North Star

27 | the bigger picture

2019

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Kaipo sat next to me on the damp curb, surrounded by the pungent odor of smoke and wet grass. Even though it had rained earlier in the day, I couldn't definitively count on it being from the weather since we were sitting outside a bar, so I forced the thought to the back of my mind.

"I came to listen," he answered. "Duh."

"But you don't know him."

He seemed to find that comment amusing. "Are we only allowed to listen if we know him?"

"You have shit timing."

Kaipo looked pointedly down at me. "Considering I saw you bolt out of the room like you were running away from a fire, I'd say I have pretty good timing."

I would too, but I wasn't about to admit that to him.

"He's pretty good."

"Yeah, he is. Really good."

"So, what the hell was that?" he asked, cutting right to the chase.

It was embarrassing to think about it. I didn't know what had come through me. One second I was listening to Nikau perform, the next I felt like the walls were closing in on me on all sides and I had no idea why. That wasn't the first time I had heard that song since my father passed away and it certainly wasn't going to be the last. While we often listened to and sang it together, I couldn't let it go after he died, even though there were many other things that I had.

"Dad and I loved that song."

I had become adept at gauging people's perception of me just by the way they subconsciously managed their microexpressions. For many, they were gut reactions that I tried not to take too seriously, especially if it was for something smaller. Two events stood out amongst the rest as times when I had seen a significant shift in people's perception of me—dropping out of high school to get my GED and my father's death.

There wasn't much to think about when it came to the former, but the latter was what set me off most of the time.

I hated the pity that arose after it happened. It made me feel pathetic. For the longest time, all anyone could ever see when they looked at me was my dead father, and when that was the ghost I was already confronted with each time I looked into the mirror, the last thing I wanted was to see that on all of the living faces that passed me by.

Kaipo was the only person who never treated me any differently after Dad died. He comforted me when I needed it, but he never treated me as if I had a big fragile sticker stuck to my forehead. I was still his friend who acted a little differently but was otherwise the same girl, even though I knew that I wasn't and never would be anymore.

"It was... it was the last song we ever danced to. I've listened to it since but... I don't know. Hearing him sing it tonight just—"

I couldn't explain it. A long time had passed since I had any sort of reaction like that about, well, anything. Even as we sat there, my heart raced so quickly that I was convinced it was the reason why my fingers appeared to be shaking, tiny seismic vibrations. More than usual, I had become hyperaware of the sound of my surroundings—the sound of water trickling from a storm drain, the click of a lighter followed by the inhale of a cigarette, a staggered pair of footsteps fading into the night.

Luckily, Kaipo didn't need me to. We had been friends for long enough that we knew what the other was thinking even when we didn't understand ourselves. There weren't a lot of things I was sure of nowadays, but I always understood that I was lucky to have a friend like Kaipo. Someone who saw me at my worst and still stuck around. I never wanted to take advantage of it, and while I wasn't always as good of a friend as I wished I could be, I thought I did a decent job.