Because humans are dumb.

Abby is, naturally, distressed. “But where is its mama?” she asks the man. “Why did she leave her baby?”

“Her baby got too tired to swim, so the mother seal brought it here, up to the beach, to rest. The mother will swim around and get some food and then return to pick her baby up later. The beach is kind of like baby seal daycare.”

Abby bites her lip. “But what if the mother gets lost and doesn’t come back?”

“The mother always comes back,” the man says. “She remembers exactly where she left her baby. Trust me. They’ll find each other again.”

Afton snorts and rolls her eyes. She’s irritable today—she forgot to put on sunscreen before our bike ride yesterday and now her skin is the approximate color of a ripe tomato.

“Come on, let’s get some more aloe on you.” Mom lifts Abby into her arms. “And let’s get you a snack, bug. Ada, do you need anything?”

“I’m good.”

They start back toward the room. Pop and I stay on the beach, listening to waves crash into the sand and watching the seal pup—from a safe distance, of course.

“It doesn’t even look like it’s breathing,” I say.

The man from the park service stakes a final Don’t touch! sign into the sand and stands up. “Seals can hold their breath. In the water they only come up to breathe about every three minutes.”

“Oh. Cool. Well, it looks . . . dead,” I observe.

The man sighs. “That’s why people are always trying to help them. They think there’s something wrong, so they try to intervene, when the best thing for everyone is to leave it alone.”

Pop looks over at me with knowing eyes. “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere,” he says.

Acknowledgments

In the summer of 2017, my mother, Carol, and my stepfather, Jack, invited me to go along with them to the annual conference of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a week-long event they attended every year. That year it was held in Hawaii at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island. I said yes, of course. It turned out to be one of those vacations of a lifetime—it was beautiful and relaxing and fun every minute. I will always be so grateful they asked me—and Jack paid my way, I should add. While I was there, I bought a Hawaii-themed blank book (it had palm trees on it) and started jotting down an idea, something about a girl propositioning a boy she’d spent a week with every year for almost her entire life. It was set in Hawaii, of course. Thank you so much, Carol and Jack Ware, for that amazing vacation, and for all the ways you’ve supported me and my writing over the years.