Strong Like the Sea, стр. 49

Uncle holds my gaze, and Auntie whispers in his ear, “What good are you for the ocean or your honu, Saisei, if you are not well yourself? Come.”

Waiting for his answer, I can’t help but remember how he told Auntie that the day he invited anyone in to cause trouble would be the day pigs fly. Seems to me, he’s got plenty of trouble as is and I didn’t bring any of it. Flying pigs or no, he doesn’t look good.

At last he nods. “Start there, near the bush to the side. Clear a path from there to the water and work across.”

“No problem.” I grab a pair of gloves from the shed.

Sarge whines as they get in their car and drive away, but follows me when I walk to the shoreline.

Big and small, rubbish lies in all shapes and sizes. The storm took whatever it touched and threw it back on land. All the way down the beach both ways, rubbish of every color mars the pale sand. How can one person make a difference against something like this? It’s endless.

Like a tide pulling sand from beneath my feet as it scurries back to sea, the sight steals my courage out from under me. No wonder Uncle was upset. One person can’t clean the whole beach; it’s impossible without an army to help.

Something cool and wet touches my fingers, and I glance down at the empty bottle Sarge presses to my hand.

No one told Sarge the job is too big for a girl and a dog, so he waits for me to open the sack, and we go to work.

I message friends that Uncle needs help but don’t stop to wait for anyone. Piece by piece. Step by step. We clean until a small path of sand stretches from Tanaka’s fence line near his bushes to the sea. When we reach the water, we turn toward the bushes again. Makai, mauka. Toward the sea, toward the mountain, back and forth, we fill the bags.

When we clear a four-foot strip from the yard to the water, Sarge’s black ears perk and he trots between me and Auntie’s house as Tehani skips around the corner, sunlight sparkling off her kitty-ear headband. Kase, Naya, and Ekolu follow behind and throw me a shaka.

“You came!” I take a few steps toward them, but Sarge is faster and runs to head them off. He leans against Tehani and blocks their way.

“You got choke rubbish, hah?” Ekolu gazes from one side of the beach to the other but stumbles back as Sarge nudges Tehani into him, herding my friends with his big shaggy behind.

“Sarge! Leave them alone.” I run up to grab his collar, and he sits down with a whump.

“My foot!” Tehani squeaks.

“Oh, come on. We need their help!” We let Sarge smell everyone’s hands and I hold his collar and scratch between his ears while everyone slips past us to the beach. He’s not fooled, though; his tongue might be out, but his eyes follow their every move. “They’re friends, buddy. It’s okay.”

With all of us working, it goes a lot faster. Naya and Kase handle the ghost nets and heavy stuff while Tehani, Ekolu, and I pick up all the rest. Sarge stays by my side and brings me super helpful stuff like a broken milk crate, a sun-bleached rubber ducky, and a smiley-face emoji disc still attached to some wilted balloons.

I tie off another sack and smile at how the clear patch of sand at the end of the yard is growing. Even better, far down the beach, miniature people with buckets come to the shore by twos and threes, then whole groups as the coconut wireless spreads the word: You like go save our beach?

It must’ve taken a lot of hands to throw all this into the ocean, but today we have even more hands working together to pull it all back out.

“Hey, Tehani! Like one new skirt?” Ekolu sways with a net held in a fist at each hip.

“Naw, it looks good on you, brah. But you need a hat.” She tosses a broken laundry basket at him and he catches it but holds it out to me.

“Alex is the girl fo’ hats. You like try?”

“Naw.” I shove a handful of musty plastic bags into the rubbish sack and touch the brim of my bowler hat. “I already got one. That’s all yours.”

Still grinning at us, Ekolu jogs sideways and shakes his net-skirt on the way to the rubbish bag.

“Watch out!” Faster than I’ve ever seen the big guy move, Kase lunges to push Ekolu off his path. “Man-o’-war.”

Ekolu sprawls on his hands and knees over a weathered milk crate. “Hey! Why fo—?”

A clear, blue bubble the size of a fist with a raised sail shines on the sand, dark blue tentacles sprawled across the path. One more step and Ekolu would have felt the awful stings for hours and probably carried the scars for months.

“Ho, thanks brah.” Ekolu scrambles up, and we all check the sand around us for any more blue bubbles hidden amongst the rubbish.

“Never turn your back on the ocean.” Tehani murmurs the words we all know by heart, a reminder that the ocean changes from one blink to the next.

As if I could forget.

I shudder as Ekolu and Kase poke the blue bubble with a stick to see how long the tentacles are. Uncle says the ocean makes him feel safe, but that makes no sense when creatures like this can wash up on the shore. Seems more like a sly trap to me.

When we find no more of them on the beach, we scan the water for clear tiny sails bobbing on the surface with their terrible tentacles trailing below, but none seem to be around.

Naya grabs a shovel from the shed, scoops the man-o’-war up, and carefully slides the mess into Kase’s rubbish bag.

The danger gone, my friends relax and