Prints in the Sand: My Journey with Nanea

Back at Lily’s house, I’m not ready for home yet, so when Nanea suggests another sleepover, this time at her place, refusing isn’t an option. She borrows Mrs. Suda’s phone to ask her mother, then returns looking discouraged along with Lily. They explain that Mrs. Suda needs Lily to babysit Tommy tonight instead.

Nanea pushes me to call my own mother right away, so I dial each digit on the heavy black kitchen phone, waiting through the rotary’s long spin between numbers. Nothing happens on the other end, since Mom’s number doesn’t exist yet. Still, I know she isn’t worried about me. She’s busy at work and my brothers are building their sand castle with Auntie Oli. This is exactly where I want to be.

Nanea’s house turns out to be just a short walk away, so we set off together, and she tells me about her family along the way. Her father welds at the Pearl Harbor shipyard, her mother pitches in with the Red Cross, and her older sister, Mary Lou, defies explanation, Nanea says with a chuckle. Mentioning her brother David makes her fall quiet, but a sudden bark snaps her back, and she brightens. A scruffy dog springs off a porch and races toward us. It’s the same dog from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Nanea crouches for kisses, and when I kneel, too, Mele licks my hand just the same. Wondering aloud whether dinner is cooking, Nanea leads us bounding up the porch steps and into the house.

Nanea pulls up short in the living room, thrown by an unfamiliar soldier on the couch. Her mother steps in wiping her hands on her apron and introduces him as Lieutenant Foster. When he stands to greet us, I notice he’s very tall, with a shy smile and cropped dark hair.

Nanea’s mother explains she and Papa invited him over for a night or two off base, so he will take David’s room while Nanea and I share the daybed or sleep with Mary Lou. In the kitchen, Nanea whispers that Mary Lou snores, and I barely swallow a laugh, which is good since Mary Lou stands right there setting the table, humming and twirling as she grabs napkins.

Nanea guesses aloud that her sister’s good mood has something to do with the cute soldier joining them for dinner, which drops Mary Lou’s jaw as she swats her with a napkin and hisses at her to lower her voice. But judging by the grin Mary Lou can’t hide, I think Nanea might be onto something.

Once dinner starts, Lieutenant Foster stays remarkably quiet even as Nanea’s parents ask him plenty of questions about his family back home. But no one pays more attention to him than Mary Lou, refilling his water and passing him potatoes again and again. Every time it happens, Nanea elbows me with a knowing look, and when Mary Lou catches us spying, she does not get mad, just winks.

After dinner, we walk Mele around the block, and hopping off the back porch, Nanea marvels at how sweet Mary Lou already is over Lieutenant Foster. She hopes she won’t be that obvious about a boy someday. I’d say the same about myself, but then, while watching Mele drink from his water bowl, I’m distracted by a scrap of bright yellow paper on the ground. It’s wedged under the tire of a bicycle propped against the house. Sliding it loose, I realize it isn’t paper scrap at all, but a tiny folded bird.

Nanea identifies it instantly as an origami crane and urges me to open it, but I hesitate. I won’t be able to fold it nicely again. Nanea says she knows origami, so she’ll be able to refold it. So I carefully ease the tiny wings open and press the paper flat against the side of the house, and the sight of what is written there catches my breath. Someone has left a message, written entirely in code.

Tiny capital letters march across the page in flawless black ink, but they don’t make sense. Odd combinations of letters are grouped together with spaces in between. Nanea decides it’s definitely code and asks where I found it. Once I point out the bicycle, she realizes the message must belong to Lieutenant Foster, though neither of us can guess who he would write to in secret. A spy is the first idea that pops out of my mouth, though Nanea seems doubtful. We circle the block puzzling over the letters without any luck, so I tuck the note in my pocket to keep safe. Back at the house I can’t stop replaying how silent Lieutenant Foster stayed at dinner, wondering if he really is hiding something.

Nanea and I settle onto the daybed for the night, snug under a quilt patterned with bright blue flowers, and I drift off to Mary Lou’s snoring down the hall. But later, a creaking bedroom door startles me awake. I make out a shadowy shape moving through the dark, far too tall to be Mary Lou, which leaves only Lieutenant Foster. The hair on my arms stands up as he takes slow, steady steps toward us, but he veers toward the front door instead, easing it open and slipping outside.

Nanea’s whisper cuts the quiet, wondering where he could be headed this late, especially with the curfew. But even without the wartime rule, a guest tiptoeing out at night strikes both of us as odd. We stay wide awake until the front door creaks open an hour later, and we snap our eyes shut to fake sleep. Lieutenant Foster pads back into David’s room as if he had never left.

Morning arrives to find David’s door standing open over a neatly made bed. And Lieutenant Foster and his bicycle are gone. While Nanea and I walk Mele, she notices another orange scrap where the bike once stood, this one shaped into a tiny gecko with more coded writing on its leg. Before we can unfold it, an older woman leaning on a cane bustles toward us, and Nanea greets her as Mrs. Lin. She launches into questions about their overnight guest, asking whether Nanea’s mother served her shoyu chicken and hinting she would love the recipe, barely pausing for an answer.

But then, Mrs. Lin spots the gecko in Nanea’s fist. She asks to look at it, and Nanea has no choice but to open her hand. Mrs. Lin plucks up the paper creature, tilting it toward the morning light and asking who wrote on it and what it says. Nanea shoots me an uncertain look, torn over how much to reveal. I share her hesitation. If Lieutenant Foster truly is a spy, somebody ought to know, yet we have no real proof of anything.