by Terri Farley
When Duckie stayed quiet, Darby reviewed what she’d just said and knew that hadn’t been right. It kind of implied that Duckie wasn’t that great.
Wincing, Darby said, “Besides, you almost killed me. I’ll never be able to swim that way again, and then he’ll be so disappointed, he’ll think I’m useless.”
Megan caught Darby’s eye and pantomimed putting her finger down her throat.
Darby turned away.
“So you’re really, honestly, not going to join?” Duckie asked.
Apparently Duckie believed everyone was as sneaky as she was. She still wasn’t convinced.
And that, Darby thought with a sly smile, was what she and Heather used to call a V.G.T., a Very Good Thing.
“No, I swear I won’t join the team, if…” Darby paused. She rolled her eyes up and counted the whitewashed boards in the ceiling.
“If?” Duckie demanded.
“Well…” Darby stretched out her cousin’s torture. “I won’t, if you help me with something.”
After she’d explained, Duckie had still been unconvinced that there wasn’t more to Darby’s promise not to join the team, but she agreed to meet her early Saturday morning at the Sugar Sands Cove beach.
When Darby hung up, she was yawning again and trying to put her soggy ponytail into some kind of order. Megan looked at her with something like suspicion mingled with respect.
“What?” Darby asked. “I forgot something? Is she going to ambush me and beat me up?”
Of course it had been too easy. What kind of dumb mistake had she made?
“I don’t think so,” Megan said. “It’s just that you’re getting so good at being bad, you’d better watch yourself. Especially if you’re going to hang around with Annie Potter.”
Jonah was so glad to have his Land Rover fixed that he volunteered to take Hoku and Darby to Sugar Sands Cove Resort for their second water training.
She didn’t ask him how the window had been broken. She was just happy they had two vehicles again, and glad Jonah wasn’t so dead-set against Babe’s “dude” idea that he refused to go near his sister and her cremellos.
As suspicious as Hoku had been of Darby since Duxelles had sabotaged their first water-training attempt, she loaded just as easily as before into the trailer.
“You did a good job working with her. She loads real nice,” Jonah said as he locked the back of the horse trailer.
“But I didn’t,” Darby said. “She just does it naturally.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess it could have to do with Cathy.”
“Aunty Cathy?”
“Seems like I saw her putting chunks of apple in an aluminum bowl and carrying it out here, putting it in the trailer.”
Amazed, Darby stared at him. Did he mean it smelled good in there, so Hoku didn’t mind going in?
“Yeah,” Jonah said, nodding. “Then it seems like your little horse got curious, walked up close, and stretched her neck out like a giraffe, then used her lips to grab that bowl. She just started pulling it toward herself when your aunty Cathy—yeah, I’m pretty sure it was her—said, “Oh no, you don’t. If you want to eat them, you have to do it inside the trailer.’”
“Wow!” Darby said. “When did she do all this?”
“Hard to remember,” Jonah said, stroking a knuckle over his mustache and squinting. “Coulda been while you were at school.”
It would have been too sappy to say that every day she felt more at home on ‘Iolani Ranch, but it was true.
“That is so cool,” Darby said as they pulled out of the ranch yard. “I’ll thank her as soon as we get back home.”
Jonah gave a satisfied nod.
They’d turned onto the main highway when Jonah said, “I like this solution of yours.”
“Oh, good,” Darby said. “I hope it works.”
“Gotta try it and see,” Jonah said. “Only way.”
“Yep,” she agreed.
“Just like my truck.”
Oh, no. Darby felt a sudden flash of worry. Jonah hadn’t done one of his random story sessions for a while, but she hadn’t missed them. They usually left her feeling like she’d missed half of what he was trying to tell her.
And if this story involved truck parts, she didn’t see how her grandfather would expect her to get it.
“When the Land Rover didn’t start, I tried jump-starting it off Kimo’s Ram.”
Darby nodded. She wasn’t exactly sure what jump-starting was, but she thought it might have been that thing he and Kimo did when they ran cables between the two trucks.
“That didn’t work, so I replaced the battery. That didn’t work, either, but when I disconnected the battery, this truck locked me inside.
“I did everything myself,” Jonah pointed out.
“I noticed,” Darby said.
She glanced at the broken back window. She’d bet Jonah had had a cell phone in his pocket and had been too stubborn to use it, but she didn’t ask.
“But I finally got it going. See, there was one cable that looked good, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know ’til I tested it.”
“Yep,” Darby said, but she was thinking that Kit must be a faster driver than Jonah.
“Like you,” Jonah said.
“Yeah?”
“You tried being nice. Then you had to get mean back at your cousin.”
“Well, she—”
Jonah held his palm out, stopping her.
“It didn’t work, but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes. Then, you beat her at her own game and didn’t rub her face in it.” He gave Darby’s shoulder a gentle shove. “I call that success.”
Darby saw the sparkling sugar-white buildings of the resort ahead and hoped her grandfather would have another reason to admire her on their way home.
Her plan was simple.
Darby had decided that she’d teach Hoku that people in the water—especially Duckie—were nothing to fear.
She planned to reenact the day she’d gone swimming with Hoku as closely as she could. She wouldn’t try to ride her. She’d just swim with her and, sometime, Duckie would swim beneath her.
Before tourists began strolling the beach and before she unloaded Hoku, Darby went over everything with her cousin.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Duckie looked cranky. She’d told Darby she did not get up this early on weekends.
Strangely, without her anger to cloud her judgment, she’d realized swimming among a horse’s hooves could be dangerous.
“Horses are natural swimmers and they like it. The only reason she got panicky, there at the end, was because you scared her.”
Duckie put her hands on the hips of her white bathing suit, implying there was no way she’d apologize.
“I don’t want you to say you’re sorry,” Darby told her. “Just help me teach her she’s okay out there.” Darby stared out at the ocean. “Usually. Oh, and make sure she sees you coming before you go diving near her.”
“And if I do this, I’ve got the Water Babies all to myself again?”
It was a weird way to put her swimming-star status, but Darby said, “Right, but I’m also assuming that you said that awful stuff about Stormbird not because you’d really hurt him but—”
“Just to make you mad, so you’d get in trouble with Coach.”
“Okay,” Darby said.
The sun sent streamers of light through the clouds as Darby led Hoku toward the ocean.
Alert and cautious, Hoku held each hoof up for an extra second before she set it down. She raised her head high, sighting over the waves, but every few steps she’d lower her chin to graze the top of Darby’s head.
They were still in shallow water, but directly out from where Duckie had pulled her “prank,” when Hoku made a clacking sound with her teeth.
“Poor baby,” Darby said, stroking the filly’s neck.
She’d read that when horses did that, it was a submissive gesture. It meant, Please don’t hurt me; I’m just a baby.
/> “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Hoku.”
“Stop hugging,” Jonah called from the shore.
His timing was perfect. Hoku gave up fear to turn her flat-eared glare on the interfering male. Then she strode on, beside Darby.
“Give her plenty of rope when you get out there, yeah?” Jonah yelled.
Darby turned, cupping her hand at her ear so that he’d speak up over the waves.
“She’s gonna need her head and neck free. Some guy in the Caribbean drowned his horse, riding with a tie-down or martingale or one of those things. Dumb. Horse shoulda taken the guy with him.”
Darby waved a sign that she’d gotten the point of the story, and kept walking.
When they were chest deep, Hoku recognized the sea she’d enjoyed before.
She gave a long neigh, as if this was a window to the world she’d known before, a range that just happened to have waves instead of sagebrush.
She began swimming, hardly noticing when Darby let go of the lead rope and clung to Hoku’s mane instead.
Darby floated. Swept along by Hoku’s motion, Darby’s swim-strained muscles didn’t work at all. She glided through satiny waves as Hoku stretched out in a streamlined position of her own.
Then Hoku gave a snort, and Darby noticed that the filly’s attention was focused on movement farther out.
Somehow Duckie had gotten ahead of them.
She was saying something. Or…singing?
As Duckie drew closer, Darby realized her cousin was imitating the “shark music” from the old movie Jaws.
“Not funny,” Darby said. But it was, just a little bit.
For someone who claimed to have zero interest in horses, Duckie had good instincts, Darby thought.
Her cousin swam a huge circle around Darby and Hoku, decreasing its size so gradually that at first Darby didn’t notice.
Then, as she came closer, Duckie swam underwater, but she kept a hand visible—raised at first, then trailed atop the sea.
“Good job,” Darby said softly, and Hoku must have thought the appreciation was for her, because she slowed long enough to nibble the shoulder strap of Darby’s new red tank suit.
The pause was enough to make the sorrel’s body dip in the water. Blinking, Hoku seemed to understand that no shore underfoot meant she had to keep moving.
As decisively as if she and Darby had discussed it, Hoku swam in an arc. Her powerful strokes raised a swell of water that washed over Darby. The mustang was headed back toward the beach.
Duckie must not have realized how preoccupied the filly was with her return to solid earth, because she picked that moment to zip toward Hoku, underwater.
“Here she comes, girl,” Darby warned.
She pointed, as if Hoku would follow her gesture. It didn’t make sense that she would, because it didn’t fall into any of the horse communication categories Darby could think of, but she did it anyway.
Hoku’s water trot slowed and her head and neck swung toward the white object arrowing toward them.
“It’s just Duckie,” Darby said in a teasing tone, but Hoku arched her neck and fixed her eyes on the thing.
If the tension in the filly’s body was equal to her concentration, Hoku was trying to figure out whether this white thing matched with the one that had been humming and swimming circles around her.
Duckie swam past about six feet away from them, then turned around and came back closer.
Darby couldn’t tell if her mustang was trembling from fear or anticipation, but when Duckie skimmed up close to the horse’s belly, where Darby couldn’t even see her, she found out it was neither.
It was curiosity.
Hoku plunged her head and neck underwater, dragging Darby along with her.
Darby opened her eyes. For a few seconds, she stared, as Hoku did. A blue-green world surrounded a glowing figure.
“It was just Duckie,” she told Hoku as they lifted their heads.
Hoku snorted. She shook her mane. Darby just dodged the horse’s heavy, wet head before Hoku thrust it underwater again.
This time Darby didn’t go with her.
The filly blew bubbles through her mouth and nose, and when Darby jerked at the lead rope, afraid something was wrong, Hoku only grudgingly came back up.
“Doesn’t that sting—”
Hoku snorted saltwater in Darby’s face. Once more she brandished her slippery head like a weapon and Darby was lucky to get out of the way.
“I’ve had enough fun,” Darby said, laughing at the horse.
Hoku seemed to understand, because she struck out for the beach, towing Darby right beside her.
Jonah and Duckie were waiting, about ten feet apart, when Darby and Hoku came ashore.
Hoku shook again, splattering them all with saltwater, then gave a satisfied nicker.
“She’s not glaring at you,” Darby said to Jonah, but he didn’t get as excited as she was.
“Get water up her nose?” he asked, nodding back out at the sea.
“Yeah,” Darby said, laughing. “But she didn’t seem to mind much.”
“Lead her around some,” he said. “I’m gonna take a look at those weak-eyed cremello horses of my sister’s so she’ll leave me in peace.”
Darby didn’t see Aunt Babe anywhere around, but she said, “Okay,” and began walking Hoku, cooling her out as if she’d just had a long run.
To Darby’s surprise, Duckie walked beside them for a minute.
“It’s okay if you call me Duckie,” she said. “It’s not like it’s some major secret, but I hate you doing it behind my back. Since it kind of goes with my swimming, I like it better than my other nicknames.”
“Okay,” Darby said, but she was talking to her cousin’s back, because Duckie was already walking away.
Then she turned back, hands on hips, and said, “Just don’t think this means we’re friends, though.”
“Okay,” Darby said again.
Duckie seemed to regret being civil, because she added, “If you go changing your mind about the swim team, I’ll make your life miserable. Count on it.”
And then, appearing more satisfied, Duckie strode across the beach toward the resort building.
Hoku flipped her wet forelock away from her eyes and nudged Darby.
The filly’s eyes danced with sunlight reflections, and if a horse could laugh, Darby thought, hers was.
She looked around quickly for Jonah, and when she didn’t see him, she circled Hoku’s neck with a hug.
“This is the only swim team I want to be on. I pick you, Hoku. Always.”
Darby’s Dictionary
In case anybody reads this besides me, which it’s too late to tell you not to do if you’ve gotten this far, I know this isn’t a real dictionary. For one thing, it’s not all correct, and for another, it’s not alphabetized because I’m just adding things as I hear them. Besides, this dictionary is just to help me remember. Even though I’m pretty self-conscious about pronouncing Hawaiian words, it seems to me if I live here (and since I’m part Hawaiian), I should at least try to say things right.
‘aumakua—OW MA KOO AH—these are family guardians from ancient times. I think ancestors are supposed to come back and look out for their family members. Our ‘aumakua are owls and Megan’s is a sea turtle.
chicken skin—goose bumps
da kine—DAH KYNE—“that sort of thing” or “stuff like that”
hanai—HA NYE E—a foster or adopted child, like Cade is Jonah’s, but I don’t know if it’s permanent
‘iolani—EE OH LAWN EE—this is a hawk that brings messages from the gods, but Jonah has it painted on his trucks as an owl bursting through the clouds
hiapo—HIGH AH PO—a firstborn child, like me, and it’s apparently tradition for grandparents, if they feel like it, to just take hiapo to raise!
hoku—HO COO—star
ali’i—AH LEE EE—royalty, but it includes chiefs besides queens and kings and people like that
pupule
—POO POO LAY—crazy
paniolo—PAW KNEE OH LOW—cowboy or cowgirl
lanai—LAH NA E—this is like a balcony or veranda. Sun House’s is more like a long balcony with a view of the pastures.
lei niho palaoa—LAY NEEHO PAH LAHOAH—necklace made for old-time Hawaiian royalty from braids of their own hair. It’s totally kapu—forbidden—for anyone else to wear it.
luna—LOU NUH—a boss or top guy, like Jonah’s stallion
pueo—POO AY OH—an owl, our family guardian. The very coolest thing is that one lives in the tree next to Hoku’s corral.
pau—POW—finished, like Kimo is always asking, “You pau?” to see if I’m done working with Hoku or shoveling up after the horses
pali—PAW LEE—cliffs
ohia—OH HE UH—a tree like the one next to Hoku’s corral
lei—LAY E—necklace of flowers. I thought they were pronounced LAY, but Hawaiians add another sound. I also thought leis were sappy touristy things, but getting one is a real honor, from the right people.
lau hala—LA OO HA LA—some kind of leaf in shades of brown, used to make paniolo hats like Cade’s. I guess they’re really expensive.
kapu—KAH POO—forbidden, a taboo
tutu—TOO TOO—great-grandmother
menehune—MEN AY WHO NAY—little people
honu—HO NEW—sea turtle
hewa-hewa—HEE VAH HEE VAH—crazy
ipo—EE POE—sweetheart, actually short for “ku’uipo”
Darby’s Diary
Ellen Kealoha Carter—my mom, and since she’s responsible for me being in Hawaii, I’m putting her first. Also I miss her. My mom is a beautiful and talented actress, but she hasn’t had her big break yet. Her job in Tahiti might be it, which is sort of ironic because she’s playing a Hawaiian for the first time and she swore she’d never return to Hawaii. And here I am. I get the feeling she had huge fights with her dad, Jonah, but she doesn’t hate Hawaii.
