Chapter 2
The Proposal
“I don’t want you to go back to school next fall.”
Kalama could not have more dumbstruck if her father had asked her to join the circus. Here she sat in the kitchen chair, her father staring down at her, the sunlight from the window shining brightly into her eyes, leaving her feeling very much like a clichéd criminal in a police interview. Ewa stood far away and off to the side, her hand wringing against the kitchen door as though she was just waiting for the first opportunity to bolt. Maybe it was the frightened look in her sister’s eyes that made Kalama think this more than Ewa’s actual stance.
“Excuse me?” Kalama gaped at her father, eyes wide.
“Kalama, I think I-the whole family has been a very good sport about your…education.” It was clear that her dad though about his choice of words carefully as he paced, circling around the chair. It made the conversation seem very unnerving. “But…it is becoming obvious that events beyond anyone’s control are making your…way of life extremely dangerous.”
Kalama didn’t like the way her father was speaking about magic. The way he talked about her education was the same tone a wizard might use to talk about their child smuggling illegal potion ingredients. She could hardly believe he would wait until now to voice any objection to her schooling. He had been quiet about it when she first started getting ready to leave, but had never flat out refused to allow her to go to Kailani.
“You can’t be serious!”
“Kalama!” her dad shouted, getting down to her eye-level and right in her face. “You heard me! I don’t want you going back to that God-forsaken school, and THAT’S FINAL!”
Just then, something inside Kalama snapped. She almost couldn’t believe the thoughts blaring inside her own head. She was furious with Will; yes, Will! How dare he, a Muggle tell her what she could and could not do! What right he did he have to pass proclamation over her education in magic, an education he himself could never hope to understand?
In an instant, Kalama had leapt to her feet, glaring her father right in the eyes. She could almost swear that her dad looked intimidated by her.
“Well, you’re not the first person to disapprove of a wizarding education!” Kalama shouted back at her father. “All I have to do is write the school saying you’re not going to help me anymore, and the school will take care of everything I need in order to go back!”
For that small moment in time, the balance of power shifted. Kalama’s father stepped back and seemed to regale his daughter with a sense of quiet awe.
“Well, Kalama,” he said slowly, “I guess that means you have a choice to make. You can stay here with your family, or you can decide to go back to school and be on your own.”
Kalama’s dad kept his voice calm, but there was a near icy quality to it. It would have been a lot easier to handle if he had just kept yelling. If he had done that, she might have had some clue to what he was feeling. But the way he kept his tone so devoid of emotion, it left Kalama with no idea of what was going to happen.
Kalama couldn’t stand it. She ran from the kitchen, raced through the hallways, and slammed her bedroom door shut behind her. Slowly, she slid down to the floor, her back against the door while the tears began to well in her eyes. She couldn’t be sure who had won the battle tonight, but she knew it wasn’t her, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t her father either. And she didn’t even want to think about what would happen come August when it would be time to leave for school again.
He can’t really mean it, Kalama though to herself, with her back against her bedroom door. He just can’t!
“Kahea mau ‘o ia me ka leo aloha…”
“Alright, ladies,” Mrs. Kapahali shouted loudly over the music, “let’s try to keep the beat now!”
“Kali ‘ana i ka ho’i me ke ahouni, Ku a’e ka paila o ka waiwai…”
Kalama took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. She tried as hard as she could to keep the movements of her feet and the movements of her hands in the same mind; even though they each wanted to go off in opposite directions. Her nails were still covered in their bright red polish, and this only proved to be even further of a distraction.
Summer hula had been a tradition that no amount of change in the Jameson family could end. Kalama’s mother had been the one to say the girls should take up hula when the family had first moved into the neighborhood, and she’d noticed every girl on their street running off in headdress and hula skirts. She’d signed the girls up for the classes at the same time, even though Ewa was barely old enough to walk back then.
“Malama ‘ai i ka lumi.”
The hula studio was normally large and airy when Kalama walked through it alone. But on a summer afternoon, when the room filled wall to wall with about thirty other dancing girls, and there was loud music blaring, it was about all Kalama could bear. Not to mention how the heat bounced around the studio in echoing waves. And the noise only adding to the chaos; the simultaneous rhythms of the stomping feet and the clapping hands added a rushed feel to the environment.
All that together made the whole practice feel nothing less than torture.
“Me na maka ‘oi’oi hiki ai, Ke ike pono i ka po’ele’ele…”
At the same time, however, everything that made the hula torturous almost made it energizing. A large group of racing hearts; flashes of the red skirts spinning in rhythm with the beating drums, reflecting in the wall of mirrors; suntanned feet sliding against the polished cherry-stained floors - it was almost as though the dance had power of the world. When one dancer sped up, everyone sped up. Everyone moved with the same amount of grace, the same jerks in motion. As futile as it may have seemed to the rest of the world, for that small moment in time, the dance was all that mattered.
“Pa’ani mau ana me ka pala’ie…”
Kalama’s scarlet practice skirt swirled around her as the routine came into its final rapid spin, before she and all the girls alongside her came into the finishing pose.
“’Aue ho’ohala e.”
“Okay, ladies,” Mrs. Kapahali announced to the class, “that was a very nice practice! We have our first public performance next Saturday, so make sure you all have your costumes ready by then. Other than that, I hope you all have a lovely week.” Mrs. Kapahali clapped her hands together. “Make sure you all practice your foot movements until then. We want them to be spot on! Class dismissed!”
The class of girls didn’t as much as nod before racing off in every direction. As strong as the collective rhythm had been moments before, it seemed to dissolve into near nothingness. The red tones that pulsed through the room faded, leaving the studio in only the faint white glow of the sunshine. The air cooled rapidly, and the noise dissolved into the thinning oxygen.
“Kalama!” she heard her sister call out from the doorway. “We need to go home now. Dad says we have to be home early tonight.”
Kalama nodded to her sister and raced for the door, stopping by the doormat for her burgundy sandals. Ewa stood in the school hallway, waiting for her sister. Ewa wasn’t even tapping her foot as she normally did whenever she became impatient. Kalama finally caught up to her sister, waving good-bye to Melia and Oleana, two of the Kili’e’o sisters, as she passed them running out. Kalama still hadn’t found time to go visit them yet in the two weeks she’d been home.
Once the two sisters left the school, a still heat crept back into their bones, devoid of any energy that they had felt in the dance studio. Warmth radiated off the concrete street and the tar patches on the street were soft and sinking. The June air was humid and heavy with the scent of plumeria. The noise from the city above was smothered by the leadenness of the air, and the very movements of the natural world around them seemed slowed by the weight.
“How early did Dad say we needed to be home?” Kalama asked Ewa suddenly, glancing down at her watch as she did so. “If we hurry, we might be able to catch the ice cream man before he leaves our neighborhood, and right now, I could kill for a strawberry-”
“Kalama, I don’t want you to leave forever,” Ewa whispered in a pouting voice, after Kalama had already began racing ahead.
Kalama looked back behind her shoulder to see her sister standing still and small-looking. Her feet didn’t shuffle, she didn’t wring her fingers, and she kept her eyes cast down towards the heating pavement.
“Oh, no one’s leaving home forever, Ewa,” Kalama answered, walking back slowly towards her sister. “Dad’s just bluffing. All he needs is a little time to cool down, and-”
“No, Kalama,” Ewa replied. “Dad read about the war in your newspaper. He says that in wars, people die all the time! Innocent people!”
Kalama felt taken aback by her Ewa’s words. These weren’t the kind of things that typically came out of the mouth of seven-year-old. It almost hurt Kalama to hear such thoughts come from her baby sister.
“And that because you don’t come from a wizard family, you’re probably going to be one of them…”
Kalama fidgeted where she stood, wringing her skirt in her hands. What her little sister was saying was hardly news. Everyone in Kailani knew what the war in Europe was being fought over, but they had all been told it was nothing they need to worry over. The fighting was at least years from reaching American, much less Hawaiian, soil. Another thing the teachers had stressed to the students was that they had much more to fear from their final exams than they did from being carried off in the night by Death Eaters, or whatever they were called.
“I don’t want you die, Kalama!” Ewa took a sharp intake of breath, almost cracking as she did so. “I’d be so sad!”
Kalama didn’t speak right away, feeling the need to deeply consider her choice of words. She could hardly tell Ewa that people wouldn’t die because of the war, but she also had to convey to her sister that she had no chance of dying because of this war. No one from America was being called over to fight yet.
“You remind me of Mama…” Ewa pouted. “You look like her, you sound like her…and now you going to leave, just like her.”
It was those last words that Ewa spoke that caught Kalama completely off guard. Not talking about their mother was still an unspoken law in the Jameson house: invoking the name of Nora Jameson was like evoking the name of an ancient deity. And to compare to Kalama to their mother…it was something Kalama couldn’t even fathom thinking about. It made Kalama seriously rethink the position her family saw her in. It even made Kalama’s father’s behavior seem less irrational, if they saw Kalama as some kind of link to the girls’ dead mother.
“Please, Kalama,” Ewa begged, hugging her sister tightly around the waist, “promise me you won’t go back to the school!”
Wordlessly, Kalama pushed her sister away from her. When Ewa looked up at her sister with sad, shining eyes, Kalama knelt down and looked into Ewa’s face. She grasped Ewa’s shoulders tightly, as though she were clinging to a life raft.
“I’ll think about it,” Kalama promised her sister.
Even though it was the last thing she wanted to do.
War Torn by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Kalama's family confronts her with two choices, and doesn't what to choose either of them.
Thank you, Anna, for being such a great beta!