Cut Off (23 page)

"Why did you
do
that?" Alden blurted.

"I don't know, because he was about to throw you down the stairs?"

"I can take care of myself."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that."

"Yeah, not with all those years of kung fu or anything." He rolled his eyes and walked from the house. "Later."

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Somewhere I don't have to answer questions like that one, Mom."

She fell silent, taken aback. She had taken no special joy in hitting Ke, but it had obviously been the right thing to do, and Alden's ingratitude stung like a nettle. She went inside the house and resumed attacking the junk and filth that presently owned it, fueled by resentment and the need to accomplish.

It was a tough balance, keeping him safe while ensuring he was becoming capable of keeping himself safe. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to let him navigate Robi and Ke for himself. Depending on whether Ke was truly dangerous, of course—though the fact he hadn't come armed, and had left so readily, implied he wasn't. Would depend how he reacted next. Better yet, if she could discern that, she'd know whether to trust Alden with it, or resolve it alone.

The decision calmed her down. Three hours after the incident, Alden returned from the jungle and stopped in the yard, watching her sort clothes into three piles: what they might wear themselves, what could be useful as rags, and what had no use.

"I'm sorry I went straight into attack mode," she said without looking up. "I wanted to give him a bop on the nose before things got too serious."

"What if that had made things
more
serious?"

"Then I would have fucked up. But they didn't, did they?"

Alden shrugged and pushed his blond hair from his brow. "You didn't know it would happen like that. I swear you overreact to everything."

She fought down the urge to argue the point. "You like her, don't you?"

He shrugged again, lowering his gaze to the grass. "We just met."

"I'm not asking if you want to marry her and have eighty kids, cool guy. But you want to get to know her."

"Sure."

"And
then
have eighty kids."

"Laugh it up. How am I supposed to get to know her when you just punched her brother in the nose?"

She smiled. So many things had changed, but the simple joy of making fun of your younger brother wasn't one of them. "I'll apologize to Ke. And try to figure out what his problem is."

Alden eyed her. "Probably your typical overprotective older sibling."

"That must be the worst thing ever. Why couldn't the virus have taken out everyone older than eighteen? We could finally run the planet the
right
way."

Finally, he smiled. "Because the aliens wouldn't have stood a chance."

"Do you know where they live, Ke and Robi?"

"Up the stream. Less than a mile."

"I'll go over there tomorrow," she said. "Give him a chance to cool down."

Alden went inside the house. A minute later, he came out with a basket of rusty metal aerosol cleaning products and shaving cream. Wordlessly, he carried them off to be sprayed out, which they had decided early in their post-apocalyptic life was safer than piling them up where they might wind up punctured and/or exploding. By day's end, they had removed all the obvious clutter from the house. Next would come a whole lot of cleaning, which Tristan was not looking forward to.

In the morning, she went for a quick run. After, she rinsed at the stream, then, on a lark, waded into the pool below the falls. The top of the water was warm, but the layer below the surface was so cold she drew a deep, involuntary breath. She paddled across to the falls, gasping as the chilly water spilled over her head.

The early morning sun seemed to brighten, the leaves of the trees suddenly so green she wanted to be a part of them. Her breathing was a religious experience. She felt weightless, as if she had emerged from a heavier, duller world. She knew it was nothing more than the exertion of the run and the exhilaration of immersing herself in cold water, yet she pushed those thoughts from mind, staying within the moment. She swam back to shore and dried off. Before she'd dressed, the feeling had passed.

It was a little early to be barging in on people she'd recently punched, so she went back to the house to scrub some walls. After another hour, she returned to the stream and followed the trail beside it up into the hills. As Alden had said, after half a mile, the trail forked left. Past a wall of trees, a small green house stood on stilts. Patches of crops grew around it, the jungle mingling into them. She climbed the front stairs. Ke snored on a couch on the porch. Tristan hesitated, uncertain of the social protocol of waking up a potential enemy who didn't know you were coming.

Ke blinked, eyes widening as he became aware he wasn't alone. "What are you doing here? Come to finish the job?"

"To clear the air. I'm sorry for hitting you."

He sat up, rubbing gunk from the corner of one eye. "You didn't seem too sorry. You were smiling."

"I'm sure it was just a battle-grimace."

"There was a fist in my face at the time, so maybe I didn't have the best view. But I know a smile when I see it."

She gestured at the couch across from him. "Can I sit?"

He sighed, though it might have been the sigh of a person waking up. "If you have to."

She did so. "I'm not here to waste your time. Did you come to my house to hurt Alden?"

"I was there to get Robi. I don't give a damn about your brother."

"Protecting your sister. From what?"

He spread his hands. "Well, I don't know, do I?"

"Seems rash to come to my house looking for a fight. All you had to do is tell Robi it was time to leave."

"I wasn't thinking clearly, okay? Is that what you want to hear? Things were different in Honolulu. First time a guy came at Robi, I backed him off with words. When he came back, that's when I got this." He tapped the bullet scar on his shoulder. "A few years later, when another guy told me she was his, I didn't give him the chance to come back."

She folded her arms. "Now I'm wondering why you weren't carrying a gun yesterday."

"You two, I didn't get that feral vibe I got from the survivors in the city." He smiled wryly. "I was mad, yeah, but I thought bluster would do the trick. Didn't count on running into Mrs. Pacquiao."

To her surprise, she felt a blush coming on. "Again, sorry. I'm glad I came by. This is starting to make a lot more sense."

"I appreciate it. In this place, we're practically neighbors."

"If that's settled, I'd like to move on to other business." Tristan bit her lip. "I'm afraid that they like each other."

Absently, Ke rubbed his shoulder. "They just met."

"At their age, that's all it takes. And it's not like they have a lot of options these days. Alden would probably date a dolphin if he could find its breasts."

Ke bit his lips together. "Then tell him to get swimming. I'm not going to pimp my little sister to him."

Tristan gazed across the yard. A floral, pollen-heavy scent oppressed the morning. "How old were you when the Panhandler hit?"

"Seventeen."

"In high school?"

He gave her a look. "Why
wouldn't
I be?"

"God, you're sensitive," she said. "So you were in school. Had friends. Were you always back by curfew? Did you ever sneak out? Drink beer? Smoke pot? Trespass? When you lost your parents, were you still a virgin?"

His annoyed expression became thoughtful. "Make your point."

"We did our job: we've kept them alive. Maybe it's time to let them live."

Ke rubbed his mouth. "Is he eighteen?"

"Almost twenty. Is
she
?"

"Nineteen last month. Where is this going?"

She pressed her palms together. "If they wind up wanting to be together, do you think we could stop them? If we tell them no, that would only justify their Romeo and Juliet complex."

"But if we keep their respect, they might listen to
some
of what we say." He leaned back into the couch. "Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves? Last week, she didn't know he existed."

"You know how fast things can move when you're young." She stood. "Sorry again for hitting you."

She tromped down the steps and returned to the jungle. It did feel hasty to be talking about this already, but she had a sense of inevitability.
Something
would happen between the two teens. Maybe it would last and maybe it would be no more than a fling. Either way, she had to position herself to be able to influence Alden. Otherwise, they would insulate themselves with the strongest bond two people could make: a young couple's belief they were being persecuted by meddling older relatives.

Meanwhile, there were real issues to navigate. Including ones that wouldn't have been issues back in the days of established order. Like age. How would she have felt if it had turned out Robi were only seventeen? Should they still care about age of consent? Obviously a line existed somewhere, but she wasn't sure she'd care if a nineteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old wanted to fool around or shack up or get married.

She hadn't given anything like this much thought until now. Laws were only necessary in a society of multiple people, a situation she and Alden hadn't been in for years. She did know one thing: the old laws had been designed to sustain a world that no longer existed. Most were no longer relevant. Some former rules might be in opposition to the survivors' new goals (whatever
those
might be). If it was their intention to stay in Hana—and she still wasn't sure that was the best idea—it would mean an ongoing series of decisions about how to shape this new place.

Back at the house, Alden was scrubbing walls. "How'd it go?"

"Hope you're feeling strong. I need you to help me bury a body."

His eyebrows jumped, then drew into a skeptical line. "No you didn't."

She didn't know whether to feel amused or disheartened that he'd believed her, if only for a second. "We're cool. If you guys want to hang out, I doubt it's going to lead to any more brawls."

"Cool."

He brought Robi back to the house the next day, along with a shopping cart of cleaning supplies. The two of them always seemed to be in a different room from Tristan and she often found herself straining her ears to make sure they were making noise. Silence was a bad sign and she had no idea what she would do if it lasted longer than a few seconds.

She did not enjoy this spying. It didn't help that Robi remained unfailingly polite: all smiles, asking regularly what she could do next to help. The whole affair made Tristan feel twice as old as she was and unbearably motherly. Two days in, realizing she was driving herself insane, she assigned herself a new project: setting up a water filter.

Until now, they'd been using the little portable one. It wouldn't last much longer, and anyway, it took forever to get a decent amount of water through it. To kill two birds with one stone, she dug a fire pit, set up two wire chairs above it, and topped them with a massive tamale steamer she'd looted from one of the neighbors. She got the fire going and filled the steamer with taro root. Once it was cooked, she set it aside to cool and poked the coals and embers down to charcoal and ashes. While she waited for
that
to cool, she removed a coffee table from the pile, dumped the taro roots on it, and began the tedious process of smashing it into paste.

After a few minutes, she looked up to discover Ke watching her from the shade of a tree. She jerked her hand in surprise, narrowly avoiding crushing her other hand with the fat stone she was using to grind taro.

He moved toward her. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

She set down the rock and stood. "Crush stuff with other stuff?"

"That's poi. Our version of...hot dogs, or pizza. How'd you hear about it?"

"By existing on Earth? Watching
Wayne's World
?
I didn't know what it looked like before I got here, but I went to the library for a book on local plants." She glanced at the thick purple-gray paste on the table. "It said it lasts forever and it sounded easy to make. My kind of food."

He nodded slowly, approving, then glanced at the house. "How they doing?"

"Good. She's a hard worker. As far as I know, we're not grandparents yet."

Ke snorted with laughter. "Well, I was going to invite you guys to the secret beach, but now I think I'm going to go be sick instead."

"Secret beach? You can't drop something about a secret beach and then walk away. That's a good way to get punched. Again."

"It's too far to get to today. You free tomorrow?"

"I'll bring the poi."

He grinned and said something in Hawaiian she didn't understand. After he left, she stirred the remnants of the fire to make sure there were no live embers, held the back of her hand above it to ensure it was cool enough to handle, then gathered up the charcoal and got to work grinding the chunks. Finished, she set it aside, then went to get gravel from the stream and sand from the beach. Once she was back at the house, she layered all of the above into a big plastic jug and brought it up to the lanai.

The house was far too quiet. She opened the screen door and stood there, dread mounting in her stomach. Feeling like the babysitter in a slasher movie, she braced herself and stepped inside. She found them lying on the living room floor, belly-down, comic books spread before them. Robi looked up, saw her, and waved.

In the early morning, Ke and Robi came to the house together, backpacks over their shoulders, each of them walking a pair of bikes. Alden was still waking up, but Tristan had already prepared, including donning a swimsuit beneath her clothes, and they set off within minutes, riding north up the highway. Ke set a brisk pace; he wasn't sure they'd be able to make it there and back in one day. He explained this apologetically, as if he thought Tristan might throw down her pack and go home—which wasn't an unreasonable fear—but she'd been working hard for days and was up for a break.