All of It Is an Investment in My Future
Hawaii begins its mornings early.
Work runs from eight to four. Most schools hold their first class at eight as well. So on the very first day of school, I opened my eyes at 5:40 in the morning.
A delicious smell was drifting up from the floor below.
Grrrrooowwl—
After giving my honestly growling stomach a light pat, I got up feeling refreshed and started my morning routine. First, I slipped on my indoor slippers and pulled back the curtains.
Rustle—
I opened the window I'd kept shut and looked up at the sky. Mm. It looked like another perfectly clear day today. Brightened by the fresh morning air, I walked back to the bed, tidied the blanket neatly, and spritzed the air freshener Mom had made.
Spritz.
Spritz.
The moment I finished, right on cue, a voice called up to me.
"Mo—i!! Are you awake?!"
"Yes, Mom!!"
"Then come down and eat!!"
"Coming now!!"
When I made my way downstairs, a bustling kitchen came into view. We were quite a large family—Mom; my eldest uncle and his wife; my second uncle and his wife; my youngest aunt; and Uncle Iwai. Add in the kids, and we comfortably topped ten people.
Dad stayed in Honolulu on weekdays and only came home to Maui on weekends, so today being a Tuesday, the household looked like this.
"Good morning!"
"Morning, Moi. Sleep well?"
"Yep! Anything I can help with?"
"Not a thing. Sit down and eat."
"Okay."
Now and then we got on each other's nerves, sure, but for three households plus one single relative living under one roof, our family got along remarkably well. That was the Ohana—family—culture unique to Hawaii.
Once I took my seat, my eldest aunt struck up a conversation.
"Today's your first day of school, isn't it?"
"It is. I can't wait."
"Our kids were a nervous wreck on their first days. Funny how I don't feel a single bit of worry over you, Moi."
"He's gonna be the top dog, they say."
"Malcolm? Didn't we tell you not to use that word?"
Malcolm was my cousin, five years my senior. He and I had always gotten along.
After breakfast I went up to the second floor and into the bathroom. Once I'd washed up, I put on the clothes I'd picked out the day before. Imagine—my heart fluttering over the first day of elementary school. Apparently remembering my past life didn't make me a grown-up just yet.
I straightened my clothes in front of the mirror. "All right. Let's roll!" I gave my hips a little shimmy, then walked over to my desk and looked at the paper taped to the wall.
Become the Greatest Quarterback!
Standing before it, I pressed my palms together and prayed.
Soon enough, a voice called down from downstairs again.
"Mo-i! Time for school!"
"Coming, Aunt Mel!"
At 6:40 in the morning, I left the house with my youngest aunt.
From here in Paia—where our house and Mom's restaurant stood—it was a twenty-minute drive to Kahului, where the elementary school I'd be attending sat. But this was rush hour. We really needed to budget a good forty minutes, and with the school bell ringing at 7:40 sharp, leaving an hour early was the only way to make the timing work.
The saving grace was that my youngest aunt worked in Kahului, so we got to ride together every day.
I liked her a lot.
Click.
"Buckle up first."
"Already did."
"What did I tell you?"
"Strike first, win first!"
"Correct answer. Well then—shall we go?"
My youngest aunt was twenty-six this year. She'd graduated from a college on the mainland and even landed a corporate job, but something had brought her back to the island. The adults didn't want me hearing what it was, but I'd pieced together the gist of it from context. These days she worked at a furniture store in Kahului with a high school friend, and thankfully the owner was a good-hearted man—she seemed pretty happy with her job.
Even now, she was humming to herself.
Hm. Now that I thought about it—wasn't her makeup a bit heavy? I'd never known she wore this much for work, because in my life so far I'd gone straight back to sleep right after breakfast.
"Mel?"
"Hm? What?"
"Do you have someone you like at work?"
PTOOEY!
Aunt Mel, who'd been drinking water, sprayed it all over the windshield. Then she whipped around to stare at me with wide eyes.
"Moi! How on earth did you know?!"
"So it's true?"
"Shh! Keep it a secret from everyone else. Got it?"
"Of course. It's just us, isn't it?"
"Honestly. You really do startle people sometimes."
"What kind of person is he?"
"Hmm—well, you know how it is?"
If she'd fallen for some no-good loser, I'd have been planning to find an opportunity to give him grief, but one look at my aunt's expression and the urge melted away. The face of someone in love really is a lovely thing to see.
Just like the way my parents looked at each other.
Listening to Aunt Mel chatter away, the drive to school felt like nothing at all.
"Thanks, Aunt Mel."
"One last time—what do we say?"
"Strike first, win first."
"That's the one."
We fist-bumped across the passenger window, traded our matching grins, and turned away from each other.
I lifted my head and glanced up a little. There it was—the name of the school.
Lihikai Elementary School.
After giving my backpack strap a single adjustment, I strode forward with energy. Two figures stood at the school entrance, a man and a woman. Those must be the teachers, presumably?
"Hey! You there!"
"Me?"
The man among the two presumed teachers flagged me down, and as he drew near, he said,
"Fourth grade and up starts tomorrow. Today is the first-grade entrance ceremony."
"Um... I'm a first grader?"
"...What?"
I'd come prepared for exactly this. The neighborhood mistook me all the time.
I showed him my enrollment paperwork.
Dwayne Moi Stone. Age five.
Hawaii determines eligibility for the elementary school intake that begins each August based on age as of June 30. I had turned five on December 26 of last year—which made me part of this August's class.
"Five? You?"
"I'm a little big for my age."
"..."
"..."
The teachers stared at each other in disbelief, then both put on very serious faces, and the man walked me into the building. Our destination: the administrative office.
And there, I was told,
"If you could... just..."
"..."
"Not bully the other children?"
"Excuse me??"
Just like that, I became a new student the school felt the need to warn.
Great. Apparently growing faster than everyone else was its own problem.
My school days in my past life had been gloominess itself. I was smaller than the other kids my age, and my personality was dark to boot. So I was always the target of bullying.
This life was different.
"Hey."
"Huh?"
"Mo, Moi—"
"You were bullying him right in front of me?"
"Uh... well..."
"You're sorry!!"
"You two. You're coming with me. Now."
From the very first day I walked into Lihikai Elementary, attention naturally gathered around me. Then, about a week after enrollment, was it? I disciplined, on the spot, a fat kid who'd been tormenting a small, scrawny boy, along with two dimwits who trailed after him in a pack—and from then on, I was the boss.
Even most of the upperclassmen steered clear when they saw me coming, and before long the school had gathered a following of kids devoted to me. Naturally, the school grew concerned. So this is what I chose instead:
Gr-rrring—
"Mr. Peter! These kids were picking on the younger grades again!"
"M-Moi. You again. Whew—"
I became the school's self-appointed safety patrol. Thanks to that, my reputation climbed higher by the day. It got to the point where whenever there was a problem child, the teachers would look to me first and say, Moi. Sorry to trouble you, but would you go have a word with him?
After handing the delinquents off to the office, I dusted off my palms and stepped back into the hallway. There stood the boy who'd been bullied earlier.
"Th-thank you."
"Don't mention it. I just did what had to be done."
"You really are the Boss. I'm gonna follow you from now on!"
"Sure."
"Really? You mean it?"
"Yeah. But there's a condition."
The kid gulped. His name was Corey. I bent down, looked him dead in the eye, and said,
"Eat your meals properly. Do your homework hard. Get along with your friends."
"Th-that's really it?"
"Yep. Because we're family. That's what family does."
After gently tousling the hair of wide-eyed Corey, I set off for home feeling quietly proud of myself.
Today was an after-school activity day. Track and field.
You could ask why not football, but starting football formally in high school isn't too late—quite the opposite. Playing it too young is downright harmful to the brain. Call it shaving years off your career. Plenty of players, in fact, first pick up the game in high school and play other sports before that.
So I'd chosen track first. Once I got to middle school, I planned to add javelin and baseball alongside it.
"Moi? You are our hope."
Mr. Thomas Jackson, the track coach at Lihikai Elementary, was completely obsessed with me. Through last year, the USATF sub-8 100-meter record stood at 13.74 seconds—but after I broke it with a 12.98 at a meet in Houston last year, his fixation only deepened. It probably didn't hurt that I also held every sub-8 record in the 200 meters (27.38) and the 400 meters (59.11).
This year I planned to compete in the 9–10 age bracket, taking a crack at records that had stood since 1991.
But honestly? The game was already over. Sooner or later, those records would fall too.
How could I be so sure?
"...I can't believe it. Twenty-seven oh-eight."
"Yes! A new record, right? Right?!"
"Moi, you adorable little monster!!"
Had it not been for certain inappropriate behaviors, Mr. Thomas Jackson would have happily eaten me raw. After barely squirming out of a hug, I started training.
And right here lay the reason I'd picked track.
A quarterback may not run as much as a wide receiver or running back, but football is a dynamic sport—every player, at every position, has to know how to walk and run correctly. What's more, learning to run properly from a young age strengthens the hips and core, which lowers the risk of injury down the line.
So doing track wasn't wandering off the path.
All of it was a kind of investment in my future.
Every other sport I'd take up later would be the same.
"With your talent, you could be the second Carl Lewis."
Sincere apologies to Mr. Thomas Jackson, who couldn't hide his soaring expectations—but my future had been decided from the start. And toward that end, I would keep climbing the stairs, one by one.
Three years had passed since I enrolled, and a great many things had changed—but Aunt Mel and I were still the same. No. That's not quite right. We had changed too.
We'd grown even closer.
"I got that feelin'—!"
"Tonight's gonna be a good night—!"
"Tonight's gonna be a good night—!"
"Let's go—!"
Aunt Mel and I were currently belting out the song blazing up the Billboard charts as we drove home.
In this life, 2000s hip-hop was riding a wave of popularity. In my past life, the 2020s had been hip-hop's renaissance, while the 2000s had belonged to mainstream pop and dance-electronica. Whenever a familiar melody I'd half-remembered from somewhere poured out of the speakers, I'd find myself briefly drifting back to the memories of my past life.
"I'm so stressed out! I wanna wipe it all away!"
"Gonna cross the line, maybe do a line!"
"Wh—! Mel?"
"Oh, sorry. Never ever do drugs."
"Exactly."
"Turn the song back on."
"Yep."
The music resumed. People watched us—windows down, volume up, dancing in our seats—with amused expressions, but we didn't care one bit.
We never had.
The songs kept going even after we pulled up and climbed out of the car. Different songs now, of course.
"Meet me at the hotel!"
"Hotel! Motel!"
Right when we were shaking our butts in front of the house at full throttle, the neighbor lady—who watered her yard at this exact hour like clockwork—would always look at us like we were pathetic.
But we knew the truth: she secretly enjoyed watching us do this. That's why she came out at the same time every day.
"Hotel! Motel!"
Before stepping through the front door, I poked my head back out and flashed the neighbor lady a bright, beaming smile. Her expression, in turn, contorted with disgust.
I loved seeing that rotten look on her face.
"See you tomorrow!"
"No dancing tomorrow!!"
"We'll see!"
The same conversation every time. Tomorrow would no doubt be exactly the same.
Six in the evening. The dinner table was set.
Unless there was a big sporting event like the Super Bowl, Mom's restaurant always closed at five.
"How was school today?"
"Same as always, I guess."
"Dad's coming home tomorrow. You know that, right?"
"Of course."
Tomorrow was the day the whole family gathered. A warm, generous spread on the table. Aunt Mel suggesting we commute together again. The family and Uncle Iwai asking about my day.
And so I savored each and every one of these peaceful days.