Chapter Two

"But why can't I just drive myself?" Raymond asked. Registering for school was just a formality, anyway—something he had to do to keep his plans a secret.

His mother tapped her foot for a moment. "Raymond, I am just about at the end of my rope. You need to have an adult with you. What kind of mother would I look like if I just sent my kid off by himself?"

"I'm a big boy."

"Your mouth, Raymond!"

Sarah jumped between them, playing referee. "Ray, you be quiet for a minute. Mom, how about if I take him? Everybody's happy."

Danny appeared from the hall and put his arms around his brother. He had always been quiet, but with the move he'd grown more so. Ray crouched down and smiled at him. "Now you stay home and help Mommy real good, okay?" Danny nodded, and transferred his grasp to his mother's waist.

Sarah jingled the car keys at the door while Raymond quickly re-sniffed his armpits. He checked his hair in the mirror and sighed. The humidity had turned his hair, once long and straight, into a mess of curls. He squirted a dab of mousse and tried in vain to slick it back.

"You're beautiful, Ray," Sarah called dryly from the living room. "Let's go."

Mrs. Harmon handed Sarah a manila envelope of transcripts, birth records and custody papers. Raymond ignored his mother's practiced stare.

Later, in the car, Sarah asked him: "So how long are you going to keep on being a colossal pain in the ass?"

Raymond pulled his bangs back and held them there. He watched for the occasional glimpse of beach between houses. He was struck by the odd impression of ditch water through rows of corn. Shaking off the image, he turned to his sister. "I haven't changed a bit."

Sarah chuckled. "I know. That's the problem."

The beach houses gave way to jungle as the road curved away from the coastline. He wished she wouldn't get so maternal with him. Sarah was six years older, and had always been more of a parent to him than his workaholic mother or his anything-goes dad. But right now, he didn't particularly want a mother dictating what he could and couldn't do. He smiled as he thought about living with his father—Mr. Laissez-faire himself.

Sarah reached over and put her hand on his arm. "Hang in there," she said, "I think we all just need some time to get used to all this change."

"You get used to it. I'm getting out."

She frowned. "Still think Dad's gonna come through, huh? When are you planning to spring this on Mom?"

"When I have my ticket in my hand and she can't do anything to stop me."

Sarah paused, her eyes on the road. "Well, you do what you feel is right."

Raymond turned on the radio, attempting to find a station with a minimal amount of both static and hip hop. He knew he could trust her to keep his secret, but at the same time he knew he could count on a world-class attempt to guilt-trip him into staying. She was like a mother to him, after all.

A few more minutes of driving brought them to a weather-beaten sign announcing: "You Are Entering Wailele Village." A minute later came the school, a mismatched cluster of buildings painted—or rather, not re-painted—dull off-white and mud-brown. Sarah turned and parked in the visitor's lot. The first thing that caught Raymond's eye was the bunker-shaped office building. It had narrow windows like arrow slits on a medieval castle, and faced the highway with a stonework facade and a greened-over sign. On the side facing the parking lot, the message "L.B.I. Over ALL" had been spray-painted in crude black letters. A morbidly obese maintenance worker in low-riding jeans squatted in front of the wall, giving the gym the half-moon treatment as he pried at a paint can with a screwdriver.

"L.B.I.?" Raymond muttered. "What is that, some kind of terrorist organization?" Sarah shrugged and followed Raymond inside.

The student aide at the front counter looked up when the doors squeaked shut. Sarah gave Raymond the manila envelope, but just as he opened his mouth to ask for the registrar, the front door burst open and a stocky, brown-skinned woman dragged in a Caucasian girl with bright red hair. The girl wore a leather miniskirt and fish net stockings, and deep purple bruises had begun to form around her left eye and cheek. She stared ahead stoically as the huge woman propelled her along.

Before the commotion could wane enough to accurately be described as a "lull," the doors banged open again and in came a large local boy struggling in the arms of a mustachioed security guard. As they passed him, Raymond noticed the boy had a tattoo on his arm: the initials "L.B.I."—blue-black letters on brown skin. Just past the counter, the boy broke free and swung at the guard, who grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back, and slammed him face-first into the cinder-block wall. The unwilling prisoner thumped his other fist against the painted bricks and tried to kick the man behind him, but the guard pulled him back and forced him against the wall again, holding him there as everybody in the office held their breaths. "You still going geev me trouble?" he asked the boy, yanking his wrist further up toward his shoulder blades. "No, no!" the boy responded, submitting his other arm to the guard. Gripping both of the boy's arms, the guard shuffled his prisoner around the corner and down the hall.

Raymond suddenly realized he was the only one in the office that was smiling. He just couldn't help thinking that they looked like they were square dancing. Swing your partner, do-si-do. He mugged a straight face and asked for the registrar.

* * *

Raymond followed the registrar's directions to the office of Ms. Chandler, the eleventh-grade counselor. As he approached the bench outside her office, he recognized the girl with the leather miniskirt, with the bright red hair and the bruised eye.

"She in there with somebody?" He asked her.

"Would I be waiting here if she wasn't?"

Frowning, Ray sat on the bench next to her. After a moment, he stole a quick glance at her. She ignored him, humming quietly to herself. Raymond kept examining her, expecting her to look over at him, but she stared straight ahead, obviously going for "oblivious." The door remained conspicuously closed. Raymond decided right off that she had too much makeup on, that she'd be prettier without the war paint. He tried to identify the song she was humming; it sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place the tune. He was dying to ask her about the bruise.

Finally, he asked: "What song is that?"

"No song," she said, glancing at one of her watches.

"Oh."

She blew a bubble, making an echo with the pop. "What I mean is that it's not a real song. I'm making it up as I go. It's like my nondestructive nervous habit." She shook her hair out and leaned her head back against the wall with a resounding clunk. In the fluorescent light, her Coca-Cola-red hair had the brownish shine of dyed hair.

"I'm new here," he ventured.

"Really? No shit? That would explain it, then."

"Explain what?"

"Why I haven't seen you before." She shifted her body slightly, so her legs faced in a diagonal towards him, instead of straight forward. "So where're you from?" she asked, mockingly conversational.

"Arizona. Phoenix. Well, Mesa, actually, but you know."

She nodded like she knew, and looked at the counselor's door impatiently. "So," she said, her eyes still on the door, "what do you do?"

Ray scrunched his eyebrows down. "What do you mean, like a job? What?"

She reached over and deposited her gum on the underside of a wall-mounted fire extinguisher. "What I mean is, where are you going to fit in the Wonderful Wailele Scheme of Things?"

"Wherever they let me, I guess."

"No, no, no." she said. "I mean, are you a student government wonk, or a basketball jock? Not the football player type, huh? What are you, a band nerd? Audio-visual geek? Come on—you know how high school works."

"Well, I played sax in the band back home, but I mostly joined because all my friends were in it and you got a free ride to all the football games."

"Reluctant band nerd," she nodded. "If you don't mind classifying things that way." She began counting off on her fingers. "We've got rockers, reggae mahns, wannabe homeboys, and a minimal Gothic set. You're from Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, right? You're not into, like, shit-kicker music, are you?"

Raymond shook his head. "I just listen to whatever."

"Of course we've got the beautiful people, the geeks, the Filipino princesses, a few skinheads, and of course the druggies. And the Bloods, but you sure as shit aren't getting in with them."

"Who are they?"

She took out a pack of Hubba Bubba and unwrapped a virgin piece. "Oh, surely you've seen how they've redecorated our fine campus?"

Raymond thought a minute. "Is that the L.B.I. thing out there?"

"The very same."

"I was thinking it sounded like terrorists. Like the P.L.O. or the I.R.A."

"Not a bad guess …"

"Is that who gave you that shiner?"

She turned away from him, her legs facing outward, now. "Yes." She paused, as if waiting for a question. She looked down the hall one way, then the other. "We had a disagreement over a little fashion statement, not that it's any of your business."

Raymond was scrambling for some way to respond when the door opened and the Polynesian boy he'd seen struggling in the front office walked out, followed by the security guard with the mustache. The girl on the bench popped her gum and blew a bubble, staring straight ahead. The boy glared at Raymond, then at her.

"Raymond Harmon?" the counselor asked, suddenly standing in the doorway.

Ray nodded. "Yeah, but she was here first."

Ms. Chandler flashed the girl a disapproving look. "I'll deal with you later." She turned back to Raymond. "Please shut the door behind you, Raymond."

"Nice talking to you," he said to the girl. She cracked her gum and nodded. Raymond closed the door and sat down.

Ms. Chandler had his file open in front of her, and he watched her as she read his biographical data. She had light brown skin, thick black hair and a face which might have been attractive except for a raisin-like mole sticking out from her face just below the left corner of her lower lip. She stifled a yawn.

"So you come from Arizona?" she asked him.

He nodded, resisting the urge to say "with a banjo on my knee." He tried not to be too obvious about not looking at her mole. "Phoenix. Mesa, actually, but nobody seems to know where that is."

"And what do you think of our school, so far?" Her mole bobbed as she spoke, and Raymond found himself feigning profound interest in the condition of his fingernails.

"I haven't seen anything but the parking lot and office building."

"And what do you think about Hawaii?"

"I don't know. I've only been here about sixteen hours."

Ms. Chandler pulled a piece of paper from her filing cabinet and handed it to him. "These are the school rules," she said. "I need to have you read them, then put your autograph at the bottom. All the students do it at the beginning of every school year."

Raymond took the paper and looked it over. The title at the top read "Contract of Conduct." The twenty or so rules which followed were the standard school regulations, written in first person: i.e. I will not steal school property, I will not possess, sell, or solicit drugs or other contraband, I will not argue with, fight with, harass, stab, shoot, bend, mutilate, or fold the other students—the standard rhetoric. It seemed a bit useless, seeing he was leaving, but Raymond signed the paper anyway and handed it back to the counselor. She filed it for posterity.

"Well, Raymond, do you have any questions before we turn you loose on our campus?"

Raymond dug a bit of soap from under his right thumbnail, then looked straight at Ms. Chandler. "What about this 'L.B.I.'?"

The counselor sighed. "Yes, I guess we should go over that. It stands for 'Local Bloods Incorporated.' It's a bunch of local boys. They mostly just hang around, but sometimes make trouble. Don't worry about the Bloods. I know you've heard it before, but if you don't bother them, they won't bother you." She closed his file and stood up, handing Raymond a laminated school portfolio with a picture of a blue and red Polynesian warrior on the front. "Welcome to Wailele, haole boy."

Raymond had heard the guys in the truck call him that: how-lee. "What's a how-lee?"

She sat down, shaking her head. "You know: haole … Caucasian … white."

"Gringo … honky … cracker …"

"Exactly."

"Is it, you know, a bad thing to call somebody?"

"Not necessarily. It can be very pejorative, or it can be a simple statement of fact. Depends on the tone of voice, really."

"I'm going to feel like a Mexican."

"You will?"

"You know, like a minority."

"You'll get used to it. Maybe when you get back to the Mainland, you'll know just how the Mexicans feel."

"Maybe." Then again, maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he wouldn't be in Hawaii long enough to find out. He sat back and blinked, then realized he was staring at her mole. She opened the door and he thanked her and walked out without looking at or speaking to the girl on the bench. He heard the girl's humming as he walked down the hallway to where Sarah was reading a magazine.

"Everything go okay?" his sister asked.

"I guess so." He held the front door open for her.

"The place doesn't seem too bad."

Raymond nodded. "Compared to what? Afghanistan?"

"You might even consider sticking around."

"Whatever."

Sarah gave him a little kick and they walked toward the car. As they drove out, Raymond noticed that the graffiti had been painted over, but still showed faintly through—like those ghostly water stains and blood spatters in haunted houses that refuse to be covered up. He could still make out the message: "L.B.I. Over ALL." They'd have to do another coat, he thought.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Raymond was mowing their half of the lawn with their next-door neighbor's mower when the mail-lady drove by. To his surprise, she stopped at their box. Ray left the mower chugging in the yeard and accepted the mail himself, smiling and telling the mail-lady "hi." As the truck pulled away, Raymond flipped past two coupon books and a bill addressed to a previous tenant, then came to the postcards. There were six of them, all addressed to him, with cacti and rodeos and Arizona sunsets on their fronts. He looked at them in turn, studying the pictures and wishing he were there, then turned them over. Each bore a few letters and pieces of letters on the message side. Risking the wrath of his mother, Raymond sat in the yard and laid the postcards side-to-side in the warm, fresh-cut grass. It took him a moment to arrange them so that the letters spelled "WELCOME HOME," across all six. The last was signed with a "love, Julie." Raymond noticed that the postmarks were dated the previous Tuesday, so she'd mailed them two days before the Harmons had left Arizona, on the day before The Fight.

Julie, a sophomore, had a view of their uncomplicated "relationship" that Raymond, a junior, did not share. She held the romantic notion that high school romances could somehow survive high school. When Raymond's mother informed the family of her decision to yank then up by the roots and transplant them to a little town on the north shore of Oahu, Julie had immediately set her fourteen-and-a-half-year-old heart on a long-distance relationship. At the "Aloha Luau" she threw for Ray and their mutual friends, she'd given him a box containing some apparently very masculine stationery, a roll of stamps, and a fancy gold pen. Raymond didn't give her anything; he'd already decided to write her off completely, but didn't tell her until the next day when he dropped by to say good-bye, forever. She'd called him a bastard and slapped him across the face, then cried and cried and wouldn't stop unless he'd hold her. Raymond gave her a half-hearted hug, feeling her nails dig into his back, then left, wondering why he'd gone out with her in the first place, and for a whole year.

She was the reason for his single reservation about returning to the Grand Canyon State. Dealing with her again. But he figured, if he could manage to get back home, he could manage just about anything.

Raymond looked up from the postcards, suddenly aware again of the world around him. The mower sat where he'd left it, idling roughly. With a wicked smile he got behind the mower and steered toward Julie's cutesy correspondence. The blade sucked in the postcards and spit them out the side in dozens of tiny pieces. He raked the shreds into a neat pile and ran the mower over again, this time creating confetti. He raked again, then stood back and admired his handiwork.

He was half-tempted to gather the bits and pieces and grass trimmings, stuff them into an envelope and send them back to Julie, but he decided against this. After all, there was no need to be cruel.

© Copyright 2002 by David S. Baker