Strong Like the Sea, стр. 4

With Kamehameha Highway behind me, I step up onto the small boulder at the corner of Hukilau Beach parking lot to check my map and direction.

I’m so close to finishing this clue my insides jitter, and I want to race the rest of the way, fast as rock crabs scurrying into the sea—except running might mess up my counting and directions. I need to follow the steps exactly so I don’t make mistakes and have to start over.

Mom’s map leads in a straight path toward the ocean alongside the green cement wall that borders the park.

Only eighty paces to go. Almost there!

I hop down from the rock, and my glasses slip right off my nose! I swoop to catch them quick before they hit the ground—or worse, the rock—and my hat flies off, but I save the glasses. Carefully, I slide them back on, backstep to grab my hat, and start counting paces.

Disaster averted—barely.

Losing glasses is the worst, ’cause the thing I’m looking for is the thing I need to see in the first place. I haven’t lost my glasses once since starting sixth grade and it’s already November. That’s gotta be some kinda record for me.

I count off my paces past rental cars lined up along the log markers and slip deeper into the park, the sandy grass soft under my feet. The path pulls away from the wall a little and snakes through bushes before the grass gives way to pure sand. “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty.”

The last step leaves me standing on the beach, dead even with the final corner of the wall. I stare down at the path, half expecting another big X or something to mark the spot, but Mom wouldn’t bury anything under a main path like this. Still, it’s gotta be somewhere close. My toes curl in the warm sand while I scan for anything out of place.

Down the shoreline, a couple of kids chase each other. A girl squeals with laughter as she runs away from a boy holding a slimy glob of seaweed. More keiki run after the pair, boys and girls, all of them soaking wet and laughing.

Out in the waves, a few girls bob on boards, and I squint, trying to make out if the littlest one is my bestie, Malia. I’m pretty sure she said she was going surfing with her big sisters, but with the sun shining off the water and a red-striped windsurfer gliding between us, I can’t tell if that’s her paddling for a wave or not.

Malia’s sisters would let me come surf with them in a heartbeat. They’ve invited me lots of times, but there’s a whole lotta ocean between me and them, and they are welcome to it. The shore suits me just fine.

To my left, a castle of driftwood stands in the shade of a tree, the pieces tied in place with fishing line and netting that some local keiki must’ve found washed up from yesterday’s storm.

Stretching down the beach, winding trails of color speckle the sand like sea glass above the waterline—except it’s not sea glass. The storm swallowed plastic from floating rubbish patches at sea and spit them out onto the shore. Someone must’ve already cleaned up the bigger stuff left from high waves because only the tiny pieces remain. Another day or so and the tide and sand will hide most of that too.

I tuck the compass and scroll into the back pockets of my denim shorts and kneel to check the bushes beside the path. Brushing the sand away, my fingers slide over shallow roots and I startle a couple hermit crabs, but that’s it.

Maybe something’s tied inside the bush somehow? I ease the branches apart and peer through the leaves, moving from one side of the bushes to the other, but other than a paper cup, I don’t see anything.

It’s here, I know it. I just have to think harder, be smarter—try to think like Mom.

She wouldn’t damage anything or dig a big hole if she didn’t need to; Auntie taught her to respect the island better than that. So it’s got to be someplace I can reach without messing stuff up.

I study the branches for anything hidden overhead and roll driftwood over, but a little worry slips in that maybe I made a mistake somewhere at the beginning of my steps today. Could I be in the wrong place completely?

I try to ignore the ocean and focus, but sunlight flashes across the waves like broken mirrors and keeps breaking my concentration. Or maybe the real distraction is knowing that somewhere out there, Mom’s submarine cruises deep below the surface of that vast water. I wonder if Mom would know it if they went through a rubbish patch? Navy subs don’t have portals or windows, but maybe the crew could see it on sonar or something? Could their sensors pick up plastic bags or water bottles?

Mom’s probably too busy doing whatever intelligence stuff she’s contracted for to notice things like that. But I do like to imagine she’s thinking of me, like I think of her—especially on days like today, when we get to see each other, even if it’s through a computer screen.

A tourist family with a bunch of kids all slathered in sunscreen come down the path and I step forward around the corner of the wall to let them by. With green water wings, goggles, and a snorkel stuck in his mouth, the littlest shuffles along behind the others, his feet leaving twin grooves in his wake.

“Get a wiggle on, Thomas!” the mom calls, and he waddles faster, his chubby cheeks puffing wet breaths through his snorkel. Marching straight to the ocean, he toddles onward until a wave breaks against the shore and rushes up onto the sand, sending a thin sheen of bubbles up over his toes. He squeals, patters his feet in happy little slaps against