Strong Like the Sea, стр. 9
When I get anxious, Malia’s tutu always says I need to relax and think strong so I can feel more ahonui—that’s like being really patient while still ready to persevere—but I’ve waited all day for Mom’s mysterious messenger to bring me the next clue—how much more patience do I need?
As the car engine fades away, I turn back to my screen and click on the next page of WWII info.
Mavis Batey was so smart that when she turned nineteen, she got recruited into Bletchley Park, which was a secret superhero team of pretty much the smartest people on the planet (kinda like Mom with her clearance badge). They were the brains behind the war intel—like Jarvis, the supercomputer in Iron Man’s suits, or maybe like Edna Mode’s inventions inside the Incredibles’ super-suits. So, Bletchley Park was basically the Avengers, but without the superhuman strength and stuff.
A quick rap on the door jolts me out of my seat faster than a flick of a crayfish’s tail.
Finally! But before I can run to meet my mystery clue person, Malia’s voice sounds from the lanai door.
“Hui, Alex? Aloha! Anyone home?” The screen door creaks open.
“I’m in here!” I grab my last page of notes and tape it up on the wall right between a poster of Nancy Drew sneaking with her magnifying glass and one of Braddah IZ holding his ukulele beneath a bright rainbow.
Malia walks in and scans the notebook pages taped to the wall.
“What is all that?” She stretches her arms up over her head and starts to yawn, but pulls back when her fingers brush some of Dad’s origami creatures hanging from the ceiling. “Your family sure has a thing about paper.”
I glance at my flock of origami and my notebook papers and shrug. She’s not wrong.
“Why not do all your notes on the computer so you don’t have to type them later?”
“I could, but I want to see it all at once. It helps me think better—like seeing my thoughts all spread out.”
She jerks a thumb at the countless papers taped to my wall. “So you’re saying it looks like choke papers hung all over for no reason, but it’s really your brains splatted on the wall.”
I smirk. “Yep. Zombies would think my wall is delicious.”
“Perfect. If any show up, they can munch your wall brains while we run away. Good survival plan.” She flops onto my bed and hugs a plush clown-fish pillow.
“How’d surfing go last night? I think I saw you and your sisters, but you were a ways out.”
“Yeah, we paddled out right after school, but it was choppy so we bailed early.”
“Did you get to use the new board, or did you take R2 out again?”
She gives a tired smile. “I used R2. But he didn’t see much action. And besides, I wasn’t really feeling it.”
“Why? What’s up?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know what to do for my history project, and it’s throwing me off.”
“I thought you were doing a report on the leper colony on Moloka’i?”
“Naya’s already doing that. Now I don’t know what to do. If I do good, it’ll make hers look bad, and if I don’t do as good . . .” She rolls onto her side and closes her eyes. “Ugh, I need a new topic.”
“What about something about rugby or surfing? Or that author you like so much—the one who writes about dragons?”
“Maybe.” She peeks at my brains on the wall again. “What about you? That doesn’t look like Nancy Drew book stuff.”
“Naw, it’s Mavis Batey—she’s even better. In WWII, she broke spy codes that were supposed to be unbreakable.” I touch an origami Pegasus so it spins slowly on its thread in the center of the room. “What topic sounds interesting to you?”
Malia pulls her feet up close and groans into the pillow. “How about the history of naps?”
I toss a plush starfish at her leg. “Is there such a thing?”
“So tired.” She snags the starfish and hugs it. Her long black hair pools around her shoulders, her rugby uniform not quite hiding the swimsuit straps around her neck. “Your bed is so soft. You think your dad would notice if I accidentally stayed here?” She yawns again.
“Accidentally, eh? Don’t you have a practice this afternoon?”
She pulls a pillow over her head. “Shh. I’m practicing my invisibility powers.”
“It worked!” I hold my hands out as if searching. “Oh, no! Where’d Malia go? Her epic invisibility skills are too amazing. I can’t find her anywhere.” I flop across the bed over to her side. “Oh, look, I found her.”
Head still covered, she lifts a finger and waves it across the plush pillows. “This is not the friend you’re looking for.”
“If you’re so tired all the time, can’t you drop one of the things you have to practice?”
She lifts the pillow to meet my gaze. “I can’t. One of my sisters got a dance scholarship, but the other got one for surfing. One of those might work for me—but what if I’m better at rugby? What if I drop the thing I need most?”
“Okay, okay. I get it. It just seems like a lot.” Everybody works a lot with two, sometimes three jobs, and Malia’s family is no different. Scholarships are the ticket to college, so good grades, sports, skills—whatever. Malia’s all in. But even a dolphin has to surface to breathe now and then.
“I can handle it. Just gimme a sec.” She lets the pillow fall back over her face. “One sec.”
I wait for the count of two and lean over her. “It’s been a sec.”
She throws a pillow, which sails past me and hits the wall right in the middle of Mom’s unfinished chessboard. “Shh.” She moans. “For real. Gimme a minute.”
“Okay.” We both know it’ll be longer