I glance over at her. “Why you’d want to is the bigger question.”
She frowns before she turns back to stare at the mountain. “It would just be nice to have no one talking about you,” she says. “I get tired of having to be nice all the time.”
“All the time?” I ask. “Is that what we’re going with?”
She laughs. “Almost all the time. Just not to you. Trolls don’t deserve kindness.”
I follow her gaze to the hills, thinking of the unhappy woman who waits in my room, the issues with my mom. “I guess I can see the appeal,” I admit quietly. “Probably not a lot of Sour Patch Kids up there.” I still can’t believe she brought candy on that hike instead of water.
She makes a face at me. “Of course there are. Those hills are full of Sour Patch Trees. It’s like you know nothing about Hawaiian agriculture. You’ll see.”
And just like that, she’s included me in her imagined life, living in the hills. I don’t know if she even realized she did it, but I wish the idea appealed to me a little less than it does.
When I return to the room, Sloane is up and dressed.
“You were gone for a long time,” she says. I can’t tell if she’s insinuating something or if I just feel guilty for avoiding her.
“I was worried I’d wake you if I came back too early.”
She doesn’t react at all, emotionless as ever. Her seeming apathy is what led me to think the fling in Somalia was meaningless, and I’m still not sure it wasn’t. Her interest in me seems driven more by my lack of interest than anything else.
“Do you know when your brother’s going to be here?” she asks.
In theory, he should get his passport back any day now, though the truth is you never know with Joel. It would not surprise me to discover he wasn’t in Japan at all, that he’d actually been on a bender, one hotel over, the entire time. “Possibly tomorrow.”
“Good,” she says, and then she brushes her hands against each other, as if she’s successfully solved a thorny problem.
I’m pretty sure the problem is me, and I’m pretty sure having Joel here isn’t going to fix a goddamn thing.
10
DREW
I wonder how little I would actually do on this trip if I wasn’t competing with someone.
My morning run? It would be three miles long at most, were it not for Josh. My breakfasts? Half their current size if I weren’t trying to be as excessively American as possible for Sloane’s benefit. And when Beth says she’s arranged for us all to surf—she’s rented a board for Josh, gotten an instructor for me and Sloane—the only thing that has me agreeing is Sloane saying I think I’ll pass in that snooty way of hers.
To be honest, I can kind of understand Sloane’s apprehension over this whole surfing thing. The ocean is mostly something you attempt to survive, not master, and here, where the surf break appears to be a mile from shore, it feels almost suicidal. I only want to be that far from dry land if there’s a champagne-stocked yacht involved. But I hate the way Beth deflates a little when Sloane says no, and I want to feel cooler than Sloane, though it’s hardly a competition. She’s currently wearing a shin-length linen dress and heels for breakfast on vacation. If she has a stylist, her only instructions must be “boring” and “no, more boring than that.”
At the appointed time, Josh and I wander to the beach. He’s clad only in a pair of black swim trunks, still damp from the pool and clinging to his thighs. They’ve slipped to the top of his narrow hips, low enough to show off that perfect v of his abdomen, which I swear to God is pure muscle, not an ounce of fat anywhere to be found. He tucks the rental board under his arm and moves toward the water, leaving me to wait for the instructor, who arrives late and clearly has no fucks to give. Normally, I’d appreciate the fact that he’s treating me like everyone else, but I’d prefer someone who seems at least vaguely invested in keeping me alive.
He shows me how to pop up on the board. I practice twice, he yawns and says, “Whatever, it’s easy,” and then we are off. Josh is now a tiny speck on the horizon, approaching other tiny specks.
“We’re not going that far, right?” I whisper.
The dude, whose name is Stan, all but rolls his eyes. “Yeah, unless you’ve discovered a new way to surf that doesn’t involve waves.”
Gosh, I sure hope Stan wasn’t expecting a tip.
We paddle, and paddle—requiring more upper body strength than I probably have.
If he were nicer, I’d tell him I find the ocean slightly terrifying, and that I find things that live in the ocean similarly terrifying—the movie about the surfer who got her arm bit off took place in Hawaii, after all. I’d also like to mention that I want to keep all my limbs, which doesn’t feel like the sort of thing I should have to mention, but bears repeating.
A wave crashes over my head for what feels like the hundredth time, knocking the board out from under me and dumping me in the ocean. It seems as if we’re making no progress, and I want to weep from the ache in my arms when Stan heaves a sigh and pinches my board between his toes. “I’ll tow you,” he says, not hiding how tiresome he finds the fact that I cannot propel myself with ease, using only my upper body, for extended periods of time.
When he finally stops, we are really, really far from the shore, and nearly as far from Josh.
“Okay, lie flat on your board,” he says. “We’re gonna catch this next set.”
“We?”
“Sure, I’m gonna surf when you do,” he says. “That’s why I do this job.”
“What if I fall, though?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You won’t. That board’s like an ocean liner. But if you do, just float until I get back.”
Right. Just float in the middle of the shark-infested ocean alone ‘til you get back. Excellent plan, Stan.
He pushes me while shouting frantic instructions about paddling and standing. I only make it to my knees because the board is less like an ocean liner and more like a flimsy piece of plexiglass going god-knows-how-fast over rushing, uneven water. Fortunately, he’s still there, though he looks a little disgruntled. “That was a perfect wave you just missed.”
“I’ll try to stop being so bad at surfing, then,” I reply. “Surfing, something I’ve never done.”
He is looking into the distance, not listening. “Get flat,” he says. “Hurry. This is a good set.”
This time I manage to get up, for all of two seconds. Stan gives me a thumbs up as he blows past me on his tiny little board, and just the act of looking at him is enough to send me right over the side.
When my head comes back up, I’m alone and there’s an endless ocean on three sides of me. The shore is so distant it almost seems like a mirage and I feel panic setting in.
God. Don’t do this here, I beg. Do not do this here. I take shallow sips of air and try to ignore what’s happening—though after Amsterdam I should know this tactic doesn’t work. Passing out in front of thousands of people, and on camera, sucked. But not as much as passing out in the middle of the ocean.
I attempt to get my board right side up, but just as I do, a wave hits, knocking me for a loop, the board tugging dangerously on the ankle strap and flying into the air. I cover my head with my hands as I go under. What happens if it lands on me? What happens if I’m knocked unconscious? No one will even know. No one will even see me.