“All I’m saying is, when you try to stuff your fears, they grow, but when you expose them to the light of day—even thank them—that’s when you gain the upper hand.”
“How would you know? Doesn’t seem like you’re scared of much.”
“Oh, the fear is there, but I’ve learned to compartmentalize it and give it its own little drawer in my mind, one that I can close whenever I need to.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not easy, but I’ve had practice. And maybe it’s not sharks so much as other things that really freak me out.”
In the distance a whale breached, creating a huge splash with its enormous body.
“What could scare you more than a healthy twenty-foot white?”
“A shark hunt,” she said, then thought for a bit, “or centipedes. Or some of my nightmares. When they’re bad, I’m afraid to go back to sleep. Also, relationships.”
All of these things had the ability to bring on the kind of full-body fear response ticked on by the amygdala. Racing heart, increased respiration and a laser beam focus.
“Yeah, well, I don’t need any therapy sessions. And I’m this close to getting my master’s degree,” he said, holding up his pinched fingers. “But I appreciate your concern.”
A motherly instinct—one that rarely surfaced—showed up now, and she wanted to hug him. All of him. But mainly the little boy trying so hard to be a man.
“Fine. But remember, keeping a cool head underwater can mean the difference between life and death. Yours or someone else’s.”
As they neared the buoy, a pack of frigate birds circled overhead, and Minnow could see several fishing boats in the distance. The water here was a deep marble blue, and she imagined the ahi and ono andmahi-mahi coming in to find a meal but instead ending up with a hook in their mouths and maybe fighting for their lives while a bunch of drunk guys on a boat reeled them in, or at least tried to. The lucky ones broke free.
“Let’s hang around and see who comes near,” she said.
The plan was to ask around and see if anyone had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Answers often came in the strangest places. You never knew.
They floated a few hundred yards off the buoy, watching the water, the other boats and the sky. Minnow thought the charcoal clouds were coming closer; Nalu didn’t.
Finally, a small boat buzzed by, and she flagged it down. Not much bigger than theirs with no sun protection and carrying four guys.
“Probably best if you do the talking,” she said.
They’d already been over what to ask, but she was feeling anxious, desperate for something new she could sink her teeth into.
“You okay?” the driver called.
Nalu nodded. “We’re part of the state Shark Task Force, doing some recon out here. Have you seen anything out of the ordinary? Dead whales, large sharks, that kind of thing?”
Body parts,Minnow thought.
The guy who had been sitting on a cooler in the back stood up. “I seen a big tiger outside Magic Sands the other day. Ho, the sucker was long as this boat. Grinding some kind of carcass.”
“Where’s Magic Sands?” Minnow asked Nalu.
“Down south, past Kailua Pier a ways. Not in our wheelhouse.”
“What kind of carcass?” Minnow called.
“Nothing big, hard to tell, but.”
None of his friends had seen anything that stood out, but from the sound of it, they had only been out in the boat twice in the last month.
Over the next two hours, Minnow and Nalu floated and talked with six other fishing boats. There were all walks of life out here.From the first guys—who, with any chop, looked in danger of taking on water—to a veritable yacht with a satellite antenna. Only one of the boats had a girl on it. No one had anything unusual to report. But the last boat, a salty old guy with aGilligan’s Islandhat and a missing tooth had something interesting to say.
At first he told them he’d seen nothing, but after scratching his chin for a while, he said, “You know, last week I came upon a pile of what looked like chum just bobbing along in the current. Fish skin, a mahi tail, guts and pink water. Hard to tell what it was, but it struck me as odd.”
