Sunrise

by Melissa J Morgan

  Suddenly, Tori came to a stop. “Okay, I’m in that one over there, bunk G-14,” she said, pointing to a small bunk with a stunning bright green door. “The pinao bunk, whatever that means.”

  “Dragonfly,” Cassie said—finally she knew something Tori didn’t! “Pinao means ‘dragonfly’ in Hawaiian.”

  “Cool,” Tori said. “Looks like all the bunks have Hawaiian names, because I think you’re in that one.” She pointed to a bunk with a turquoise door. A faded and peeling G-16 was painted on it. A small lanai—or porch—wrapped around the front, and painted at the top was the name of the bunk: nai’a. In Hawaiian that meant “dolphin.”

  A girl was coming down the stairs, an orange C.I.T. lei around her neck. Her wavy auburn hair frizzed out from the heat, but she didn’t seem to care. She had bright pink cheeks, intensely friendly blue-green eyes, and was filled with so much energy she seemed like she might pop. She bounded over to Tori and Cassie and quickly bleated, “Aloha, aloha, I’m Andi. Can’t wait to meet you guys later, bye!” And with that she was down the pebbled path, heading for the beach.

  “Um, wow,” Cassie said. “She seems nice.”

  “Totally,” Tori said. “See? You met someone already. And check out these hammocks.” A few hammocks were strung up in the trees. Maybe, on a hot night, if the bunk was too stuffy, C.I.T.s could sleep out there. “Besides,” Tori continued, “I have something that’ll make you stop moping. Your birthday present!”

  “My . . . birthday present?” Cassie said. Her birthday was, what? Five months ago. But there was no time to protest, as Tori was now pulling Cassie into the bunk, where they found themselves blissfully alone.

  “Where is everybody?” Cassie said.

  “I guess they’re all out being C.I.T.s or whatever,” Tori said. “So I’ll be quick. I meant to send this to you months ago, I swear! I just totally blanked. I’m a sucky cousin. Can you ever forgive me?”

  Tori looked so serious, her blue-green eyes wide, her forehead all wrinkled up like she’d shoved a leg of pantyhose over her face so she could rob a convenience store. She was too much. “Tori, don’t worry about it,” Cassie said. “We live, like, thousands of miles apart. Besides, I didn’t get you a birthday present either, did I?”

  Tori dropped her eyes to her Alice & Olivia platform sandals—not exactly practical, the heels sunk into the sand. “Uh, yeah, you got me a DVD,” she admitted. “The latest Pirates of the Caribbean. You always know how I feel about Orlando.” She sighed. Then she looked up, eyes bright again. “But I am so glad we’re alone right now because I am so going to make it up to you, so just open this!” From her Balenciaga shoulder bag she pulled out a puffy present wrapped in what looked like a glossy jungle of lipsticked mouths and painted eyes. Lots and lots of mouths and eyes.

  “What is that?” Cassie said. It looked either sexy and cool, or semi-deformed.

  “Wrapping paper,” Tori said with a shrug. “I took scissors to Italian Vogue. Just open it! Before someone comes in!”

  Cassie opened the present to reveal the most intensely shiny, blindingly bright object she had ever seen in her life, apart from the sun.

  “Do you love it, or do you love it!” Tori shrieked.

  “I . . .” Cassie stretched it out to get the full effect—it was made of spandex, it was . . . Oh no, oh yes, oh god, it’s a bathing suit, she realized. It was a gold one-piece with gigantic slits up the sides and a neckline that plunged so far down, it was nearly impossible to tell the back from the front. “I’m, what’s the word? Speechless,” Cassie said at last. She wasn’t sure how the suit would stay on.

  “Exactly. That was my exact reaction when I saw it at the boutique. It’s Dolce & Gabbana, you know. It’s so delicious, don’t you just want to eat it?”

  In fact, Cassie would probably eat the gold bathing suit before she’d wear it out in actual water, now that Tori said it. But her cousin meant well. This was just like Tori—she was fabulous, even at fourteen years old. Cassie figured she just couldn’t help it. Maybe it was anthropologically impossible to grow up within a ten-mile radius of Hollywood without having at least some glamour rub off on you. But just because Tori was fabulous didn’t mean she was a snob about people who weren’t. She wanted to share. She’d share her hundred-dollar lip gloss with you just as soon as she’d share her peanuts if you happened to sit next to her on an airplane.

  The thing is, maybe Tori could pull off a gold D&G “bathing suit”—but Cassie sure couldn’t.

  Cassie wore surfer bathing suits. As in suits with bottoms that looked more like shorts. Suits with tops that actually stayed on when the waves came splashing. She’d be stripped naked in two seconds flat if she went out on her board in that suit.

  But she loved her cousin, so she tried to pull the shock off her face and smile. She just hoped Tori didn’t ask her to try it on.

  Too late. “Put it on! Put it on! Put it on!” Tori was chanting like the camp-happy kids out in the sand. “Cass, you have to. Pleeeeeeeeeaaase?” She stuck out her lower lip.

  “Okay already! But Tor . . . I don’t know if I can pull this off.”

  Tori shook her head, hotly denying it. “You can so pull it off. All that surfing? Look at your bod.” She turned Cassie to face a floor-length mirror beside the entry to the bathroom. “You are hot,” she whispered in Cassie’s ear. “Go change into that suit, hottie. I’ll pick out a bed for you while you do.”

  Cassie stepped into a bathroom stall to put the gold contraption on. She was glad no one could see her because at first she put her leg through the arm hole and had the suit on all crooked. Finally she pulled the straps up and got the gold pieces of spandex covering what they were made to cover, and she went back into the bunk.

  Meanwhile, Tori had put Cassie’s backpack on a bed close to a window. “In my bunk we have bunk beds, but I guess you C.I.T.s are too mature for that—oh.” She’d caught sight of Cassie and stopped talking.

  Cassie covered herself with her hands. “Is it that bad?”

  Of course it’s that bad. Only a Victoria’s Secret model could pull this off!

  But Tori was shaking her head and smiling. “You look really good, Cass, I’m serious. This is, like, the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten anyone, like, ever. I should get an award for this. Or a write-up in Vogue or something.”

  “You are crazy,” Cassie repeated. “C-R-A-Z—” But before she made it to Y, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the grimy camp mirror. Through the dirty haze covering the glass—smeared with, what was that, Vaseline?—she saw herself in the D&G suit. And she looked pretty good if she did say so herself. Some might say hot, even. It was surreal.

  “Walk for me,” Tori said. “Just to your bed and back. I need the full effect.”

  In the gold suit Cassie felt like another person. She wasn’t the serious surfer girl who thought only about her next competition. And she wasn’t the girl who came after, after the incident that made her stop surfing, the one who didn’t want to get back on the board. She was something else entirely.

  It was this other Cassie who walked down the aisle between the beds like a model.

  Tori was clapping and stomping her feet and shouting for more. And Cassie was giving it to her, a swish here, a swish there, a turn, a pose with hip out, a pose with arms up, another swish, another turn, a—

  Oh.

  God.

  Please.

  No.

  Cassie had reached the end of her fantasy runway and was now facing the worst possible sight a girl in a Glamazon bathing suit could imagine in her deepest, most mortifying nightmares: not just another human being, but a boy human being. A very, very gorgeous boy.

  Cassie, seeing as she was standing there half naked, let out a shriek and dove behind the closest bed. Tori shot forward and tried to block her from sight. And Gorgeous Boy himself? He stood there frozen like he’d just caught sight of a UFO. The door to the bunk slammed shut in its frame.

  It was a deathly lon
g series of moments before anyone could find the voice to speak, followed by all three speaking at the exact same moment.

  “Don’t you know how to knock?” said Tori.

  “This is not what it looks like,” said Cassie.

  “I think maybe I’m in the wrong bunk,” said Gorgeous Boy.

  Cassie couldn’t look at him. So she looked instead at his feet. He had nice feet. Thankfully her cousin took hold of the conversation for her.

  “Dude,” Tori answered him. “The wrong bunk, hello, you think?”

  “I’m Micah, by the way,” he said. “And isn’t this B-16? On the door it said . . .”

  “I’m telling you, this is definitely not a boys’ bunk,” Tori said.

  “But it says right here . . .” Micah said. He pulled out a piece of paper.

  Tori grabbed it to prove her point. “You’re in the hummahummahumma, um, I-can’t-pronounce-it bunk. It says right here.”

  Cassie knew without having to see the paper. If all bunks were given the names of Hawaiian animals, birds, and fish, the name of his bunk would have to be the humuhumunukunukuapua’a bunk. That was the actual, practically-impossible-to-pronounce name for the Hawaii state fish.

  “This is the nai’a bunk,” she said. “Besides, this is G-16, not B-16. It’s sort of hard to read on the door.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Cassie realized she was still hiding behind a bed. She tried to stand up. She looked for the first time at his face. He had dark hair, curling near his ears, and warm brown eyes, and cocoa-colored skin. His face was, well, even better-looking than his feet.

  “I, uh, like your suit,” he said. His eye twitched.

  Was that a wink?! He wasn’t trying to WINK at me, was he?

  No. No, he was just looking a bit embarrassed. “Guess I’ll go find the right bunk then.” He lifted his bag over his shoulder, then turned back to Cassie. “I’m really sorry I barged in on you when you were, um, you know.”

  “Me too,” Cassie said.

  He looked away then, opened the door, and stepped out.

  Once the door slammed shut, Cassie keeled over onto the closest bed. She shouted something into the mattress. “Mmm ggggiiiing t’ dieeeeee.”

  “What?” Tori said softly, sitting beside her.

  With great effort, Cassie lifted her head. She had been so sure of herself for a second there, but it was gone now, all gone. “I said: I am going to die.”

  Tori, on the other hand, was smiling. “What are you talking about, Cass? That was the best thing that could have happened. What luck!”

  “Luck! Luck? Tori, he just saw me in this, in this, I’m sorry, Tor, but this hella awful suit, he saw me. Like what could possibly be worse than that?”

  Tori gave a little pout at Cassie calling her birthday gift “hella awful,” but she still had that insane smile on her face. “You’re looking at this all wrong. One of the hottest guys here just saw you looking killer in an unforgettable bathing suit. That is what I call a perfect bit of luck. And it’s all thanks to me.” She winked. “I say you owe me, big time.”

  Two

  Micah Sims wanted to shove his head in the sand—that’s how stupid he felt for walking in on Cassie and that other girl doing whatever they were doing with that bathing suit. Actually, he didn’t want to know what they were doing. Better not to know. He wanted to block the entire experience from memory, except maybe the quick glimpse he got of Cassie. Fact is, she looked hot.

  Not that she didn’t look hot normally . . .

  But at that moment when he’d walked in . . .

  Uh, yeah.

  Micah was seriously relieved the girls couldn’t read his mind.

  Micah was well aware of who Cassie was—the gossip that she was inexplicably here for the summer had surely crossed the beach ten times by now. Three separate people had told him. Besides, Micah remembered her from last summer, when he’d been at Ohana as a camper and Cassie had come with a group of surfers to do an exposition. It was hard to forget a girl like that: pretty, sure, and friendly, even though she was pro. Besides, from what he remembered when he saw her surfing, she had a killer cutback.

  “Lost?” someone called to him.

  Micah realized he was standing in the sand, looking like a dazed tourist.

  “Micah, your bunk’s over there—the one with the big humuhumunukunukuapua’a on it, you can’t miss it. Gotta go! Simona’s got me running to the—” And she didn’t finish her sentence before bounding away down the path. He saw her auburn hair bouncing wildly behind her, and that was that.

  Micah blinked. That was Andi, another C.I.T. She was so full of energy, it could be hard to take at times. Last summer, when they were both campers, he remembered her running around everywhere, doing fifteen things at once. Guess that hadn’t changed. But she’d been right: He was standing outside his own bunk and didn’t even realize it. The swimsuit incident had done more damage than he realized. He dropped off his bag, claimed a bed, and then, just as he stepped out on the lanai, he ran into the one person he was hoping to avoid just a little longer: his girlfriend from last summer, Danica DeLaura.

  He’d heard she was here, a C.I.T., too, but he was in a bit of denial about it. At the end of last summer she’d slipped him a note just before she got on the bus to the airport that basically said they were over. Not that they were so serious anyway, but still: a note? What was this, grade school?

  “Micah,” Danica said. It seemed like she’d been waiting for him outside the door. “We need to clear the air so let me go first.” Micah noticed that she looked good, but then tried not to let her notice that he’d noticed. He’d have to play this game all summer now.

  He leaned against the railing of the lanai and let her talk. Sure, she was the one to break up with him, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of being a jerk.

  “So,” Danica said, “you’re a surfing C.I.T. this summer, and I’m a surfing C.I.T., and since we’ll have to work together, obviously, this isn’t the time to—”

  “Wait, you’re the girls’ surfing C.I.T.?” Micah said.

  “Yeah,” Danica said, her eyes narrowing. “Surprised?” She stood up straight, her shoulders back, all defensive.

  “No, I just—”

  “Micah, I know this’ll be hard for you. The thing is”—and here her face softened and she changed the subject abruptly—“you look better than I remember you looking. What happened, you been working out?”

  He wanted to roll his eyes. Instead he said, “I’ve been surfing. It’s seriously all I’ve done since last summer.”

  “That’s cute,” she said. Then she added, sounding even more condescending, if that were possible, “You’re not hoping to go pro, are you?”

  Yeah, I am, he thought.

  Something told him he shouldn’t admit that to Danica, so he just shrugged, like he could go either way. Truth was, he’d been surfing nonstop all year. He lived in Waikui, so the waves were practically his backyard. It wasn’t hard to get time in the water; what was hard was being taken seriously in a place where everyone had started surfing before they learned to walk. Though he’d lived in Hawaii for years, his family was originally from St. Louis, Missouri, far from any viable ocean. And the local surfers wouldn’t let him forget it.

  “You do want to go pro, don’t you?” Danica purred, so sweet it was sickening. “And you think some sponsor’ll notice you out here and invite you to some big fancy competition and you’ll win it all. Oh, Micah . . .”

  Micah just shrugged again. “Danica, what does this have to do with clearing the air, anyway? You’re the one who gave me that stone-cold note.”

  “That note wasn’t cold,” Danica jumped in to say. “That note was necessary. I was the one who had the guts to say it first. I’m in Florida, you’re in Waikui, what did you think would happen?! I was just being realistic.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he said. There was no point arguing it now.

  Then she began t
alking again, something about how good he was looking—she just wouldn’t let it go—and he would have been uncomfortable if the sight across the sand didn’t distract him from whatever Danica was saying.

  Two girls were stepping onto the lanai of the girls’ C.I.T. bunk: Cassie and the other girl who’d been with her. There was no trace of the gold bathing suit—Cassie was wearing the usual surfgirl uniform: boardies, a sleeveless rash guard, both pale blue. She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. He tried not to make it obvious that he was watching her—he saw her walk down the steps, take the path toward the rec hall, not once looking in his direction. He tried not to show he was watching, but Danica caught him.

  “Oh yeah, her,” she said. “Can you believe her?”

  “I think it’s cool she’s here as a C.I.T.”

  “Cool? It’s pathetic. Something’s up, something weird. That’s what I think.”

  “What’s weird is that she’s not the girls’ surfing C.I.T. and you are.”

  Danica gave him a look of death. “I’ve been coming to this camp since forever,” she said. “The whole last year we were campers I worked on showing the counselors that I’m C.I.T. material. Clearly, they know I am. I deserve that spot. Besides, I applied for that surfing spot fair and square. I’m the surfing C.I.T. and she’s not. She might have a name for herself out in the real world, but here she’s a newbie. A nobody.”

  Micah smiled at Danica’s tirade. “Sounds like someone’s a little jealous.”

  “I am not dignifying that with an answer. Besides, I came here to talk about us, not that Cassie chick. We need to get this out of the way before orientation starts. Are you mature enough to handle working together this summer?”