Pāhonoa te oro

The morning of Madi’s sixth birthday started the same way all great adventures do — with the smell of pancakes. She tumbled out of bed before the sun had fully cleared the Saddleback Mountains, her hair a wild tangle of curls, her Eevee pajamas already two sizes too small. She didn’t care. Today was not just any birthday. Today was THE birthday. She’d been marking off the days on her Pokémon calendar for two whole months. Lake Forest, California was not the kind of city you’d find in a Pokémon