Strong Like the Sea, стр. 39
Standing beneath the flock of origami creatures in my room, the room feels empty without the computer screen on. My own personal ghost town. Dad must’ve turned everything off this morning after my lolo run to Castle Tree. My notes on Mavis Batey still cover the wall around my desk, but a whole lifetime has passed for me since Mom missed her call. It’s been ages since last night—years even. Time does funny things when worry and love jumble together. I glance at the clock. Another hour and a half and Dad will be home. With luck, maybe he’ll have news about Mom.
On the way out of my room, I grab the last banana lumpia from the fridge for a snack and snag my sun hat with a floppy brim. If I have to wear these sparkly things on my face, at least I can keep the sun from shining off them and bouncing sparkle rays into space.
Uncle doesn’t seem to notice the glasses when I get back in the car, and we drive the rest of the way to the post office in comfortable silence.
The Foodland Plaza is home to all sorts of great places like Foodland Grocery, Chinese food, Angel’s Shave Ice, and . . . Laie’s post office. We glide past all the other stuff and pull right up to the post office’s hallway entrance. The office has super short hours, but the hallway is always open for the PO boxes that line the wall. I jump out to search for the number. “Three one three, three one four! It’s here!” I might have squealed a little.
The key slides in the hole and turns with a click. I bite my lip as the tiny metal door swings open, and I peer inside the gloomy void. A long, narrow box tied with ribbons rests on the metal.
“What is it?” Uncle stoops to watch as I reach in and pull the box out.
“I don’t know, but I think I like it.” The red silk ribbons untie with one tug, and I shimmy the top of the container off and pass it to Uncle. Inside, a canvas scroll with dark wood knobs at each end rests in the silk-lined box. This scroll is way fancier than the first one that led me to Hukilau Beach and the lunch box.
Uncle peers over my shoulder as I set the box aside and unscroll Mom’s message.
A painted, odd-shaped oval lies on its side with wavy lines and speckles around it. Inside the oval, a whole bunch of perfect circles slice right through the canvas with a letter of the alphabet above each one.
I search for a pattern, but the letters seem totally random. No order. No cipher. No nothing. It’s just a jumbled-up alphabet over a bunch of holes inside an oval. Could the spacing of the holes mean something like with Morse code somehow? If Mavis Batey were here, she’d probably have it figured out in no time, but I don’t see it. “This one’s tricky,” I mumble. “I can’t see a pattern. I need to look it up on the computer and see if anyone else has seen pictures with holes like this.”
Uncle raises a bushy eyebrow. “You could do that, or you could go under the bridge and see where it leads.”
“Bridge?” I turn the scroll on its side. “There’s not a bridge here. What do you mean?”
He holds up the top half of the box. In the center, someone sketched a picture of the Foodland bridge from the side and added a faint dotted line disappearing underneath it. “What say we go walk under the bridge a skosh?”
“Heck, yeah!” This is gonna be the easiest challenge yet! Not only did we find Mom’s clue, but we got a picture map of where to go to figure it out. I stuff the ribbons in my pocket and tuck the empty box under my arm before grabbing Uncle’s hand and tugging him down the sidewalk. “Let’s go! It’s gotta be the Foodland bridge over here.” Mom probably tucked something up in a corner under the support beams of the bridge. “Come on!”
Uncle matches my pace as we stride along the covered sidewalk and pass storefront after storefront. “Always in such a hurry. Between you and Kama, I’ll be an Iron Man–Spartan racer in no time. You’re probably plotting it together. Can’t hide your evil plan from me.”
“No, you just think you figured our plans out. My mom’s a sneaky genius and she’s teaching me everything she knows! Muahaha!” My laughter fades from evil mastermind to nervous giggle. Uh, did I really just tease Uncle like that? I’m not thinking straight. With the next clue so close, my stomach jitters like it’s gonna run across the parking lot all by itself!
A few minutes later, we reach the far end of the parking lot where the grass dips into a wash that melts into sand under the Foodland bridge. As part of the Kamehameha Highway, the bridge is never silent for long, especially since these two little lanes connect everything on this half of the island.
I’ve been here a bunch of times before with Mom on our walks, but this time, instead of a shallow sheen of water over sand, there’s a good foot of water at the edge of the grass. The closer it gets to the bridge, the deeper the water. And beyond the bridge, it goes deeper still. There’s not one drop of sand or rock to stand on that isn’t already under water. What is it with me and water today? “No way.”
In the pool at our feet, a school of silver fish flow from one side of the wash to the other in perfect unison like metallic ribbons flashing beneath the surface. Mom can’t mean