IT TOOK THREE days, but Kai finally got his parents on the phone. The sound of a voice in Japanese, the music of it, almost made him cry. His mother told him to be helpful and kind to his cousins. His father told him he’d get over the jet lag eventually. They both sounded dead tired. Neither of them mentioned his grandparents, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Kai felt better after talking to them, but he felt worse, too. He should be doing something to help—anything.
“Want to go to town?” Jet said as they sat on the porch with their breakfast cereal. “Mom said we could. It’s kind of boring, except for the pool and the movies. My favorite is the maritime museum.”
“Okay! Sure!” Kai said, wincing at both the interruption and the fake enthusiasm. “I mean…if you want to.”
“Of course.” Jet smiled. “Or there’s bowling, if you’re really into that, and um…”
“Isn’t there anything I could do around here to help?” Kai said.
“Help?” Jet looked confused.
“Maybe I could bike to the fish market for your mom?” There must be a fish market. He went every afternoon for his grandma.
“Or work on the garden?” Kai didn’t want to go so far as to point, but there were weeds all over the place.
“Oh,” Jet looked around the yard, crestfallen. “Yeah, I should totally mow the grass.”
At last! Something useful!
“Plenty of time for that later,” Jet charged on. “There’s a bookstore and a comic shop. What do you think? Oh, and there’s a skate park. Are you a skater?”
Kai gave up. There was no helping this girl.
Jet had been his faithful tour guide for three days. She had tried so hard to be nice, but the very fact that she was trying made Kai long to say, “Please just shut up!” It wasn’t her fault, but he was weary of her, and the thought of spending the rest of the summer together made him want to run away and live in a cave. Oliver, who hadn’t said a word to him, was well on his way to being cousin of the year.
But he’d promised his mother he’d be kind to his cousins. And his father had been thrilled to hear him talk about Fort Clatsop and the Goonies House and all the famous spots in Astoria. He’d told Kai again the story of winning the Treasure Island Race with Uncle Per. Kai forced a smile.
“The comic shop sounds good.”
Kai had—used to have—an entire shelf in his bedroom for his favorite manga.
“Or the museum is fine, too,” he added. If he couldn’t help out, at least he could be agreeable. “Do you like that one better?”
“It’s my favorite,” Jet said.
Kai let Jet take the lead. They fixed up Uncle Per’s old ten-speed bike, grabbed helmets, and headed down the hill. They passed a school and then a skate park that was packed with kids their age. Kai was sure they were going to stop and say hello, but Jet rocketed past them with barely a glance.
Once they were on level ground by the river, Kai looked toward the ocean. Good. So that would be east.
He looked in the other direction. The sun was still rising on the upstream end of the river.
The ocean was on the wrong side of the land.
Kai couldn’t get used to it; he felt lost everywhere he went.
He followed Jet along the boardwalk. Astoria was bigger than Ikata, but so much felt heartbreakingly like home. The familiar smell of machine oil and fish haunted the cannery, where boats brought their catch to be weighed and sorted. A cluster of sailboats zigzagged through the chop on the Washington side of the river. Jet stopped at a gray-shingled building with a curving roof that said COLUMBIA RIVER MARITIME MUSEUM on the front.
While Jet was busy locking up their bikes, Kai edged closer to the river, feeling his heart race as he did.
He looked for the nearest street that led away from the water. It was steep. Good.
He checked the waterline. He fixed his gaze on the sailboats and forced himself to breathe steadily.
He checked the waterline again. Was it the same? Of course it was the same. The ground was holding still.
Was it? He looked at the tops of the power lines. They weren’t swaying. Everything was fine.
Kai leaned against the light buoy that was on display in front of the museum. He rested his head against the cold steel. Jet lag was not his problem. The panic was going to kill him.
He looked at the sailboats again. He missed the feeling of a boat rocking to one side as it caught the wind, the pressure of water against the tiller, the rattle of the sail. His grandfather had been a fisherman. He and Kai would hang out with the old-timers at the marine supply store. Sometimes a younger fisherman would ask them to help fix a boat. And if the day was especially fine for sailing, they’d take out the Ushio-maru and sail along the peninsula to look for dolphins or drop a fishing line, or just to admire the beauty of the mountains and the quiet of open water. Kai knew his father and uncle had sailed together as children in a boat called the Saga. He’d been hoping to see it, but nobody had mentioned it, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask.
Kai turned away from the water. The Ushio-maru was gone, along with everything else. No amount of dreaming would bring it back.
JET WAS RELIEVED to see Kai walk away. He’d been right under her nose for what felt like every minute of the last three days. And to make matters worse, he was relentlessly polite the entire time. He was patient with Oliver’s shyness. He did chores without stalling or complaining. Jet spun her bike lock and yanked it open. It was going to be a long summer.
At least Kai hadn’t asked to go skateboarding. The whole gang from school was there, and Roland was in the thick of it, showing off skateboard tricks while Skye and Bridgie just sat around and admired him.
She wasn’t being fair, and she knew it. Kai had lost everything. The reactor where his parents worked was still in danger, and his grandparents were still missing. A sensible person, a kind person, would just forget about her own problems and help her cousin cheer up. A polite person would be, well, more like Kai, who had apparently never had an unkind thought in his life.
Unlike Jet, who had imagined sinking the Viking and its obnoxious red sail approximately twenty times a day. It was bad enough that Roland stole her friend. Did he have to steal her racing partner, too?
To make matters worse, she’d been too busy to fix the Saga. She knew she should just tell her dad. Jet kicked her bike tire. No talk with Dad, no sailing. Fine. It shouldn’t be so hard. It’s not like her dad was widely known for saintly behavior. But the thought of telling him her mistake, of saying it out loud. When she’d been so stupid! She couldn’t swallow it.
Captain Dempsey would never have done this. She wasn’t the first woman bar pilot ever because she had a legacy of fathers and uncles who were also bar pilots. She was a master mariner, and she was perfect—invitation-to-the-White-House perfect. The sea stories she told got written up in magazines. For sure she didn’t forget to check the tide. If Jet was going to be the second woman bar pilot in history, she was going to have to be better than perfect.
Jet turned her attention to the gigantic window at the front of the museum. It showed her favorite exhibit, the most dramatic one in the whole museum, a full-size coast guard lifeboat in mid-rescue on heavy seas. The lifeboat was standing on its stern, riding up a thirty-foot wave made of plaster. The guardsmen mannequins were all in full foul-weather gear: helmets, red jackets, safety vests, and lifelines clipped to the rails. One of them was tossing a life ring to a drowning man. The scene towered over the sidewalk. Inside the museum they piped in the sound of wind and crashing waves and the growl of a lifeboat motor. It was awesome.
Dad knew plenty of Coasties. Jet loved it when he invited them home for dinner. They were big and loud and full of wild stories about rescues made in eighty-knot winds and forty-foot seas. Jet looked at the familiar display, thinking about the tsunami that just came through. It was nothing like the usual storms. The sky was clear, wind calm, visibility perfect. There wasn’t the up and down of s
torm swells. The water rose relentlessly in one push. They’d had plenty of warning to get to high ground. By the time the tsunami came ashore, there wasn’t anybody left to rescue.
What did the coast guard do in Japan? she wondered. They wouldn’t have had any time to clear their harbors. Jet got a twinge in her stomach. There hadn’t been one lone fisherman in the water needing rescue. There had been hundreds.
She stepped back from the window, nausea setting in. This was a terrible idea. Kai didn’t want to see this. Her heart started to race. I have to get him out of here, she thought. Jet spun around and nearly knocked Kai over. He was standing directly behind her, dead silent, his eyes locked on the drowning man.
“WAIT. KAI, DON’T look,” Jet said. She pulled him away. “I’m sorry. Let’s just go.”
Kai took a step back, eyes still locked on the rescue display.
“I’m sorry,” Jet said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Kai shook himself and looked away. If only there had been a rescue boat like this one, with life jackets and lifelines. If he’d run faster and gotten to his grandparents sooner. If they’d gone into the hills instead of to the fish cannery.
“It must be a good feeling,” he said quietly. “To rescue people.”
“Yeah.” Jet continued to edge away. “The Coasties we know are really great. Most of them are a little on the loud and crazy side.”
She took a few steps farther.
“Like my dad.”
Kai opened his mouth to say something. Jet had a way of telling the truth even when it was not the polite thing to say.
“No. Seriously,” she went on. “Everybody thinks Dad is a little bit crazy. Big Per, everybody’s got a story about him.” Kai followed her away from the river“How about your dad?” she asked. “Are there funny stories?”
“Not really. Sometimes when there’s a festival, and it’s late at night, my father tells the story about how his nickname used to be Little Lars. That usually gets a laugh.”
“Bet it wasn’t easy being my dad’s baby brother,” Jet said. “Well, as soon as your dad fixes up the reactor, he’ll be a big hero. Dad is always bragging on how crazy smart Uncle Lars is. Nuclear submarines is the brainiest job in the whole navy.”
Kai turned away from his cousin. He hated blushing. It was the worst part of being paler than his classmates. “He’s got a good team,” Kai said firmly. “If there’s a solution, they’ll find it together.”
“Do you know what my dad says about Uncle Lars?”
Kai shook his head.
“He says, ‘It’s not just that my brother is smart. Lars is a lot braver than me. Braver by a mile—a nautical mile.’ Do you know why he says that?”
“Because a nautical mile is longer than a land mile,” Kai said, smiling.
“Longer by 1.1—” Jet began.
“5078 U.S. customary miles,” Kai finished.
How about that, Kai thought. An inch of common ground.
—
EVENTUALLY THEY CAME to the comic shop.The display window had a life-size Spider-Man doll scaling the glass. Darth Vader lurked in a corner. Flyers for Rose City Comic Con were taped to the window. Inside, Kai flipped through the bins of manga until he found his favorite from when he was eight years old. Oliver had barely spoken three words to him in the last three days, but he loved to read. Kai was hoping Oliver would love good old Naruto as much as he had. But maybe not. Would Oliver really admire a manga hero? They didn’t indulge in the single-handed crashing about that heroes did in American movies.
Maybe Kai was the one who should change. Maybe Captain America was the key to understanding his American cousins. He grabbed three comics from the Captain America bin, found himself a spot on the floor, and began studying.
A little while later Jet came and sat beside him.
“Hungry? There’s a teriyaki place on the corner,” she said.
Kai had been smelling the teriyaki and getting more homesick by the minute.
“McDonald’s would be great. You have to drive for hours to get there from my town. Is there one nearby?”
“Right this way,” Jet said.
Kai bought one Captain America for Oliver and one Naruto, just in case. Jet waved good-bye to the shop girl and headed them down Commercial Street.
“Best to get McDonald’s when it’s just the two of us,” Jet said. “Mom’s kind of into the healthy food.It will get better when Dad’s shift is over, and he has twenty days in a row off the river. Then Mom will be drawing her comic book night and day, and Dad willdo all the shopping and cooking. It’ll be barbecue chicken and the good kind of cookies for dinner all the time.”
“Uncle Per cooks?”
“With gusto!” Jet said. “It’s a little bit frightening. So what’s your favorite at McDonald’s?”
“Shrimp burger and potato pie.”
“Potato pie? They have potato pie at McDonald’s?”
“With bacon. What else would you eat with a shrimp burger?”
Jet stopped walking. “Potato pie. Really? I thought the menu was the same everywhere.”
“Huh,” Kai said. “Me too.”
The big differences in America—like everybody speaking English and all the money being green, Kai had expected. But the other stuff, the menu at McDonald’s, the gigantic grocery stores, the way people hugged each other for no reason—those differences made him feel like he’d landed on the surface of the moon.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Jet asked.
His father had mentioned something on the phone about the best soda shop in the universe. Kai couldn’t remember the name.
“Is there a place to get milk shakes?”
Jet did an about-face. “Custard King to the rescue!” she announced. “Let’s get three milk shakes and call it lunch.”
Ten minutes later they were perched on a brick wall, watching river traffic go by and rotating sips between three milk shakes.
“Perfect day for a sail,” Kai said, nodding toward the sailboats that darted back and forth between fishing boats on the Columbia.
Jet sighed. “Yes, perfect,” she said.
“My dad told me stories about a boat he and Uncle Per sailed in the Astoria Regatta when they were boys. Do you still have it?”
Jet nodded, took the last slurp of the chocolate-hazelnut shake, and pitched the empty cup into the trash at the edge of the parking lot.
“I kind of made a mistake,” she said. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. “I broke it.”
“Broke it?”
“A little bit. I didn’t actually sink it. Not completely. I kind of ran into something. Long story.”
“But we can fix it, right?” Kai wiggled the straw around in the strawberry shake to get the last bit.
“I don’t know,” Jet said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Can I take a look?”
“You know how to patch a boat?” Jet perked up.
Kai nodded. He couldn’t quite bring himself to talk about fixing boats with his ojī-san, so instead he said, “My mom had a sailboat called the Ushio-maru.”
“Cool name,” Jet said. “Does it mean something?”
“It means tide, or it can mean opportunity.”
Kai could picture every line of his boat, the curve of her sails against the blue of the sky and the deeper blue of the Uwa Sea, the red-and-white rigging ropes, the polished mahogany of the trim pieces.
“When my father was on one of his submarine cruises, and they had liberty in Japan, he saw my mother sailing, and they got to talking about her boat because it was like the one he had when he was a boy. That’s how they met.”
When he’d left Ikata, Kai looked for his boat in the water and among the ruins on the shore. The marina was still under drifts of mud and great tangles of broken steel and piles of shattered timbers. He’d only looked for one second, but that second of looking played over and over in his head.
“H
ello,” Jet said a few moments later in a singsong voice. “Earth to Kai!” She tilted her head to the side to look at him. “Will you show me how to fix my boat?”
Kai swam up out of his memories. “Sure,” he said.
Fixing one sailboat wasn’t much, but in a universe of broken things, he was grateful for something to mend.
JET AND KAI collected their bikes and rode up the boardwalk to the marine hardware store. Jet described the size and shape of the holes in the Saga, and Kai filled up a basket with what they needed: cloth and resin, but also acetone, brushes and rags, a box cutter, and turpentine for cleaning up.
When they got to the sailing club, Captain Chandler’s van was parked in the drive, and the red sailboat was at the dock. Great, Jet thought. Roland. Just who I don’t want to deal with right now. But Roland was nowhere in sight. It was only Beck and his dad.
When Jet opened the shed door, Kai actually gasped at the sight of the Saga and ran his hand lovingly over the bow.
“Is it really the same boat our fathers won the Treasure Island Race in?” Kai said.
“Yup,” Jet said. “They were fourteen and thirteen when they won, back in the age of dinosaurs.”
“He has stories about this boat,” Kai said. “A lot of stories.”
Jet smiled as she watched her cousin look at the Saga with his hands as much as with his eyes. It was the first moment she’d seen him look relaxed since he arrived. He was finally on familiar ground.
“Okay, what was that first step?” she said.
Kai launched into a description of the process. He’d been more chatty in the last hour than he’d been for three days. This was what she missed about hanging out with Beck. He liked to build stuff. Last summer they’d worked for weeks on the tree house and its rock wall and zip line. Over at Beck’s house they’d built a rope bridge and an archery range. Their dads had helped, especially Captain Chandler, but most of it was just her and Beck and a box of tools and one delicious building problem after another.
She stole a look at the red sailboat. Roland still hadn’t shown up. Near as she could tell from eavesdropping on the boys’ table at lunch, all Beck and Roland ever did was play video games. Jet had been hoping all school year long that Beck would get bored of it and come over to build stuff again in the summer, but maybe getting Roland to sail with him was Beck’s answer to that problem.
The Turn of the Tide Page 6