Page 6 of Hula Girl

Though she can’t see me, I nod. “I’ll try.”

“Call me again later?”

“Yes, of course. Get some sleep, Mama.”

We say our goodbyes, and I stare at the walls of my hotel room. I’m staying at the Ritz-Carlton. It’s a lovely place with stunning ocean views, luxurious appointments, and a sense that it’s a haven away from the world.

I should love it.

Instead, I’m counting the hours until I can leave.

3

Ford

My phone’s alarm goes off and I groan.

Yes, I’m the one who set the alarm. Yes, I actually do want to get up, so I can catch some waves. But, it’s early. Like, still-dark early.

And my head is pounding. I might have had one too many shots of tequila last night. It felt good at the time, though. That fuzzy, happy oblivion of drunkenness—it was exactly what I needed to forget that my time’s running out and I have to face the thing I’ve been avoiding for almost a year.

The second alarm I had set to make sure I didn’t sleep after turning off the first alarm goes off.

Silencing it, I force myself to sit up. The shades in my tiny beach hut are closed and the space is darkened, but I can hear the waves. Those aren’t the waves I set my alarm for, though. They’re too small, too tame. No, I need to get my ass up, down some coconut water (the hangover cure I swear by), get in my truck and head over to Honolua Bay. That’s where the waves are, the ones that can get up to twenty feet in the winter months. Though it’s late March and I’m probably being overly optimistic that those kinds of big swells will still come through.

Maybe I can afford five more minutes before going I rationalize as I lie back down and close my eyes.

But the sleep I’d hoped to catch doesn’t come. Instead, my thoughts are occupied by the trip to Los Angeles I’m going to have to make in a week. I haven’t been to the mainland in a long while. No reason to go over there, not when I’ve got such a sweet setup here. I live in the most beautiful place in the world, I surf every day, and I have a low-pressure job I love. The only reason to go to LA is because Ihaveto.

I don’t mind being in the city itself, though the traffic is a waste of precious time. What I do mind is being under my father’s control while I’m there.

My father, Ford McAvoy—Senior, thank you very much—is the most arrogant, controlling prick I’ve ever known. I still shake my head anytime I try to envision him and my mom together. She’s his opposite in every way: sweet, thoughtful, and generous with her time.

They were only supposed to be a quick vacation romance. She was working in one of the resorts on Oahu the summer before her junior year at UC Berkeley. He was celebrating passing the bar with a dozen of his fellow law school buddies. They had a fling and, oops, I was the fruit of their indiscretion. When she tracked him down to tell him she was pregnant, he offered financial responsibility but straight out told her he had no interest in taking on parental responsibilities, not when he was about to get his career started. She opted to stay in Hawai‘i, eventually moving to Maui where she set up a music school and taught local kids.

She raised me on her own, though her parents visited us often. The two of us loved the island life, even though our status ashaoles, or non-natives, presented challenges now and again. I was one of those kids who ran around barefoot everywhere, was dirty more often than not, and learned to swim before I could walk. Learning to surf came only a few years later. I loved the freedom of it all.

But when I was twelve, my father had a change of heart and insisted that I be sent over to meet him. He wanted to get to know me after all these years. My mother would only agree to have me visit for two weeks in the summer and I went kicking and screaming. After all, this was a stranger I was being forced to meet. That’s not to say I wasn’t curious about the man whose good looks I was beginning to favor. It was a confusing mix of emotions, combined with the surging hormones of my age, and I couldn’t help but be a brat to him the whole time. There was part of me that wanted him to abandon me all over again, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with figuring out what he meant to me. His absence had never really bothered me. I didn’t know anything else. And I always had my mom, and then later, her long-time boyfriend, too. They were the only steady, supportive presence I had while growing up, and I’d convinced myself that they were all I needed.

On my last night at my father’s place in Brentwood, a posh suburb of Los Angeles, he took me to the backyard for a project he said he’d been meaning to get to ever since I’d gotten there. It was a model airplane. He wanted us to make it together.

Those kinds of crafts weren’t my thing. I was an outdoors kind of kid. Give me the beach, a pool, a dirt bike for exploring trails, or a skateboard for trying tricks—anything where I could move, be active. Sitting in one spot for hours on end to painstakingly piece together tiny parts was not my idea of fun. I wasn’t shy about voicing this opinion, either.

“Youwillsit here, and youwillwork on this until we are done,” he said in his insistent way. “Understood?”

I’d been back talking him the whole trip. Maybe I’d just exhausted myself from the effort of it or maybe I figured I’d offer him a parting gift since I’d be leaving, but for whatever reason, I decided to do as he said.

Then, the weirdest thing happened. After almost forty-five minutes of working in near silence, he started to talk to me. Like, really talk to me. It wasn’t the barking of orders like it had been for the last two weeks. It wasn’t the disappointed-in-me instructions to tuck in my shirt or wipe the dirt off my face. It was him telling me a little about himself. About who he had been when he was my age. I was shocked to learn that he had the same sense of adventure that I did. He told me tales of spending all day getting lost in Griffith Park with his buddies, of biking in the Santa Monica Mountains, even of trying to learn to surf at Zuma Beach.

I saw him anew for those few hours we worked together. I thought, maybe he wasn’t so bad. But as we were finishing up the plane, his real motives for the bonding session came to light.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It was after that summer when I was about to turn thirteen that my father had this sort of talk with me.”

I’d looked up at him, a sense of impending doom filling me. I couldn’t know exactly what he was about to say, but I was certain that I wasn’t going to like it.

“What I’m saying, Ford,” he continued, “is it’s time for you to buckle down. Now is the time when it starts to matter what kind of grades you get in school. Now is the time to start learning how to get on in polite society instead of running around like a feral animal.” He paused here, squeezing my shoulder hard enough that I winced. “Now is the time for you to come live with me so I can assure your path in life.”

I remember shaking my head but being unable to utter a word.

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