Chapter Six
What. The. Hell.
Slowly, I faced Naira, hoping I hadn’t heard right. She looked back at me with her luminous brown eyes, waiting for me to say something. Her fingers twisted around one another in her lap.
“You mean you’re going to leave on this research trip?”
Naira swallowed, slow to speak, like she was weighing her words. “Well, yeah. But I mean after that.” The skinny gold bangles covering Naira’s slender arm nearly to her elbow jingled from her movement.
“Just say what you’re going to say,” I muttered, already feeling the heat building behind my eyes.
She took a deep breath. “So, I’ve been thinking about applying to U of Charleston for the fall if I can get in. If I go on the research trip, it won’t just be to kick around. It’ll be to check out the school and make a final decision.”
The last word she said real low, ducking her head down in shame like she shouldn’t have been telling me this bullshit news. She shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I’ve been thinking. The weekend will help me figure it out.”
The hell was she talking about? There was no way Naira had been thinking about leaving the island and me and Sekou.
The words rolled around in my head. Naira said leaving. She meant leaving, leaving.
“You’re screwing with us, right?” There was a piece of me warning to be cool, but it was a teeny-tiny piece. Being cool wasn’t really my style.
“I’m dead serious.”
The burning in my eyes increased, and I bit my lip to hold back the tears and words I knew would get me in trouble.
I knew what this meant. I knew it when I saw Luke with Naira. I knew it when I woke up this morning to my grandma in a weird trance. And now, I knew that I was losing my best friend. That she would leave me behind.
My place would always be here on the Isle, where I would one day take over Nana Ama’s role. Naira had promised she would be right there with me.
Sekou pursed his lips like he was trying to figure out how we got here. That made two of us. It was like Naira was tossing us to the side and didn’t give a damn about it.
I heard myself asking, “Are you, like, for real?”
“The realest,” she said. “Can Charleston really be considered ‘going away’? And if I did want to go farther, why not? Honestly, I think you’re making a bigger deal of this than necessary.”
“The difference,” I said, “is that you’re talking about living there. Like, with mainlanders.”
“For school. I’ll be back some weekends. And on holidays. And for the summer.”
“I just always thought…” I was at a loss for words.
What did I think? I hadn’t. I thought the Isle and working on it, living on it, was enough.
I didn’t think Naira would want to live like a mainlander.
She’d be away, away. Not commuting like we’d been doing for high school.
Not even going to the community college right across the way. But living there.
“You thought everything would stay the same.” She snorted. “Life isn’t like that, Ada. It might be for you. But not so much for me.”
I waited for Sekou to step in, to tap me out like a tag team wrestling duo. But he kept quiet.
“Kinfolk leave all the time. They come and go. Live abroad and return home.” Naira stepped out of the cart, her tone cool as ice.
“But—but … we’re different. This is our home, and we swore we’d stick together. Hold this place down. How can we do that when you’re”—I waved my hands into the void—“out there.”
“Then come with,” she said suddenly, like it was the best idea in the world. “Me, you, and Se away at school.”
I flinched, her words like stabs.
At the same time, Sekou said, “You know Ada can’t just up and leave the Isle whenever she wants.”
Naira turned to him. “Why can’t she?”
It sounded like a dare and an insult to me and my grandmother.
She knew Nana’s fear of traveling far distances across the sea and her unwavering belief that crossing the sea always meant one wouldn’t return.
That the most Nana would occasionally do is venture the few miles over the waterway to Hilton Head or towns along the coast when she needed to step out.
Because of all this, Naira knew I was just as oathbound to the Golden Isle as my grandmother.
She knew we had to stay to protect ourselves and the land we owned.
I opened myself up to feel. Naira’s vibe was different.
Resentful. Fearful. Chilled. Feelings from her that were new to me, and terrifying.
Confrontation was her enemy. She was supposed to be the sensible one.
Sekou, the playful one. Me, the hothead.
We balanced one another out, but now we were out of whack.
“What’s the problem? That I want to see the world?
” she scoffed. “It’s not even the world, it’s like a microcosm of the world.
” Her thumb and forefinger nearly touched for emphasis.
“It’s just Charleston for god’s sake. What’s wrong with going, huh?
With knowing what’s out there? With knowing who’s out there? ”
And there it was. The real reason why Naira wanted off our rock. School my ass. This “change of mind” was all about goddamn Luke.
Sekou finally said, “It’s a surprise, Naira, you know?
Just the other day you were talking about what we were gonna put on the grill for the Fourth.
You and me were looking at online schools just last week.
It’s been us three since we could talk, so, I mean, we need a minute. To process all of this.”
Naira said, “Know what I think?”
I didn’t want to know, but Naira was going to enlighten me any damn way.
Sekou whispered, “Don’t do it.”
“I think you’re really mad about the thought of me and Sekou finally getting out from up under you.
I think you like that we follow you around like little birdies.
It’s the Ada Show all the time, we’re just the sidekicks.
And we play into it every fucking time because it’s your family who runs all of this.
” She took a deep breath like she was preparing to say something big.
Then she delivered. “You think you own us.”
I felt heat flush my cheeks.
“Naira, what?” Sekou said, shocked.
Naira couldn’t unsay what she just said. And I couldn’t unhear it.
I clenched my fist and tried to keep in all the rage and hurt I wanted to unleash. I’d tried up until now to keep quiet, tried to hold myself back from lashing out because I knew how sensitive she was.
I really tried, but Naira had made it impossible.
Sekou slung an arm across the back of the seat, the tips of his fingers grazing my shoulder like he was going to comfort me or rein me in. I moved out of reach, not wanting to be touched. I didn’t want to be here with Naira, who wanted to leave, and Sekou, who seemed fine with it all.
I got out of the cart.
I wanted to say the most hurtful things possible. I wanted to cry.
“We can talk about it tomorrow when everyone’s had a moment, you know? Not say things we’ll regret in the morning,” Sekou suggested.
What was he saying? It was better to be the one leaving than the one being left.
“Ada, wait,” Naira called out as I increased the distance between us.
It was enough to accuse me of wanting to keep her down by keeping her here.
It was enough to spring a new plan different than what we’d talked about for years, to not trust us enough to discuss it.
And now she wanted me to wait. For what?
“Ada,” she said again while Sekou looked back and forth as if he was unsure which side of the rope to land on. Well, I’d make the choice for him.
“You’re a liar, Naira,” I told her.
“What?” she squeaked.
“A liar. You signed up for this research trip for your college class. Fine. But then you say you want to go away to find yourself or see what’s out there or some shit.
I think there’s nothing, but whatever. But now I know why you’re really leaving for that trip tomorrow.
I know ‘what’s out there.’ A boy. A boring, entitled, ignorant, rich mainlander prep you barely even know. ”
Sekou groaned as his head dropped in his hand as if I was the one who’d broken our pact. But it wasn’t me. It was Naira who’d flipped on me, on him and the Isle, on our friendship.
“Jesus, Ada,” Sekou muttered.
My body trembled, but I held myself together, just for a little bit longer. “So, go be with that boy and leave me the hell alone. For good.” I turned on my heel and began walking.
“Ada!” Sekou called from behind me. “What the hell? How you gonna … What about your ride?”
I kept walking.
I spent all night tossing and turning, wondering how I could have done or said things differently.
But in the end, Naira had said enough and I guess I had too.
I tried brushing off Naira’s accusation that I wanted to control them, to keep them here and content on the Isle like I was.
But a part of me feared she was right. I’d never want to trap someone where they didn’t want to be.
Nana’s number one rule was clear: Everyone deserved the freedom to choose their own path.
Naira had made hers, and I knew that meant she would probably leave the Isle.
This trip was just the beginning. And as much as it gutted me, I couldn’t stand in her way.
I couldn’t wave goodbye either. And I couldn’t stand to see Sekou’s disappointed face that I’d handled Naira all wrong. What was I supposed to do, baby her? What about me?
When I woke up the next morning, nightmare and earthquake-free, all the feelings from the night before rushed at me at once when I remembered what Naira had said. What Sekou didn’t say because I had said enough.
… Leave me the hell alone. For good.
That part I hadn’t meant. As angry and hurt as I was by Naira, I couldn’t send her off with what I’d said.
From the top of the pier at the private marina on the Kin side of the Isle, I watched as the boat Naira was on backed up farther and farther from the dock, curving into a turn, and began its way up the two-hour trek to Charleston Harbor.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I fished it out, seeing the text from Naira pop up. I’m sorry.
My anger and pride might have kept me from answering her sorry or the string of messages that followed, but at least I’d still shown up for her, though she didn’t know it.
She wouldn’t know I stayed on the pier, watching the boat’s wake eventually subside to light ripples as it moved farther away.
She wouldn’t know I remained long after everyone else left to go about their day’s business.
Long after the boat was barely a speck, and then when it was no longer there.