by Edie Claire
“Stop!” I ordered, feeling a reluctant tug of sympathy. She was trying so hard… but it was never going to work. “I can’t see you!” I explained, suddenly unsure whether she knew that. “Zane can see you, but I can’t. All I see is a blur! Save your energy for him — maybe he can understand you.”
She disappeared as quickly as a soap bubble popped. The image, the scent, the presence, the feelings… gone.
I collapsed on my bed.
“Kali?” My mother called up the stairwell. “Who are you talking to up there?”
“Nobody living,” I called back.
There was a pause. “Breakfast is ready.”
I chuckled at the absurdity that was otherwise known as my “gift.” It was either that or cry, and I had done more than enough of that already.
I dressed quickly and joined my parents downstairs. My dad was in uniform. For them, the moving “vacation” was over. Today they went back to work.
“Kali,” my mother began, her voice tired. The creases of tension in her forehead were deeper than usual. “I know you were planning to start putting job applications in soon, but… I have a proposal for you.”
My eyebrows rose.
She sighed. “This house is going to take a lot more work than we thought to make it livable — and I just don’t have the time to deal with it right now. We’re not even through unpacking, and I’ve got to get back to the textbook project or I’ll never make my deadline. So since you need spending money anyway…”
My hopes climbed.
“Your dad and I have discussed it, and we’d like to pay you to work on it. Nothing too complicated — just cleaning, unpacking, sorting, reorganizing, figuring out some way to save some more space… and then the repainting, and every stitch of carpet needs to be torn out and the floor cleaned before we put in new—”
“Deal!” I answered, short-circuiting the rest of the list. I didn’t care if they wanted me to scrub the tile grout with a toothbrush, so long as I could set my own hours and spend the maximum amount of time possible with Zane.
My father threw me a questioning glance. “That easy, huh? And what about your surfing friend? Does he plan on getting a job anytime soon?”
My hackles rose. I knew that a lot of people viewed surfing as a pastime for loafers and druggies. I didn’t care what most people thought about most surfers, but I did care what my dad thought about Zane. “Dad,” I said heavily. “Zane has worked some job or other, year round, since he was fifteen years old. For a while there, he was essentially supporting himself. And after the accident he went straight into PT — doing two and three times as much workout as he was supposed to, just so he could better faster. When he moved to Oahu, Craig and Trina — that’s the lawyer and his wife — made him promise he would take a couple months off to chill out and relax before starting college in the fall. The doctors and therapists at rehab all told him the same thing. Which is—”
My dad raised his palms in surrender. “Down girl, down!” he mocked, grinning at me. “I was just asking, after all. Where is he going to college?”
“University of Hawaii Manoa.”
“To study what?”
“Engineering.”
My dad humphed in reluctant approval.
My mom chuckled. “Anything else, Mitch? Think quickly now.”
My dad straightened. “They have engineering at the Academy, you know.”
My mom and I groaned out loud.
“Fine then!” he said with good humor, rising. “I know when my opinion isn’t valued. I’m off to the base.”
Fear stabbed suddenly at my insides. Was he in danger, or wasn’t he? Would he walk out the door only to be mown down by the bus he planned to ride? Would an airplane drop out of the sky? I was halfway out of my seat to prevent his leaving when I stopped and slowly sank back into it. With no specifics on whatever threat might loom, what could I do? Who was to say that if I prevented his going to work, the roof of the house wouldn’t collapse on him?
“Goodbye, Dad,” I managed.
“Goodbye, Darlin’,” he returned, kissing my mother and heading for the door. He was halfway through it when he turned around and popped his head back in. “Oh, and by the way,” he said with a smirk. “I do like the boy.”
He whirled back out and shut the door behind him.
***
My second swimming lesson took place in the sheltered snorkeling area at Turtle Bay. The ocean water was crystal clear and teeming with brightly colored fish. The sky was blue and the air was warm. Gulls and the occasional giant frigatebird soared overhead, and a brisk wind twirled the tall white turbines of the wind farm on the green peaks nearby. Children splashed in the shallow water all around me. Zane was helpful and instructive and patient and kind.
His student sucked.
“You’re getting it,” he insisted.
“Ah erm mnot,” I argued, pulling seawater-soaked curls out of my mouth. I was supposed to have been keeping it closed. I was nervous, like I always was when large bodies of water were involved, but this afternoon was worse than usual for me. I couldn’t focus.
Zane looked at me thoughtfully. “You’re worried about your dad, aren’t you?”
I looked back at him, then exhaled with a sigh. Yes, I was worried about my dad. When Zane had come to pick me up, we’d walked around every inch of the house looking for Kalia, but the ghost had been AWOL. I still had no idea what her problem was, no idea how to protect my dad, and no clue how to deal with my own conflicted feelings about my grandmother.
But that wasn’t the only reason I was out of sorts.
“Yes,” I answered. “Maybe we should call it quits for today? Before I drown?”
His killer green eyes blinked at me, affronted. “I’m not going to let you drown, Kali.”
I looked at him standing there in the waist-deep water, his bronzed torso glistening with drops of seawater, his blond curls shining in the sun. It would almost be worth it to inhale a lungful or two, if it meant he would actually touch me.
So far today, he’d been doing just about everything to avoid it. When teaching someone to swim, that took effort.
“But if you’re not feeling it,” he continued. “We can try again tomorrow.”
We walked up out of the water together, and as his gaze drifted back over the open ocean, I could see the spark of excitement in his eyes. The waves had been growing steadily higher all afternoon.
“Zane,” I chuckled. “If you want to get out there, don’t let me stop you. Park me on the beach and I’m good. In fact, I’d like that. I could use a couple hours to just sit in the sand and chill. I love to watch you surf.”
His face, first lighting up at the suggestion, darkened at my last few words. He seemed suddenly deep in thought. “I do want to get out there,” he replied as we collected our things and headed towards his car. “Maybe in a bit.”
He said no more, and by the time we reached the parking lot, I had had all I could take. There were only two things that explained his bizarre behavior. Either he had decided he wasn’t into me after all — a reasonable decision given the baggage I’d revealed over the last twenty-four hours — or we had some kind of major misunderstanding going on. If he wasn’t into me, I’d rather know now. As for misunderstandings… I didn’t do them. Life was too short.
We dumped our stuff in his backseat. But before he could get in the car, I stopped him.
“You’re afraid to touch me and you don’t want me to watch you surf,” I said. “Would you tell me why? Please?”
I had startled him. But only a little, thank goodness. If he couldn’t handle directness, he would have dumped me in Nebraska.
“You’re very perceptive,” he said softly.
“Off topic,” I replied. “Let’s do one at a time. Why don’t you want me to watch you surf?”
His eyes left mine. “Kali…” he said with discomfort.
My heart began to crack wide open. “Zane,” I interrupted, forcing myself to say
the words, to get it over with. “You don’t owe me anything. You’re not obligated. I helped you get your memory back and you gave me two swimming lessons. We’re even. There’s no need to pretend anything you don’t feel anymore. All you have to do is—”
“What are you talking about?” he broke in. “Are you kidding me? You can’t possibly think—” He ran a hand through his curls and turned away. Then he blew out a breath and turned back. He started to reach out toward me, then abruptly withdrew his hands. “This is impossible!” he said with a groan. Then he faced me squarely.
“Just listen to me, Kali. I know you think you know me already — that I’m the one who needs to get reacquainted with you. Well, I’ve done that. It took about thirty seconds. I’m as crazy about you as I ever was, could possibly ever have been. How you could be so perceptive about everything else and not see that, I have no idea. But what you don’t get is… you don’t know me.”
My knees were getting wobbly again. My heart, newly repaired, was now pumping blood so hard I was afraid my cheeks would explode. “Of course I do,” I argued.
“No, you don’t,” he insisted. “Kali, the guy you fell for before… he wasn’t real. He was like some kind of superman. He could disappear; he could reappear. He could walk through walls. He could walk on water. He could jump off the wing of an airplane and hang suspended in the air. He could surf the pipe!”
His voice nearly broke. “I can’t do any of those things,” he said roughly. “It’s taken months for me to get back to anything even close to the guy you remember. But even in the best of shape, I’m no great surfer. I’m nothing but a rank amateur from Hackensack, New Jersey.” His eyes held mine. “I can’t defy physics anymore. I’m not that guy. I’m just… me.”
I thought about what he said. I thought about it for about two seconds. Then I backed up about five steps, ran forward, and jumped on him.
He caught me against his chest, solid and firm. I surprised him so that he nearly stumbled, but of course he didn’t; he shifted his weight, clutched me tightly, and broke my fall.
He lowered me back down slowly, his breathing rapid. “What was that?” he demanded.
I grinned at him, not loosening my own hold in the slightest. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not want a guy who can walk through walls? That I might, just possibly, prefer a guy who can keep me from doing a faceplant on the asphalt?”
I watched, my heart thudding pleasantly, as his expression turned slowly into a smile.
“I can do that,” he whispered.
Oh, my. It was the sexy whisper. The one I had zero control over. He still held me, and I held him, and the insane, ridiculous pull between us was so warmly, wonderfully powerful that this time I felt sure I would drown in it.
He drew in a ragged breath. “Do you feel that, Kali?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“I don’t think it’s… normal.”
I chuckled. “I wouldn’t know. But nothing else between us has been, has it?”
He smiled at me. “Good point.”
I was sure he would kiss me. But I was wrong.
“Does it scare you?” he asked.
“No,” I answered easily. “Does it scare you?”
He hesitated. “Oh, yeah. Bigtime.”
My heart leapt all over again. He had just answered my second question.
“Well then,” I replied with a smile, continuing to hold him. “Get over it!”
He laughed, his green eyes sparkling. He ran a hand gently up my back. Slowly, his head leaned down toward mine.
A truck horn blasted six feet from our ears.
“Hey lovebirds!” a middle-aged Hawaiian man yelled out the driver’s window. “You moving into that spot, or what?”
We looked up to see an open-bed pickup filled to overflowing with men, boys, and surfboards. The driver was waiting to pull into the spot next to Zane’s car — the only otherwise-empty spot in the public lot. The surfers, to a one, hung over the sides of the bed, leering and grinning at us.
We broke apart laughing.
Chapter 18
Zane spent the rest of the afternoon on the ocean. I spent it on the beach, alternating awkwardly between angst over my dad and joy at watching Zane surf again. Apparently, having even a half-decent swell hit the North Shore at this time of the year was enough to entice every human with a surfboard to flock to the beaches immediately, so all the best breaks were crowded to capacity. Even at the less desirable spot Zane chose to stake out, competition for waves was fierce. In two hours of paddling and drifting he managed to catch fewer than a half-dozen waves, most of those barely surfable. But at last, he got lucky. He ended his run with a beautiful ride on a perfect waist-high wave that he was able to ride nearly all the way back to the beach.
I stood up and applauded wildly. He was nowhere near ready to rip with the pros, true. But it was clear that, as I suspected even when he was a wraith, the guy had natural talent.
He came off the water totally stoked and insisted on buying us a celebratory pair of barbecue plates at Ted’s Bakery (chased down by two amazing pieces of pie), where between forkfuls he went on to deconstruct the entire session in detail. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t understand half of what he was saying. I was enjoying his enjoyment more than I could say.
We were on our way back to my house, and he was bragging to me about how dedicated the surfing community was both to protecting the ocean environment and to improving the lives of poor people near the world’s best breaks, when my phone rang. It was Kylee. I had been waiting for her call all afternoon.
“What did your grandmother say?” I asked as soon as the hellos were over. Kylee had assured me, on my last call, that I shouldn’t assume the worst — that if a loved one were in imminent danger of death, Kalia would have acted more directly to stop it, like Tien did. But we both wanted to hear that from her grandmother.
“Well,” Kylee began, “since Kalia almost certainly never lived in the house you just bought, what she’s attempting isn’t really a “haunting,” but a targeted visible manifestation — which is much more difficult to do. Ba noi says that Tien could probably not have appeared to me so far from where she died if it weren’t for all the family around me at the time… a family’s love has incredible strength, and a spirit can tap into that, if their motives are good. Kalia isn’t as far from where she died, but still, appearing so solidly to a stranger like Zane, even for a couple seconds, is a pretty amazing feat. He must be very sensitive, for a newbie.”
“Don’t praise him too much,” I warned, grinning at Zane. “You’re on speakerphone, and his ego is big enough already.”
“Hi, Kylee,” Zane said.
There was a pause. In the background, I knew, Kylee was silently squealing. “Hi, Zane,” she replied. “Anyway, Kali, don’t expect too much from her. She’s bound to be exhausting herself, and you’ll need to help her any way you can.”
“Like how?” I asked.
“Ba noi says you need to give her options — almost like multiple choice questions. If she can gesture but not talk, you’ve got to give suggestions and then give her an easy way to answer you, like by pointing at something.”
“Check.”
“And if it’s easier for her to appear to Zane, make sure she has enough opportunity to do it. She may find enough strength only intermittently, and you can’t know when that will be.”
I looked at Zane. “I don’t suppose you want to spend another frolicking evening unpacking dusty binders, Christmas decorations, and vinyl records from the seventies?”
He smiled back at me. “Sold. You think this time I can get your dad to tell me about his days at the Academy?”
“Don’t you dare,” I threatened. “Okay, Kylee. We’ll do it. Anything else?”
“Just that…” she hesitated. “Well, she says not to judge Kalia too harshly. You don’t know the whole story, and… well, any kind of negative feelings from you could make it harder for her to
appear. You understand what I mean?”
My teeth clenched. I felt falsely accused and guilty at the same time. “I get it,” I answered.
“Kylee,” Zane asked, his voice suddenly sounding odd. “Is it possible for Kalia to appear other places besides the Thompson’s house? Like random places where Kali and I might be?”
“It’s easier with more family around, but sure,” Kylee answered. “Why?”
I slid in my seat as Zane made a sharp swerve onto an exit ramp.
“Because I just saw her on the side of the road,” he answered. “She pointed to the exit. I think she wants to lead us somewhere.”
My pulse sped up. Lead us where? “We have to go, Kylee,” I said quickly. “I’ll fill you in later, okay?” I got the distinct feeling, as Kylee reluctantly said goodbye, that it was not okay. She would have preferred I leave the speakerphone on all day and tote her around like a caged cricket. But I had to focus.
“Have you seen her again?” I asked anxiously.
“No,” Zane answered, straining to scan the crowd at every intersection. We were into the city of Honolulu now. “But she definitely wanted us to go this way. I guess we should just keep going straight, until she shows us otherwise.”
Tense minutes passed. He had to be wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing, but he made no move to turn around. The traffic was terrible.
“Wait,” he said sharply. “There she is!”
I looked out, but naturally I saw nothing.
“It was just for a split second,” Zane explained. “I hope I’m catching everything.” He made a right at the next light. “And there,” he said a few moments later, turning again. We were past Waikiki now, heading toward the cone of the extinct volcano Diamond Head. Zane made a couple more turns, then abruptly pulled off the road and stopped. “Okay, Kali,” he said tightly. “Here we are.”
I looked out the window at the small white-painted office building that rose up on my right, guarding entry to a large, flat field beyond. The field was bathed in well-tended green grass and dotted with floral arrangements.
It was a cemetery.