By the time Nori turned onto their street, her legs ached. She hurried past her house without looking, hoping her parents weren’t home. It was just then that she heard her name called out. Nori paused to listen and heard her name fill the air again. It was Leia. She was hiding in the tear-down shed in their yard. It’s Leia, she thought, heart racing with happiness. But when the door of the shed cracked open, it took only a moment for Nori to realize that her freedom had come at a price. Even in the hot, small space, Leia was shivering. Nori couldn’t stop staring at her torn clothes, the thin, spidery cut on the side of her neck, her legs and arms scraped and bruised; the redness across her cheek where he must have hit her. Nori smelled the sack of pig shit her father had stored in the shed, hoping to grow taro, and thought she would be sick.

“Leia!” She willed herself to reach out and hug her. “It’s over, it’s over,” Nori repeated, hugging her closer until she calmed. “Let’s go tell Mama,” she whispered. Mama would know what to do.

Leia shook her head, her face a mask of anguish. “No, no, please no,” she said. “I just want it all to go away.”

“We can’t—”

“No!”

“What if it happens again to someone else?” Nori said. Nori breathed in the smelly, stagnant air. She kept her voice low and calm. “He deserves to be punished. He needs to be put in jail.”

Leia refused to listen. “Promise me, Nori!” she said, her voice tight and shrill, like a thread about to snap. “You won’t tell anyone about what happened. Promise me! Promise me!”

Nori had pulled away from her. He is still out there, Nori thought, swallowing down her disgust. Her stomach turned. A sudden, strangled cry came from Leia, followed by a whispered litany of “promise me, promise me, promise me, promise me—”

“Stop!” Nori screamed.

Leia stopped.

Nori leaned closer and whispered, “I promise.”

Thankfully, her parents weren’t home. Nori took Leia to her room, where she washed her face, drank some water, and changed into one of her clean shirts.

Then they walked back to the Natua house pretending nothing ever happened.

* * *

It didn’t go away. Two months later Leia realized she was pregnant. Through a girl they knew in school whose older sister was rumored to have been pregnant twice, yet never delivered, Nori was given the name and address of a woman who lived just outside of Hilo town “who could get rid of it,” the girl said. It is still an “it,” Nori thought, trying to stay calm. She pooled her savings, along with Leia and Mariko, only to have three dollars and twenty-three cents of the five dollars they needed.