“We are ohana—family—at this school. If the young man perhaps showed kokua—shared more information with his ohana, as to the source of the drugs— I might be inclined to a more lenient view.”

Now a raindrop from a drooping petal struck a petal on a lower branch, and the tap of one syrupy drop was enough to dislodge it. Sharkey watched the pinkish blossom fall, lighting like a butterfly on the dewy tips of some slender grass blades, making them bend.

“Joey, tell the headmaster what he wants to know.”

So this was the reason for the ritual. Dr. Chock was asking Sharkey to snitch on the other stoners, especially his friend Harry Ho, who was a fellow surfer. Everyone had weed, it was easy to find, the headmaster must have known that. But he wanted Sharkey to submit. This wish gave Sharkey strength: he realized that he had power to deny the bossy man what he wanted.

“Are you going to show kokua?” Dr. Chock said. “You’d also be helping yourself. And that would be pono. In the true Hawaiian way.”

Now Sharkey smiled, for the only time that morning, no longer feeling small and cornered, eavesdropping on his fate.

“No, sir.”

“He should be punished,” his mother said, and recoiled, looking fretful, as though shocked by the words she’d just uttered.

“Are you in military housing?”

“No. We live off base. We—” She began to explain, as though giving a reason, but became flustered again and said, “We’re in Manoa.”

“You’ll have to enroll him at Stevenson Intermediate, or maybe Roo­se­velt,” Dr. Chock said, his jowls registering satisfaction with a shake, and not a smile but a show of bonelike teeth. “Roosevelt’s your nearest high school. A private school won’t take him, with his record. A public school might be just what he needs.”

Even that was not the end of it. Dr. Chock slid papers across the desk and gloated, his mouth open, as Sharkey’s mother signed them, and before the session was over she was in tears.

“The boy is pau here,” Dr. Chock said. “Finished.”

Outside the school, before his mother could gather her wits to speak, Sharkey said, “I’m going to catch some waves.”

He hurried away from her squawk—she was calling out, “But why?”—escaping down the sloping still-wet sidewalk, in sunshine, to Ala Moana, where, at Magic Island, he kept his board. And there, just off the beach at Bomboras, he surfed until sunset, alone, because everyone else was in school. Sliding on water, leaving no trace, he was stirred to the thought that the surface of the sea was forever unmarked, ageless, mirroring the purity of the sky, and could never be scarred.