“What are you doing here?” I hissed as I urged him inside. “You’ll get us in trouble—no visitors after eleven o’clock!”
“You’re here,” he said casually.
“Because I’m spending the night. But everyone else had to go home, even my dad. Only one person is allowed to be here after visiting hours!”
“Come on, let me stay. I promise I’ll hide when the nurse comes to do his vitals.” He flashed his crooked grin and I was lost—he knew it too. With a rub of my arm, he squeezed through the partially open doorway and headed straight for Moku.
“Kona!” Moku said, nearly bouncing out of bed. He’d decided Kona was okay earlier in the day when he’d brought him the world’s biggest ice cream sundae. “Did you get ice cream?”
Kona laughed, warm and deep and real. “No, no ice cream. But I did bring this.” He held up a bag from the local bookstore.
Moku’s enthusiasm visibly waned. He had dyslexia, so reading had always been a problem for him. “Oh. Thanks.”
“Go ahead and open it—it’s not what you think.”
Warily, Moku opened the bag, then squealed when he saw a sketchbook, colored pens and markers, and three how-to drawing books. One was on sharks and other ocean creatures, another was on dinosaurs, and the third was favorite cartoon characters.
Moku was in heaven—my little brother loved to draw even more than I did. He opened the shark book and dived right in, drawing a pretty good rendition of a huge hammerhead shark.
“How did you know he liked to draw?” I murmured to Kona.
“I’ve seen your artwork, and Cecily’s. So I took a shot.”
He pulled the second chair in the room over to where I was sitting, then, once settled, wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I sank into him, grateful some of the tension between us had dissipated in the last couple of days.
“I missed you,” he said softly, his fingers playing through the tips of my hair where it met my shoulders.
“Me too.” I kissed his cheek before laying my head on his shoulder. “Thank you for getting Zarek.”
“You don’t need to thank me for that.”
“I’m indebted to you. I always will be.”
“Why?”
I stared at him incredulously. “You saved Moku. How can I ever repay that?”
“You needed help and I tried to help you. That’s all. I thought that was what you were supposed to do when you loved someone.”
And there it was. The six-ton killer whale in the room. “It is,” I told him. “But not everyone is willing to swim two days through treacherous waters to do that, especially when they’re angry. So thank you.”
“Will you stop it? You make it sound like you’re about to dump me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? That’s what you got out of that?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
His silver eyes were dull, and more than a little bit nervous as he looked at me. But before I could say anything else, Moku crowed, “Look at this!” and held up his finished drawing.
“It looks fantastic!” I told him. “Good job.”
Kona echoed my sentiments; then we both watched, bemused, as Moku tore a piece of paper out of his sketch book and started folding it industriously.
“What are you making?” I asked after a minute of watching him fold the first top of the paper into triangles.
Both Kona and Moku looked at me like I’d grown another head. “A paper airplane!” they exclaimed at the same time, then grinned at each other.
“Obviously,” Moku continued, making a few more folds that finally turned the paper into a recognizable form. But when he pulled back his arm and sent it soaring, it crashed straight into the ground.
His shoulders slumped. “They always do that,” he mumbled to himself.
“That’s because you’re too tip heavy,” Kona said. “Give me a sheet of paper and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“You know how to make paper airplanes?” It was my turn to stare at him incredulously.
He looked down his nose at me in what I had come to think of as his princely look. “I’m a guy, aren’t I?”
“You’re a two-hundred-year-old underwater prince!”
“Which is why I’ve had over fifty years to perfect the technique. Watch and learn, sweet Tempest. Watch and learn.”
“Excuse me, but I am quite the paper airplane designer myself, you know.”
“Really?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “Well then, let’s have a competition, shall we? I’ll show Moku how to make my airplane and then you can show him how to make yours and we’ll see which one goes farther.”
It was a challenge, pure and simple, a toss of the gauntlet that Kona knew I would never be able to resist. “Fine. You’re on.”
“Awesome!” crowed Moku as he ripped more paper from the sketchbook. “Show me how to keep it from crashing to the floor, Kona!”
“Oh, I see how you are,” I teased him, pretending to be miffed. “No loyalty at all.”
“Aww, don’t be mad, Tempest. It’s just that Kona’s a guy and guys are better at stuff like this.”
My eyes widened and I stared at him, mouth open, for long seconds. Kona choked on a laugh, then became incredibly absorbed in the pattern of the wallpaper. “That is completely sexist!” I told Moku indignantly. “Not to mention ridiculous! Who’s been telling you that stuff while I’ve been gone?” I knew it wasn’t my dad, who’d spent my entire life telling me I could do anything I put my mind to.
“Rio said—”
“Oh, really? Rio said? It seems that pipsqueak has had a lot to say these days, hasn’t he?” I took one of the pieces of paper determinedly. “I’ll show you how to build the world’s best airplane.”
Kona snorted and muttered something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like “Good luck!” Which, of course, only annoyed me more.
The next few minutes were spent aligning, calibrating, folding, and refolding, until finally there were four airplanes—one made by Kona, one from me, and then the two done by Moku as we taught him how to make the planes.
I was honest enough to admit that Kona’s looked more elegant than mine, not to mention flashier. But I’d been doing my design for years and was confident in its ability to kick Kona’s pretty little plane’s butt.
The rules were simple. Whichever two of the four planes went farthest would have a fly-off and whoever won the fly-off would have bragging rights for life.
“Are you ready?” I asked when we were all lined up against the back wall of Moku’s room, planes at the ready.
“Yes!” crowed Moku, who was so excited he was practically jumping up and down. “Let’s do this!”
“All right, then.” Kona winked at me over my brother’s head. “Count us down, man.”
“Three, two, one, go!” We let the planes rip.
Kona’s flew the fastest, but it crashed and burned before reaching the halfway point of the room. Mine went the farthest, followed by Moku’s version of Kona’s plane.
Moku retrieved the airplanes, then counted us down for the fly-off. And then bragged hugely as his plane soared all the way to the opposite wall.