That Which Feeds Us

ONE

TWO WEEKS AGO

The week after she started at the mortuary, Lehua learned the dead didn't stay asleep.

The first time a deceased had woken up, she'd been assisting her new boss Avery in the embalming room. As the mortuary's newest initiate, Lehua was tasked with disinfecting the man's body with a soapy sponge, working each stiff limb out of rigor mortis, readying him for Avery's scalpel and drain tube.

Lehua had been running the sponge down one of his arms when the hair along the back of her neck rose at the sudden feeling of eyes on her face.

His brown eyes. The dead man's open eyes bored into her skull. His face etched sharp by the room's harsh fluorescent light strips. She clamped down on her scream but dropped the sponge, splattering her newly bought scrubs with soap and water.

Avery had only glanced at Lehua. Above her respirator, her kohl-rimmed eyes had crinkled into a smile. "Sorry," she said, fitting a small plastic disk-an eye cap, she would later explain to a less shaken Lehua-beneath the man's eyelids one by one, sealing them shut once more. "Sometimes, they wake up."

Lehua suspected it had been a test from Avery. A rite for new recruits. When Lehua had handed Avery her scalpel and watched the man's skin break beneath the blade near his collarbone, she had apparently proven herself. But since that moment, the man's eyes had been scorched into Lehua's memory, their color haunting the darkness behind her own eyelids. Walnut brown, gold-veined, like the hardened sap of a tree.

Lehua remembered those amber eyes now as she looked down at the body bag on the gurney. Its zipper pulled like an open wound. Under the tarp-like bag, the deceased-Sarah Brown-gazed ahead with glassy eyes.

Lehua had been at the Phoenix mortuary for half a year now and had seen plenty of open-eyed, slack-jawed corpses. Yet there was always a tight inhale, a squeeze in her chest, whenever the dead watched her work. She couldn't shake the eerie sense that she was moored to the dead's bedside in the hushed mortuary. But the quiet purpose centered her.

"Our work," Avery had explained when Lehua had first been hired, "requires precision."

Any mistakes, and she could ruin a family's goodbye.

Lehua rolled the gurney through the crematorium's double-wide doors. A row of steel cremators reflected the room's sterile light. Each machine was flanked by an adjoined observation room's glass window. Tonight those navy wainscoted rooms were empty.

Lehua pushed Sarah toward the nearest cremator. A wooden casket lay atop its conveyor belt. Using the body bag for leverage, Lehua hauled Sarah into the bare pine box. She folded Sarah's stiff hands onto her stomach, noticing the delicate nail beds, the polish on their filed ends, the pale outline of a ring, now gone. Sarah had been in her apartment, sans air conditioning, for a week before a neighbor had noticed the smell. Even in November, the stubborn heat in Phoenix had only cooled so much and her pale skin had started to blister.

On a copy of Sarah's photo ID, her white bob framed a furrowed face, fringing eyes like tanzanite. Normally, Lehua would try to match the corpse in front of her to the photo. She would clean Sarah's body, plumping her cheeks with cotton before shuttering her eyes once more, and then she and Avery would give her family a chance to say goodbye. Except Sarah had no family left. Lehua would be her only send-off, a depressing party of one.

Lehua flicked on the cremator's touchscreen and started preheating the furnace for Sarah's exit. She didn't carry the same dark humor as her boss. The dead they prepared weren't asleep, their ghosts on the verge of waking up. No.

Growing up, she'd inherited a legacy of native Hawaiian superstitions from her grandparents. "We never kill night moths," her grandfather used to whisper, gently cupping the dusty-winged creatures that darted inside their home. "They're the spirits of our visiting loved ones."

She thought she had already uprooted those seeds of island superstition when her grandparents had died and no night moths came to visit her. But when she'd met the man's eyes that first week at the mortuary, what had surprised her was how blank they'd been. How empty.

That's what's next? she'd thought, her heart seizing in her chest like it'd been trapped in a vice, strangling the remaining roots of her grandparents' stories. Back then, she'd felt like a fortune teller gazing too far into the future, unable to unsee what they'd learned. Now, it was with finality that she met Sarah's dead eyes. That's what's next.

Lehua stepped away from the casket, unlocked her phone to clock the cremation time, and froze.

Six missed calls. All from her twin. Ohia.

Lehua considered ignoring her, but whatever peace the mortuary's night shift and its collection of dead had brought her was lost. Ohia hadn't called in three months. Not since their fight.

Since Lehua had dropped out of college, they repeated the same conversation about how Lehua was "letting her future drift away" every time they spoke. Only it had ended differently the last time they saw each other. Ohia had looked at her accusingly from beneath her dark lashes, her mouth had crushed into a disdainful line, and she'd said: "You're wasting your life away."

Lehua had been too shocked to say the words rising in her throat now: Screw you, Ohia. But six calls in the last half hour alone meant something bad had happened. Because Lehua wouldn't be her sister's first call in an emergency. She'd be Ohia's last.

Lehua retreated into the observation room. Through the viewing glass, she could still see Sarah in her casket, blue eyes staring up as Lehua dialed her sister. She rapped her knuckles against the glass, waiting.

Ohia picked up on the second ring.

"There you are," her twin said by way of greeting.

"What's wrong?" The words were out before Lehua could stop them, but she had no idea how else to start. Growing up, she and Ohia had been inseparable. But a rift had been growing between them, even before their fight. Lehua had wondered if there was an elusive shorthand she was missing, the way twins like them were supposed to communicate.

Now the silence that followed went long enough that Lehua was convinced Ohia had hung up on her.

"Jesus, Le. Nothing's wrong," her twin finally answered, laughing low. "I'm going home. I got a job on a small island farm near Maui-"

"Oh," said Lehua without meaning to, wondering if the cremation retort roaring in the other room had messed with her hearing. "Home like Hawaiʻi?"

"Yes, like Hawaiʻi," snorted Ohia.

"On a farm?" Lehua tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

"Yeah, it's like an internship."

That's why you're calling? Annoyance spiked through Lehua. That's it?

She tried to picture the homeland she'd only seen in photos. The islands their mom had abandoned them for shortly after their birth, leaving them in Arizona to be raised by their grandparents. Their grandparents had been nostalgic for their homeland, too, sharing its legends before they'd died, and their wistfulness had been contagious. Enough so that when Lehua imagined the islands, they were like a fairy tale long worn into memory, effervescent and hazy. But she could clearly imagine Ohia in Hawaiʻi, watching the tide ebb in and out, her umbra eyes shining like the blown-out end of a smoldering match.

The mortuary's viewing glass reflected Lehua's own smudged silhouette. Her short curls fell like a crow's bent wing over her shaved undercut, and her eyes were two inkblots. The mortuary was the one place where Lehua fit and Ohia didn't, which had been a large part of its appeal. When she had told Ohia about her job, her sunny sister had reliably shuddered. "Never touch me again."

Lehua knew she should be glad for Ohia. A better sister might've pried for details, gushing about how lucky her twin was, exclaiming at all the right moments. And she wanted to be. But all Lehua heard was You're wasting your life away.

Even living outside her sister's orbit, Lehua scrolled past enough of Ohia's interviews to know she was a top favorite among college runners nationwide. It was the type of fame they had dreamed about together, until six months ago when Lehua abandoned that dream. At least that's how Ohia interpreted her dropping out. Because her twin had never considered how it felt for Lehua to always be chasing her, and always coming second.

Lehua didn't know how farming factored into her sister's bright future as a track superstar-and she didn't care enough to ask, either.

"Well, I get off in the morning," Lehua offered, more generously than she felt. "I can pick you up for breakfast or-"

"I can't."

"You can't," Lehua repeated, hoping Ohia heard the annoyance lacing her voice. Can't or won't?

Ohia swallowed, a sharp break before she sighed, letting Lehua know her not-so-subtle message had been received.

"No, Le. I can't," she said tightly. "I'm on the boat now."

Then the words that cut deeper than Avery's scalpel, breaking skin: "I'm already gone."


TWO

NOW, FRIDAY

Please call me.

Lehua cradled her phone under the inn's veranda, her back turned toward the ocean and the saltwater wind clawing into her hoodie. The text stayed delivered-but unread.

Rain puddled along Canal Street, reflecting Lāhainā Harbor in ripples of purple, blue, and pale yellow, shining like a healing bruise.

That evening, she shared the Maui veranda with a pair of disappointed vacationers in formless kaftans. The middle-aged women leaned against the inn's wall, waiting out the rain. Fliers and posters were taped behind them, the largest of which read Charter a Romantic Maui Dinner Boat Today. Underneath that ad, a poster of a smiling woman with brown skin.

MISSING read a painfully familiar word above her head, the letters long and red like scratches, and Lehua thought of Ohia leaving for a small island farm. She hadn't suspected anything was wrong until two days ago when Ohia's coach had shown up at the mortuary, and cold dread had washed over her like the sea.

"Lehua?" Coach Ulrich had called, half running to keep up with her long-legged retreat to her car. "Where's Ohia?"

That had stopped her in her tracks.

Lehua hadn't spoken to him since she had dropped out and turned in her uniform. Of course his first words to her in six months had been about Ohia. Old Uzzy hadn't changed.

"Wouldn't you know? She's doing some internship on a farm."

"What internship?" he had snapped. "Ohia's on academic suspension for her failing grades. She left the team." He had frowned, implying well enough what he hadn't said. Like you.

Lehua had gotten in her car and rushed to Ohia's apartment. Her sister couldn't have been suspended. Uzzy had to have been mistaken. During their freshman year, Ohia had averaged a 4.0 with ease while Lehua had limped into class after practice, struggling to keep up. But when she'd gotten to Ohia's apartment, her room had been cleared out, and her roommate's girlfriend was already moving in.

"She's taking a year off," her roommate had said blithely. Lehua had left, confused and angry, reeling from the strangeness of it all. Had they been talking about the same Ohia?

Lehua turned her back to the missing-person flier stuck to the hotel. Ohia's not missing, she thought obstinately, scrolling through her unanswered texts.

uzzy came to see me

is everything ok

what's going on

where are you

call me

please call me

She dialed Ohia, and her twin's photo-smiling out of the corner of her mouth, her hair falling in dark waves-filled her screen. The two-second tone rang, and Lehua imagined Ohia on a nearby shoreline with a brand-new trail of freckles, answering with a scowl. You were worried?

That image dissipated as Ohia's phone went straight to voicemail.

She redialed. The same trill answered her. "Hi. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message and I'll get back to you-"

No. Lehua hit the End Call button. You won't.

That made thirty-five unanswered calls, ten voicemails, six text messages, and not a single word from her sister.

Where are you, Ohia? she thought for the tenth time that day. She'd been looking for two days now. The only certainty Lehua had that Ohia was even in Hawaiʻi was her bank charges.

After leaving Ohia's apartment, Lehua had phoned her sister's bank, claiming she'd lost her card, and had learned Ohia's last two transactions occurred on Maui two weeks ago. She had withdrawn three hundred dollars and bought something at a Lāhainā convenience store, exactly twenty-five minutes before their phone call. Lehua had immediately called out of work and booked a flight to Maui.

Yesterday, she had landed in Kahului Airport with a single bag, alone in a homeland she had never been to. She'd caught a bus to the west side of Maui and shown Ohia's photo to everyone, asking if they had seen her or heard about a small island farm, only to reserve a hotel room hours later, two paychecks poorer, red-faced and defeated.

Today had to end differently.

Lehua glanced at the time. Almost six. She left the veranda's shelter, departing the Maui hotel she had checked out of, and headed to the pier to continue her search. That morning, none of the local fishermen she had talked to had recognized Ohia. But they recommended coming back in the evening to ask the private charters. "She looks like a yacht girl," one of the men had said under his breath.

Tourists formed queues along the docks. In the rain, they looked like shadows behind the ocean's mist and fog. Lehua felt like a stranger walking past them. Lehua showed Ohia's photo to everyone she passed and checked the signs for the tour boats-Maui Whale Watch. Dolphin Encounter. Sub Boat Expedition-until she saw a pretty brown girl.

She stood separate from the tourists, wearing a green crop top and denim cutoffs that brushed her knees. The highlighted ends of her hair twisted toward her waist like an unfurled garter snake.

The girl with her crammed duffel bag didn't look like she was there for any of the cruises. She was the same age as Lehua but a full head shorter, staring at an anchored trawler boat until she noticed Lehua.

"Hi," Lehua said, caught. "Sorry."

"Can I help you?"

There was no irritation in the girl's voice, but her expression had gone from wistful to bemused. Lehua ignored the heat growing in her cheeks and offered her phone with the picture of Ohia, the false version of herself coming to life.

"I'm Lehua," she said, flashing her most winning smile, a poor facsimile of the one Ohia wore in her picture. "I'm looking for my sister, Ohia."