happy I took a minute to read the brochure in the cabana. “The dormant volcano.”
He gives me an appreciative thumbs-up, and we pile our stuff into the rented Jeep Wrangler, then take off, following the signs for the volcano. We climb high into the clouds, passing pastures with grazing cows. When we finally get to the parking lot, we see a Jeep with Ivy and Cody just leaving. I hope that means we’re catching up.
When we climb out, we rush into the welcome center. Someone at the welcome center tells us that we need to proceed down a route into the crater. We rush into the barren, moonlike landscape, and up ahead we see the outpost, which makes us run faster.
I’m feeling good. Almost athletic. Like we can do this. I keep up with Luke now, or maybe he’s just falling in with my pace. But we make a good team.
We get to the outpost and see Brad and Natalie there. I get a thrill of excitement, thinking yes, we really are catching up, when I hear Brad let out a torrent of curses. He starts to kick and pummel at the wooden post in front of him.
As we near it, I see it. Four posts, one for each team. There is a little glass-faced cabinet with the clue visible inside, but it’s locked with a padlock. I come up close to it and lift it. It’s a combination padlock, looking for five numbers.
“What do you think this is?” I ask Luke.
“Hell if I know,” he says. “Did we get a combination?”
“No!” Brad growls, punching his palm. “We’ve been here an hour, trying every fucking combination we can think of.”
I look around, then at the clue. It hits me right away.
I put in one, zero, zero, two, three, then yank the lock.
It opens.
“Holy fuck,” Luke breathes. “What did you just do?”
I grab the clue and rip it open as Brad and Natalie stare at us. “The height of the mountain,” I tell them. “The highest point on Maui.”
“Oh!” Natalie says and starts to press in the number. I grab Luke’s hand, and we rush back to the parking lot.
I pull the clue out of the envelope and read. “We have to take the Road to Hana. When we get to the end of the road, beyond the Seven Sacred Pools, we’ll get our next clue.”
“The Seven Sacred Pools? Shit.”
We jump into the open-topped Jeep and take off. Road sounds a lot tamer than what this actually is. It turns out that the road is a narrow, twisty one-lane dirt path, with traffic going in both directions . . . on the side of a high cliff over the ocean. If you take any one of the hairpin curves too fast, you might find yourself careening straight into a tour bus coming the opposite way. Swerving to miss it means hitting a cliff wall or plummeting a hundred feet into the rocks below. So the speed limit is only five miles per hour.
Luke drives forty, his hands gripping the wheel, his body tense, like he’s got something to prove.
“Do you see that?” I say, pointing across the inlet. “I think that might be Ivy and Cody.”
Luke presses on the accelerator, swerving narrowly to miss a stray cow on the road. “Hell yeah. We’re coming in right behind them.”
I grip the handle on the door, hoping we do and don’t somehow end up falling to our deaths, because that would be a really great way to finish this season.
We end up driving past the very crowded and touristy Seven Sacred Pools, but the road continues on, and we manage to catch up to Ivy and Cody, ending up right on their tails. We climb out and see the marker telling us which trail to take. It’s simply a bunch of arrows on the path that we need to follow.
Once again, our two teams are neck and neck on the trail, which is mostly uphill and rocky. Luke gives me a hand during the really steep parts, and we don’t lag behind.
We all stop and look up in wonder at an ice-blue pool with three narrow, beautiful waterfalls cascading into it. Cody points to the arrow.
Which is pointing straight up the waterfall.
Fear tightens my chest.
“How do we do that?” I ask Luke. “There’s got to be an easier way. I’m not Spider-Man.”
He rakes his hands through his scrubby buzz cut and frowns. “Nah. I bet it’s easier than it looks. Come on.”