Chapter 4
So Why Are You Running Away?
Hot grains of sand shifted uncomfortably over the soles of Kalama’s sandals as the younger children raced as around her: some locals, some the children of wealthy tourists. Shovels scraped against the surface of Waikiki beach, digging for wet fragments to be used in the basic construction; while the drying, white sand was shifted of to the side of later use. Piles of shells, beach glass, and even bottle caps and other pieces of disguarded trash grew next to pillars, towers, and mounds while the children shouted orders at one another.
Kalama had never been able to understand why people thought this was fun.
Certainly, making sand castles could be enjoyable when it was done at a leisurely pace and simply for the sake of creating something beautiful. Even if it would only be a matter of hours before the tide swept it back into the ocean to be used again in fifty years when the sand was pushed back to the shore.
But the people who competed in the Waikiki Sand-Towers Competition had no understanding of this concept. The people were all given a set amount of time, six hours, in which they had to remain on the beach. They would fight one another for small patches of sand, as though they didn’t see the stretches of land covered in it, and horded pieces of garbage like rare jewels.
Nothing about the spectacle appealed to Kalama, and everything about it appealed to Ewa and her dad.
No matter how many times Kalama insisted she hated this competition, her father would always sign the family up to compete; and Kalama would always stand off to the side while her family went mad, watching the sun travel across the sky and wander into the ocean so she could allow the waves to lap against her feet. When her mom had been alive, she would find some way to distract her father, usually through Ewa, and the two of them would wander over to the marketplace or into the narrow corridor streets to shop through the tacky Hawaiian souvenirs, never buying a thing.
Kalama found herself thinking of her mother a lot lately, ever since the storm and the breakdown on the peeling red porch swing. Nearly every moment of every day, she found herself breaking the unspoken rule among her family, even if she was the only one who knew it. It had placed an invisible barrier between her and her living relatives, pushing her back toward her family buried in the ground.
Will picked up a stray piece of beach wood and began using it as a makeshift carving tool to create ridges in the barricade wall. Yes, Will; she had stopped calling him ‘Dad’ in her mind days ago. The only problem was that every time she forced herself to make this distinction, the knot in her stomach grew tighter and tighter. To have her only father dead and rotting in the earth, and to consider that she was sharing a home, being raised by someone whom she now felt so emotionally distant from, it was almost more than Kalama could bear.
“TIME!” a judge’s voice blared through a blow horn. “Fifteen minute break, people! The clock is ticking!”
A wave of competitors rushed away from the construction area to merge into the crowd of spectators. Once the clusters thinned out, Kalama was able to find Will and Ewa, still lingering over their ‘masterpiece’, smoothing the walls of one of their quarter towers and then bleaching it with handfuls of dry sand.
Will let loose a long whistle of exhaustion and Ewa wiped the sweat from her forehead before it could drip into her eyes. “So, Kalama,” he asked as he made his way to a drink vender’s cart, the two girls trailing behind him, “you’ve been watching the other families. Where would you say the Jameson castle ranks?”
There was an overly happy tone in his voice when he asked Kalama this. It was clear that Will did feel the current level of animosity in Kalama’s tone, even if he didn’t know the reason behind it. From the lack of concern, he might have believed it was just the beginning of puberty.
“You’re doing good,” Kalama replied flatly. “There’s one castle off to the far left being built by that family with the eight kids, they’re building a scale model of a Japanese palace. But the wall are shaky and it looks like a soft breeze could knock it over.”
“Do you think we’ll win?” Ewa begged her sister to answer, jumping up several times onto her tiptoes in an attempt to reach Kalama’s eye level.
“Maybe.” Kalama shrugged her shoulders and continued to follow after Will. “Who knows?”
The drink cart (this particular one at least) was not a typical part of the Waikiki scenery: it was one of those easily moved models that could be taken anywhere the money was. And today, the dirty white cart with its commercial stickers and scratched paintings of fruit, had found its way to the Sand-Towers competition and right in front of Kalama’s newly critical gaze.
“Oh, look at this, girls. They have those blended organic juices you always get,” Will remarked as he pulled his wallet from his pocket, a good amount of sand coming out with it. “You like pineapple-papaya, right, Kalama?”
Kalama nodded absent mindedly, even though she had never even tried pineapple-papaya. It sounded like a busy tasting drink that would probably be disgusting.
The aged Japanese woman who ran the cart reached into the chilled bin and retrieved the glass juice bottles without even needing to look down to read the labels. Maybe she’s a witch too, Kalama found herself thinking. Lately, Kalama noticed that the more she obsessed about magic, the more she began to notice the places that it might be hiding. Was it possible that older witches and wizards could see magic in younger children just the same way older Muggles could predict a rainstorm. From the way the juice vender seemed to be acknowledging Kalama and only Kalama with a knowing stare, it certainly seemed that way.
“You daughters are adorable!” She smiled, gaps in her teeth clearly visible as she did. “They look just like you.”
“I’m not his daughter,” Kalama informed her as she took one of the juice bottles from her.
Kalama glanced to the side just in time to see the mortified expression on Will’s shocked face, the drink in his hand barely remaining held in his grasp. Ewa let lose a tiny yelp and seemed to choke on her strawberry-melon juice. Even the drink vendor appeared to be taken aback by Kalama’s sudden statement.
From the direction of the conversation, Kalama knew she must have sounded like one of those pureblood fanatics she had gone to school with; students who would say whatever it took to separate themselves from any shred of Muggle blood they might have had. However, despite what Kalama intellectually knew what she was saying may have sounded like to this strange woman, she didn’t care. While those students disavowed their Muggle lineage out some old world bigotry, Kalama did it in an effort to finally live the truth.
It was something she should have started doing since the moment she knew that she wouldn’t be a part of the Muggle world, no matter how effectively she had been able to convince herself and everyone else otherwise.
“My father died when I was three,” Kalama continued to explain as she unscrewed the bottle cap. “My mom married Will later. Ewa’s his daughter, but I’m not.”
Kalama took a sip and made a face; pineapple-papaya was an awful flavor.
Cautiously, Will handed the vendor a few crisp new bills, all the while keeping his eyes on Kalama as though the words were a precursor to a transformation into some horrific creature more fitting of her recent words.
“C’mon, girls.” There was a restrained stillness in his tone, allowing all the spectators around them to predict the great storm of harsh words that was to come, even if none of them would witness it. As they walked, Ewa pressed the rim of her juice bottle to her lips, but didn’t drink. She regaled her sister with an odd expression: a combination of shock, worry, and a small touch of excitement that all small children got when they watched someone just about to get in trouble. Kalama was the only one who appeared calm. She had been the one who had manipulated the situation to make this happen. She wanted this to happen, even though there was no ‘why’ behind it.
Suddenly, Will grabbed her shoulder and spun her around so she would have to look him in the eyes while she answered for herself. “What the hell was that?!”
Ewa jumped as her father shouted. The two girls had always known that Will had a bit of a temper, but neither sister had seen it since their mother had died. The passing of Nora Jameson seemed to have left a hole in the man that all previous anger had been sinking into ever since. Two years later, that had certainly changed.
“What are you talking about, Will?”
“THAT is what I am talking about!” Willed yelled, though keeping his voice somewhat hushed to avoid garnering too much attention. “How dare you say the kinds of things you just said?”
“Why?” Kalama asked with a raised eyebrow. “Was what I said a lie?”
That last reply held Will aback for a moment. Up until now, Kalama had never forced him to account for the fact that he was her stepfather. She could remember when Will and her mother first started dating and even after they got married, he had tried to sit Kalama down and talk to her using words he had read in secondhand self-help books. But there is only so much a four-year-old is capable of understanding, so most of what was said simply washed over her. In her simple little mind, her daddy was gone and now she had a new daddy. And with all the special privileges and treats she had gotten from him in an attempt to earn her love, she hardly saw any reason to complain.
That had been so long ago that now, that when a real test surfaced, Will didn’t know what to say.
“K-Kalama,” he stuttered, “that is hardly any excuse for you to say what you just said. I have been you dad for more than half your life, and that entitles me to somerespec-”
“And the ability to decide whether or not I’ll be allowed to reenter my own world!” Kalama snapped.
“Alright, Kalama,” Will huffed under his breath, “I was hoping that you would love me and you sister enough to make this decision on your own, but seeing all this has shown that is certainly not the case.”
Kalama felt her blood boiling and she reached into her pocket to grip her wand.
“I’m doing what I think is best for you,” Will tried to explain evenly. “You might not understand today, but someday you will thank m-”
Not able to take anymore of this, Kalama pulled her wand from her pocket and pointed it directly at Will’s chest. His eyes flashed around the beach, looking for anyone who might have seen the wand as more than just a pretty stick.
“Kalama, you put that away this instant!” Will hissed at her. “I do know something about wizarding in laws. If someone sees you doing magic, you will be in a world of trouble!”
“And what if I don’t? put it away” Kalama raised the question. “You’ll forbid me from going back to school again before I turn you into a parrot!”
“Threats are not helping your case, young lady,” Will warned with a tone of finality. “I am the adult in this household, and my decision is final! There is a war going on, and I will not have you going to some school who’s only interest is to train you to die in combat. They have an alternative motive, but we are your family, Kalama. No one can ever care for you and know better what is best for you than we do-”
“SHUT UP, MUGGLE!” Kalama screamed.
The sudden sound of breaking glass and a piercing scream from Ewa soon stopped the argument right in its tracks. When Kalama looked over to her sister, she saw that Ewa’s juice bottle had spontaneously burst in her hand. Slivers of glass lay scattered all around her feet, deep cuts slashing across her face. The ruby-red juice splashed across her face, mixing with the blood until Kalama could not tell the difference between the two. Salty tears seeped into the pronounced cuts, causing Ewa to screech even louder.
Will rushed right over to Ewa, but Kalama’s fight-or-flight instincts took over and before she knew it, she was sprinting into the narrow, crowded alleys of the shopping districts. She didn’t look back, even when Will yelled for her; she kept her eyes forward and allowed the voice shouting her name to merge into the collective noise.
War Torn by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: A family arguement at a sand castle building contest opens old, metaphorical wounds and create new, physical ones.
Thanks go out to my wonderful beta chick, Anna!