eight
My Best Friend's a Wingman
e i g h t ; look what you made me do
“Hey are you okay? How did it go?” Kai lets me inside his house after I rang the bell. He looks a bit surprised to see me, taking in my slightly sweaty form and heavy breathing. “How did you get here?”
“I ran,” I tell him, gasping desperately for air and heading towards the kitchen.
“You ran?” He repeats incredulously, following closely behind.
I take a glass from the cupboard and fill myself a glass of water. Water tastes extraordinarily divine when you just traveled one and a half miles on feet. I gulp the whole thing down while Kai eyes me warily, his arms folded upon the kitchen’s island. “So…?”
“The school’s principal is ing useless and decides to let those hooligans go just because one of the parents is a smartass and claims that if ‘there’s no proof, then why bother believing the victim?’” I say in one breath.
He mutters a curse. “You’re kidding me.”
I recap what went down during the meeting and the closer I get to the conclusion, the more each of us grow agitated. Kai ruffles his hair in frustration. “I can’t even trust adults to be adults who do the right thing.” He paces back and forth, appearing to be deep in thought. His posture is rigid, and his jaw clenches. At times like this, I realize how much more affected Kai is about this whole conflict. He’s been through this. Only he can comprehend how deep the cut is since it was him who bled before.
I drag out a breath. It comes out as a quiet whisper when I reveal the guilt that has been eating me inside. “I feel like I could’ve done more, you know? I should have noticed that he’s been unhappy about entering middle school.”
He stops pacing and settles himself across from me. His gaze is open, honest. “I know you feel responsible. There’s a lot of things that we should have done, but it’s in the past. We’d just get lost in our heads if we keep dwelling on the should-haves.”
Suddenly it feels like we’re talking about something beyond my brother. There has always been a darkness lurking underneath Kai’s exterior. He has mastered the art of hiding it, but on some days, the shadows around him make themselves less obscured. And on those days, I want to make it go away, tell him that it’s okay to be broken, assure that he’s still himself regardless of those scars. However, some wounds are more permanent than others, more buried inside us than we’d like to. My words would be pointless because time seems like the only way to heal.
I nod my head in agreement and sigh. “I wish being different wasn’t such a bad thing,” I say, referring to my brother. “Why are humans so scared of people who are different anyway? We have labels for everything. Once someone doesn’t fit an approved label, we alienate that person instead of putting the effort to educate ourselves about their differences.”
As always, Kai listens to my rant intently. Not missing a beat, he joins in my discussion. “Maybe ignorance is bliss. And that type of ignorance is why we have hatred in the first place.”
“I know that there won’t be a day when our world becomes perfect . . . but we have so goddamn much to improve on.”
He snorts. “Ain’t that the truth.”
• • • • • • •
A loud thud echoes from somewhere inside his house. Startled, I clutch onto the bottle next to me as defense. “Either someone just broke into your place, or you have demons visiting.”
He chuckles, our previous somber atmosphere dissipating. “Or,” he emphasizes. “You have an active imagination. It’s just my sister. What, you think that empty plastic water bottle could protect you from a burglar or Satan himself?”
Within seconds later, Kayla saunters into the kitchen with one hand clutching her stomach, looking paler than usual. Kayla is Kai’s second eldest sister, a middle child who is 4 years older than him. While Kai is similar to his Dad in terms of looks—who I seldom see except on holiday breaks—Kayla got her looks from their mom, he told me once when I had wondered why they didn’t look like actual siblings. Thin lips that are tinted in rose, eyes that tilt upwards like a cat, and a slender nose — she’s a stunner. She’s got straight long hair that touches her elbows that I’m sort of envious about. It takes me 40 minutes of straightening every morning to look half as good as hers. She probably wakes up flawless.
“Hey Skylar, I didn’t know you’re here.” She smiles at me, but it appears like it takes a lot of effort to do that easy task. I raise my hand to wave at her but forgetting that I’m holding a water bottle. I’m very smooth.
“Feeling better?” Kai eyes her.
“Just a bit,” she replies with a hint of gruffness, as she submerges a tea bag in hot water.
“She’s been constipated,” Kai explains to me with a completely straight face. Instinctively, I cover my mouth because I can’t trust myself not to crack an immature smile at this.
Kayla groans. “Skylar definitely didn’t need to know that.”
“Why not?” Regardless, his eyes sparkle with tease. “We’re all family here. No need to be shy.”
“Whatever, brat. If he ever annoys you, just tell me,” she directs that statement towards me. “I have countlessly lectured him on how to treat women but it goes in one ear and out the other.”
“Don’t worry. I know how to handle him.”
She gives me a high five, sips on her tea, and just like that, disappears out of view. Kai rolls his eyes, and before he gives a sarcastic speech about what have I done to have you guys scheme against me, I blurt, “I have an idea.”
• • • • • • •
Here we are, at four in the afternoon in a grocery store on a Thursday. I already called Mom to update her that I’m going to bake brownies at Kai’s house. She sounded p
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