by Edie Claire
He was spewing warm and fuzzy emotions like a volcano, but those balls of light barely made headway in the sea of gray surrounding him. My muddled mind tracked back to swimwear. “What’s so special about the boardshorts?” I forced out.
To my surprise, Makani laughed out loud. Relief. It was bubbling off him. “Probably nothing. But when I told the uncles I wasn’t sure where those particular boardshorts had gotten to, they were like…” He recoiled as if reenacting the moment. “Whoa. Coming of the apocalypse, man!”
“But why?” Kylee pressed.
Makani chuckled again. “It’s just superstition. I was wearing them when I won at Gold Coast, and then again at J-Bay. I didn’t even notice until people started telling me I had to wear them in the finals at Teahupoo, too. I guess I wore that pair other times and lost, but somebody noticed that whenever I wore them the day of a finals match, I won, so now I’m stuck. At least until I wear them in a finals match and lose, anyway!”
My mouth hung open. Superstition? This was all about a silly superstition? No way!
Amazement. The strong, focused emotion struck me soundly, and I watched as Makani’s dark eyes widened. “Wait,” he murmured. He leaned down to peek inside the suitcase again, then he straightened and stared at Tara. His mouth opened wordlessly as his finger pointed downward. It took him a moment to speak. “Those weren’t clean,” he said roughly.
Tara snorted. “Clean? They weren’t clean? Are you kidding me? They reeked! That bag stank so bad we couldn’t keep it within ten feet of the house. We’re talking air quality alert level, here. You’re lucky I didn’t drop it in the nearest landfill as a public service.”
Surprise. Offense. Warmth. Desperation…
Argh! If it weren’t for Zane, I would so pull my blind back down!
Makani’s eyes twinkled at Tara, and slowly his lopsided smile appeared, looking exactly as it had in the AirTide advertisement. I had no way of knowing for sure which of the accursed free-flying emotions were coming from the ghosts and which were coming from Makani, but I would stake my life he was feeling no offense.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he said softly.
Kylee let out a muffled sigh that only I could hear. She had always been a sucker for sexy whispers.
Tara, on the other hand, merely shrugged. “No biggie. I’ve got five brothers. I’ve washed worse. Gotta warn you though — some of the cotton stuff’s a lost cause. Mildew. Damage halted, but not reversed.”
Makani was still smiling. “Gotcha. I’ve got three brothers myself. All younger. And yours?”
“One older, four younger,” Tara returned. “You ever get stuck in the middle seat?”
He laughed out loud. “Never.”
“Makani,” Kylee broke in, “congratulations on the Billabong thing. We were watching clips of it earlier. I love the way you surf.”
“Thanks,” he said politely. He looked up and down the street again. There was only one little boy on a bike up the road. Makani adjusted his cap a little and turned his back to the child. “Well, I guess I’d better get going,” he said. He faced Tara again, and they presented an amusing picture with his ugly frames mirroring hers, obscuring two uncommonly beautiful faces. “I still can’t believe you washed my clothes,” he said with embarrassment. “I should, like, pay you or something.”
Tara waved a hand. “Please, no. Too weird. I’m just glad to have my own clothes back. Even if everybody does tell me that Kali’s stuff looks better on me!”
Makani had picked up his suitcase. But now he dropped it again, stunned. “You…” he stammered weakly, “You don’t live here?”
Tara’s blue eyes shifted over to mine in puzzlement. I shrugged. “Um, no,” she answered. “Kali lives here. Kylee and I are just visiting.”
Makani swore, and the guilt that rolled off him combined with the sadness, dread, and worry already hanging in the air to whip up such a pall of dreariness I was seriously tempted to mumble a goodbye and run inside.
“I’m such an idiot,” he berated himself. “Somehow I thought you were in the same situation as me — flying home. I never thought you might be a tourist, and that I had your only clothes! Oh, man, you should have said something!”
“I’m pretty sure I did,” Tara admitted, although she was smiling as she said so. “It’s fine now. No harm done.”
But Makani looked stricken. “Yeah, there was,” he insisted. “I should have called you sooner. I really am sorry about that. I got home from the contest and my mom wanted to see me but my aunt was in the hospital in Hilo and so my mom had to be over there, and then we got back and there were all these interviews and stuff and they kept changing the—” he stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I should have got it back to you sooner. I’ve been a total jerk, and now you go and wash my nasty clothes and make me feel even worse.”
Tara chortled. “Yeah. That’s why I did it.”
Lust.
Oh, my.
“Let me make it up to you,” he offered, his dark eyes twinkling again. “How long are you staying on the island? What have you seen so far?”
Tara started to answer his questions, but she didn’t get very far. Somehow Kylee appeared front and center and began to recount our past and future itinerary. Or rather, her idealized version of it, which seemed cleverly designed to earn us all an invitation to go windsurfing at Kailua Bay. Kylee had admired both the colorful sailboards and the kites from a distance, and she no doubt envisioned herself sailing away with Makani on a sapphire sea. She would be less excited when she realized that both kitesurfing and sailboarding were solo activities.
Makani encouraged her interest, and even gave her some pointers about lessons and rentals. But then he turned back to Tara. “And what are you looking forward to doing?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “I’ve enjoyed everything. It’s fun just being here with Kali. But I suppose if I were by myself…”
I turned to look at her. We’d discussed what we all wanted to do on their first night here, but Tara had said very little. I could only remember her mentioning one thing that didn’t make our list. Kylee hadn’t been interested in it at all, and when I said I didn’t care one way or the other, Tara had acted like it didn’t matter and never mentioned it again.
“What’s that?” Makani asked.
“The Bishop Museum,” Tara answered in a voice that, if I didn’t know her better, I could swear sounded almost shy.
Excitement. Approval. Despair. Frustration. Adoration. Worry. More Lust…
Whoa! I really couldn’t take much more of this.
Makani threw back his head with a laugh. “I love the museum! It used to be one of my favorite places when I was a kid. I haven’t been there in ages, though. How about if I give all three of you a guided tour? It’s the least I can do, really. For screwing up your vacation. What do you say?”
“The museum?” Kylee repeated, her disappointment obvious.
“We say yes,” Tara answered over her. “We’d love to. Or at least I would. These two can do whatever the hell they want.”
“Well, I want to go!” I said enthusiastically, smiling at him. “I haven’t been yet, either, but I’d love to see the coat of feathers. My boyfriend and I have been meaning to, but we haven’t got around to do it. Would you mind terribly if he came too?”
You so owe me for this, Zane! I thought, even though every word I said was true. I really did want to go to the museum, and we really had talked about going. I just felt a little weird about inviting him along. But if I didn’t at least give it a try…
“Sure,” Makani answered easily. Then he caught my eyes. “But… if you don’t mind, could you not tell anybody else about it? We’ll have a lot more fun if we can walk around without anybody knowing who I am. The cap and glasses are usually enough, but if there’s a crowd, then people start wondering why…”
“Totally get that,” I said quickly. “Just the four of us. Nobody else will know
.”
He smiled at me, too. “Thanks.”
Gratitude. Death.
All the happy feelings within me sank like a stone. What the heck was going on with him?
Makani pulled out his phone, glanced at it, and winced. “Crap, I’m going to be late,” he muttered. He looked at Tara again. “I’ve gotta go. When can we do this?”
She shrugged. “My schedule’s open.”
“Mine—” he looked crestfallen. “Is not.” He looked at his phone again and began scrolling with a frown. “This is ridiculous… I don’t know when… Wait. Are you doing anything later today? Like midafternoon? The museum closes at five, but we can get in a few good hours, maybe.”
“Perfect,” Tara answered. “Text us a time and we’ll meet you there?”
“You got it.”
There were smiles and goodbyes all around as Makani grabbed his suitcase and headed for his car. But just when I thought we’d seen the last of the trouble-making luggage, he stopped as he was putting it in the front seat and dug out the jersey. He found a pen in the car’s glove compartment and scribbled something. “Hey Tara,” he called, tossing the blue fabric through the air.
She reached up and caught it in one hand.
He grinned at her. “Little souvenir,” he explained. “From Tahiti. If you don’t want it, maybe you can score some cash on EBay.”
Tara grinned back. “We’ll see.”
He got in the car, waved back at us once, then drove away.
“O.M.G.,” Kylee said in an exaggerated whisper. “He was so totally adorable, wasn’t he? A geek at heart, maybe, but still… totally adorable.”
Tara said nothing. She just stood still holding the jersey and smiled to herself.
I breathed out with a sigh of relief and pulled my blind back down into place with a slam. Glowing platinum… yes! I could not go through that every day. It was exhausting. “Kylee, how many ghosts did he bring with him? I swear, it felt like there was a whole friggin’ army!”
Kylee looked at me strangely and shook her head. “There was only one that I saw. An older woman. Maybe like his grandmother? She was kind of hovering and fussing and all that. I didn’t see either of the surfer ghosts.”
I blinked back at her with a frown. I started to puzzle out that information, and then I just gave up. Was there really any point in trying? Makani had his freakin’ boardshorts back, and he seemed happy, so the ghosts should be happy, which meant everybody should be happy. My blind was back down and I didn’t have to feel this crazy crap anymore.
Done.
“Ooh, let me see!” Kylee cried, taking the jersey from Tara’s hands. “He has such cool handwriting! Bold, yet sensitive.”
“All I see is a squiggle,” Tara said. “But it was nice of him, wasn’t it?”
I held out my hand and Kylee gave me the jersey. I grabbed it by the shoulders and spread it out to see the portion of the neckline that Makani had signed.
The shirt went blurry.
I drowned all over again.
Chapter 17
I lay flat on my bed upstairs, staring at the ceiling. “Don’t worry, Kali,” Kylee soothed. “We will figure all this out. I promise. Eventually.”
She did not sound particularly confident. The drowning sequence had been even more vivid the third time, and it had only ended when Tara took the jersey out of my hands. I felt so numb afterward that they had to guide me back inside the house, at which point my mom pounced on us begging to hear every word that had been said. My friends indulged her while I recovered, although retelling the actual words of our meeting with Makani only told a tiny fraction of the story. I was pretty sure, judging by the way my mom looked at me, that she picked up on that, but she didn’t probe any further, which was a relief.
My parents knew about my abilities, and Zane’s and Kylee’s too, but I hadn’t mentioned the surfer ghosts yet. My dad had more or less come to grips with the whole supernatural thing over the summer, but since hearing about it still weirded him out a little I usually kept the gory details to myself, and this latest drama had seemed harmless enough in the beginning. Now it had all gotten so complicated I had no idea where to begin. So I didn’t even try. We just moved upstairs where we could talk without being overheard.
“But it doesn’t make any sense!” I moaned, noticing how much I sounded like Tara. Things didn’t always have to make sense to me. Many times I could be more like Kylee. I could shrug and say “whatever!” and decide not to think about it. This was not one of those times.
“Are you one hundred percent sure there were no ghosts around me?” I asked weakly, looking at Kylee.
Her dark eyes swam with sympathy. “No, Kali. I told you before. There was just the old woman ghost, and she left with Makani. And she wasn’t hostile at all. She just seemed afraid.”
Tara paced the floor beside my bed. “You touched the jersey before, though. Didn’t you?”
I nodded. My head hurt. A rooster ringtone sounded, and I felt guilty as I ignored my phone. Zane must have sent a million texts in the last half an hour. He was even more frustrated than my mother at having to watch the exchange with Makani with no audio, and he couldn’t call me to talk about it because he was in the middle of a registration session. But I couldn’t answer his questions yet. Too much had happened to explain by text. He couldn’t feel the emotions I’d felt, and since I’d put my blind back in place before handling the jersey, he had no idea that I’d drowned again, either.
“I touched it before I touched the boardshorts when I loaded them both in the dryer,” I answered Tara. “The jersey didn’t do anything then. At least not right away.”
“It’s strange,” Tara said thoughtfully. “Makani did give the jersey to me, so it really wasn’t his anymore. Even if some ghost was able to punish you from a distance, or without Kylee being able to see him, it seems… well… a tad overzealous.”
“There would be no point,” Kylee argued. “Ghosts aren’t insane.”
Tara scoffed. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous that just sounded?”
Kylee ignored her. “It’s more like the clothing itself is cursed in some way. But only Kali is sensitive to it.”
“Oh, no,” Tara said quickly, hands raised. “I do not do ‘curses.’”
“Neither do I,” I agreed, sitting up. I really didn’t like the sound of that. I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my messages. Zane was so excited. So stoked about starting college, about our meeting Makani, even about Tara’s “souvenir.” He would be horrified when I told him I’d drowned again, and I was sorely tempted not to. But I knew that he would want to know. And if our roles were reversed, I’d be plenty annoyed if he didn’t tell me.
“All I mean,” Kylee tried to explain, “is that maybe it isn’t the ghosts that are doing it. I told you when it happened at the beach that the big guy was just staring at the two of you. Almost like he didn’t know what was going on, either. Which makes me wonder if the drowning thing isn’t separate. If it isn’t some perception you’re picking up from the clothes themselves.”
“Like maybe a memory of Makani’s?” Tara suggested. “Another imprint Kali is sensing?”
Optimism flickered. “Yes!” I cried. “Maybe that’s something we have in common! Maybe he almost drowned when he was younger, too!” I liked that thought. Not that he had nearly drowned once, but that there was no current threat associated with the horrible images. “Why not? He’s been surfing the North Shore since he was little, it would almost be more surprising if he hadn’t ever been held under for a wave or two!”
Tara’s sharp blue eyes did not seem convinced. “Didn’t you say there was blood?” she asked.
I hopped off the edge of my bed. “Yes, but he could have cut himself on the reef or something,” I said dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. I still think it’s the best theory we’ve got. For whatever reason, Makani has tight ties to the spiritual world. Maybe his clothes are radioactive with his energy. We already know I’m sen
sitive to imprints of past events, so it makes sense that I could tap into some visuals. Maybe touching his things brings out the drowning scene in particular because it triggers my own phobia.”
“Now there’s a thought,” Kylee said. “I wonder if some of his belongings could be more ‘radiant’ than others? He did only wear the jersey one time. But I guess you could argue that it became more significant to him emotionally after he signed it and gave it to Tara.”
“I still don’t see—” Tara began.
“Well I’m glad that’s settled,” I announced cheerfully. I had an explanation that both made some sense and didn’t scare me. Now I could move on.
I picked up my phone and began to text Zane. Not being able to hear what any of us had said earlier, he had no idea that he was about to meet Makani himself, in person, this very afternoon.
I couldn’t wait to make his day.
***
Zane’s green eyes blazed with light as he caught sight of us at the appointed meeting place just outside the entrance to the Bishop Museum. He stepped up at once and enfolded me in a fierce hug, which he couldn’t possibly know how much I needed.
Do you have any idea how much I adore you right now? His embrace said loud and clear.
Right back at you, mine returned.
“Any sign of Makani?” Kylee chirped, scoping out the area.
Zane shook his head as he released me. “Not yet.” He grinned down at me, but after studying my traitorous face for a second, his enthusiasm dimmed a little. “You okay?”
I smiled back. He still had one arm around my shoulders. “Better now.”
Tara looked up from her phone and back toward the parking lot. “He says he just got here.”