The pakalolo was welcome. It gave Sharkey the sort of lift he needed, for the kindness of the boys made him conspicuous, and their attention oppressed him in ways he hadn’t expected. Their forced good humor directed at him demanded a response. For “How’s it?” or “How you doin’, brah?” he had to say he was doing well, getting over it, though in his silent and sober moments he knew he would never get over his father’s death, and even in those times when it briefly left his mind his mother might be near him, tearful, to remind him. Nothing and no one could fill the empty space where his father had been.

He had known what it was like to be bullied—the continual skirmishing, the need to look over his shoulder, the unexpected elbow or insult. What he was unprepared for was the weight of scrutiny in other people’s pity, their need to be reassured, as though they were the ones suffering and had to be bucked up. It took energy to endure being pitied, he had to be alert, and prompt, like someone who’s expected to offer elaborate thanks for a gift and might be in danger of offending the giver, to the point where such attention could seem like more than a burden, the gift an expression of hostility.

The boys were simple; they needed their kindness to be noticed, their generosity to be acknowledged, because Sharkey had been their victim and now, led by Wilfred, they were making him their friend in a sequence of encumbering gestures.

One hot afternoon after school Wilfred said, “Come,” and Sharkey followed him down the hill and through Papakolea, a street of bungalows, and through side streets lined by shacks. When he hesitated and looked behind him he saw Vai from school with one of her friends, a smaller girl he recognized from the class.

Vai pushed the girl toward Sharkey. “Dis Nalani.”

The girl smiled and fought off Vai’s hand.

Ahead of them, Wilfred had paused near a white van parked at a slant just off the road. “Get in, brah,” Wilfred said to Sharkey, yanking a side door and handing Sharkey the joint he’d been smoking. “You need dis.”

Sharkey climbed in, but before Wilfred shut the door, the girl Nalani shouldered past him, and then they were sitting on a torn mattress in the stink and heat of the van, the only light the glare from the sun burning from the pinholes of rust on the sides and the roof.

In a shy croaky voice Nalani said, “You want to play with me?”