Chapter 6

 

~ ANNIE ~

 

 

Escaping into the luxurious bathrooms at the Queen K—the kind with tiny, soft hand linens for drying rather than paper towels—I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance at the display.

No reply.

Still no reply.

I slide my phone into my back pocket again. I’d texted Cam my schedule the moment I got home last night. Tired of eating whatever canned spaghetti shaped like cartoon characters happens to be on sale at Walmart (because yes, we really do have a Walmart on the island), I could really use a regular customer. But as the minutes tick away on my morning, I’m feeling less confident that he’ll ever want me back.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

I work with kids all day, so certain words are stripped from my verbal lexicon. But they are still there in my mind, festering like a cold that wants to burst from me in a nasty sneeze of expletives.

Damn it all; I knew better.

Last night, with the stars twinkling above us, I felt transformed somehow. Powerful, even, with more money in my pocket than I’ve had in ages. Something about being needed by a guy who could snap a surfboard over his knee made me feel less like a victim. If those stars hadn’t been out—if they hadn’t made me feel as though I wasn’t a girl hiding out from her life—I swear I would have remembered my place and kept my mouth shut.

People don’t like advice on child-rearing from a babysitter. Period.

That’s one of the first things I learned in this business. They’ll trust me to raise their offspring, but they won’t trust me enough to want my insights—no matter how much time I spend with their kids.

I guess I thought differently about Cam. He’s not a parent, and he seemed so out of his element with a kid in his house.

Cam needed that advice. But it wasn’t my place to say anything, I remind myself, staring at my reflection in the mirror. He would have been more open to it if I’d written an anonymous note and left it in his mailbox.

Seriously, that’s not a bad idea for next time.

I step back into the keiki care. It’s just me and Kaila this morning, a native Hawaiian woman around my age who always wears this serene smile as if she knows some great secret to island life that will always be out of my reach.

She’s playing ukulele for the kids and singing something Hawaiian. I pick up on a few of the native words—for sea, sky, wind, love. Hawaiian is one of those languages that flows over you like a soft breeze. It doesn’t really matter what she’s saying. She could sing these kids her grocery list in her native Hawaiian and they’d still look at her entranced.

There’s one Japanese child in this group, an adorably talkative eight-year-old. She’s the sole reason I’m here. Thanks to two years with the Shimozatos, I’m just this side of fluent and that really comes in handy at these big-moneyed hotels because Hawai‘i attracts a constant flood of Japanese tourists.

I make a lei with the little girl, speaking to her as best as I can in her native language purely for the practice. She’s been in keiki care three times this week, and while Japanese might be her first language, the kid knows English as well as I do.

I glance at my watch. “They’ve only got me here till ten, Kaila. You’ll be all right?” I ask my co-worker, silently praying she’ll need me for longer. She’s been working here since she was eighteen and the people in Human Resources might listen if she tells them to bulk up my schedule.

“Oh, no. Her mom and dad will be back soon. They drove to Papakolea.”

The little girl at my side frowns. “I wanted to go with them,” she says quietly.

“You’re not missing anything,” I tell her in my broken Japanese. And I mean every word. I’ve never cared much for the famed green sand beach—much preferring the spectacle of the black sand of Punalu‘u Beach. Of course, it’s likely because I took a hell of a fall when I was scaling along the steep slope that leads down to its green shoreline a few years back.

It’s illegal to take any of the green sand home, but I unwittingly took a fair amount of it embedded in my gaping knee wounds.

I might love Papakolea if I wasn’t so much of a klutz.

When the girl’s parents return, I stay for about ten more precious, money-earning minutes, wiping down the craft tables. I’d give up a kidney to have a forty-hour week here.

“I told David in HR that we could really use you around here more.” Kaila’s words are music to my ears.

“Reaaaally?” I can’t help drawing out the word. “That would be great.”

“HR is chewing on it for a while. You know how slowly things move around here. They’re on island time.”

I shrug. “I’m not going anywhere. I can wait.”

She tilts her head, her gaze locked on mine. “You’re really not? Going, I mean?”

“I just got here a couple months ago.”

“Well, sure. But a lot of malihini come here and think they want to stay here forever. Then around the third month, they get island fever.”

“Oh, that’s not me. I’ll be sticking around.” I feel tempted to tell her the truth—or at least some small portion of it. That I can’t go back. Not yet.

While all the plans I’d laid out for my life are back on the East Coast where I went to college after I left Hawaii, this forced retreat to paradise is going to last a lot longer than a few months, unless a miracle happens.

And my life is fresh out of miracles these days.

“I don’t know why you would,” she says under her breath, her words shrouded behind Polynesian music as the kids do a little freestyle hula dancing.

“Really?”

“I’m trying to save enough money so I can get off this island.”

“Leave paradise?”

Brow raised, she eyes me. “It’s not paradise when you’ve got three generations of family watching your every move.”

“Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. California seems nice. I’ve always wanted to do that long drive up the coast.”

“Highway 1?”

Her eyes brighten. “You’ve done it?”

“No. I’ve just heard about it. I have a friend who drove it though.”

Kaila breathes out a sigh, then grins at my perplexed expression. “You don’t really get it, I know. But the idea of being able to just get in my car and drive for days is amazing to me. An island traps you. I’ve never been on a road vacation in my life.”

Curious, I tilt my head. “You mean a road trip?”

“Road trip,” she corrects herself, giving her head a shake. “See? I didn’t even know what to call it.”

“It’s okay. I’ll clue you in on how we talk on the mainland if you teach me a little Hawaiian.” I lean against the counter. “Why don’t you just do it, then? Just buy a ticket and go?”

“It takes a lot of money just to get anywhere from here. I’d need an apartment there. A car.” She bites her lower lip thoughtfully for a moment. “I’d need a good one for all the driving I’ve got in mind. It adds up. And let’s face it; we’re not getting rich working here.”

My mouth opens, wanting to say that I’d kill for the kind of regular pay she’s getting as a full-timer with a pretty impressive benefits package. But she doesn’t look like she wants the reminder.

She cocks her head, her eyes aimed toward the kids in her care, but her mind looking like she’s somewhere else right now. “Maybe I’d just plunk myself down in the middle of it all so I can drive any direction I want. North, south, east, west. Just jump in my car and go. Like maybe…” Her voice drifts. “…Indianapolis or… Wichita.”

Brows hiking up an inch, I sputter a laugh. “Have you been to Wichita?”

“No. Have you?”

“I grew up a few hours from there.”

“I thought you said you were from the East Coast somewhere.”

“I went to college there. But I was raised just outside of Kansas City.”

She looks at me with misplaced intrigue. “What’s it like?”

Pressing my lips together a moment, I picture the tract housing suburb where I grew up. “Great people. And the best corn you’ve had in your life. And it’s really…” I pause, struggling for the right word. “Flat. You know? Spread out.” I sigh, looking for more ways to talk about my home. How does one describe the Midwest to a person who grew up in a tropical paradise?

I love my hometown—really, I do. And there are times when I think if I had stayed right where I’d been planted, I would have avoided the mess that now defines my life.

But for the love of God, it’s just not Hawai‘i.

“I’ll bet,” she breathes out. “I’m always looking at those Midwestern cities on Google maps—roads spitting out from them in every direction. I could drive anywhere I wanted and not hit the shore for days.”

“True.” She’s got me there.

“And there are Cracker Barrels everywhere,” she adds.

My brow furrows yet again. This has to be the strangest conversation I’ve ever had. “You like Cracker Barrel?”

“Mm, yeah. I went to one when my family went to Disneyland.”

I shrug. To each her own. Maybe going to Cracker Barrel to her is kind of like a mainlander coming to Hawai‘i and getting shave ice.

“Well, then you’d probably love it there.”

I leave Kaila dreaming about Cracker Barrel and interstate highways as she settles in with four kids making leis—older kids who can handle the long lei needles without poking their eyes out.

After changing out of my uniform in the locker room, I take the long route to the parking lot along the shoreline and watch a few whales breach in the distance.

“Whale!” I shout when I see the first one and, here at the resort, it’s a welcome announcement. Every tourist within earshot drops what they’re doing and follows my pointed finger to the splash.

After I get to my car, I text Sam. I can’t help it. There aren’t many people I can share good news with anymore, and I feel a hint of promise in the air.

“Kaila asked HR to increase my hours!”

I wait a moment for her response, knowing that if her phone is still on, I probably woke her up. Again.

When my phone doesn’t chirp a reply, I set it down and start the drive to Hapuna Beach. I have to pay for parking there, but it’s well worth the small fee because the lot is filled with rental cars. I’ve gotten three babysitting jobs from cars parked at this beach.

Despite the midday sun, I don’t even bother with sunscreen. I’m in a race, needing to feel the pulse of the ocean striking my calves. It calms me somehow, reminds me that I’m not on the mainland, and if anyone here gives me a second glance it’s more likely because they’ve just never seen such pasty white skin on someone who’s not driving a rental.

As I walk toward the sand, I put some more fliers under windshields even though I’m starting to question my marketing strategy. I need a freaking website, just like everyone keeps saying.

But Annie Bradshaw can’t take a risk like that.

I remember stammering my name to that broad-shouldered sex god with no paternal instincts, hoping he wouldn’t recognize me. I would prefer to invent a completely fake name, but I still need to be able to cash checks like his.

Fortunately, people here just aren’t putting two and two together. Even Human Resources at the Queen K didn’t raise an eyebrow when they punched my name into payroll.

The Big Island is a half a world away from Washington, D.C.

And a world away in every way that matters to me.