I’ve started a ritual in Hawaii: Every weekend morning, when I don’t have to be shooting and before the sun comes out, I go down to the beach and jump in the ocean. There isn’t a soul around except the early-morning surfers, and even if they throw you a smile, it never develops into a conversation. We have an understanding that everyone is alone, but not in a way that’s lonely. The opposite, actually. To me the ocean in the morning is like a good friend, the kind you can sit in silence with for hours.
I’ve never seen Rainer down here, or Wyatt, but then Wyatt works all the time and Rainer usually goes away on the weekends. I know he’s sticking around today, but he seems much more like a brunch-at-the-hotel kind of guy than a wake-up-at-dawn-and-hop-in-the-freezing-ocean guy.
I toss my towel onto a rock and head toward the shore. I feel the water and then start walking forward, giving myself to the count of three before I dive in. It’s the only way to go—if you edge in, it’s pure torture.
The water hits—so sharp it feels like the wind has been knocked out of me—and I come up to the surface gasping for air. The ocean is new to me, but I’ve always loved the water.
Before my sister got pregnant and my brothers moved out, my parents used to take us camping every summer. My sister hated it. She’d stay in the tent and complain about how she hadn’t brought enough magazines, or how the air was too cold or the ground too hard or how the food stank, but I loved it. I used to look forward to those trips every year.
We’d set up camp around a lake my dad had chosen, and the five of us would pitch tents while my mom unloaded the kitchen supplies. As soon as we were done, I’d hit the water. It didn’t matter how cold it was—as soon as camp was set up I was in. My mom says I was born with a fish’s tail, and I think it’s probably true. When I was little, people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d always say a fish. I didn’t understand that a fish wasn’t something you could work toward. That no matter how hard I tried, I’d never sprout gills and a tail.
Once I’m totally underwater, it’s heaven. Cool and crisp and deliciously refreshing, like biting into the summer’s first slice of watermelon. The cold zings through my body, waking up my arms and legs and toes. I flip over onto my back and let the waves rock me out. It’s just starting to get light, and I can see rays of pink and yellow and orange puncture the sky. It’s like watching a painting being made. Long, leisurely brushstrokes that soften the darkness until the spaces between aren’t pockets of sun, but the other way around.
I stretch my hands out in front of me and pump my legs forward, pitching my body underwater. It doesn’t bite now and instead feels smooth, and soft—like a silk robe or velvet pajamas.
I spend about fifteen minutes floating and swimming, sometimes stopping to watch the sherbet sky. When I’m in the water, it feels like the whole world is on the same level—the beach and the sky are parallel, not perpendicular. It’s so different from Portland. Portland is all rounded corners and hills. Hawaii feels level, like everything is happening at the same time here, all at once.
I finally let a wave carry me back. I sink my feet into the sand, hopping up and down a few times to get the water out of my ears and wringing my hair over my shoulder. It’s completely light out, and if I stand facing the condos, I can see all the way up Haleakala, Maui’s dormant volcano. When we first got here, Rainer’s dad paid for Hawaiian culture lessons. The whole crew came, but most people left early. I was one of the few who ended up staying and hearing the entire thing. They told us that the Hawaiian Islands are actually a chain of volcanoes and that the “hot spot” moves from island to island, which is why only one volcano at a time is actually active—currently the one on Hawaii, the Big Island. The totally fascinating thing, though, is that the hot spot is moving now, creating another island. It will probably rise to the surface sometime in the next ten thousand to one hundred thousand years. It has already been named, too. It’s called Loihi.
I wrap my towel around my waist and tromp back up to the condos. I’m looking forward to getting out of Wailea, our beach town, today. Jake bought me all these guidebooks, most of them focused on which species are indigenous and how to tell if ocean water is polluted, but he did get me one plain, straight-up tourist-trap book. The kind that tells you where the best burgers are and how to find the hikes with the waterfalls. I’m bringing it with us today.
The woman at the reception desk greets me with a smile. “You have a message, Ms. Townsen.”
She hands me a note on hotel stationery with trim, precise cursive on it:
Get dressed and come meet me for breakfast.
—R
My pulse lights up, and my body suddenly feels warm. No more morning-water goose bumps.
“Anything else?” I ask the woman, making an effort to hide the slow smile that is spreading across my face. I have to figure out how to get it together. He’s my coworker, not some school crush.
“No,” she replies. “Just the one note.”
I nod and take off toward my room, my flip-flops making smacking noises on the marble floor.
When I come down to breakfast, Rainer is waiting in another Hawaiian shirt and wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses. This shirt is light blue, the color of the waves. He’s smiling his signature dimply smile and tapping his forefinger on his watch.
“You’re late,” he says.
I hold up his note. “You didn’t specify a time.”
“I just assumed you’d see it and come running.”
“Is that what the girls normally do?”
Rainer shrugs. “Pretty much, yeah.” He shakes his head and smiles. “I’m kidding,” he says. He looks at me to make sure I know it. “Sit. You know I would have waited all day, anyway.”
“So, what are we doing today?” I say, trying to change the subject, determined to keep myself together. Cool. Collected.
A waitress has set an orange juice and bread basket down, and I tear off a muffin top. I realize I’m starving. It’s the morning swims. The ocean makes me ravenous.
Rainer watches me with amusement. “I thought that was on you, PG.” He leans closer to me. “I get the car; you bring the plan.”
I pull out my guidebook and open it to the page on Paia, this little town on the north shore I’ve been wanting to go to. There is supposed to be a restaurant there called the Fish Market that has the best burgers and sandwiches on the island, and the town is apparently cluttered with cute, artsy stores and shops. Not that anything could ever beat Trinkets n’ Things, but, you know, one can dream. The guidebook says that from Paia you can go to Ho’okipa Beach and watch the windsurfers. I think that sounds kind of perfect.
Bent over my eggs and coffee, I tell all this to Rainer.
“I’m impressed,” he says. “You learned all that from this?” He plucks the copy of The Real Maui out of my hands and fans through the pages.
I nod and parrot what Jake told me: “It’s supposed to be the best one.”
Rainer smiles slightly, like he thinks this is sort of funny. Cute, maybe. I internally cringe at how childlike I sound. So damn young. Then he pulls my coffee out of my hand, takes a sip, and sets it down. “Time is wasting, PG. Let’s go.”
Rainer has rented a neon-blue convertible, and when we pick it up at the valet, I can’t help but snort. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Oh, come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“You mean irony?”
He shakes his head. “You’re impossible.”
“I have a sense of adventure. It just involves things like hiking, not driving the tourist mobile.”
“Well, I’m going to be the one driving.” Rainer tilts his sunglasses up and looks at me. I can’t help but note, even now with this aqua vehicle right by us, how blue his eyes are.
He holds the door open for me, and I get inside.
“Plus,” he says, shutting the door, “I look good in blue.”
It will be easier to spot us in this thing for sure, but so far that hasn’t really been a problem. People are always complaining about the paparazzi, but I don’t see what the big deal is. And truthfully, it might not be a terrible thing to be recognized, just a little bit. I mean, someone wanting to take my picture is kind of a new concept for me. Up until now I’ve had to jostle my way into Christmas card photos.
Wyatt keeps hammering into us, practically preaching, that this is going to change, that every day moves us closer to insanity, but I don’t know. There was a big fuss when I got the part—magazine articles, one shot of me coming out of a Coffee Bean—but then everything settled down when we got here. No one recognizes me. How could they? I haven’t done anything yet.
I take out the big map of Maui that was folded into the guidebook. We start driving west, the beach on our left and the hills climbing up into the mountains on our right. Every single second looks like a postcard. I keep wanting to freeze-frame the drive. The book says that the Hawaiian Islands are thought to be God’s country, that if he ever chose to live anywhere on earth, it would be here. I get what they mean. It’s paradise.
“What do you do in Portland?” Rainer asks. The top is down, and the wind is loud. My hair is blowing every which way, and I try to secure it back, my hands plastered to the side of my head like earmuffs.
“What?” I bellow.
“Portland!”
It’s funny—Rainer feels so familiar, but we haven’t actually spent a lot of time talking about our lives before this movie. I’m glad that we’re getting the chance now.
The truth, though, is that I know a lot about him. The external stuff, anyway. All courtesy of Cassandra. Like his favorite color is orange and he has a dog named Scoot and when he was twelve his dad gave him a dinner date with Steven Spielberg for his birthday. He grew up in Beverly Hills, his parents are still married, and he’s an only child, despite occasional rumors to the contrary.
His parents have a bowling alley in their basement and a tennis court in their backyard. He’s one of People’s most beautiful and his birthday is in June… although it could be January.
I realize, suddenly, the only thing Cassandra left out was Britney.
Rainer looks over at me and smiles. My eyes are watering bullets, and my hair looks like it’s caught in an eighties music video. Sexy.
He says something I can’t understand, but I don’t pretend to, and we drive in silence until we reach Paia.
Paia is exactly like the guidebook described: a little hippie town that has more restaurants and character than the entire south side of the island combined. I can tell as soon as we pull in that this is the real island, the part no one sees on a beach vacation. Being on our part of the island is a little like being stuck on a cruise ship—it’s beautiful and there is lots of good food, but you never get to see anything real.
Paia is composed of two strips. One that the highway runs into and another road that intersects it perpendicularly. There are no parking spots available, and every restaurant—mostly outdoor cafés—seems to be packed. I half expect Rainer to try to valet, but then he swings into a little parking lot at the base of town and proves me wrong.
“Seems like you picked the hot spot,” he says. He parks, locks up the top, and then comes around to open my door. I’ve already done it, so we have this funny little moment where I’m getting out and he’s trying to be helpful, but he gets stuck between the car next to us and my door. It’s sweet, and kind of disarming.
Here’s a fun fact: Even Rainer Devon looks silly caught between two parked cars.
We extricate ourselves from the parking lot and walk over to the Fish Market. Even though there is an insane line that wraps clear around the outside of the restaurant, I insist we stay and eat there. It’s not like we have anywhere else to be.
“Don’t doubt the book,” I say, and Rainer consents.
“We could just go up, you know,” he says, gesturing to the register about twenty people out.
“Cut, you mean?”
“For all they know, we need to be back on set.”
“But we don’t need to be back on set,” I point out.
He crosses his arms and squints at me. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” Who does he think he is, Brad Pitt? Would Brad Pitt cut in line? Probably. But only because he had to go save orphans or something. The only thing Rainer has to do is see a beach.
“Your naïveté is cute, PG, but you’re a big star now. It’s time to start acting like one.”
“That’s not acting like a star,” I say. “That’s acting like an asshole.”
He rolls his eyes and takes my hand. It makes me jump, but I don’t fight him. He drags me up to the front of the line, excuses himself to the man who is at the register, and smiles at the cashier—a girl about our age. She looks at the cash register and then does this little gasp when she sees Rainer staring at her.
“You don’t think we could put in an order, do you?” Rainer asks, beaming at her. He’s still holding my hand and pulls me closer, showing me to her like I’m evidence he’s providing.
The girl looks at me and then her eyes get wide. It’s the same look Cassandra gives me when she has something really important to tell me and can’t quite get the words out.
“Y-y-you’re August,” she sputters.
I glance at Rainer and then back at the girl. My first inclination is to correct her. I’m not August. I’m Paige.
But instead what happens is that I smile and nod, slowly, and then the whole restaurant falls silent. Where a minute before I felt like I was back in Rainer’s convertible having to shout to be heard, now the only thing I want is for someone to sneeze to cover up the sound of my breathing.
And it’s fast. My heart is going a mile a minute.
“I loved the books,” the girl pushes on. “I’m so excited for the movie. Could I have your autograph?”
Rainer raises his eyebrows at me and smiles a told you so grin. I fumble in my purse, trying to find a pen. Are you supposed to keep pens on you when you’re famous? Is that the deal? Or do people provide them?
I find one dangling from an eyeglass case at the bottom of my bag and take it out, cap first.
“Um, sure. What should I sign?”
The girl looks at me like she doesn’t get the question, and Rainer hands me a napkin.
“Will this do?” he asks her.
She nods emphatically, and I take the napkin, pressing it down on the counter. At this point it feels like every single person in the restaurant has swiveled to look at me. I feel a little like one of those mannequins in the windows at department stores that are between outfit changes: naked and completely on display.
Except, you know, they’re not alive.
I swallow and then scrawl my name. It looks messy, and you can barely make out the T in Townsen. I don’t really have a signature. I never even signed my name, I don’t think, until a few years ago when I had to get a passport. We were supposed to go to Vancouver to visit my dad’s brother, who moved there like five years ago to start this woodchopping business, but we never did. We tried again a few years later, but it was right around the time Annabelle graced us with her presence and after that, travel… Well, it wasn’t diapers, so it was out.
I hand the napkin to the girl, and she’s beaming. Serious Christmas-morning smile.
“Thank you so much!” she says. “I’ll take your orders. On the house.”
“That’s sweet,” Rainer says. He hands over a hundred-dollar bill with a stack of twenties curled underneath. He cocks his head behind him. “Will you buy these people in line lunch, on me?”
The girl blushes fuchsia and nods. Rainer looks at me. I can feel my eyes go wide. “What?” he says. “I pay it forward.” He orders and people start to talk again, the lunch-hour sounds resuming. Somewhere someone takes a picture and a little girl comes up to Rainer and asks for his autograph. He accepts and bends down, scooping her into a big hug. Her tiny little cheeks turn Pop-Tart pink. He signs one for the cashier, too.
We get our food, and I shove a twenty-dollar bill into the tip jar.
The restaurant is all community-style, long wooden tables with benches on the sides. Rainer takes our tray, and we head over to an empty portion of a table in the corner. I sit down. A stranger just recognized me. Someone I have never met before knew who I was.
“You feeling okay there?” Rainer leans forward, so I can see a few freckles on his nose.
“Yeah, fine.” But the truth is the whole experience is surreal—like a dream. I keep expecting to snap back to reality.
“You’ll get used to it,” he says. He takes my hand up lightly, lets his fingers curl through mine just for a moment. “I don’t want you to worry.”
“Do you ever think it’s strange?” I say. I have to swallow to keep my voice even.
“What?” he asks. He uncurls his fingers but lets his thumb glide over my wrist before he returns his hand to his side of the table.
“That people you’ve never met know your name?”
Rainer picks up his burger. “Yes,” he starts. “Well, I’m not sure.” He pauses, takes a bite, and chews thoughtfully. “It’s always been this way for me. I mean, I was acting when I was a kid. I guess I don’t know any different.”
I nod and bite into my burger. It’s delicious. The Real Maui was right: These things are incredible. Although it could just be that I haven’t had a real hamburger in months. Jake is a vegan, of course, and is constantly trying to get me to consume the cardboard tofu crap he buys. He even convinced my parents to switch over, which royally sucks because now my mom serves soy dogs at our house.
We eat in silence for a few minutes, momentarily lulled by our food. We still get a couple of sideways stares, but for the most part everyone seems to have gone back to their meals.
After lunch we pull into the windsurfing beach. I read about an overlook where you can park and walk out to some rocks that hang over the ocean. If it’s windy, chances are the windsurfers will be out. And at Ho’okipa, apparently, it’s always windy.
The wind zips and howls around us when we step outside. But it’s still warm, and the sun beats down strong and steady on my back.
Rainer squints into the sunlight and tosses me a baseball hat from the backseat. “Careful of that skin, PG. August is pretty pasty.”
I roll my eyes and jam the Lakers hat down over my forehead.
“Looks cute on you,” he says, giving me an approving nod.
My chest stumbles right along with my feet.
“Easy,” he says, putting a hand on my back. “C’mon.”
We climb through the railing, then walk down to the rocks. They make a shelf along the cliff, prime seating, like they knew people were going to want to watch the show. We take a seat, and as soon as I look out over the water, my breath catches.
Windsurfers are everywhere, but they don’t look like humans. They look like little butterflies. Tiny, colorful butterflies that dip and sway and fly across the ocean.
“They’re beautiful,” I breathe.
Rainer nods beside me. “Yeah. It’s pretty tough, too.”
“Have you been?” I ask.
“Once,” he says. “It was part of this pub shoot I did for Wild Things.”
I remember Wild Things. It came out when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I think. It was about these young competitive surfers. Rainer played the lead guy, the one who gets injured the week before the big competition; they think he’s going to have to sit it out, but at the last minute, he changes his mind, races into the water, and wins gold.
“Do you surf?” I ask him.
“I’d like to think I do,” he says. “But no, not really.” He places his hands in the sand, palms down. “You?”
I shake my head. “I haven’t, but I want to. Everything about the water fascinates me.” I’d have gone surfing the first day I was here if there weren’t all this stuff in my contract about not getting injured and the “prohibition of impact-based sports” while filming. I asked the producers exactly what about surfing was “impact-based,” but I never got a response.
The wind is picking up, and I tuck my arms around me. All of a sudden my skin has goose bumps. The sun has hidden behind a cloud, and the drop in temperature feels like twenty degrees.
“Here,” Rainer says. He’s brought out this lightweight gray cotton hoodie, and he slides it over my shoulders. His hand brushes my skin. Is it my imagination, or do his fingers linger there?
“Thanks,” I say.
He clears his throat. “No problem.”
Rainer rests his elbows on his knees and gazes out over the water. “Things feel so distant here, huh?” he says.
I thread my arms through his sweatshirt. “What do you mean?”
He keeps his gaze on the ocean. “What you were asking me earlier, if it’s weird when I get recognized? It is, but I don’t think because of what you meant. I think because it becomes your norm and that—” His voice breaks off. When it returns, it’s softer. “That’s a strange way to live.” He looks over at me. His eyes have changed. They’re darker somehow, stormier. They have more depth. “I want you to know that you don’t have to go through any of this alone. Whatever is coming, whatever happens, you’ll have me. I promise.”
I can feel my heart hammering in my chest. I swear he can, too. “Thank you,” I say.
He keeps looking at me, and I think he’s going to say something more, something about what it’s like where I’m headed—where we both are. The moment stretches, and the air seems to pause around us. Even the wind stills.
But he doesn’t say anything, and after a bit I follow his gaze back to the water. There is one windsurfer in particular who catches my eye. He has a blue sail and is farther out than the rest of them. So far, in fact, that it’s hard to see whether he’s moving at all. The only way I know for sure is that he gets smaller and smaller. By the time we stand up and walk back to the car, his blue sail might be the ripple of a wave.