Jet had flunked crayons in kindergarten, so she always let Skye and Bridgie design their castle. Bridgie launched into the plan before Jet had even buckled up.
“I was totally going to go for the tallest castle yet,” Bridgie said, sketch pad in hand.
“Like the one that collapsed on us last time?” Skye said.
“We’re not in the little-kid competition anymore,” Jet added. Not that she cared so much about winning when it came to sand castles. Still, she didn’t want to look like an idiot.
“You’re in the Sand Teen division now,” Grandma Abby chirped. Grandma Bernice was already taking pictures of them in the backseat.
“Right! I know!” Bridgie said. “We need a theme this year. So important.”
“A theme?” Skye said, skeptically. “Is that required?”
“No, but you’re going to love it,” Bridgie said. “Trust me.”
Jet obliged her with a drum roll.
“Starfish!” Bridgie announced.
“You mean sea stars?” Skye said. She’d done a project about them in school.
“Right! Sea stars. We’ll call it the Mystery of the Missing Starfish.” Bridgie flipped open her sketchbook. Skye and Jet leaned in.
“Wow,” Skye said. “Can we do this?”
“Oh yes!” Grandma Claire said from the driver’s seat. “People do special causes all the time: spotted owls, honoring veterans, global warming.” She went on and on with the list of causes she remembered from years past. Grandma Claire’s truck was covered in bumper stickers. Jet had gotten used to being honked at in her truck.
Bridgie’s sketch showed a tide pool full of sea urchins, mussels, and barnacles. A giant starfish climbed out of the tide pool, and as it crawled away it got smaller and legs fell off until it finally melted away into the sand. Sea stars had been dying from a wasting disease all down the Oregon coast. It was terrible. Their bodies rotted into a gooey mush. Skye had talked about it for months. She had a soft spot for lost causes.
“This is awesome, Bridgie,” Jet said. “Plus the tide pool isn’t tall enough to crumble.”
“You haven’t even seen the best part,” Bridgie said. She took out a clipboard with flyers. “It’s a baby sea-star register.” She handed it to Skye. “You can talk to people about sea stars and how to be a citizen scientist all day long if you want.”
“You’re the best, Bridgie!” Skye said.
The two of them bickered about the design the rest of the way to Cannon Beach. Jet didn’t mind. She loved it when her friends cared about cool things, not just malls and makeup, but things that really mattered. All her bad feelings about splashing Kai started to fade.
When they got to the beach, they unpacked Grandma Abby’s amazing collection of sand-sculpting tools and Grandma Bernice’s equally amazing cooler of star-shaped sandwiches. It was chilly when they started building, but digging in the sand soon warmed them up. They had four hours until judging, and five until the tide washed their work away.
The first hour of the contest, the beach was empty except for other builders. Grandma B launched into her usual role as the paparazzo. Grandmas A and C lounged and read books. Jet and Skye brought sand and water wherever Bridgie needed them and shaped the rough outlines. Bridgie followed after with the sculpting tools and a spray bottle of water. They decorated the tide pool with a bunch of mussel shells and sea-urchin skeletons and dead barnacles.
“So, Skye,” Bridgie said as they were finishing up, “did you tell Jet your news?”
“News?” Jet turned to Skye. When she spent every school day with them, there was never news she missed. Last summer and all the summers before, when she and Beck built stuff together, she hadn’t minded being out of the loop, but something about the way Bridgie said news made her stomach twist.
“What’s going on?” Jet said.
“Well…” Skye was not shy about speaking up. Jet loved that about her, but suddenly she looked like a little kid called up to read a book report.
“It’s okay,” Jet said. “What’s up?”
“Well,” Skye said again.
“Oh, just tell her!” Bridgie set down her sand tools for the first time in three hours. She was bursting with the news, a ridiculous grin on her face. She brushed off her hands and pulled out the sandwiches and sodas.
“So a bunch of us were down at the skate park yesterday,” Skye went on. “And Roland and I got to talking because we have all the same music on our phones and—”
“They’re going out!” Bridgie barged in.
“Out?” Jet looked from one friend to the other.
“Yes,” Sky said blushing like a beet.
“It’s so cute!” Bridgie said.
Are you kidding me? was Jet’s first thought. She took a huge bite of sandwich so she wouldn’t say it aloud. Couldn’t this wait until high school? was her second thought—also better not said out loud. And then it really hit her.
“Wait a minute. Roland?” Jet said. “Roland from school?”
Roland the name caller, she thought. Roland the snob. Roland the colossal toadstool. She took several more bites to keep from saying all this. Roland the stealer of friends.
“Of course,” Skye said. “What other Roland is there?”
“He gave her an otter!” Bridgie went on.
“A toy otter,” Skye said. “It’s cute.”
“Oh,” Jet said, still trying to wrap her head around the idea. “Because sea otters are endangered, and you care about endangered animals. Right?”
“It’s so cute!” Bridgie cooed.
“Cute? Cute! What’s the matter with you two!” Jet said. “Why him?”
Last fall, when Roland had started calling her Spot, Skye and Bridgie persuaded every girl in class, and the school librarian, to draw freckles on their faces with eyeliner. They used to be on her side. Jet felt like she’d taken a wrong tack and lost the wind.
“Because he asked me,” Skye said.
“That’s not a reason,” Jet said.
“Just because he teased you last year doesn’t make him a monster,” Skye said. She looked down at Jet. Skye was so much taller that looking down was a regular thing, but Jet had never felt small beside her friend before.
“We should have a code,” Bridgie said enthusiastically. “A boyfriend code. We have to be nice to each other’s boyfriends.” She looked to Skye for an approving nod. “And our boyfriends have to be nice to all of us.”
“We don’t have boyfriends,” Jet said.
Bridgie shot her a look. It was the wrong thing to say. The knot in Jet’s stomach tightened.
“Yet,” Jet said quickly. “Not yet.”
“Here they come,” Skye said, pointing up the beach. Roland and Beck and all three of the Mikes were headed their way. Skye and Bridgie stood up and waved. They brushed off their sand.
“You don’t have to be his girlfriend,” Jet said quickly. “You could say you were kidding. Please. I don’t trust him.”
Jet wracked her brains to figure out what Skye saw in him. What everyone saw in him. He said mean things with a laugh and everyone laughed withhim, as if being funny made it okay to be mean. It wasn’t just her, and it wasn’t just teasing. He was awful to the boy who liked to sew and to the girl who stuttered.
“You’re not being fair,” Bridgie said. “He can be nice.”
Not to everybody, Jet thought.
“I don’t want to fight about this,” Skye said.
“Fine,” Jet said. “Go. I’ll just stay here because I care about sea otters—real sea otters. And sea stars. I’ll just take this.” She picked up the clipboard with its flyers about tracking the health of baby sea stars. “And I’ll sign people up to be citizen scientists.” Jet took a deep breath. She faked a smile.
“Go on, girls,” Grandma Abby said gently. “We’ll hang out with Jet for a while.”
Jet breathed a huge sigh of relief when Skye and Bridgie ran off to meet the boys. She didn’t want to face them—not today, may
be not ever. She’d driven her only cousin away, and now she didn’t have a friend left.
“Plenty of other fish in the sea,” Grandma Claire announced. As if this were about Jet wanting a boyfriend of her own.
“Who needs a fish?” Grandma Bernice said. “Slippery old things.” She went on for quite a while with the fish metaphor, and then Grandmas A through C started saying things about…well…“fish” that old ladies should not say out loud. They all found it hilarious. Jet wanted to curl up and bury herself in the sand. By the time awards rolled around, she was fresh out of fake smile, and even the blue ribbon didn’t make a difference.
KAI WAS THRILLED to see Jet take off with her friends for the beach. He spent most of the day with Uncle Per, culling spoiled fruit from the trees and weeding the garden. He’d missed the familiar work of tending his obā-san’s herbs and flowers.
That night at dinner, Uncle Per didn’t have any stories to tell. Jet didn’t say anything, either, and Oliver was a turtle in his shell. The silence gave him plenty of time to think. Into that quiet came the memory of Obā-san’s words when one of the bigger boys had thrown rocks at him on the way home from school. “Makenaide. Gambare,” she’d said. “Carry on.”
“Gambare!” the boys shouted during a soccer match when anyone showed a moment of weakness. “Toughen up!” “Keep going!” He’d heard it all his life. The book his uncle was reading was a very Japanese kind of story, with court rivals and spies and plenty of fighting. And that thing d’Artagnan said—“All for one and one for all”—that was the sort of thing his grandfather would say, or his principal.
It was a value he was falling short on. Jet had done a coldhearted thing, but he had responded just as coldly. He should apologize.
He didn’t have to guess where Jet went after dinner. She had this crazy habit of sitting on the porch roof. Kai’s bedroom was right next to hers. He slid open his window and sat on the roof beside her. Jet had binoculars in her hand. Kai could hear marine radio coming from her room. Even though it was after nine o’clock, the sun still cast long shadows across the garden. A ship worked its way over the bar and up the Columbia. Kai thought about what he wanted to say. After two and a half days of saying nothing, he wanted to get it right.
“I’m sorry,” Jet blurted out. “I knew you were afraid of the water, and I splashed you anyway. That was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“That’s okay—” Kai began, but Jet cut him off.
“It’s not okay. It was mean,” she said. She kept her eyes fixed on the bar and the ship moving across it. “When I’m afraid of something, I jump anyway. I don’t know why. I’m just like that. I wanted to help you get over it, and now I probably made it worse.” Jet wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them.
“No,” Kai said, still scrambling for the right thing to say.
Jet drove him crazy, even when she wasn’t being mean, but at least she’d been trying to help. In all his silence Kai had only been serving himself. His grandparents had taught him better. Maybe if he conquered his fears. Maybe if he crewed faithfully for his cousin, then his grandparents would be found. Even if it was only their bodies recovered, it would bring his mother peace to give them a proper funeral.
“I hate being afraid,” Kai said. “I want to get over it.”
“You don’t have to,” Jet said. “I was wrong to push you.”
“But I want to push me,” Kai said. “Everyone at home is doing brave things, hard things, every day, and I’m just…” He scraped his palms along the rough shingles of the roof so the sting would help him not cry. He had to do something, be something, they could respect.
“Maybe it’s too soon,” Jet said.
“I want to sail.” He curled his hands into fists. Gambare. No matter what the cost. “For my family,” he said.
“We can be on the water without going in,” Jet said. “I promise I’ll never push you again.”
“Deal,” Kai said.
And then they sat in a silence that wasn’t uncomfortable at all. The sun sank over the water, lighting up the clouds in pink and orange. Jet passed him the binoculars and pointed to the ship that had just cleared the bar and was heading out to sea.
“That one’s going to Yokohama,” Jet said. “Carrying timber for new houses.”
Kai followed it with the binoculars until the ship’s lights disappeared over the horizon, and the sky was freckled with stars.
THE NEXT MORNING Jet and Kai tried again. It was that stillest moment of the day, before the wind picked up and right at the turn of the tide. The water of Youngs Bay was a sheet of glass. Gray herons that fished on the edges of the bay took off low across the water. Their slow, rowing wing beats stirred the morning fog into swirls. A bald eagle soared overhead, looking for running salmon. It was Jet’s favorite time of day, but she could see that the beauty was lost on Kai.
The kind thing would be to let him off the hook. But it was too late for that. Kai promised to race. No way was he going to back out. He’d die trying. To be honest, he looked a little bit like he was dying right in front of her. His voice went all breathy like hers did before oral reports in school. Fine. If Kai was all in, Jet was, too. They’d have a slack current for the first part of their sail. She’d walk him through it one step at a time.
And then Beck and Roland showed up. It was bad enough they had to practice in the same bay. They could at least practice at a different time. Kai recognized Beck from before. He walked right over and started talking to the enemy! Maybe he missed having boys his age to hang out with. They stood in a ring around the Viking, and Kai asked one question after another, all smiles.
“Hey,” Jet said twenty minutes later, when she’d completely exhausted any pretense of busywork on the Saga. “Ready to get out there?”
The boys turned in unison.
“The tide,” she said. “It’s turning. We should sail.”
“Look, it’s got a toe strap,” Kai said. “So they can lean over the side without falling out, if the wind is strong enough to make the boat ride up on one hull.”
Great, Jet thought. Another feature maximizing their speed. She stole a look at the sleek twin hulls. She was going to have to work harder than she’d ever worked before to beat this boat.
“And the sail,” Kai went on eagerly. “Just over a hundred square feet.”
“Awesome,” Jet said frostily.
The mast was taller than hers. Winning was going to take more than work. She was going to need every ounce of luck she could get.
“Got your work cut out for you!” Roland said, way more cheerfully than he needed to. “We’re gonna smoke you come race day.”
Beck dug a hole in the dirt with his sneaker. He didn’t take Roland’s side, but he didn’t take Jet’s, either. And Kai just stood there smiling away, as if family honor wasn’t at stake.
“Oh yeah?” Jet said, looking from Roland to Beck.
Maybe sabotage was the solution. Jet entertained a brief fantasy involving a dark night and an ax. No, there’d be no victory in that. Besides, Beck loved that boat, and maybe, just maybe, it would give him a way to sail with his dad again. But the championship at the regatta? No way was she giving that up, not to a couple of video-game-playing skateboarders.
“Prove it!” Jet said. She turned on her heel and went to the dock to launch the Saga.
The last of the morning fog rose off the bay. Kai hesitated before getting in the boat. He closed his eyes as the mist swirled along the ground and disappeared into the tall grasses. He shivered but then opened his eyes, squared his shoulders, and got into the boat.
“Ready?” Jet said.
“Un,” Kai said crisply. “Let’s go.”
Jet pushed off, hopped into the stern, and sat at the tiller. Kai pushed the daggerboard down into the water, and Jet lowered the rudder. She took them on an easy tack across the bay to give Kai some time to settle in. He was stronger than Oliver by a mile, so he handled the jib sail a lot faster
. He was taller, too, so if she needed him to hold the tiller steady, he’d be able to reach, no problem. Once they really got into a groove of sailing together, they’d be unbeatable! Jet noticed with considerable satisfaction that it took Beck and Roland longer to launch their larger boat and raise its sails because they kept arguing about how to do it right.
Her moment of smugness was brief. Once they were out on the water, Beck and Roland swooped past the Saga in a single tack.
Jet saw an opening where she could get ahead of the Viking without cutting her off in a way that would disqualify them from a race for failing to yield.
“Ready about,” she called.
“Ready,” Kai answered, but he was slow to turn the jib, and clumsy.
Jet was an inch from yelling at him to hurry up when she remembered how hard all this was for him. His delay put them directly behind the catamaran, where it would be even harder to pass them on the next tack. Jet dropped back. She kept an eagle eye on the wind and waited for an advantage. When she saw one she called for a turn, and again Kai hesitated. They fell into place directly behind Beck’s boat. The worst place to be in a race. As the sun rose higher, the wind picked up, and the Viking with its taller sail had the clear advantage.
As they pulled away Roland called over his shoulder, “Hey, Jet, you sail like a girl!”
Jet gripped the tiller so hard, every one of her knuckles popped. If looks could kill, the Viking would be going down in flames.
“Don’t you worry,” Jet said to Kai. “We’ll catch them.”
BUT JET AND Kai didn’t catch the Viking. Not all morning long. A couple of times when the wind slacked off or got fluky, the Saga had the advantage. Jet could have caught them, would have, if Kai had been quicker. He sat in the bow, hunched over like a vulture, eyes darting over the water as if he expected to be swallowed by sea monsters. Jet had muttered more swear words under her breath in the last three hours than she had in her entire life. She could beat the Viking, she knew it! Size wasn’t everything. She had more experience than Roland, and she was a better judge of the wind than Beck. If only she’d been sailing solo.
The Turn of the Tide Page 10