One. Gracie loves Mr. Hoppy

Even though he poops way too much and Mommy says she’s old enough and responsible enough to clean up after him, Gracie still loves her rabbit. His fur is softer than anything she’s ever touched, and his eyes are the colour of chocolate.  His nose is pink and his whiskers tickle her hand when she feeds him carrot slices and he never bites her, even though Mommy tells her to be careful every time she does it. Mr. Hoppy never slobbers like Abegaila’s dog, and never yowls like the Siamese cat that lives next door.  He chewed up one of her notebooks when she first got him, but then Mommy helped her find some chew sticks at the pet store and he hasn’t wrecked anything since.

Mr. Hoppy was a gift from her step-father, Stan, and that sort of makes him cool because she can tell that sometimes Stan doesn’t really know what to do with her. Not like Daddy does. So for him to give her a bunny because she asked for one shows that at least he’s trying, and it makes it easier to be nice about everything, for both of them. 

Best of all, she can tell Mr. Hoppy all her secrets, and he never talks back, and won’t let anyone else know.

Now if she could just figure out what to do with all the poop.

Two. Gracie loves the colour pink

She has pink barettes and pink hair scrunchies and pink hairbands. Stan made sure her tennis dress was pinstriped in pink. Mr. Hoppy’s cage has a pink lid, and she made him a pink food bowl at school with his name etched into the glaze. Dolphin Trainer Annie came with a blue swimsuit and a yellow flowered sarong and a black wetsuit, but one weekend Aunty Kono came to visit her and Daddy and brought her a whole box of pink clothes for Dolphin Trainer Annie that are way cooler than anything the other girls at school have.  She and Aunty Kono have matching pink swimsuits now, and just as soon as Mommy and Daddy say yes, Steve’s going to buy her a pink surfboard.

Her laptop is pink, with pink HelloKitty stickers on it and after that one time she had to let Daddy use it, Steve started calling Daddy Kitty every time she brings it over to Steve’s to work on her homework.  Daddy usually tells Steve to shut up, but Gracie can tell he doesn’t really mean it, the same way she knows he doesn’t really mean it when he tells her she can’t use Facebook until she is thirty.

Her bedroom is pink (rose, Mommy says). Her dresser is white, but has pink knobs on it. Her pink housecoat hangs on a pink hook on the back of the door, and the lamp on her bedside table has a pretty pink lace shade that Mommy says came from Grandma Williams.

 Unfortunately her bed is dark Koa wood and her quilt is ocean blue. But Daddy bought her a pink fuzzy pillow that says Princess on it in hot pink glitter, and that helps. It sits on her bed along with the hot pink squishy football that Daddy gave her. Hot pink is her second favorite shade of pink.

The best pink, Gracie thinks, her favorite pink, is the pink on her Daddy’s face and arms and legs, because they have been spending more time on the beach with Steve lately. It’s a soft pink, not like sunburn (which she got the first day she went to the beach with Mommy and now she always remembers her sunscreen) and feels warm on her skin when Daddy puts his arms around her in a hug. And the best bit is it exactly matches Steve’s pink ears when she asks him if, since he calls Daddy Danno sometimes, does that mean he loves Daddy too?

Three. Gracie loves her new bed

When she first started visiting Daddy on the weekends (and she wished it was every weekend, but for now, she just had to content herself with phone calls on the days she can’t be with him), it was a little bit like a camping adventure. Daddy would roll out his sleeping bag, and then flip open the couch (a fascinating procedure that she thought was a little like magic—that feeling would follow her all the way to her own first apartment some dozen years later when she got a fold-out sofa of her own). Even though it looked like it hurt his back, Daddy always made her sleep in the bed, and he would sleep on the floor.  Sometimes they would sit on the bed together watching Disney DVDs (Sleeping Beauty was her current favorite because Aurora wore a pink dress) until very late (And Daddy always made her promise not to tell Mommy that he lost track of the time and once Gracie had asked if Mommy would spank Daddy for keeping her up late and Daddy had laughed for a long time). And every morning, Daddy would make pancakes and they’d eat together sitting on the bed, until it was time to fold it away.

Even though she misses the hide-a-bed, Gracie loves her new bed.  It doesn’t hurt her back like the sofa bed and is bigger than her bed at home.  Like her bed at home, though, this one is made of Koa wood, too, but Kamekona and Steve and one of Kamekona’s brothers built it and then Aunty Kono let her help paint it and now it’s hot pink (and Steve didn’t even complain about the hot pink drips on the floor, even though it’s his house, he just smiled at her in what Daddy calls his “goofball grin” and bought her a fluffy pink throw rug to go over the stains).  Daddy says Steve is spoiling her but since she and Daddy get to share Steve’s big house all the time now, Gracie thinks Steve is spoiling Daddy too.

The pink sheets and HelloKitty comforter came from Mommy, after her and Daddy had a long talk about Steve’s house. Gracie was supposed to be in bed, and it wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t sleep, so she could hear them talking (not yelling, thank goodness, because if there was one thing that Gracie was glad hadn’t come with them to Hawaii it was the sound of her parents voices raised in anger. The nasty words Mommy had used and the I-eat-bad-guys-and-you-are-a-bad-guy tone that Daddy had used before the divorce were some of Gracie’s worst memories, even worse than when she was five and had the flu and coughed so hard she threw up all over herself for hours). She couldn’t make out everything they were saying, but she heard Steve’s name coming from both of them, and they were still talking when she finally did fall asleep.

The next day, Mommy asked her if she’d like to spend an extra day with Daddy next weekend, and then after school they went to Sheetworld in Pearlridge Mall and not only did she get all the pink stuff for her bed, but she got to ride the monorail.

Now when she spends weekends with Daddy, he tucks her into the pink bed in her room, and he lets her leave the window open so she can hear the ocean right there in Steve’s backyard. At first, just Daddy would put her to bed, sometimes reading to her, sometimes telling her stories about when he and Uncle Matty were little kids in New Jersey, but always giving her a big kiss and a hug and saying he loved her. Now, though, Steve usually comes in just after Daddy. He doesn’t hug and kiss her, but he sometimes sits on the edge of the bed and pats the covers over her legs.  He usually reminds her that Danno loves her and tells her how lucky Danno is to have her. She agrees.

But just last weekend, as she was snuggling into her wonderful bed, she thought about Steve a little more than usual, and she decided that she and Daddy were pretty lucky too. She wondered if Steve knew how much she really, really liked his house, and her room and her bed and everything, and just in case he didn’t, she stayed awake until Steve came into her room and when he said, “Danno loves you,” she replied “Love you, Steve.”

Four. Gracie loves Steve McGarrett

Except for her daddy, Steve McGarrett is the coolest guy Gracie knows, and she loves him for lots of reasons. 

Steve is an awesome swimmer and just as soon as she wears them down enough to say yes, Mommy and Daddy are going to let him teach her how to surf. Steve wears cargo pants all the time and they have a million different pockets in them where he keeps his wallet and keys and phone, but also candies and small toys for her. Steve was in the Navy and has medals like Grandpa Williams had, and a pretty suit with gold stars on it (Secretly, Gracie thinks the suit would be more beautiful if it was pink).

Steve has a really cool car, big and black and shiny. He doesn’t drive it, but sometimes Gracie will find him sitting in it in the garage and he always invites her to join him, and he plays the radio sometimes and sometimes she pretends they are on a date. 

Steve built her bed, and he’s always fixing stuff up around the house and Daddy says he should change his name from McGarrett to McGuyver. Gracie doesn’t know who McGuyver is, but he must be a good friend of her daddy’s because he’s always smiling when he says it.

Steve always has lots of fruit in the house for her snacks, and he’s really good at making vegetables taste good (way better than Mommy, and Daddy insists that hot dogs are at least part vegetable so he’s no help), but he also keeps York Peppermint Patties in the freezer and whenever Daddy sneaks one for himself, he sneaks one for her too.

Steve has a big house that he says belongs to his family, and it’s built on the coast so the beach is right there, whenever she wants to play in the sand, or, as long as an adult is with her, go swimming. Steve is not just good at swimming, though. He’s also good at climbing, running, building sand castles and he’s got the high score on Dance Dance Revolution (although he didn’t beat her by much).

Steve has tattoos that cover his whole shoulders and Daddy says she can have tattoos too, if she wants them, when she turns ninety. Steve has the longest eyelashes Gracie has ever seen on a man and when she asked him once if he used make-up like Drew Barrymore, Daddy laughed so hard he was almost crying, and then he called Steve Princess for the whole day.

Steve doesn’t mind being called Princess.

Steve likes hugging, but isn’t very good at it. He looked stiff and a little scared when Gracie hugged him the first weekend she got to stay at his house. Gracie hugs him now every time she gets to be with him and Daddy, so he can get more practice and be better at it. Daddy is helping him practice, too, and pretty soon Gracie knows he’ll be as good at hugs as Daddy.

The thing Gracie loves most about Steve is a secret. Sometimes Gracie gets nightmares. She knows she is way too old to be sleeping with her Mommy or Daddy, but sometimes she wakes up absolutely convinced that there is a monster under the bed, and not all the pink fluffy throw rugs in the universe are going to make it go away. She knows that if anyone at school ever heard of this they’d laugh her right out of the second grade. Steve seems to know that this is a secret that has to be kept. Because when she absolutely can’t stand being alone in the dark for a minute more, and she walks quietly down the hallway to Steve and Daddy’s room, Steve is always awake by the time she pushes open the door. He doesn’t offer her a glass of water, like Mommy, or tell her to go back to bed, like Stan, or take her back to bed and talk to her like Daddy does sometimes. He just moves away from Daddy without waking him (like a ninja) and makes room for her in the middle of their big bed (the comforter is the colour of sand, and makes Gracie feel warm and content, even if she thinks it should be pink, like hers). In the dark, with just moonlight coming in through the window, it’s hard for Gracie to see the smile on Steve’s face, but she knows it’s there. So she just snuggles down between them, and then Steve will kiss her on the forehead and put one long tattooed arm out so that he’s hugging her and Daddy at the same time and he whispers, “You’re safe. I will always keep you safe.”

Five. Gracie loves Danno

Gracie knows her daddy is the most amazing person in the world. For one thing, he has blonde hair, and almost everyone else Gracie knows in Hawaii has brown or black hair.  If that wasn’t enough, her daddy is a policeman. And not just a regular policeman, like Sergeant Kinimaka, who comes to her classroom once a month in his blue suit to tell them to look both ways when they cross the street and to never get into a stranger’s car. Gracie knew those rules ages ago, because her daddy is a special policeman; a detective. And he works with Steve, who is a commander, and even though she’s not quite sure what a commander is, it sounds important, so that makes her daddy important, too.

But what really makes her daddy the best person ever, even more than his job, or his hair, or how he and Steve always find fun things for her to do when she’s with them, even more than all that, is something that Daddy doesn’t even think she remembers, but she does (and always will, even years and years later, when she has to tell the story at a funeral and try desperately not to cry, knowing it will just make it harder on Steve).

When Mommy told her that Stan was going to be working in Hawaii, and that she and Gracie were going to be living there, her first question had been could she swim with dolphins like she’d seen on Animal Planet.  And then she asked if Daddy was going to move to Hawaii, too.

Mommy told her no; told her that she could still see Daddy in Weehawken at Thanksgiving, or maybe Christmas; told her that Daddy had to stay in New Jersey because his job was important; his family was here; he had commitments.

She refused to eat supper and was still crying in her room when Daddy came to get her for the weekend. He looked like he might have been crying, too, but Gracie knew her Daddy never cried. He hugged her for a really long time, which made her crying stop (he could always do that, like he had some kind of magic), and then he set her gently on her bed and sat down beside her and held her hands. He didn’t say anything right away, and Gracie wondered if she had done something wrong. She must have, because Daddy was looking so serious, and this would maybe be the last time she saw her Daddy for a really long time, and if that wasn’t punishment, she didn’t know what was. She was getting ready to cry again when Daddy asked what Mommy had told her about going to Hawaii.

So she told him about moving, and how she wanted to swim with dolphins (which he said sounded like fun) and then, because she didn’t want to be punished, she told him she understood that he had commitments and couldn’t come to Hawaii with her and then she did cry a little more when she told him that she wasn’t sure what commitments were.

She thought Daddy might hug her again then, but he just took a deep breath. And then another.  And then he said that a commitment was a pledge or a promise.

“And Gracie,” he said, “You are my number one commitment. Don’t ever forget that, or let anyone tell you different.  And even though I can’t come with you on the plane ride to Hawaii, I will come to you. I will always come when you need me. That’s my commitment. So let’s just say you’re going to go on ahead and scope out the scene for me, okay? Check out the pineapples and the surfers and the hula dancers, and I will be there just as soon as I can.”

“You promise?” she knew she wasn’t supposed to wipe her nose on her sleeve, but she did it anyway.

“I promise. Always.”

And then he did hug her again and she hugged him back and whispered “I love you Danno” and he said back to her “I love you more.”

The first week in Hawaii was in a hotel and Mommy wouldn’t let her swim with dolphins, and the second week they were moving into a big house (the biggest she’d ever seen) and Stan hired a painter to make her room pink. The third week they went to some schools to see if Mommy and Stan liked them (it didn’t seem to matter whether she liked them, but it wasn’t that big a deal because they all seemed fine, even if they weren’t in New Jersey) And the fourth week (a month already, she’d changed the page on the calendar) she started school and found out that math was easier in Hawaii but English was harder, and all her teachers had funny names.

When she came out of the school that Friday, she finished her conversation with her new best friend Abegaila and when she looked up to see if she could see Stan’s car, there was Daddy, leaning against an awesome sports car, wearing the tie Gracie had picked out for him two Christmases ago, and holding a big pink fuzzy pillow in his arms.

He had come for her, just like he promised.

Gracie doesn’t love Tommy

Even though Daddy told her not to listen to a word that Tommy says ‘cos he’s a pathological liar (Gracie isn’t sure what pathological means, but she figures it’s Danno-speak for jerkface, which Tommy is), she can’t help hearing him.  Tommy told her that rabbits eat pineapple, which Mr. Hoppy proved was a lie, and then he told her that box jellyfish could crawl into her bedroom through the window at night and kill her. (She had nightmares about that one, and the next day Daddy and Steve took her to Lanikai Beach and showed her how to be safe in the water, and then, after supper that night, they all sat on the couch together and watched a special on different jellyfish and none of them could get into bedrooms).

Tommy calls her a spaz, sometimes, and a haole (When she told Daddy that, he asked her where the hell Tommy thought Cleveland was, then apologized for swearing and made her promise not to tell Mommy) (Steve just told her to be proud of the fact).  He calls her a dork a lot and once he called her a douche, and when she asked Mommy what a douche was, Mommy had turned pink like Steve’s ears and when she found out Tommy had called her that, she talked to Tommy’s mom and then Tommy didn’t talk to her for a whole week, which was awesome.

Then, one Friday when it was Daddy’s weekend, he and Steve came to pick her up after school, and she waved to show she had seen them, Tommy came up behind her and gave her a shove. Not enough to knock her over, just enough to make her angry.

“Jerk,” she muttered. She knew some other words she could call him, but Mommy always told her that when people were rude to her, she should never stoop to their level, which meant she couldn’t use any of the words she heard on television sometimes or even from Daddy once in a while, although he always apologized to her right away.

“Oh, look, your mahu daddies are here for you, Gracie-Lou!” said Tommy

Gracie hates being called Gracie-Lou, but she ignores it this time, because she’s too busy being shocked and angry by turns at what Tommy has called Steve and her Daddy. She knows what mahu means because Abegaila  had told her that Abegaila’s uncle was mahu and that meant gay.  Mommy had explained to her about gay people last year when she’d asked about her friend Mary’s two mommies. But Abegaila said that mahu was a mean way to say it, and besides, even if her Daddy and Steve were gay, which honestly hadn’t occurred to her, there was no way that it was any of Tommy’s darned business.

“Pa'a ka waha!” she told Tommy and then she decided she didn’t have to say anything else, even though secretly she had been learning all kinds of Hawaiian words from Uncle Chin and Aunty Kono.  She didn’t have to add any swears (which, she believed, weren’t real swears if they weren’t in English) because, as she ran into her daddy’s arms, and then reached out when he picked her up so that she was hugging Steve as well as Daddy, she looked back at Tommy, and at Tommy’s Green Lantern backpack (her backpack was HelloKitty and way cooler than the Green Lantern) in particular, she realized something.

 She had finally figured out what to do with all that Mr. Hoppy poop.