Free Sisterchicks Do the Hula by Robin Jones Gunn

seen any out here for a while. I’ve missed them.”
    One of the guys on the crew started to tease her. “I’m sure they missed you, little haole girl.”
    “Hey, who you calling a haole girl?”
    “You, haole girl,” he said.
    She gave the guy a friendly shove. “You watch it,
da’ kine
boy, or you’ll go in for a swim with the dolphins.”
    They joked back and forth while the dolphins slowed their pace and fell away from us. I scanned the water for any sign of the friendly creatures, but as quickly as they had appeared, they disappeared.
    “See what you did?” the clever girl with the bandana around her neck said to the guy. “You scared ’em away.”
    “Not me. You scared ’em, haole girl.” The guy had such a great smile and easygoing manner that it seemed he was enjoying the teasing as much as the girl was.
    “May I ask you a question?” I said. “What does
how-lee
mean?”
    “No breath,” the island boy said.
    “No breath?” I repeated.
    The girl turned toward me. “It’s what the Hawaiians call someone who is just visiting the islands. Someone who isn’t a local. It’s not a very polite term.” She gave the guy another punch in the arm.
    “Auwe!” He cried in mock pain, rubbing his arm.
    “You big baby.”
    “Hey!” the other crewmate called from the back of the catamaran, breaking up the little flirt-fest. “Somebody check on the line on the port. It looks like it’s tangled.”
    “You check it.” The guy gave a chin-up nod to the girl.
    “Fine. I’ll show you how it’s done.”
    He kept grinning as she made her way across the meshwith ease. It was a rather entertaining pleasure to watch these two interact. It made me think of Darren and the way he had perfected the art of teasing when we first met. I was the shortstop for our church summer league softball team, and Darren was on second base. He says the night he watched me slide into home and scrape up my leg was the night he knew I was the one for him. I couldn’t imagine sliding anywhere or scraping any part of me on purpose now. I wondered if Darren missed the old Hope.
    For the remainder of our catamaran sail, Laurie and I stayed in the front, even though we got splashed and our hair was tousled like crazy while the sail billowed with the steady trade wind and took us coasting in to shore.
    “I like your hair like that,” Laurie said, as the catamaran slowly motored back into its watery parking spot near the beach.
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “No, it’s darling. You should see it.”
    I fluffed up the sides and tugged at the wayward strands in the back. “You like it?”
    “I really do. Seriously.”
    “I call it ‘swims with dolphins.’ ”
    “Well, it’s working for you, girl.” Laurie hopped up off the mesh. “I’ll get our beach bags.”
    I rolled to the side, trying to find a useable center of gravity. First to the left … nothing to hold on to. I rolled to the right. And rolled some more, until I was in the center of the mesh,with canvas and gravity playing a joke on me. I was stuck. The other four tourists were off the catamaran and saying their thank-yous to the crew.
    “Laurie,” I called out, calmly at first. She didn’t hear me inside the cabin. “Laurie!” She still didn’t hear.
    I tried to reach for one of the ropes hanging from the mast pole, thinking I could use it to pull myself up.
    “Whoa, not that one,” the island boy said, coming toward me with that huge white smile of his at full sail. “You need a hand?”
    “Yes,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “As a matter of fact, I
could
use a hand. Thank you.”
    The brawny island boy didn’t hold out a hand for me. Oh, no, he came around behind me, looped his thick arms under my perspiring armpits and hoisted me up, using his knee to support my lower back. I had no choice but to depend on his broad chest to steady my disoriented sense of balance.
    Click
.
    Click, click, click, click
.
    That Laurie! She