S1 Week 1 Bonus Story: Hapa
A Paid Content Preview
Welcome to Trainwrecks, a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.
For series introduction, character profiles, relationship charts, and general orientation, check out the Table of Contents!
Next Bonus Story (An American Dream Pt. 1)
Author’s Note: Friday chapters/content will be exclusive to paid subscribers after this week. These bonus chapters are not needed to understand the main story, but dive deeper into an individual character’s history or expand on current narrative events. For our first bonus chapter, we take a glimpse into Duke’s past.
Content Warning: Racism, racial violence
Hapa (/ˈhɑːpə/) is a Hawaiian word for someone of multiracial ancestry. In Hawaii, the word refers to any person of mixed ethnic heritage, regardless of the specific mixture.
~*~
The bottom of the creek tasted of dirt and weeds.
Head submerged, eyes open, the dappled sunlight that illuminated the tangled green grasses and muddy floor was almost beautiful. But the bottom of some Waimanalo creek was not the last thing eleven-year-old Duke Kingston ever wanted to see. Hands beat and scratched at the fingers tangled in his hair, holding him down. His mouth filled with putrid water as his lungs expelled what air he had left and desperately sought more. Panic flooded his brain.
And then he was free.
With a frantic gasp, he tore away from the creek bed, scrambling for the safety of the hill’s lush vegetation. He didn’t get far before he collapsed and threw up the mud he’d swallowed.
Muffled voices reached his water-filled ears.
“He said he wanted to see if there was any fish down there!”
“Yeah, Joshua was just helping him!”
His cousins. If he wasn’t so weak, he’d have sprung up and murdered them, wrapped his hands around their necks and squeezed until the last drop of life had leaked out of their eyes.
“You think I was born yesterday? You’d better get your asses home before I drag you both down to the police! Go on!”
Duke turned onto his side, away from the husky voice of his grandmother. Shame filled the empty places left behind by his fear and desperation. He let out a pitiful cough. Tears spilled down his nose and temple, dripping onto the grass below. His entire body trembled violently, and when his grandmother’s hand touched his soaked shoulder, he bit back a sob.
“Get up, my love. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, so gently that it chased what was left of his anger away.
But it was still another five minutes before he stopped crying.
~*~
Felicia Régine Moreaux had been somebody, once upon a time. But when she’d first laid eyes on Ray Kingston, the person she had been had ceased to matter.
“It was love at first sight for both of us,” she’d told Duke with a wistful smile. With her honey blonde hair, light brown eyes, fair skin, and propensity for wearing name brand clothes, she stood out in their east Oahu neighborhood the way a polar bear might have, had it washed up in Kaneohe Bay. She sat in a rocking chair on the lanai, her gaze upon the sea. “I couldn’t have left him if I wanted to.”
Duke, who’d been ten years old at the time, stood off to the side, hands clenched into fists. “Yeah, well maybe you should have!” His legs were covered in bruises from his cousin Erik’s baseball bat. “Everyone makes fun of me because of you!” His eyes filled with tears. “They call me Pepé Le Pew and tell me to go back to France!” He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm. “I’ve never even been to France…!”
And yet, despite his frustration, he ran into his mother’s embrace the moment she offered it. “Ah, mon cœur,” she murmured into his hair. He hated that it sounded like an apology.
~*~
His grandmother’s house was at the end of the cul-de-sac. Duke had lived there for the first few years of his life, until his father’s restaurant took off and his parents were able to afford a place of their own. He stood barefoot on the kitchen tile as his grandmother scrubbed his head with an old dish towel.
Like his father, she was tall and muscular, dark-skinned, tattooed. Her frizzy black hair had been combed up into a severe bun, and her arms jiggled as she moved. “You’re getting too big to let them push you around,” she said.
Duke stared down at his stick-thin arms and legs. “Doesn’t feel like it.” He was almost in the seventh grade, but while the other boys in his class were beginning to get taller, he had yet to see any changes in himself. He was small. Pathetic. Useless. “Anyway, I started it this time.”
“Did you?”
“They called Mom a white bitch.”
His grandmother scowled. “Those assholes.” But he knew she wasn’t talking about his cousins. She was thinking of their parents, who said those things within their hearing and encouraged their children’s small-mindedness, even praised it.
Duke met her gaze tentatively. “You used to hate Mom, too.”
“I didn’t hate her,” she said as she dug the dish towel into his ear. “I didn’t understand her. What some rich white lady want with my son? He was a busboy. He couldn’t give her the kind of future she’d been raised to expect. But when I saw how much she loved him…” She smiled. “I was hard on her at first because I wanted to make sure she was gonna stick around.”
“She’s tough,” Duke said.
“Yeah she is. And so are you.” She took a couple steps back. “There now. Not good as new, but close enough.”
He stood under the fluorescent kitchen lamp, his shirt still damp. A moth trapped in the light fixture tapped against the bulb. Through the open window and screen door, the rush of the Pacific could be heard like a distant lullaby. “They were trying to kill me,” he said.
And his grandmother, who was not in the habit of lying, didn’t reply.
~*~
There was a lot of talk about where they should go. North Shore was getting too expensive, but nearby Wahiawa saw plenty of traffic, was next to the military bases, and might therefore be a good place for a new restaurant location. Aiea was closer to the action of Honolulu without being Honolulu. Waianae, if they wanted to stick to the ocean, wouldn’t be terrible either.
But when Duke burst into his grandmother’s house four months later, breathless from running the entire way, he shouted, “We’re moving to the mainland!”
She gazed at him sorrowfully. “I know.”
“You… you know?” He fell back against the wall, stunned. Of course she did. His father wouldn’t have come to such a decision without consulting the matriarch of the family first. “I’m not going,” he said.
“Yes, you are.”
“Fuck that! I’m staying here!” His rage overtook him. “Why should I have to go anywhere? I’ll get stronger!” He pointed back towards the door. “If those fuckers come for me again, I’ll rip them to pieces!”
His grandmother stood from the dining room table where she’d been reading a paperback novel—The Hideous Truth by Makoto Hirashima. “That’s enough!” she cried, and Duke wilted in the face of her anger. “You will go to the mainland with your parents. Do you think this is easy for any of us? Do you think they want to leave? This is their home!” She laid her hands on either side of his face. “They’re not just trying to save your life, my love, they’re trying to save your soul.”
Duke lowered his head.
“You shouldn’t have to get stronger.” She pushed his hair out of his face. “You have such a gentle heart. If you stay here, you’re going to lose that, and then who will you be? Someone like your cousins?” She wrapped her arms around him. “If I can’t see you for a while, then so be it. But I’m not going anywhere. You can come back and visit whenever you want, yeah? This is your home, too.”
Duke hugged her tight, surprised to find that he could rest his chin on her shoulder now. He was getting taller, bigger, and admittedly meaner. He didn’t want to go to the mainland, to some faraway place where it snowed and the ocean was too cold to swim in. But if it meant he would have the chance to grow into someone his grandmother could be proud of, then he would go with his head held high.
Author’s Note: The novel Duke’s grandmother is reading was written by Makoto Hirashima, Dimitri and Victoria’s mother.
Thank you for reading! As a reminder, Friday posts are bonus content for paid subscribers. For $5 a month (or a discounted price of $50 a year), you will get four bonus stories. Your paid subscription will be reinvested into the series in the form of artwork and promotional posts! This month’s stories are Hapa (Duke), An American Dream Pt. 1 (Sebastian), Daddy Dearest (Victoria), and Danse Macabre Pt. 1 (Jasmine). If you’d rather wait to commit until the story is a little farther along, no worries! You can upgrade to a paid subscription at any time.