Matters of Circumstance Read Online Free Page B

think it would be great!”
    They had been hanging out together a lot in the past week, thanks to their mutual condition. If everything else failed, at least they could talk about that—how hard it was to clean wings in the shower, how hard it was to sleep on their backs, why Farrah should or shouldn’t tell her parents, any number of such things. It usually didn’t go that far, though. With Neal there were always a million and one things to discuss.
    In a lot of ways Farrah looked up to Neal, because she knew she wouldn’t have been able to go through this alone. To know that Neal had was incredible. And he was always so easygoing about everything. Nothing she said or did surprised him, and when she needed it he was always willing to have a serious conversation. He had become something like a hero to her. If neither of them had grown wings Farrah was beginning to realize that she would have wanted to know Neal anyway, simply because of everything he was.
    Which was not to say that his never-ending optimism didn’t sometimes get on her nerves, because it did. Right now, for example. Farrah wasn’t afraid of speaking her mind to him. “Don’t you care about why you need to wear these sweaters?” she hissed. “How can you be so cheerful about this?”
    “Because it beats having a stick up my ass?” he suggested with a pointed sidelong glance. They were currently wandering around without a purpose, only stopping when one of them halfheartedly window-shopped. “Honestly, Farrah, if we can’t do anything about it what’s the point of making ourselves feel bad? I don’t know about you, but I prefer being happy.”
    And what could she say to that, ‘No, I like feeling sorry for myself and dwelling on the things I can’t change’?
    Farrah decided to change the subject instead. “So Ruby told me you’re originally from Hawaii.”
    “Technically, I’m originally from southern California,” he said, conforming to the subject with enviable ease. “My parents moved to Hawaii when I was… two, I think? One and a half or two—anyway, we stayed there ‘til the summer before freshmen year, and then we moved here. The east coast was a major shock, but at least wearing jackets here makes sense. Some people in Hawaii do it when its fashionable, but I would hate not to have a choice about it, you know?”
    That made sense. It sounded horrible just in theory.
    “So.” Farrah felt a little foolish, but plowed on for the sake of keeping the conversation going. “What was Hawaii like? I mean, was living there actually tropical and beautiful like they say?”
    “Well, it was tropical in that it never snowed,” said Neal. “But it wasn’t like I lived in a grass hut and ate laulau every night.”
    She wrinkled her nose. Having been born and raised on the east coast, that didn’t even sound good. “What’s laulau?”
    “Pork wrapped in leaves and baked in an underground oven, basically. It’s good.” He was smiling at her—probably because she sounded like a moron when she said laulau . “Like every other place, though, Hawaii had its good and bad points. Everybody smokes pot, it’s proven to be the worst state for education, is generally racist against white people, and doesn’t look like the movies about 95% of the time. But its spirit just sort of… makes you want to come back. They have this saying— wea eva you go, dea you stay, if you’ll excuse the white-boy accent.”
    It didn’t sound like he had an accent to her—actually, the way Neal talked sometimes reminded her of the Hawaiian guys she saw on TV. Sometimes he spoke too simply and/or ambiguously, and he developed this tone that she didn’t recognize.
    “Okay, I’ll bite: what does it mean?” she said.
    Clearly enjoying the way she was humoring him, he grinned big enough to put his lone snaggletooth on full display. “Basically means that once you’ve lived in Hawaii, you can’t really stay anywhere else. You always come back.”
    “Is