Chapter 4 #2
I install a length of pipe from one end of the tank to the other and log the time. He taps the opening with a single arm, retreats, returns, and finally disappears through in a smooth glide. I tell myself I will check back in a few days to see if the route has joined his mental map.
When I reach for the LEGO, he tightens, suckers sealing with a decisive pop.
We have a short, civil tug-of-war that I win on a technicality after I promise to bring a new set next time.
He lets go as if we drew up a contract. I leave the pipe, the notes, and the echo of a phone call I did not ask to overhear, and remind myself that at least one of us knows how to adapt quickly to a new structure.
Two hours later the warm afternoon sun has shouldered out the lab fluorescents, and my skin finally has a nonzero chance of remembering what melanin is. Soren decides that if I picked up a tan I could pass as someone who’s spent more than a month here.
“You already have the light, tangled, curly hair,” she says.
“And the freckles—don’t forget the freckles,” Alana adds, sipping a passionfruit smoothie.
Maya snorts into her cup. “Sure, she could pass as local—as long as she doesn’t speak, or try public transit alone, or get let loose in a corner store.”
Soren and Alana stop. The latter turns, eyes bright. “What happens if we set you loose in a corner store?”
Maya groans. “Don’t get her started—”
“You literally have ahi poke in your ABCs,” I say, pointing at the one half a block away, already glowing like a lighthouse. “And fresh fruit. And towels. And, like, twelve kinds of milk.”
They stare for a beat and then crack up.
Soren wipes tears, shoulders shaking. “Yeah, and?”
“Do you know how many different places I’d have to visit to get all of that back home? And those places close at five. Here you can buy chocolate-covered macadamia nuts at two in the morning like it’s an essential service.”
Alana slings an arm around my shoulders. “Maya, where did you find this weirdo? I love her. Can we keep her?”
Maya snorts again. “She found me. Weirdos always find me. Look at this roster.”
We do look like we were assembled by committee.
Alana and Maya are tall, all curves and long muscles; Alana’s rich dark skin and riot of curls make my pale everything look like it missed the memo, and while Soren and I both have light eyes, her burgundy hair and the tattoos winding down her arms give her a different wavelength altogether.
Different, yes—but in the few weeks since I landed, here they’ve been ridiculous in the best way.
Soren and Alana share a small apartment near Waikīkī; they keep light class loads, work close to the strip, and Alana’s parents cover rent on the condition that groceries and everything else are on them.
They still end up in our dorm more nights than not—sometimes to pry Maya toward a party, sometimes to attempt, and fail, to pry me there too.
We’ve done coffee runs, early and late. When I bump into either of them without the others, they never pretend not to see me; they loop me into whatever conversation they’re in or walk with me until our paths split.
Between the three of them—and Kai, plus the occasional Theo sighting—I’m finally building a small circle that makes being this far from home feel less like an experiment in isolation. Honestly, I don’t even think I had this many genuinely kind friends back home.
We cut a few blocks inland to the food trucks Maya’s been hyping all week. When Maya wants something, the rest of us save time by agreeing, and frankly I am not immune to my own cravings either.
Orders fly. Maya claims al pastor tacos.
Alana goes for a veggie rice bowl that smells like peppers and lime.
Soren points at garlic shrimp without even reading the sign.
I pick lumpia from the Filipino truck and burn my fingers on the first one because patience is a skill I practice but do not own.
We grab a scarred wooden table. Maya drops her phone in the middle and hits play on something labeled Food Truck Park.
“You have a playlist for food trucks?” I ask.
“You should know by now that I have a playlist for everything, Coralie darling,” she says, already elbow-deep in taco number one.
I’m dipping a lumpia into sweet chili when Soren looks over. “So, tell us, how’s it going with Wilkes?”
I cough-laugh, swallow, and aim a glare at Maya that says I know where you sleep.
She grins, unapologetic for spilling my secret. “They asked. I answered.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, which in my mouth sounds unconvincing even to me.
Alana lifts an eyebrow. “We’ve all seen him around at one point or another, girl. He’s stupid hot. Not even my usual type and I’m still annoyed about it.”
Soren nods. “Not my lane either. Still, I have eyes.”
Which is fair. Holden has the kind of face that interferes with verbal processing and the quiet that reads like he knows what he’s doing.
It feels borderline indecent that all of that arrives paired with a mind sharp enough to dissect a figure and spot the confound before I’ve even flipped to a clean page.
“And,” Soren adds, turning back to her shrimp, “Maya says he can’t stand you.”
“Maya,” I say, because her name deserves to be said in full, broad daylight with all the annoyance I can muster.
She pats my arm. “I love you, but he does seem allergic.”
“Fine,” I admit. “Yes. And I think I made it worse today.”
Three heads snap up.
I tell them about the lab. The girl—Summer. I repeat the part where she asked for Holden, called him H, downgraded my octopus to a fish, and then left like she had somewhere better to be and I was in the way.
Alana whistles. “You met Summer Brooks.”
“I remember her from last year,” Maya says. “I think she graduated. She hasn’t been around much, but when she is, you notice. She’s kind of like Holden in that way.”
Soren nods. “I’ve seen her with him. She’s gorgeous, and she can get sharp when people slow her down. I watched her scream at a barista once. Don’t get me wrong, I love a boss girl. But she’s… not gentle.”
We sit with that while the playlist hums and a fryer pops in the background. I wipe sweet chili from my fingers and stare at the condensation ring my cup is making.
“If that read is right,” I say, “they make sense together. Gorgeous faces, limited small talk, not a lot of energy for please and thank you.”
We spend the next while trying to reverse-engineer why Holden seems unable to stand next to me.
We run through the TAs and professors I’ve talked to—most are friendly, the rest are blissfully unaware I exist—and then replay every excruciating beat with him: lectures where my questions evaporated mid-air, the time I asked about a passage and he explained it like someone had put ChatGPT in a button-down—concise, bloodless, zero eye contact.
And yes, I hear the Barnacle Rule rattling its shell: do not let anyone who distracts you interfere with the work.
I know. But what’s the protocol when the distraction is also assigned to help me do the work, and we keep intersecting like badly timed tides?
Barnacle was very clear on pinching and leaving; he was less specific about conflicts of interest.
We get nowhere. After twenty minutes of theories and exactly zero idea of what we’re talking about, Soren lands on the only explanation that fits the chaos: Holden was trapped in an igloo as a child, now hates the cold, and has sworn eternal vengeance on anyone from the northeast. I am collateral.
Honestly, as working hypotheses go, I have heard worse.
We clear the table, sort the trash like decent humans, and wander toward Alana’s car near Waikīkī. The air smells like fry oil and sunscreen; sand sneaks into my sandals.
“You should come surf the North Shore with us,” Maya says, bumping her hip into mine.
“Oh, sure. I would love to get repeatedly punched in the face by the Pacific. Sounds lovely.”
She snorts. “You won’t. We’ll start you on a foamie at Pua?ena. Baby waves. Toddler waves.”
“Toddlers are violent,” I say, which earns me an eye roll.
She has been campaigning all month. You are not a real local until you paddle out, Coralie.
She may be right. The picture is almost persuasive: a board under my arm, the sun on my shoulders, my friends shouting when I pop up for half a second.
The problem is that I have not even put a toe in that side of the ocean yet.
I know tide pools and transects, not breaks and sets.
I can map a denser field of view than most, but I cannot imagine my body trusting a moving wall of water.
“Come watch,” Alana says, jingling her keys. “No pressure. We’ll bribe you with malasadas after.”
Soren grins around a shrimp skewer she carried with her. “You can be our shore team. Film the wipeouts. Edit to dramatic music.”
I look at the line of palms, the blue beyond them, the way the light keeps throwing coins across the surface. Maybe. Maybe not today, but maybe.
I opt to stay in Waikīkī instead, mostly because I have the bus route back to campus mapped in my head from here and that feels like progress. They wave through open windows and roll off in Alana’s white Volkswagen.
On my solo drift I pass another corner store and force myself to keep moving.
Maya was not wrong about me and ABCs; they’re tiny, fluorescent universes where you can buy just about anything without changing aisles.
If civilization collapses, I am barricading myself in one and living a surprisingly comfortable life.
The strip is crowded in a way campus never is.
Here, it’s tourists and locals braided together—people in line for designer storefronts, bare feet dusted with sand, calves stamped with the day, kids wobbling past in palm-print floaties.
The whole street runs on that odd island tempo that is somehow relaxed and frantic at the same time.