Sharkey said fiercely, “Yes, I’ve been under a wave—hold-downs, tossed by a boomer, caught in a cave in a reef, over the falls, the duck-dive into oblivion—all of that, shacked in the impact zone. It’s like being waterboarded.”

“But, like, I mean drowning,” the boy said, gnawing his finger.

“I’m drowning now!” Sharkey shouted into the boy’s face, and the boy looked slapped.

The chairs creaked, there were groans, they were startled by the shout, by Skippy raising his arms and yelling, “It’s all good, brah.” Olive staggered to her feet, kicked her chair aside, rushed to Sharkey, and took him by the hand and led him away, Skippy calling after him, “Next time, brah, for these keiki, I hope you have a more better message.”

6

Paperwork

All this fricken paper,” Sharkey said in a blaming and aggrieved way, stepping back at the sight of the separate piles of folders Olive had set out on the long koa dining table. She stood at the head of the table, as though presiding over a meal she’d prepared.

“I tried to make it chronological,” she said, and hearing Sharkey swear under his breath, she reacted sharply, smacking the table in frustration, shaking the nearer stacks.

She’d been up early, sorting the papers, leaving Sharkey in bed, undisturbed in his stupor. After the fiasco at the community center, Sharkey had gone to bed, and he had not woken until long after Olive had finished her work, tidying the documents, creating files.

“Start as we mean to go on,” she said.

“What does that even mean?”

“Be meticulous in creating a profile.”

“What’s the point?” Sharkey said, turning away.

“There’s a man buried somewhere in all this paper.”

What Sharkey mumbled in reply was indistinct, but his tone was dismissive.

“The man you killed,” Olive said, and Sharkey reacted more forcefully than when she’d smacked the table—it was as though she’d smacked his head. “The man you don’t know, whose ashes are sitting in a box, jinxing you.”

“I hate paper,” he said with disgust. “I hate documents. People say, ‘We have to do the paperwork,’ and I want to puke at the word.”

In a pitying voice, and looking sorrowful, Olive said, “You’re afraid.”

“Out of my element.” He pushed at his face with his fist.

“What would that element be?”

“Surf.”

“You almost drowned in the surf at Waimea, mate.”

“Maybe I’m not used to this.” He wandered back to the table and flicked one stack with his finger. “I’m not into paperwork.” He saw that Olive was still watching him with pity. “I never wrote a real letter,” he said. He hated the precision of paper, its stern language, the obligations it imposed, the formality of it, the demands. “I never read a real book.”

“That’s the sort of thing a little kid might say,” Olive said. “A lazy little kid.”