more than I did.”
I shrug, trying not to laugh at her misfortune. “I guess Harrison sobered me up.” Which is true, in a way. We had a good time, but nothing sobers me up faster than being hit with the panic that a guy wants arealrelationship. My heart beats faster even now at the thought of it.
“Aaaand, that’s my cue to leave,” Isaiah says. He grabs another Gatorade from the refrigerator and a massive bag of chips from the cupboard, then swivels around and promptly exits the kitchen. It’s clear he’s terrified of getting dragged into the conversation that’s about to happen, which he should be – it’s girl talk.
A few moments of silence pass while Chyna eyeballs me. She wants the gossip, as always, and despite not feeling great, she manages to perk up. “So what happened with Harrison last night then? Spill!”
“We hooked up, but. . .”
“Oh no. Why is there abut?”
“I need to end things with him tonight,” I tell her. No point tiptoeing around the reality of the situation. It was always going to end at some point. That’s the entire definition of a fling – it’s temporary, casual. There’s no way I can keep seeing someone who wants things to progress. The very idea suffocates me.
Chyna nearly chokes. “What? Already?”
“He invited me on a ski trip,” I tell her. “That’s pretty serious, right? Like,girlfriend-serious.”
I run my fingers through the ends of my hair, static making them stick to my skin like weird little magnets. I try real hard to keep my gaze focused on Chyna, but it’s difficult when I know she doesn’t get it. I always think that Chyna is lucky in life; she’s never even so much as experienced the death of a family pet – in fact, her family tree is made up entirely oflivingfamily members, both close and distant, and the only funeral she’s ever attended was the one where I was sat in the front row. She doesn’tknowhow awful it is to lose people. My guess is that she takes all of her relationships with the people she loves for granted, but that’s not her fault. How could she do otherwise?
“And what’s so bad about going on a trip with him?” Her big brown eyes bore into mine, and there it is, that simple innocence and inability to relate to my thoughts on the matter. I don’t know how many times I have to tell her that I willabsolutely notget into a relationship with anyoneever, but I can never find the words to convince her. “Harrison is at least one of the nicer guys on the team,” she says. “You like being around him, don’t you?”
I nearly grab my empty bowl and hurl it at her, mostly because a guy being nice can’t ever be enough to change my mind, but I remain calm. Instead, I just laugh. All airy and fake. “Oh, come on. Can you seriously imagine me dating Harrison Boyd?”
Chyna thinks. “Okay, nope. You don’t have that much in common.”
“He was getting boring anyway.” I shrug, sliding down from the counter and pulling at the hem of Chyna’s camp T-shirt. “And the fun part is finding someone new,” I say, steering the conversation onto safer ground. “Do you suppose Drew Kaminski is single?”
Chyna links her arm around mine and flashes me a sideways grin, her smile dazzling as it lights up her face, making her seem more like herself. “Isn’t there only one way to find out?” she says with a laugh, and that’s why I love Chyna. She doesn’t always agree with my antics, but she doesn’t ever judge me for them. We’re young. We have our whole lives ahead of us. We’re free to do as we please. We make our own decisions, and just because we’re friends doesn’t mean our choices have to be the same.
“Hold on,” Chyna says, tugging me toward the refrigerator. She ransacks it, filling her arms with a variety of food, from cheese to cooked chicken. “I need to eat before I die of starvation.”
*
For the past two years, I have grown to hate walking through the front door of my own house. It doesn’t feel like a home anymore. It doesn’t have that sense of warmth and security it had when Mom was alive. She used to always have candles lit around the house every evening in the fall and winter, and every room would smell of spiced cinnamon. You could always hear her singing too – while she did yoga, while she cooked dinner, while she dabbled in sketching. Without her, our home has no ambience. It’s why I prefer to spend the night elsewhere whenever I can, absorbing the easy love of someone else’s family. It’s not just that, though. If I come back here I’m instantly locked in a battle with the awkward silences that are waiting in every corner of this house. And even if I don’t come back, there’s still a silence. I want Dad to wonder where I am foronce. I want him to worry about me. To ask me where I’ve been and who with. Instead, he never seems to bat an eyelid.
I wave goodbye to Chyna from my porch as she drives off after giving me a ride home. I’m still wearing her clothes while holding a grocery bag full of my own from last night. My hair is matted. I haven’t showered. I look like absolute trash, but it’s not like our neighbors haven’t seen me returning home like this on a Sunday morning before. Mrs. Khan, the old lady who lives on her own next door, scrunches up her face and resumes watering her plants when she catches my eye, so I don’t even give her a smile. Instead I grit my teeth and push open my front door. The house is silent and reeks of stale smoke. But that’s nothing new these days.
I head for the kitchen and find Dad huddled over our old dining table, surrounded by travel guides and scraps of paper and a pack of cigarettes. He’s engrossed in something on his laptop, the glare of the screen reflecting off his glasses.
