We catch the bus to Waikiki on a Saturday, leaving our dormitories on the mountain behind. We want to tan and check out the hot tourists. The bus is cheap, only fifty cents. Our bags are packed full of coconut oil from Tahiti, blanket-sized beach towels, and sandwiches from the dining hall. There’s no AC and the windows won’t open. We are sweating in our shorts and tank tops, a rainbow of bikini straps tied around our necks, our already brown skin glistening. We talk story about the hot young haoles we are going to see, seated two-by-two, inseparable. We transfer in Chinatown and can’t sit together. An old lady blocks a row of seats, reading a porn magazine. We laugh behind our hands because we don’t want to piss her off, but we all try to peek at the men and one woman doing the things we all know about but shouldn’t. A man starts eyeing us up. We turn our bodies away from him, and he starts talking about our legs and how we could be linebackers and we get angry and want to get off the bus, but we don’t because we don’t know the bus routes well enough not to end up on the other side of the island. We put our headphones on, listening to Vanilla and his sexy voice, telling us to stop, collaborate, and listen. The man gets angry at us for ignoring him, stands up and gets really close. We can feel his red eyes and even redder breath on our skin, the heat chills us. The old lady with the porn mag looks up at him, looks at us, and looks right back at her mag. The bus driver is too busy to notice until the guy’s red scream shakes the whole bus, crashing down on us.

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