Strong Like the Sea, стр. 45
What better plant to bear a message from my mother who’s trapped somewhere far across the sea? Did she pick that plant on purpose? A message inside a message? Or was it a happy accident?
We scramble off the rocks and Malia splashes toward the beach, but I look back up to our secret cave and wish I could find a new message from Mom every time I climbed inside. It’s a silly wish, and I know wishes don’t make it real, but just in case, I pluck a white half-flower from the bush overhead, cup it in my hands, and whisper, “I love you too. Come back soon.”
With my heart’s greatest wish carried on its petals, I blow the little flower off my open palm and watch as it tumbles into the sea. If branches and leaves can send me words of love, who’s to say my flower of legend can’t carry my wish all the way to Mom?
“Alex, you coming?” Malia shakes a piece of seaweed from her rubber slipper. “I got hula lessons in twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, yeah. Coming.” I splash out of the waves and run past her before she can catch her balance. “Race you to the bikes!”
“Hey! No fair!”
I glance over my shoulder and laugh as Malia sprints after me, but her smile drops as she focuses on something beyond me. She reaches for me with fingers spread wide. “Alex, stop!”
Something huge bellows and roars!
I’m so close I can’t tell what it is, but deep and loud, the roar fills my ears, and I flinch, my feet skidding in the sand as I wheel back from the sound, my heart racing.
Malia catches me before I fall, and we scramble away as a massive gray seal rears up from its sunning spot on the beach and roars again, its lighter underbelly disappearing beneath its girth.
The four-hundred-pound seal wriggles to face us, flesh rippling against the sand. White whiskers fan out from either side of its muzzle, and pale gray spots dot its back and neck.
Stumbling, almost tripping over our own feet, we retreat toward the rocks of the point, but a lady waves her arms from the tree line. “Get away from there!”
“We’re trying!” Malia grabs my hand and we run past trees with dense leaves and cave-like hollows beneath their branches. We don’t stop until we’re a hundred feet away, the distant seal no more than a gray bump on the beach—at least until it curls up to scratch its head with a flipper.
“What were you doing running at a Hawaiian monk seal like that?” The lady shakes a roll of caution tape at us. “They’re endangered and protected. You were way too close—you scared her!”
“We didn’t mean to,” I gasp, my hands on my knees. Scared her? I left my lungs back there on the beach somewhere.
“We didn’t know it was there.” Malia tugs my arm farther from the shore. “We’d never bother a seal on purpose. I swear.”
The protector lady waves at a guy carrying a caution sign and mallet through the trees, the stern lines of her face softening as she considers us again. “I suppose if you really didn’t see the seal, you probably had quite the fright as well.”
“Oh gosh, yes.” I clutch my shirt. “I thought I was gonna die right there of a heart attack.”
She chuckles, “I can see that. You’re lucky to see a seal like this at all. Most people never get the chance. But next time, use the rule of thumb.” She holds her arm out straight in front, her hand in a thumbs-up position, and squints down the length of her arm toward the seal. “See? If I can cover the seal’s whole body with my thumb like this, I’m far enough away. Never go closer than that.”
“You bet. Next time hopefully I’ll see it before I hear it.” I watch the seal roll to her side and lift her head, maybe watching us.
The lady leans against a tree, her frizzy red hair flying away from her ponytail. “I never get tired of seeing them. This one’s probably trying to rest up ahead of the storm coming in tonight. Every time I see one of these seals, it feels like everything’s all right in the world again. Like for that one moment, there’s still magic.” She coughs and shifts the tape from one hand to the other. “I know that seems silly.”
“No. Not silly.” I clasp Malia’s hand and gaze across grass and sand to where the cave hides high in the rock—that special hollow where Mom’s words of love came to me as if whispered across the deep. “I think you’re right. It does feel like magic here.”
The stupid tin is locked down tighter than an oyster. Unbendable. Immovable. But it’s not Mom’s fault. There must’ve been a flaw in the metal when they made it. Now corrosion flows all the way around the rim in a cankering wreath of rust.
Last night, while storm winds and rain beat against the windows, I scrubbed the tin with water and baking soda and left a thick paste of the stuff over the corrosion to sit overnight while I worked on my Mavis Batey report. And still, the rust will not let go.
With today being a teacher’s workday even though it’s Monday, I’ve used the morning off from school to try every trick I could imagine to get the box open. When that didn’t work, I searched online and followed all sorts of advice that was supposed to work like a charm to clean off rust, but none