Smoking cost money, and pakalolo was itself a form of currency that he used to lure Nalani to his house, sneaking her past his dozing mother to his room, where they sat cross-legged on his bed, passing a joint back and forth until, laughing softly, they kissed, and then he held her head, his hands against her ears, and lowered it into his lap, saying, “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

He handed over fives and tens to Wilfred now, money that he twitched from his mother’s purse. But one day there was none in the purse, and his mother was too sleepy to give him any, so he had to say to Wilfred, “I’m tapped out, brah.”

“I gotta pay my guy.”

“Got no money, brah.”

Wilfred thought a moment, in reflection probing his nostril with his finger, then said, “You got one board, braddah.”

The board he had not used for how many months? He knew he was too out of shape to swim into a big swell or manage heavy surf, much less to ride a wave, which made the board seem superfluous. But he felt sentimental—it was a link to a life he had not wished to abandon.

Yet he said, “How much for my board?” and at the same time thought, I can always buy another one.

“Maybe good for fifty bucks.”

So he agreed to sell his surfboard for a stash of pakalolo, and after school, when he trooped with Wilfred and the others to Ala Moana and Magic Island, he was reminded of how this had been a regular after-school route, and it seemed that it was someone else’s habit, the boy he had been, brisk and efficient, almost unrecognizable now. He was surprised and relieved to find his board on the rack as he had left it, crusted with dirt-flecked sea salt and old wax from being unused, the visible neglect shaming him and making it easier to abandon.

“Dis one good stick,” Wilfred said. “Dis been shaped more better.” And he ran his thick fingers over the board, brushing the blunt rails clean. “Put some sex wax on dis and it fly.”

Wilfred lifted it from the rack and, holding it in both hands, grunted in admiration.

“I used to catch waves,” he said. “In Wai‘anae—Yokohama Bay. Pray for Sex Beach. My calabash cousin Clay place.”

“Put the board down.” The voice was gruff and assertive. “Put it down and step away from the rack, boy.”

It was Uncle Sunshine, striding barefoot across the grass.

Startled by the man’s command and his fierce posture—head down, elbows out—the boys backed up and Wilfred jammed the board into the rack.