Hawaiʻi was never a place for me. It was a vaguely perceptible dot in the ocean of my awareness. It was a place where rich people lived. Where the privileged vacationed. Where pineapples grew.

It was blonde-haired blue-eyed Wendy Watkins from my Sunday school class when I was ten, going every year with her family and coming back all suntanned, hair-bleached, and full of all the reasons why Kauai was the only island worth going to anymore. Too many cheap tourists everywhere else, you know.