THE rocked to and fro as it ambled from the lush Windward side southbound to downtown. Malia felt her body relax and her senses heighten, the privilege of an observer with nowhere to go. Clank-clank-clank meant an adult slipped 75 cents into the fare box. A single ding meant a child was on board, though there were few. At the high school stop, teenagers got on the bus bringing with them a wave of singsong pidgin. The girls talked about the boys who were not there (whom they loved) or the girls who were not there (whom they hated). Malia imagined these were the sorts of girls who wrote letters to the scandalous advice columns in Teen! magazine. They had wide hips and flowers in their hair. They had breasts and boyfriends.

Their high-pitched racket only lasted a few stops and the bus returned to its monotonous pushing, pulling and squealing of the wheels. The driver had traveled this route many times before. He anticipated the tight turns and turned his lights on before they entered the tunnel through the Koolaus.

The riders sunk into their seats with the ease of familiarity. Many carried bus passes and exchanged greetings with the driver. Malia made up stories for this changing, moving population. She pegged the ones who wore slip-free shoes and smelled of Pine Sol as janitors. For the women who wore ergonomic shoes over nylon knee-highs, Malia broke them into camps - those wearing pastel were maids in Waikiki's hotels, while those with tired faces were nurses at Queens or Kapiolani hospitals. The Filipinos, who got on in Kalihi, were field workers because they smelled like damp earth, musty and exposed. The Japanese tourists seemed to congregate farther south, catching the bus to transfer at Ala Moana into Waikiki. They lugged their cameras and their bags full of designer clothes. Some used umbrellas to protect their skin from the sun. Others looked darker than Malia, with Sun-In streaks and neon colored lipstick.

Finally, as the mountain neighborhoods gave way to high rises, the red-skinned tourists with their visors and fanny packs climbed the bus stairs with their maps in hand. "Is this going to Like-Like Highway?"

"You mean lee-kay-lee-kay? Dat's where we just came from. Gotta catch dat bus on da oddah side of da street," the driver said.

Although Malia enjoyed the coming and going of people, the engine's hum and the cold air conditioning lulled her to sleep. The hour-long ride was long by local standards. Her eyes jolted open when she heard the bus fall silent. The driver, in his uniform Aloha attire, stared at her. She looked around to find that she was the only passenger.

"Last stop, Ala Moana," he said, clutching a pack of cigarettes in his hand. "You going back?"

Poor driver, Malia thought, he goes in circles all day. Even the bus that covered the entire island was just one big circle. On the Island map in her head, she mentally drew the route. All the roads between the mountain and the sea. Mauka and Makai. One side wet, one side dry. And yet it was a bigger circle than the confines of her new house, of the bleak boundaries of morning recess at school. She thought of the small island off the Windward coast that looked like, and was aptly called, Chinaman's Hat. Matsumoto's Shave Ice in Haleiwa. An ice skating rink in Aiea. These were spots on a map. Weekend revelries Malia overheard from her classmates.

Malia nodded. Yes, she was going back. She was going to go anywhere the bus went.

"'Kay den. I going take one 10 minute break, den we go, yeah?"

"Yes," she said, hearing her voice fill the space.

Cheek pressed against the glass, she thought of it as sprinting and standing still at the same time. Malia imagined herself as the bus, ambling through streets with singsong names: Kahekili, Kamehameha, Pali, Likelike. She was large enough to pick up lines of travelers, smelly and tired, eating their fare. They all embarked on a journey just to arrive at the place they began.

At school, Malia spoke slower than the local girls, whose tongues ran over English sentences like a horse at the races. Their words galloped past her and sometimes they mimicked the way she enunciated her words, how she spoke "good English." Since arriving a few months before, Malia became familiar with pidgin. She understood the words or lack of words, but the tellers were young and agile, and their sentences were too. That day, two girls looked at her impatiently, waiting for an answer. The playground noise didn't make it any easier to focus, her senses overwhelmed by the games of tetherball and dodgeball that loomed around her.

"Ehgirlyouhaole? See? Toldyou."

"Haole? Shelooklikemycousinlpo. Shejusttalksfunnykine."

Without an answer, the girls walked away, laughing. Why did they ask so many questions? She had already told them that her family moved from San Francisco so Malia could be closer to her real dad in Hawaii, who lived in Kalihi on the opposite side of the Koolau range. It wasn't the whole truth, but easier than explaining how she, her mom and her four younger half-brothers left behind her stepfather in San Francisco. Malia made a mental correction. Ex-stepfather. With a new wife and new step kids. He called to talk to his sons, but Malia only enjoyed the spoils of his child support checks.

Was she haole? She mulled this over on her walks home from school. Although her mom was haole with pale skin the color of dried lauhala leaves, Malia looked like her biological dad, Errol, with his broad Polynesian shoulders and a thick mass of black hair. Their likeness was striking, and Malia hadn't realized it until he picked her up from Honolulu International Airport. In their years of absence, her vision of her father had not been one she recalled, but rather concocted through old photographs.

Malia has kept the two photographs in her school binder since she moved to Hawaii. One was taken at his first wedding, where Malia's very pregnant mother stood beside him. In the photograph, her father's face is half-covered with wedding cake, his brown eyes and crooked teeth peeking through the white frosting. Like a ghost. His smile, caught by the camera, makes Malia think he is happy.

In the other, dated two months later, Errol holds a newborn Malia. In this photograph, Malia catches only the edge of his profile: an ear, his jaw, the shadow of a full cheek. She keeps this as a reminder that she came from him, from here, but really, she frequently returns to it amazed that she comprises the frame. In the photographs in her mother's family album, Malia lingers on the margins: the tall brown girl at the end of a line of pink boys.

So when she made her way to the airport gate, Malia felt certain Errol would recognize her, place her back into focus. She stared into the sea of faces, waiting for familiarity.

But it was her mother who recognized him first. The man was round around his midriff, but his face had thinned, revealing a strong bone structure. High cheekbones, a dramatically sloped forehead, a chin tucked under the lower lip. His eyes were her eyes, his nose her nose.

"Lia," he said, the name he called her as a baby. It was the first time she heard it.

Embarrassed, Malia returned the greeting. "Hi, Dad."

She leaned forward, waiting for the embrace she had expected, but he tapped her shoulder instead. It was nearly a punch, as if she were a boy. As if they were going to throw a ball around.

"Will I be staying with you?" she finally asked.

"My wife," he began. "We don't have enough room with my boys and. . .did your mom say you were staying with me?"

"She said I'd get to see you."

"Of course," he laughed, relieved. "We live so close now. In fact, I'll show you where I live when I drive you to your new house. We'll pass it on the road."

After a month passed, Malia hadn't seen him again. Errol worked long hours at his father's store near Pearl Harbor. She waited for his call most days, and when he finally did call, he apologized for not coming by. "No day off this week," he'd say.

Her mom changed the subject when Malia asked to be driven to Errol's. Finally, one day she told Malia, "I know you want to see him honey, but there's six of us. I can't just go carting you off to Kalihi without worrying about your brothers. They're younger than you. And. . .they miss their daddy. How do you think they'll feel with you going off to Errol's? I need you to be a big girl for me OK?"

"OK," Malia said. She was tired of having to answer this question that didn't feel like a question. Her mom always failed to mention that her brothers' daddy had been Malia's step dad too.

"I just thought you understood he had his own life now. He loves you but you shouldn't expect him to do things for you."

Malia didn't want to be at home anymore. She set off to wander through the neighborhood, as she did most days after school. She walked down her street, where all the houses looked the same, then out to the main road. She passed the cemetery, the bus stop, the gas station and the grocery store. Finally, she arrived at Aloha Candies and Crack Seed. She liked the way the bell sounded when she opened the glass door, an empty metal clamor. It smelled like dried plums and steamed buns. Sometimes Malia came for the smell as much as the candy, and she liked the woman behind the counter, an older Japanese woman with a large smile and delicate manners. Selecting a Chlck-O-Stick, Malla gave the woman $1 and the woman handed Malia 75 cents. Malia placed the three shiny coins in her Sanrio wallet.

With the orange mass of sweetness in one hand, Malia headed home. She noticed the bus Idling at the stop, and she considered the coins clinking inside the wallet. She had more than enough fare to travel somewhere else. Big girls got to do whatever they wanted.

On the bus, Malia receded into the landscape. Those everpresent Koolaus, wet and green and jagged like shark's teeth; the roads that oscillated between mountain and sea, slow-moving like the gray sky. The clouds held a promise, pouring their blessings onto the valley once a day. A sudden torrent, then sunshine. One thing Malia could count on. In that moving blur, it seemed Hawaii was slowly becoming a part of her.

Sometimes Malia rode down to Kailua, where people tracked sand into the grooved bus floor, and Waimanalo, where loose rock formations consumed her view on one side and the Pacific stretched out beyond the horizon on the other. She liked to imagine what lay beyond the sea, more Islands than she could name. Yet she returned again and again to the Downtown line. The driver nodded to her in recognition as she got on the bus. "Eh, Ala Moana girl. You going shopping again today?"

Malia lingered to fish out her quarter fare. "I just like to look," she answered. She was the first and only passenger at this bus stop, which marked the end of one line and the beginning of another. She had never thought it necessary to have a purpose other than riding, though she did enjoy wandering around at her favorite destination. At Ala Moana, Malia would gaze into window displays and buy dime and quarter sweets.

"Too expensive Ala Moana. All dat fancy stuff for tourists. What's your name?"

"Malia."

"My calabash auntie's bruddah get one daughter named Malia. I'm Elijah," he said, pointing to his plastic nametag. Elijah looked younger than her mom, but old enough to have children. He had a face that welcomed laughter. His belly pushed at the buttons of his white and blue Aloha shirt. He wore tennis shoes without socks and a gold cross around his neck.

"Elijah? Like from the Bible?"

"Yeah, my mom's a real Bible thumper. My bruddahs are Moses and Ezekiel. She go church every day, praying for my sins. Our sins."

Malia laughed, though she didn't know why that was funny. She and her brothers used to go to Sunday school in San Francisco, and she knew the names only as tales from a book. She opened her wallet snap, but Elijah covered the fare box with his hand. "No need," he said. "You ride the bus plenty."

She smiled, "Thanks."

"Nah."

She usually headed to the back of the bus to resume her anonymity, but Malia felt drawn to Elijah. She casually took a few route maps behind his seat and watched him, in her peripheral vision, change the route sign. She pretended to study the maps she knew so well. "Do you ever go up to the North Shore?" she asked.

"No, dat's Route 55, Circle Island. Why? You like go dere?"

"Maybe another day. The map says that route goes to Chinaman's Hat, and I hear it's really cool." In truth, Malia had gone to Chinaman's Hat last week, and found it unimpressive. The beach was polluted, and the small island off the shore just another pretty thing that she could not reach. But she liked how Elijah turned to her with a half-smile. She realized he was about the age of her father when he was frozen in the photographs.

"You're not from here, huh?"

"I was born here. But I've been in San Francisco since I was little," she said, wanting to hear him talk again. She liked the way he spoke slowly, like her dad. A local man who talked with the cadence of slippers dragging on asphalt, a voice heavy like the buzz of insects on a humid day. "What about you? Did you grow up here?"

"Oh yeah, and I never going leave. My family stay here. And too cold mainland. I going tell you one secret, 'kay?"

"OK," she said, sitting down. "What is it?"

"There stay plenty places mo' bettah dan Ala Moana and Chinaman's Hat. Look dese mountains here. You can swim in da streams. You can go Chinatown, eat ono grinds, plenty snacks for a quarter. You just need someone fo' show you." Malla smiled. She knew that, but no one had bothered. "I going think of some places for you, yeah? I going ask my daughter, too. She little bit younger den you, but she curious, too."

"That would be awesome," Malia said, trying to hide her enthusiasm. Malia wandered to the back, thinking of all the local spots unmarked on bus maps. She would tell the girls at school about how cool they were, how Elijah told her about them and how he let her ride the bus for free. Her friend Elijah. No, she'd call him "uncle," as the kids called men close to the family. Uncle Elijah.

Malia watched as more passengers climbed on at other stops, Elijah welcoming and joking with them about road construction, the weather, their jobs, their kids. At first, she was jealous that he was chatty with everyone, but she figured it was just evidence of his kindness.

She imagined him on Sunday mornings, putting socks on for church, driving his wife and kids in time for the sermon and Sunday school. Malia bet he hung his kids' pictures on the refrigerator with alphabet magnets. When they came to him wanting something, maybe money to buy candy, he'd just hand them the dollar. And when they came to him when they were naughty, he'd forgive them. "Nah," he'd say. "No worries."

The bus turned onto the Pali, approached Kalihi and Malia leaned to the window, anticipating her father's house. Whenever she rode this route, she searched for the house with lime green siding and windows with jalousies but no screens. Sometimes she saw Errol's sons in the yard passing a football between them or being called to dinner by their mother. The house always whizzed by so quickly.

At Ala Moana, Malia exited through the front door to say goodbye to Elijah. "Laters Malia," he said, flashing her a wide grin.

Malia looked forward to using her saved quarter for a Chick-OStick. She planned to window-shop for an hour or two and head to Woolworth's to buy the candy so she could enjoy it as she looked around.

Outside of Woolworth's, however, Malia noticed a group of tita-girls lingering near the automatic doors. Just as her pidgin understanding grew, she was also developing a sensor for playground-variety trouble. They were big, buxom girls who looked like women and talked like men. They dragged their slippers as they came towards her.

"Ehgirlgimmeonedollarlhungry," one said.

Malia took a moment to space the words apart in her head.

"What? Youlolo?" the girl said, annoyed that her hand was not yet full of money.

Lolo. It's what they called the special-ed kids at school. Yet she didn't know what to say, as she had no cache of witty remarks or silencing refusals. And even if she did, the words would be tinged with her mainland accent, and she didn't want to hear it again: Haole. LoIo. Not like us.

Malia reached into her bag. Her face turned feverish and a lump buoyed in her throat. She had given girls like this her peanut butter sandwich crackers and juice boxes at school. Let them ask her stupid questions. She let go of the wallet, felt it thump back into the bag. "No."

"Whatyousay?"

"No," Malia repeated, but her voice felt smaller. The girls laughed.

"Searchtake?" the tita-leader said. She waited, but the words stunned Malia. Search take?

The tita grabbed Malia's bag, seized the pink wallet and emptied the contents into her friend's waiting hand. The tita counted the money. Two dollars and 25 cents. "T'anks, eh?" she said and shoved the bag back into Malia.

"But ... " Malia said. "I need money for the bus!"

The girl tossed a quarter in the air, and Malia scrambled as it rolled along the ground.

She clutched the coin in her fist. Search take. As if nothing belonged to her. Everything was everyone else's.

Malia wouldn't follow the tita and her friends into the store. Without any money to dream of spending, she didn't want to look around Ala Moana either. Instead she returned to the bus depot, sitting with the smell of exhaust as buses from all sides of the island converged at her feet.

"Eh!" she heard a man say behind her. Maybe it was Elijah coming to tell her it was OK. She turned around to see Rambo heading towards her. Rambo wasn't his real name, just what the kids called him. He was a homeless man with dreadlocks past his okole, and he rode the Ala Moana line almost as often as Malia.

"Littlegirl," Rambo said, standing above her, swaying his stinking, lanky body. "Littlegirlcanllickyourpussy?"

"Excuse me?"

"I said," Rambo repeated, "canllickyourpussy?"

Malia was not sure what he meant, but she knew it was more X-rated than Teen! She turned away. Rambo sat beside her, touched her face.

"Malia."

It was another man's voice. She didn't want to be noticed anymore, but she nervously looked over. Elijah walked toward her with a big, sweating soda in one hand, his pack of cigarettes in another. So now he comes, she thought. Rambo quickly rose, his dreadlocks caressing her shoulder. She shivered.

"Who dat guy?"

"Nobody," she said. With Rambo gone, she felt embarrassed.

"You OK?"

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, no worries." No worries. It's what the kids said at school.

Malia felt her eyes water. If she blinked, Elijah would see her crying. He looked at her, but she turned her head. He sighed. He tapped his cigarette pack against his palm, then lit one. "Fricking perverts," he said to himself, the words billowing out with the smoke. After a few moments, he sat down next to Malia.

"I thought you going look around?

"I was," she said, taking a measured breath so her voice wouldn't falter. "There were these girls. They took my money."

"Hah? They went search take you? How old you? 12?"

She looked at Elijah. A tear betrayed her. "I'm 1 1 ."

"Your maddah know where you stay?"

She nodded, wondering if it counted as lying since she didn't say the words.

"We take you home, 'kay?" he said, walking to a waiting bus. She wondered how he knew which one was his, with so many identical ones in the depot. He opened the door for her and she immediately went to the back corner, where she could lean her shoulder against the bus frame, rest her feet on the bump above the tire. The small space cocooned her. Up front, Elijah changed the route sign, fingered through his transfers. Out the window, passengers queued up, glancing at their watches. Before opening the door, he looked at her, as he did that first day she had fallen asleep. "I like you come sit here with me," he said. "Nobody else going mess with you today."

Malia took a seat cattycorner to Elijah's and the passengers came aboard. He turned the large wheel, steering the bus into the lane. His eyes focused on the road.

"Look, girl, you no can go any kine place by yourself. Crazy people li'dat going mess with you. Next time you come ride bus, you bring your friends, 'kay?" She didn't have any friends, but she nodded anyway. "You get bruddahs and sistas?"

"I have four half-brothers." She also had two half-brothers Errol's sons - but she hadn't met them, so she didn't know if they counted.

"Plenty bruddahs, dat's good. Dey can come with you. My wife and I make our boy go everywhere with his little sistah, 'cause she trust everybody. No good."

The bus lurched closer to the tunnel through the mountain that separated her mother and father's homes. Malia looked at her watch and wondered if she would make it home before the sun set.

She pulled the cord. The STOP REQUESTED sign lit up in red. As Elijah slowed the bus, she pushed to her feet.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"My dad's."

"Oh," he said, relieved. "Good. Kinda late to be walking alone in Kalihi. Your faddah lives close to here? I can drive you closer."

"No need," she said. Before descending the steps, she said, "Thanks, Elijah."

Malia held onto the straps of her backpack as she walked two blocks to the house with lime green siding and windows with jalousies but no screens. The amber streetlights flickered. Cars, half stripped for parts, bordered the street. Malia could hear the red earth give way beneath her shoes, families chattering through their rickety houses. She heard the crickets begin. Low riders slowed down when they saw her, yelling words in a language she didn't understand. Two teenagers passed, holding hands.

Malia knew she should've called. When she'd arrived, she couldn't bring herself to knock because she wasn't sure if Errol's wife would put her right back on the bus. Instead, Malia shimmied through a crack in the fence and walked down the driveway, finding a place to sit on the top cement doorstep. Rats rustled through garbage on the street.

She shivered and her eyelids felt heavy. She tried to keep herself awake by reciting the alphabet backwards, never getting past Q.

A car door slammed shut. Malia woke on the hard step. She knew it was Errol because she had memorized the sound of his footsteps: the squish of his step, the drag of his rubber slipper on asphalt, then again.

"Jesus, girl, what you doing here?" Her father sighed. Although Malia could see only his silhouette, she could tell he was tired. He wore a bone-heavy fatigue that made him stoop, even for a man of his stature. She wanted to see his face, her face. He climbed the steps, touching her shoulder as he passed.

"Come," he said, opening the door. Inside was spare with a nightlight flickering beside the dining table at the far end of the room. Her father continued in front of her, dropping his keys in a tray. She heard him clanking around in the kitchen, perhaps placing his lunch tin on the counter. When she saw him again, he came to the table with a clean plate. He scooped half of the contents of his own plate onto hers.

"Come Lia, come eat."

Malia took off her slippers and made her way to the table. Sitting in front of her father now, she noticed something else about him. He wasn't just tired; he was at ease. Not quite happy, but at least at home.

She looked down at her plate. A half-scoop of rice, a cold piece of chicken and a few scraps of pickled vegetables.

"Sorry," he said. "Next time I'll have plenty for you."

"No problem," she replied, watching how he ate with a spoon, chasing after the food on his plate. She wondered why he wouldn't look at her. She could hear his bare foot tapping on the tile. Could he be nervous? After all, she didn't know him, but he didn't know her, either.

"Dad?" He looked up from his plate. She smiled as wide as her mouth would allow, exposing all her teeth, her nose scrunched up, her eyes slim as slits. Her brothers always laughed at her exaggerated, distorted face, the clown inside their sister.

"You're silly like your mother," he said.

"Maybe I'm like you," she said, peeling the skin from the drumstick. "How come you never came to see me in San Francisco?"

Errol rose, walked into the kitchen and washed his plate. She wondered if he heard her. She didn't have the courage to ask again.

"All I had was pictures of you. You kept changing, like babies do. You lost all your fat. You grew tall. It reminded me of how long it had been. And it was hard for me to call with the time difference. I told myself it didn't make any difference to you. Same reason I didn't go to San Francisco." He sat back down and placed his elbows on the table, rubbing his heavily bagged eyes.

"You don't have to be my dad if you don't want to," Malia said, biting her lip. Maybe now his life was too full that he had to leave her behind. Maybe she had left him behind first. Only now, she remembered those early years when she wouldn't steal herself away from games with her brothers or dinner with the family to take Errol's calls. She could hear her mother: "Malia! Get over here and talk to your father, I'm not going to tell you again."

She wanted to get on a bus, to escape the distance between them that could not be measured in miles. But it was too late. "I'm sorry Dad," she said. "Take me home? Please?"

'"Lia," he said, finally looking at her. "There's no reason for you to be sorry."

This close, he may have looked like Malia, but nothing like the man in the photographs. She heard him breathe, saw his jaw clench as if he wanted to say more but could not open his mouth. He placed her plate on the kitchen counter, then scooped up her tiny backpack. It hung like a child over this broad shoulder. "Come," he said, "let me drive you home."

Errol didn't talk much during the ride. He leaned against the doorframe, his left arm hanging out the window. Malia fumbled with the radio dial, but as they neared the tunnel, all she found was static. The noise of the wind and roar of cars passing saved them from talking. They both seemed relieved, as if they had nothing left to say. Maybe another day, Malia reassured herself.

When he reached the other side of the mountain and fumbled at intersections, Malia guided him along the bus route she had memorized, across the line between them.

Alicia Upano, born and raised on Oahu, is a writer, journalist and teacher in San Diego. Malia's Fare is her first published short story.

In her first published short story, San Diego writer ALICIA UPANO strove to represent Hawaii, where she grew up, in a real, nuanced way. An essential part of that authenticity is language: "Nothing feels more like home to me, or has more music and humor, than pidgin," Upano said. The story is also an ode to public transport, which Upano came to know intimately while writing for newspapers in Washington, D.C. and San Jose, CA. When she's not consuming books and finds herself in Hawaii, "I shamelessly eat as much meat juhn as my body can handle. That stuff is good."