14
Shark Bite
Ho‘okahe koko
To shed blood.
I didn’t taste blood or bone or sinew. I tasted memory.
“Jay, what’s it like to surf?” I ask.
It’s the summer we turn nine. I’m sprawling on the cool wooden slats of the front lanai watching Jay rub, rub, rubbing wax over a borrowed surfboard. Nili-boy is on his way to take him surfing.
Jay puts down the wax and smiles.
“Surfing is riding a skateboard down a volcano, dunking the winning basket at the buzzer, jumping from an airplane without a parachute, getting straight As on your math tests, and eating the onolicious-est plate lunch ever rolled into one. People say it’s like flying, but they’re wrong. It’s all the best things in life amped to the nth degree. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Stand what?”
“Sitting up at the beach pavilion
