Three heads snap up.
I tell them about the lab. The girl—Summer. I repeat the part where she asked for Holden, called himH, downgraded my octopus to a fish, and then left like she had somewhere better to be and I was in the way.
Alana whistles. “You met Summer Brooks.”
“I remember her from last year,” Maya says. “I think she graduated. She hasn’t been around much, but when she is, you notice. She’s kind of like Holden in that way.”
Soren nods. “I’ve seen her with him. She’s gorgeous, and she can get sharp when people slow her down. I watched her scream at a barista once. Don’t get me wrong, I love a boss girl. But she’s… not gentle.”
We sit with that while the playlist hums and a fryer pops in the background. I wipe sweet chili from my fingers and stare at the condensationring my cup is making.
“If that read is right,” I say, “they make sense together. Gorgeous faces, limited small talk, not a lot of energy for please and thank you.”
We spend the next while trying to reverse-engineer why Holden seems unable to stand next to me. We run through the TAs and professors I’ve talked to—most are friendly, the rest are blissfully unaware I exist—and then replay every excruciating beat with him: lectures where my questions evaporated mid-air, the time I asked about a passage and he explained it like someone had put ChatGPT in a button-down—concise, bloodless, zero eye contact.
And yes, I hear the Barnacle Rule rattling its shell: do not let anyone who distracts you interfere with the work. I know. But what’s the protocol when the distraction is also assigned to help medothe work, and we keep intersecting like badly timed tides? Barnacle was very clear on pinching and leaving; he was less specific about conflicts of interest.
We get nowhere. After twenty minutes of theories and exactly zero idea of what we’re talking about, Soren lands on the only explanation that fits the chaos: Holden was trapped in an igloo as a child, now hates the cold, and has sworn eternal vengeance on anyone from the northeast. I am collateral. Honestly, as working hypotheses go, I have heard worse.
We clear the table, sort the trash like decent humans, and wander toward Alana’s car near Waikiki. The air smells like fry oil and sunscreen; sand sneaks into my sandals.
“You should come surf the North Shore with us,” Maya says, bumping her hip into mine.
“Oh, sure. I would love to get repeatedly punched in the face by the Pacific.Sounds lovely.”
She snorts. “Youwon’t. We’ll start you on a foamie at Pua?ena. Baby waves. Toddler waves.”
“Toddlers are violent,” I say, which earns me an eye roll.
She has been campaigning all month.You are not a real local until you paddle out, Coralie.She may be right. The picture is almost persuasive: a board under my arm, the sun on my shoulders, my friends shouting when I pop up for half a second. The problem is that I have not even put a toe in that side of the ocean yet. I know tide pools and transects, not breaks and sets. I can map a denser field of view than most, but I cannot imagine my body trusting a moving wall of water.
“Come watch,” Alana says, jingling her keys. “No pressure. We’ll bribe you with malasadas after.”
Soren grins around a shrimp skewer she carried with her. “You can be our shore team. Film the wipeouts. Edit to dramatic music.”
I look at the line of palms, the blue beyond them, the way the light keeps throwing coins across the surface. Maybe. Maybe not today, but maybe.
I opt to stay in Waikiki instead, mostly because I have the bus route back to campus mapped in my head from here and that feels like progress. They wave through open windows and roll off in Alana’s white Volkswagen.
On my solo drift I pass another corner store and force myself to keep moving. Maya was not wrong about me and ABCs; they’re tiny, fluorescent universes where you can buy just about anything without changing aisles. If civilization collapses, I am barricading myself in one and living a surprisingly comfortable life.
The strip is crowded in a way campus never is. Here, it’s tourists and locals braided together—people in line for designer storefronts, bare feet dusted with sand, calves stamped with the day, kids wobbling past in palm-print floaties. The whole street runs on that odd island tempo that is somehow relaxed and frantic at the same time.
I keep comparing it to home without meaning to. Concrete sidewalks instead of the weathered boardwalk. Palms trading shade for the sway of pines. A sky that commits to blue with no caveat, where mine usually negotiates in gray. Not better and not worse, just different, which is whatnowlooks like for me.
On a whim, I cut toward a quieter stretch of beach. Diamond Head, which the girls call Le‘ahi, lifts to my left, reminding me this is all basalt and history, and the glassy stack of Waikiki high-rises lines my right like a second coastline. I sit in the sand and peel off my shirt because yes, I had the sense to wear a suit under my clothes. The bikini top is emerald and a little too ambitious by Nova Scotia standards, but here it disappears into the crowd and gives my ghost-pale skin a chance to remember sunlight.
I pull a book from my tote—the kind Kai likes to roast, when I go for coffee during his shifts, for being unrealistic and full of morally gray people who fall in love far too fast. Some people get their romance from watching movies with ballrooms and corsets; I prefer grumpy/sunshine tropes with sharp dialogue and a statistically significant number of pining scenes. Let me have my serotonin delivery system, will you?
The sun keeps to its arc and my book hits the inevitable third-act breakup I never enjoy, which is exactly when I notice a rack of small surfboards and a teenager guarding them with theresigned air of someone on hour three of a slow shift. Against all available evidence, I stand up and walk over.
“Hi. Can I rent one of these?”
He looks me over, assessing whether he wants a stranger’s poor choices on his conscience, then shrugs. “They’re free. Write your name. Bring it back in an hour.”
So I do. I can’t offer a rigorous reason. Maybe I want to try once without my very competent friends watching. Maybe it’s the rare feeling of being dressed for this climate on purpose. Maybe I’m in the place I’ve been daydreaming about for years and my body finally decided to be a part of it.
Back at my towel, I tuck my phone inside the book, slide both under the tote, and shimmy out of my skirt. The board is comically small—shorter than I am, clearly built for children and their unbreakable cartilage—so I adjust my metric for success. If I can sit on it without capsizing, I’ll count it. Today’s rubric is generous by design.
