“We aren’t supposed to be up here?”
“Not exactly. Go!”
KAI GASPED. HE’D never have climbed up if he’d known it was against the rules.
“Hurry!” Jet said through clenched teeth.
“Okay!”
Uncle Per walked down the driveway toward them. The minute Kai was off the ladder, Jet barreled down after him. She ran to the desk, slapped a palm down on a hand-drawn map, and crumpled it into a ball. The door of the barn slid open. Jet stuffed the crumpled map in her pocket and turned away from the desk.
“There you are!” Uncle Per said. “What mischief are you up to in my office?”
“Jet was showing me the…ah—”
“Chart of the river!” Jet filled in. She waved at the chart on the desk. “I was showing him the course for the Treasure Island Race.”
“It’s true,” Kai said, standing shoulder to shoulder with his cousin. “My father has told me so much about the race. I wanted to see for myself.”
“You know Uncle Lars would want him to be in it,” Jet said. “Be a shame if the Saga doesn’t sail, even if I don’t.”
“Giving up, are you?”
“No!” She glared up at her dad.
“Good!” He glared right back.
“Good?”
“Don’t you have anything to say to me after all this time?”
Kai’s heart was still racing from the climb down the ladder. He could see Jet’s hands shaking. She chewed at the corner of her lip.
“Yes,” Jet said. She fixed her eyes on the floor and spoke all in a rush.
“I’m sorry, Dad. There’s no excuse for what I did. I should have checked the tide. Double-checked. I made a guess, and I was wrong. It was my fault we ran aground. It was my fault that we nearly got swept into the shipping lane. I never meant to put Oliver in danger. Never!”
Kai took a step back as quietly as he could. For a moment in his mind, he was back in Ikata. When he got to the emergency shelter, he’d hidden in the shadows outside. He knew his principal would shame him for leaving the group, for putting himself above the others, for not falling into line and doing his duty as a proper Japanese boy should. He braced himself for the scolding that would come Jet’s way.
“A fair assessment,” Uncle Per said. “I appreciate your acceptance of responsibility.”
No yelling? Kai looked at his uncle in amazement. The man had a real gift for volume. Even when it was just “pass the salt,” you could hear him across the house.
Uncle Per crossed his arms and continued to look sternly at Jet. “And what have you learned?”
“To check the tide?”
There was doubt in her voice. She already knew to check the tide. Uncle Per was waiting for her to say something else.
“You have a phone, yes?” Uncle Per said. “Are you using it to text all your friends? Listen to pop music? Watch cat videos?”
“You know I’m not like that!”
“So you could use that phone for talking?”
Jet hung her head. Uncle Per put a hand on her shoulder to invite a hug. Jet sighed and leaned in.
Kai let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. His father was like this, too: kind where another man would be stern and calm where another would be angry. Kai had always thought his father was the only one.
“I don’t expect you to never make a mistake,” Uncle Per said. He kissed the top of her head. “But you have to talk to me, especially when you’re in trouble.”
“I know,” Jet said. “I should have told you way sooner.”
“You put your brother in the bad spot of having to tattle on you.”
Jet winced.
“So do you think you can find room in your elephant-size pride to apologize to Oliver?”
“Yeah. I’ll do it today. Promise.”
“Good,” Uncle Per said. He glanced over at Kai with a grin. “I didn’t apologize to my brother nearly enough. By my count I owe him nine hundred and seventy-two more.”
“That’s a lot,” Kai said doubtfully.
Uncle Per burst out laughing. “Okay, so I exaggerate a little!” He threw an arm over Kai’s shoulder and gave him a hug, just like his own father would. “I hear it’s been a little rough out at the reactor,” he added, much more gently.
Kai nodded. He’d always cringed at his father’s hugs. No one else had a hugging father, but now that he was thousands of miles from home, he missed it.
“Lars’ll get the job done. You’ll see.”
Kai hugged his uncle back. The news on the computer was awful. Each story was worse than the last. His father told him it was going to be okay, but maybe he wasn’t telling the truth. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to tell the truth.
“Spend a little less time chasing the news and a little more time out in the sun,” Uncle Per said. “Knowing you’re here, safe and sound, doing all the things he loved when he was a boy, is the medicine that’s keeping my brother going. I promise you.”
Kai nodded slowly.
“He has a favorite mountain. How about we climb it together tomorrow and send him a picture from the top?”
Jet edged toward the door to leave them alone.
“I’m not quite done with you, Jet Boat, you future pirate of the high seas!” Uncle Per raised his voice.
“Did I do something else wrong?” Jet said.
“No.” Uncle Per smiled. “But I have something for you. An aid to doing things right in the future.” He took a thin booklet from his shirt pocket. He thumbed through the first few pages.
“The tide will crest at 7.15 feet at eighteen minutes after noon today.” He showed Jet the spot he was reading from on the tide table. “So if I were going to sail on Youngs Bay this morning, any time between eight and noon would be safe. We have nine hours and forty-nine minutes before we lose daylight.” He pulled a second tide table out of his pocket and handed it over. “It won’t run out of batteries or need the Internet. You can read it in the pouring rain.”
Kai turned away so they wouldn’t see the tears rising. His ojī-san had a paper tide table exactly the same. He kept it in his pocket. He checked it every day. Such a little thing. Why did it choke him up, when all the hours he’d spent watching video loops of rising water and burning houses didn’t? He went over to the desk and pretended to study the chart.
“I check it every morning,” Uncle Per went on. “And from now until the day of the race, whether you sail the Saga or not, you will tell me the tide and your assessment of when it’s safe to sail, taking into consideration all the local conditions. Is that fair?”
“Yeah, but…is that all?” Jet looked from the tide table to her dad. “I wrecked the Saga!”
“Minor damages.”
“Minor?”
“Compared to the loss of life or limb—everything is minor.”
Kai thought about Captain Chandler. He’d fallen in the sea somewhere on this very chart of the mouth of the Columbia. The ocean looked easy on paper. Captain Chandler was as tall as Uncle Per and so broad shouldered he made the wheelchair look like a toy. But one rogue wave had crushed him. There was no mercy in the ocean. None.
“What if I hadn’t stopped the Saga?” Jet said.
“You did stop her,” Uncle Per said firmly. “You got lucky, Jet, and I’m grateful. When you spend your life at sea, luck will always play her part, sometimes running with you and sometimes against.”
Kai nodded, lost in his own thoughts.
“I don’t love it,” Uncle Per went on. “But I’ve learned to respect that my best effort is not always going to keep me safe. Still, luck favors the well-prepared. Do we have a bargain?”
Jet nodded, and they shook hands. She took a deep breath. Kai looked from one to the other. It was done. She could sail again. Kai traced the shore of Youngs Bay on the chart with his finger. It was only a little smaller than the inlet in front of his home village. His grandfather would have loved to fish there.
“There’s
still something we have to settle.” Uncle Per walked over to the armchair and sat. “You haven’t told me the story of it.”
“Story?” Jet said, looking from her dad to Kai.
“Waiting!” Uncle Per folded his arms across his chest.
“But…it was a disaster,” Jet said. “Mistakes from start to finish.”
“A sea story is nothing but the run of luck that didn’t kill you. Come on now. Out with it!”
Kai pulled up the office chair and gave her an encouraging nod.
Uncle Per leaned forward with anticipation. “Regale us! Embellish! Your cousin there has probably got a million fishing stories. Am I right?”
Kai held up his hands in surrender. People did not just bust out in stories at the drop of a hat. There was the expected back and forth of asking and saying no. But his grandpa did have sea stories. Ojī-san was a great teller.
“You’re not going to let your cousin have a better story than you, are you?” Uncle Per said with a wink in Kai’s direction.
“Not a chance!” Jet smiled.
“But no cussing!” Uncle Per boomed out. “Or your mother will kill me!”
“Okay,” Jet said. “Are you ready?” She waited for that moment of quiet that comes before a story.
“It was such a perfect day, it would have been a crime not to go sailing.”
AS LUCK WOULD have it, the next day was perfect for sailing—clear, warm, and windy. Jet was lurking in the hall as Kai took his shower, and when he opened the door she said, “Are the patches on the Saga cured yet?” She was bouncing on her toes like a little kid.
“No,” he said quickly, and turned away.
He closed the door of his room before she could ask him anything else. His heart was hammering as if he’d run up a mountain. He wanted the boat to be fixed and didn’t, wanted to sail and dreaded the idea of being on the water. He was ashamed of being rude to his cousin and exasperated with her—what? Her energy was boundless. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She was like that girl with the sailor suit in the Shōjo comics. She even had the long blond hair and blue eyes. All she needed was a talking cat and superpowers. The thought of spending another day with her made him want to hide under the covers and sleep until noon.
Ojī-san would want him to be a better man than that. Kai gathered his resolve and headed downstairs.
“Saddle Mountain!” Uncle Per announced as Kai slid into his seat at the breakfast table.
“It’ll be great,” Jet said. “We can go geocaching!”
“Geocaching?” Kai said.
“It’s a treasure hunt,” Oliver mumbled, his mouth full of waffles. He was up to his elbows in syrup, as usual. “It’s awesome!”
Jet opened up a website and scrolled through some pages. “Look, there’s a new cache on the trail on the way up.” Jet scribbled down the coordinates. “It’s three stars for terrain because the trail is steep, but it’s only two stars for difficulty.” Jet turned to Oliver. “Do you want to find that one?”
“How big?” Oliver said.
“Medium. Go ask Mom if she’s got leftover swag from Comic Con to swap for the treasure.”
Oliver scooted off to the living room, where Aunt Karin was already penciling comic-book pages.
“You’re supposed to swap something when you find the treasure,” Jet said. “I make origami sailboats.”
“Are you going to find a harder one for you and Kai?” Uncle Per asked. He popped a fresh waffle out of the iron and slathered on butter and syrup.
Jet clicked around the map on the screen. “Here we go,” she said. “A microcache, and it’s five out of five stars for difficulty. Want to try it?”
“I guess.”
“Haven’t you ever done this before? They have caches all over the world.” Jet flicked her finger across the screen and zoomed the map to Japan. It was peppered with green squares to mark hidden caches. There were more than a dozen in his home prefecture.
“Geocaches are everywhere,” Uncle Per said. “Give it a try. Your dad would like this game. Something to look forward to when you go home.”
Kai slid in next to Jet and scrolled around the map. There were treasures hidden all over the world, and he’d never known to look for them.
—
IN THE CAR Oliver quietly insisted Kai sit next to him. Oliver loved the Naruto comic so much that Kai had gone back and gotten a dozen more the next day. Now Oliver had a fistful of manga and was determined to discuss every last detail. He wasn’t nearly as shy as Kai first guessed. It was kind of cool to see Oliver getting excited about all the same comics Kai loved when he was a little kid.
They parked at the Saddle Mountain trailhead. Jet typed in the coordinates for the easy geocache. Oliver took command of the GPS, even though they had a thousand feet to climb before they’d be close to the hidden treasure box. He picked out a stick to be his quarterstaff or broadsword, as the adventure required. He and Uncle Per spun one hero tale after another as they walked, borrowing equally from Norse myths and Marvel comics. Oliver called out the distance on the GPS as they got closer to the geocache. He anticipated dragons at every turn.
Kai walked up the trail steadily, barely listening to Oliver’s unfolding adventure story and grateful Jet didn’t feel like talking. He’d taken several pictures at the start and sent them to his father. It felt good to visit a place that meant something to him, and it felt even better to do something that would bring him comfort.
But Kai hadn’t expected to be afraid. He didn’t know the hills would be so much like the ones above his hometown. The smell of pine trees was achingly familiar. The ferns that grew along the trail looked exactly the same. The wind made the tall pines rub against each other, making eerie creaking and popping noises. More than the climb made his heart race.
The earthquake made trees dance like this when he was climbing the hills behind his town. He’d seen and heard a hundred things that day he hoped to never remember. The crack of falling trees and the rumble of landslides set off by the aftershocks. The whimpering of a drenched farm dog, faithfully following a half-dozen chickens through the underbrush and stopping every few steps, smelling the ground for a path home. Worst of all was the sound of people wailing, calling encouragement to those trying to wade out of the advancing edges of the tide, gasping and groaning as people sheltering on rooftops were swept away.
Kai was so lost in thought that he barely noticed the excitement building as Oliver got closer and closer to the GPS point where the geocache was hidden. When they were finally on top of the target, Oliver shouted with glee and attacked the sword fern that stood above the treasure as if it were a guarding dragon. Kai flinched as though he’d been struck in the face.
The ground is not moving, he told himself. I am not all alone. Mom and Dad are fine. They are not going to die of radiation. They’ll get the reactor fixed. They’ll find…But he could not tell himself what he’d been repeating every night as he paced the floor trying to wear himself out enough to sleep. It had been a week. They hadn’t found new survivors for days.
His father had told him not to give up hope. His grandparents might be in a different survivors’ camp. The final list of people who died wouldn’t be ready for weeks. Kai clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what Ojī-san told him about meditating. But the only word he could remember was his grandfather’s last word—run. Why had he listened?
“Kai?”
Oliver slipped his small and sweaty hand into his. The sword stick in Oliver’s other hand was still raised to fend off the invisible.
“Only pretend dragons,” Oliver said.
He leaned in and rested his head under Kai’s chin. Kai froze. He’d never had a brother, never babysat, never hugged someone younger than him. Kai rested his cheek on Oliver’s head and watched Jet and his uncle uncover the treasure—a plastic shoe box with a logbook, a bunch of local postcards, and some Mardi Gras beads.
“I’m too old f
or dragons,” Kai said. “Sorry.”
Oliver gave him a quick hug and scampered off to sign his name in the logbook. He took a green strand of beads and left one of Aunt Karin’s mini comic books.
The hike got easier after that. Oliver gave Kai the GPS, and Uncle Per explained how to use it. Kai looked for things in the forest that didn’t remind him of home. Thimbleberries were new, and chickarees and banana slugs. They climbed up out of the trees to a rocky knob that was the east horn of Saddle Mountain. The trail dipped down, crossed a boulder field, and rose again to a wooden platform on the western horn of the saddle. Their GPS point drew closer as they made the final scramble up to the observation platform.
When they reached the top, Kai gasped at the view of the river and the ocean, but everyone else was intent on finding the geocache. The GPS said it should be in the middle of the platform. But nothing was up there except weathered wooden deck boards, a railing, and a warning sign about not leaving the platform.
“It’s a microcache,” Jet was saying as she consulted her notebook. “So less than three inches in any dimension. I bet it’s one of those magnetic things to hide a key in.”
“It’s supposed to be right here,” Oliver insisted, standing dead center on the platform. He jumped up and down on the spot. “Right here! Right here!”
“Oh, I’ve got an idea.” Jet skipped to the edge of the platform, lay down on her stomach, and hung her head over the edge. “Yes! Metal cross braces.”
Oliver joined her. “Lot of spiders down there,” he said.
Jet shrugged off the spiders and worked her way under the platform.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Uncle Per said. “Get back up here! I’ll go.”
“It’s not dad-size under there,” Oliver said.
“It says don’t leave the platform.” Kai gestured to the sign they were all ignoring. He shook his head in amazement as Jet’s feet disappeared under the wooden decking.
“Who’s leaving the platform?” came Jet’s muffled voice from underneath their feet. “I’m hanging on super tight!”
Uncle Per muttered under his breath as he paced from one edge to another.
The Turn of the Tide Page 8