Sunrise

by Melissa J Morgan

Danica shrugged. “I’ve got no problem with Micah,” she said.

  “Haydee, seriously, me and Danica working together is no issue,” Micah said.

  “Good.”

  “So only surfing C.I.T.s and counselors can compete, right?” Danica said suddenly.

  “What, the two of you? No, all C.I.T.s can compete. Speaking of . . .”

  Micah could see Danica’s face getting pinched.

  “Where’s that surfer chick? I want to give her fair warning about the competition. She’s up for a fight.” Haydee winked at Danica.

  “You mean Cassie?” Micah said. Danica looked like she might bite his head off at the mention of her name. “She took one of her kids to the infirmary.”

  “Anyway, she shouldn’t be allowed to enter. She’s pro,” Danica said, clearly hating having to admit that out loud.

  “Any C.I.T. can enter,” Haydee said. “Besides, it sort of racks up the competition, no? Gets your blood flowing. Makes you want to win?”

  “Oh, I’ll win,” Danica vowed. “Then I’ll go to Oahu and take that contest there . . . if we get a shot at it. Will we, Haydee? Will our camp be sending surfers to compete in the Oahu contest?”

  Haydee had a small smile on her face. “Not telling. Anyway, that’s the attitude I like to see. You’ll give Cassie the news about next weekend, yeah?”

  “We’ll tell her,” Danica said.

  Haydee grinned. “But first, clean up these boards.” She nodded at the scattered white surfboards left on the sand where the kids had abandoned them. Then she took off for the rec hall, leaving them to deal with the mess.

  Danica had her own ideas. “You’ll handle this, won’t you, boo?” she asked Micah. “I have got to tell Sasha and Sierra the news.”

  “Danica, I’m not cleaning this up without you.”

  “Then don’t clean it up,” she said. Soon she, too, had taken off down the beach. Micah was left to clean, sort, and carry the boards back to the stands. If only boys could compete against girls in that expo: Ex-girlfriend or not, Danica would get a run for her money.

  Micah was putting the last of the camp boards away, but this time he took the long route around the back of the showers, knowing he’d cross near the infirmary. Maybe Cassie will still be in there, he thought.

  And what do you know, there she was, walking out.

  “Hey,” he said as if he just happened to bump into her. But there was no reason to act shifty: He actually had news to tell her, about the expo.

  “Hi,” she said. She seemed more relaxed around him now—finally. “So Tamra cut her foot up pretty bad, poor kid. She was just walking on the sand and stepped wrong on the shell and . . . Anyway, she’s on the phone with her mom.”

  “That sucks,” he said. “But I’m glad I ran into you,” he said. “Haydee and Zeke wanted me to tell you some news about the surf contest. You know all about that, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “There’s some kind of contest in August, right?”

  She was so nonchalant about it—he figured she just knew she’d win. With skills like she had, a little contest like this was in the bag. He wished he had her confidence. And more, he wished he had her skills.

  “They moved it up—the whole expo’s moved up . . . to Visiting Day this weekend.”

  “That’s cool,” she said. “So you’re competing in it, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. You are, too, right?”

  “Oh, I don’t know yet,” she said vaguely. “I thought I’d have more time to decide, you know . . .” She wouldn’t look at him. Now she was back again to not looking at him.

  “I just figured . . .” he started. “But I guess because of the . . . I mean, I guess it makes sense that you don’t know if you’ll do it.”

  “What are you doing with a board all the way over here?” she asked, clearly wanting to change the subject. “Don’t they get put away on the other side of the beach?”

  “Yeah,” he said. It wasn’t like he could explain how he took a detour to the infirmary so he could have this non-conversation with her and make a fool of himself.

  “Huh,” she said. He had no idea what that meant.

  “You should compete,” he shot out. “You’d be awesome. I know a week isn’t long enough to get over whatever you need to get over but . . .” Here he stopped. “Anyway.”

  Her eyes darkened. She looked about to burst out with something, but someone came running up shouting her name. It was her cousin, Tori. She shrieked and leaped into Cassie’s arms. Micah took a big step back.

  “Eddie asked me!” she cried. “We’re hanging after dinner tonight. I knew it! Did I say I knew it or did I say I knew it?!”

  “You knew it,” Cassie said, this huge smile on her face.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Tori said to him, “but Cass and me, we’ve got to talk.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, and backed away with the board.

  He tried not to look over his shoulder to see if Cassie was watching him go. He tried not to, but as he turned the corner, he did look.

  And there she was, standing with her cousin, talking animatedly. She wasn’t looking in his direction, not at all, like she’d forgotten he’d ever been there.

  Danica went looking for Sierra and Sasha everywhere. They weren’t in the C.I.T. bunk, not on the beach, not in the pool, not in the rec hall. She wanted to tell them about how the surfing expo got pushed up weeks ahead of time. It’s all so I don’t get good enough to beat Cassie, she suspected. They want Cassie to win, so they’re making sure she does.

  Danica wanted someone to complain to, and she knew Sierra and Sasha would listen. Only Sierra and Sasha weren’t anywhere she could see. By the time she found them—just walking the pebbled paths, chatting like they had nowhere to be—she was so riled up, she wasn’t able to explain it properly.

  “I don’t get it,” Sierra said, after Danica had told her about the expo now happening on Visiting Day, “are your parents coming and you don’t want them to see?”

  “My parents?” Danica said. “No, they never come for Visiting Day—it’s too far and they’re too busy. This has nothing to do with my parents.”

  Sasha spoke up. “And you still get to surf in the contest, right?”

  Danica sighed. “Yeah, of course. It’s just that Cassie . . .” she said, trying to find the words. “Cassie is all—” She stopped talking then. Sierra and Sasha turned to see where she was looking, which was at the path outside the infirmary where Cassie, the very person she’d just mentioned, was standing with Micah. They couldn’t seem to stay away from each other, apparently.

  “Are they together now?” Sierra said.

  Danica didn’t answer.

  “If they are . . .” Sasha started. “Danica, that sucks.”

  “But Danica doesn’t like Micah anymore, right, D?” Sierra said quickly.

  And then Danica’s two best camp friends were looking right at her, waiting for confirmation that she was so far over Micah that she didn’t care who he was crushing on, but they didn’t get anything of the sort. Something on her face gave it away.

  “You do still like him!” Sierra said.

  “She does,” affirmed Sasha, eyes wide.

  “Just shut up, okay?” Danica said. They were talking pretty loudly—she didn’t want Micah and Cassie to overhear. “And by the way, they’re not together. It’s nothing . . . they’re just talking.”

  “They’re not together,” Sierra said, studying them from afar, “not yet.”

  Sasha put an arm around Danica’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, D. It’ll never happen. Micah will never like someone else. Not with you here.”

  “Yeah!” said Sierra.

  “Yeah,” Danica said. Her voice was very small, barely recognizable as hers. It was bad enough she had to deal with the drama of Cassie stealing her extremely deserved spotlight just by being at Ohana this summer, but now Cassie was going after Micah, too? That could not happen. It just couldn’t.

 
; Six

  There was another Camp Ohana C.I.T. tradition in the works, and this one had to be kept top secret from campers and counselors alike: night swimming.

  Every summer, the C.I.T.s and some of the lifeguards snuck out after lights-out to go swimming. Tonight’s swim was planned for the usual cove on the beach, just a five-minute walk from camp grounds. The girls in the C.I.T. bunk were getting dressed for the night out when Andi came up and sat on the end of Cassie’s bed. “I’m wearing black,” she said. “So if I blend in with the dark and you can’t find me, just call my name and I’ll come running.”

  “Okay,” Cassie said. She had to admit: Andi made more of an effort with her than the others girls. Cassie couldn’t say for sure, but it almost seemed as if Andi wanted to be her friend.

  “So, this place we’re going, the counselors won’t hear us there?” Cassie asked.

  Andi shrugged. “Well, they could hear, I guess. It is pretty close by.”

  “Why aren’t we going to one of the saltwater lagoons?” Cassie said. “I used to go to this one place close by a lot when I was a kid—just with my family, before I started traveling so much. It’s called Lani Kohola . . .” Cassie stopped talking. She wondered if she should have brought it up. This tradition had been in place for years. But Cassie still was reluctant to go swimming in the ocean at night, and she knew that the only real safe spot to swim at night was an enclosed lagoon, something smaller than, well, the expanse of the entire ocean.

  But Emmy, who had also grown up in Kona, knew the exact spot Cassie had mentioned. “Guys, we have to go to Lani Kohola. It’s this little lagoon you can’t see from the road, it’s gorgeous. Great idea, Cassie.”

  “No, really, never mind,” Cassie said. “It’s actually not a good idea. It’s a local spot.”

  This got Danica’s attention. “Yeah, so?”

  “I mean it’s for locals only. Only locals go swimming there. No tourists.”

  “We’re not tourists,” Danica said.

  “I didn’t say you were a tourist,” Cassie began, fumbling. “I just meant you don’t live on the island—most of the C.I.T.s aren’t from here—so we shouldn’t really go. I really shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “What would happen?” Andi piped up. “I mean if we all went swimming there and, you know, some locals showed up to swim there, too.”

  “Oh, nothin’ will happen,” Emmy said. “I know everyone. Everyone knows me. If any locals come by, I just say hey, dudes, it’s me, Emmy. No worries.”

  “So it’s decided then,” Danica said. “Lani Kohola it is.”

  Cassie should have kept her mouth shut. Emmy acted like it was no big deal to bring a bunch of strange kids to a secret spot used only by locals, but Cassie wasn’t so sure. Locals in Hawaii were known to be very protective of their secret spots. Everyone’s heard a story of a tourist who got banged up by a local just for dipping his toe in the wrong stretch of beach. But Emmy was acting like such a thing wouldn’t ever happen with her around, so Cassie shrugged it off.

  But then she got nervous when the guys said the best way to get to Lani Kohola would be to swipe one of the Ohana vans for the short ride. Somehow she was now complicit in grand theft auto—and all she’d wanted was somewhere calm to go swimming!

  Cassie was going over her anxieties—one more was that she wouldn’t be able to string together a coherent sentence now that Micah was around—when she got a welcome sight: her cousin Tori, running across the sand in a bathing suit.

  “I snuck out!” she whispered when she reached Cassie. “So did Eddie.” And sure enough, Tori’s new boyfriend emerged from the shadows, along with one of his friends. They hopped in the Ohana van with the C.I.T.s and the lifeguards—jam-packed in the back—and were soon at the lagoon.

  Lani Kohola, the saltwater lagoon hidden from view of the road, was a shimmering green pool in the night. The air smelled wonderful—a touch of this incredible sweetness that Cassie recalled from her childhood.

  It didn’t take long before Cassie forgot her stress. Tori helped, but it wasn’t just her cousin who was making sure to include her. Andi was, too. Shortly into the evening, Andi had motioned to Cassie to come join her group.

  Me? Cassie thought at first, surprised.

  Soon, Cassie found herself in the midst of it, covering her face from the splashes. All around her the other C.I.T.s and the lifeguards whooped it up, but she didn’t feel as separate from them as she usually did. She was here, with them, a part of this just as much as anybody else.

  Tori swam over and they floated together at the edge of the lagoon on their backs, looking up through the ring of palm trees at the stars.

  “You havin’ fun?” Tori asked.

  “I’m glad you came,” Cassie said. “I just hope you don’t get in trouble for it.”

  “I won’t,” Tori said confidentially. “But yeah, I’m glad I came. Did you see Eddie?”

  “Tor!”

  “Just kidding, Cass. I’m glad I’m here. I get the feeling you need me.”

  Flashlights skittered on the shore above, showing Ben approaching the hill overlooking the lagoon, about to jump in. The group screamed in encouragement. Cassie and Tori swam off to the side, giving him room, but when Ben hit the water, a giant wave still cascaded up to their chins. He’d gone in feet-first but somehow tipped over and landed in a classic belly flop, splashing everywhere.

  “Owwwww!” Ben moaned when he surfaced at last.

  Some girls were cracking up. Danica was laughing, standing on the sand in a bright turquoise bikini, pointing at him. Cassie noticed that the only girl who wasn’t in some form of hysterics was Emmy. She was looking at Ben with this serious expression on her face, as if concerned that he’d hurt himself. Tori saw, too, and swam closer to Cassie to whisper in her ear.

  “Look who likes Ben!”

  “No,” Cassie said, somewhat in horror. “She can’t think he’s cute, can she?”

  “Well, technically, he is cute, like, on paper. But in person, he’s sort of . . .” Tori treaded water, searching for the word.

  “Obnoxious?”

  “Yeah. Just like Charlie is cute, technically, on paper, but when you talk to him, he’s, like, too awkward to stay cute, you know? It sorts of cancels it out.”

  “He is too cute!”

  “Wait, you don’t like him, do you?”

  “No.”

  “I know who you like!” Tori shrieked. Cassie could see her cousin’s smile in the darkness. She could see it, and she knew the name that would cross her lips next. She just didn’t want it said out loud, not here where anyone could hear.

  She leaped toward Tori, covering her mouth so the name couldn’t come out. “Shhh!” she cried.

  “What are you guys talking about?” said a voice. Andi swam up. “What’s the secret? Tell! Tell!”

  “It’s nothing,” Cassie said. “Totally and completely absolutely nothing.”

  “You’re talking about boys,” Andi said. “I knew it.”

  At this, someone else swam up, but in the dim light Cassie couldn’t make out who it was at first. Cassie’s stomach sunk when she realized it was Danica. “What boy?” Danica said. “You have to tell me. Don’t think I won’t find out.”

  “No boy!” Cassie protested. “Really.”

  Tori was thankfully silent, though she knew very well the exact boy Cassie was not thinking of at that moment. He was on the hill overlooking the water. He was calling out to watch out below. Then he was diving in. Cassie watched him make a smooth impact, then turned away before he surfaced.

  “Good,” Danica said, “because this is no time to be thinking about boys. What with the contest coming up. I just hope Cassie’s ready for it.”

  Cassie stopped floating and stood again in the water, surprised to be called out.

  “Yeah, you heard me,” Danica said. In the dark it was hard to tell if she was being serious or not. “It’s gonna be tough. I’m pretty good. You probably didn’t know that, b
ut I am. Ask anyone here. And I happen to know you’re out of practice. Didn’t you say you haven’t been on a board in, like, forever?”

  “I’ll be okay,” Cassie said.

  Tori stepped up to defend her, as always. “Oh, she’ll rock it,” she told Danica. “You can be sure about that.”

  “Really?” Danica said.

  “Yes, really,” Tori shot back.

  Cassie didn’t know what else to say. Fact is, Danica had a good point. No matter how good Cassie had been in the past, she hadn’t surfed in months. Was it like riding a bicycle, like once you learn how to thrash waves your body never forgets? She had no idea, and now Danica was using that doubt to psych her out.

  Tori waited until Danica had swam away and was toweling off onshore with her friends, then said, “What is her problem?”

  “Oh, that’s Danica,” Andi said. “She’s just like that. You get used to it.”

  “Like what? Mean?”

  “She takes Ohana really seriously—she loves this place. And you, Cassie, you’re new.” She shrugged. “Anyways, you have nothing to worry about in that surf contest. I mean, obviously you’ll win.”

  A huge splash came from nearby and Andi tried to duck it. It caught her on the head and she shrieked. “You’re dead, you are so dead!” And then she was paddling for Charlie, trying to get back at him.

  Cassie stood there in the water practically up to her neck, not saying anything.

  “You will win, Cass. You know that, right?”

  Tori said quietly.

  “I’m getting out,” Cassie said. “I’m done swimming.” She headed fast for shore. On the sand, she searched out her towel and dried off. Tori quietly joined her.

  “Cassie?” someone said.

  She turned to find Micah. She didn’t remember seeing him leave the lagoon after he dove in off the hill, but there he stood, dried off, his T-shirt on.

  “You want to take a walk?” he said. “Just down the beach and back?”

  Cassie fiddled with her bag, looking for something she didn’t even need. What did that mean, a walk on the beach? Where would they walk? What would they talk about? What should she say? There were too many questions and not enough answers. Before she even realized what she was saying, the words came out of her mouth: “Nah. Thanks, though.”