Strong Like the Sea, стр. 44
“To Clissolds Beach already?” Dad takes a bite and studies the calendar. “Better than I thought. How’d you get so far today?”
I grin. “Easy, I got Uncle on my team.”
The next morning, Malia and I ride our bikes to the PCC side of Laie Point as planned, but Jack sends a text that he has to go do yard work for somebody and can’t come.
“Wait, Jack is doing yard work? On purpose?” Sure, he’s always first in line for adventure, but yard work?
“Maybe they’re paying him with Spam musubi?” Malia guesses. She sends him a teasing text, Any food there? But he sends back, Sorry busy.
So weird.
Pine needles crunch under our feet as we slip through shadows of beach almond and ironwood trees. I step carefully so I don’t get pricked by quarter-sized pinecones and long seedpods, but Malia wears slippers, so she doesn’t have to watch as close.
As the prickly needles and giant seedpods give way first to grass and then sand, we wind through piles of driftwood along the waterline and watch for tiny sand-colored hermit crabs. Any other day, we’d build racetracks of sand to see whose hermit crab creeps over the finish line first, same as Mom did when she was a kid. Way better than sandcastles any day.
As we near the rocks of the Point, a’ama crabs skitter sideways, streaking away from us into grooves and cracks. It amazes me that something stuck sideways can move so fast, but they do. Fast as minnows darting from light to shadow, they’re here and gone in a blink. Behind them, black snails creep along above and below the waterline on rocks jutting up from tide pools. Sometimes we let them cling to our fingers, their little eyeball tentacles testing the air. Ekolu sucked one out of its shell once and ate it. He said they’re way salty and dared me to do it too, but I like my food to not be alive when I eat it. I mean, eww. Food that’s already dead should be a rule.
Malia and I climb past the first few tide pools, high above the waves where green naupaka leaves with their tiny white half-flowers blanket most of the rocks. With one last glance behind us, we slip into a wide crack.
“See anything?” Malia wedges her slippers against the sides real careful so they don’t fall down into the crevice.
“Not yet.” I climb farther in and the space narrows, the sides forming a natural cave. We search for a marking of some kind, but there’s only rock with naupaka branches and leaves curled into the space between.
I hunt for patterns, messages, anything, but it all seems pretty normal—until I spy a flat rock darker than the rest wedged way back in the crack. Reaching as far in as I can, I grab the stone, and my fingers touch something metal and not-stone behind it. I pull the stone out of the way and pluck a breath mint tin out of the crack. “Got it!”
It’s jammed shut, so I try wiggling the lid. No luck.
“Love you,” Malia says.
“Uh, thanks?” I mean, we’re best friends and all, so I guess I love her too, but . . . I slide my fingernails under the edge.
“No,” she laughs. “Look!”
Cradled in her hand, a naupaka leaf clearly reads “Love you” in brown scratches across it. And once I see that message, a dozen more wink at us from the branches inside the crack. I read one after the other:
Strong,
Brave,
Smart,
Kind,
Beautiful,
U got this,
Brilliant
Each leaf could describe my mom perfectly, and I wonder if maybe it is all about her, until I read the last three leaves.
My girl,
I ♥ U,
Alexis.
I tuck the tin into my shorts pocket, reach out, and cradle the last leaf. “Did Mom write all this?”
Malia turns them over one by one. “Had to. She probably stood right where you are with a needle or thorn and scratched the words on these leaves while they were still growing. With letters this brown, they’ve been here a while.”
I imagine Mom, climbing up inside here to hide the tin, but staying longer to write words of love for me to find. I climb up and peek over the edge, half expecting to see her on the beach below, but it’s only Malia and me alone with driftwood, sand, and waves as far as I can see. Even still, I hear Mom’s voice whispering to me with every word, “Alexis, my girl, I love you.”
We’ve seen words written on leaves a hundred times, even picked swears off a few bushes now and then, but this time feels different. Expectant. As if she waits on the other side for me to speak back.
“Do you have something I can write with?” I pat my pockets and scan the rocks.
Malia snaps a narrow, dried twig off the naupaka branch. “Try this.”
I search for the youngest leaf I can find and hold it from behind while I scratch an answer onto the new leaf: Love U 2.
We search the rest of the leaves one by one and check the cracks for any that might have fallen. And even then we linger, because something in me wants to hold this message, this moment with me for as long as I can. We almost take the leaves with us when we climb out, but they seem to belong there in that mystical hollow. It’d be like stealing from a church. So I take a few pictures and leave them there, with the white half-flowers of the naupaka blooming between Mom’s words.
At school we learned a legend of separated lovers, one cursed to stay mauka in the mountains, the other forever doomed to roam makai by the shore. The naupaka flower testifies of their loss and sorrow. There’s two different kinds of naupaka plants and both have