And so Sharkey knew for the first time what it meant to belong to a band of brothers, the Special Forces of a small group of boys whom he could trust to be on his side, who sat together to eat, who kept to themselves during school hours, who were always on the margins, who never mocked each other, though they knew they were geeky and mockable; who seldom had long conversations and yet were in agreement on most things. Their ritual consisted of meeting after school in the far corner of the parking lot, behind the lava-rock wall next to the monkey pod tree, and passing a blunt from hand to hand until it was a small squeezed roach. It was their ritual of defiance that made them happier afterward, buzzed and always laughing.

Huddled that way they felt protected together, and when they saw each other in the playground or the pool they gathered in a cluster, ill-assorted, badly matched—Harry Ho was athletic but small, Walter Opunui wheezed with asthma and panted when he smoked, Alex Louie was skinny and sallow, Willy Miranda wore thick glasses, and Kali Fifita was overweight and slow. They jeered at the school teams; they knew they were viewed with suspicion, if not despised. But they had each other. They recognized their weaknesses, but it was secret knowledge; they did not use it to their advantage, or mention it.

But they saw they had strengths too—Harry the surfer, Joe his friend with the forbidding scar, Opunui always had money, Fifita had access to pakalolo. From this mutual protection a close friendship emerged, even a kind of sweetness, and as they smoked murmuring, remembering incidents from school, how Willy found a mistake on a math equation on the blackboard or Harry said to the chaplain after a Hawaiian prayer in Bible studies, “But Akua means spirit too, not only God—can also mean devil, or ghost,” or the day the English teacher said, “Where do we find true aloha?” and Sharkey raised his hand: “Only on the shirts.” He was scolded in the class but praised for his wit behind the wall near the monkey pod tree.

“You so kolohe,” Harry said, passing him the butt.

One day in the cafeteria a senior boy attempted to talk to Harry, singling him out, as though to separate him from the group.

Harry said, “Keep walking.”

The others were grateful to him for that. They were sensitive to slights. But though they felt weak as individuals and miserable at home, they were strong as a group and liked to think of themselves as a hui, a new word for Sharkey, explained by Harry as a little gang.