Paper Boats

by Dee Lestari

  Noni’s and Eko’s jaws dropped. They turned around. Kugy was at the information kiosk manning the microphone. Before long, a station employee hurried over to take care of the situation—a punk kid who’d taken the opportunity to get up to no good when he’d taken a break to go to the bathroom.

  Noni and Eko weren’t the only ones witnessing all this. Not far off a young man also stood gawking. And this young man was now sure that the strange girl whom the station attendant had just shooed away was the same girl he thought had been calling his name before.

  Kugy was laughing as she approached Noni and Eko. “It’s his own fault, leaving his post like that.”

  Just then, the three of them saw a young man walking toward them.

  Keenan was about to say, “Excuse me,” when it struck him. “Eko?” he asked.

  “Keenan?”

  They looked at one another in amazement. Their minds ran down their respective corridors of memory, all the way back to nine years ago. Keenan remembered Eko as a big-boned boy bordering on plump, with a cheerful disposition and long curly lashes that made him look like a girl. Eko remembered Keenan as a boy with Caucasian features and brownish hair, skinny and long-legged with downcast eyes. Even though he had rarely spoken, he had always had a smile on his lips. And now here was Keenan towering over him, tall and strong. His hair, which was tied back in a ponytail, was no longer brown but pitch-black, and hung a little below his shoulders. Only the expression in his eyes hadn’t changed—the same expression that made Keenan seem older than he was, even when he was a little boy. Keenan also wouldn’t have recognized his cousin if it weren’t for his two round eyes fringed by curling lashes. They had always been Eko’s most distinguishing feature and had earned him the nickname Pretty Boy. But now his cousin was no longer round like a ball. On the contrary, he looked as if he could be a fitness instructor.

  Those nine years seemed to melt away when they embraced each other. Laughing, they realized that they’d practically been standing next to each other the whole time.

  “Your mother was right. You do look like a real artist!” Eko exclaimed, thumping Keenan on the shoulder. “Keenan, this is my girl, Noni. And this is her friend . . .”

  Kugy looked flustered, her face red as she extended her hand.

  “Hi. I’m Kugy . . .”

  Keenan grinned as he took the small hand and watched her duck her head in embarrassment. She really was just like a kitten. “Hi. So, we’re properly introduced at last.”

  “Have you two met?” asked Eko, seeing the odd way they were looking at each other. Kugy had gone limp, like a prawn cracker someone had drenched in water, while Keenan looked guilty, as if he’d been caught red-handed.

  “No!” they both answered at the same time. Exchanging glances, they laughed.

  “Yes!” they said at the same time again, correcting themselves. And again, they laughed.

  “What’s going on?” asked Noni. She and Eko were beginning to wonder if this was all a setup.

  “We must have known each other in a past life,” Kugy answered quickly.

  “Yup,” Keenan added with a straight face. “And let me tell you, she sure was fierce.”

  Eko tilted his head, wondering whether they were serious or joking, and whether it mattered. “Did she dress this badly in her past life?”

  “Oh, always!” Keenan grinned.

  Kugy guffawed with delight. She felt her confidence returning. For an instant, the four of them felt a closeness that transcended time and space, as if they had all been friends for a long time.

  Soon, it began to pour again. In the parking lot of the train station, a bright-yellow Fiat was trying its best to exit. Noni sat behind the wheel while her three friends pushed the car from behind, Kugy in the middle, flanked by the two men. Kugy looked small, but it was obvious from the sound of her loud voice that she was the overseer. Yelling with all her might, she spurred them on until finally the Fiat began running again on its own power rather than theirs.

  The telephone in the corridor of the student boarding house had been ringing for some time. Finally, there came the pitter-patter of running feet and Kugy yelling, “Don’t pick it up! It’s for me!”

  She snatched up the receiver and breathlessly greeted the person on the other end. “Hello?”

  “Hi, darling.”

  “Hi, Josh.”

  “Did you just come back from jogging or something? That’s unusually athletic of you.”

  “Not jogging. Pushing. A car.”

  “What?”

  “In the rain, too. Pouring rain.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Fuad’s sick and Eko had to pick up his cousin from the station. The one from the Netherlands. So they needed me to push the car in case it stalled. Ugh. It’s just like Fuad. He really stalled this time.”

  “Is Eko crazy? Why couldn’t he find someone else? There must have been lots of coolies at the station. He should’ve just paid one of them to help instead. You’ll catch a chill being out in the rain like this. Eko and Fuad can’t sub for you if you have to miss class.”

  “Josh, it’s not a big deal. Eko and his cousin were the ones really doing all the pushing. I just pretended—for moral support.”

  “But it was raining, right?”

  “Well, yeah . . .”

  “See?” And with that, the floodgates opened, releasing an unceasing torrent of rebuke.

  Kugy grimaced, waiting for it to end as she wrung out the hem of her T-shirt. Josh had been her boyfriend for two years, and when it came to arguments she could never win. If Kugy had to pick a phrase to describe their dynamic, it would be “opposites attract.” Not a single one of their friends believed it when they had first become a couple—not hers, and not Josh’s. They were different in almost every way. Clean-cut, basketball-playing Josh was a favorite among the girls at school thanks to his good looks, his cool car, and the manners of a born Prince Charming. Opening doors, buying flowers, taking her to candlelit dinners at expensive restaurants—for Josh, this was all standard operating procedure. Kugy was popular at school in her own right since she was very social and participated in a variety of activities. But she was his polar opposite. They called her Mother Alien because she was considered the head honcho of all the weirdos at school. Nobody knew what to make of it: How on earth did Prince Charming and Mother Alien end up together?

  No one knew the answer. Not Josh. Not Kugy. Maybe Josh had been smitten with Kugy because she was so unlike the other girls he had dated. Kugy was so relaxed and unafraid to be herself. In contrast, other girls were always falling over themselves to get him to take them out just once for dinner or a movie. Kugy hadn’t taken Josh’s advances seriously at first because of the glaring differences between them. What Kugy hadn’t realized was that this had piqued Josh’s interest all the more.

  Kugy would never forget the day they had officially become a couple. The rain had been coming down that afternoon with the same force it was coming down now. And Josh had taken up Kugy’s challenge of taking public transportation to get to her house. He had arrived at the front door, drenched. His hair, usually so neat, was limp with rainwater. And his bouquet of white roses was a mess, having been crushed against the backs of the other passengers on the Metromini bus. It was then that Kugy saw Josh in a new light—not as a spoiled brat, the apple of the school’s eye, but as someone who was willing to make sacrifices for the person on whom he had set his heart. And in the end, Kugy had decided to set her heart on him as well.

  They had been going out for almost two years, and they still remained two completely different people. But to Kugy, Josh—so careful and fussy—functioned as someone who gave her life structure, who brought her back down to earth whenever she lingered too long in the realm of imagination. To Josh, Kugy—who couldn’t care less what other people thought and did whatever she liked—served to remind him that he should relax and welcome the surprises life had to offer. They’d learned to adapt to each other
. One trick Kugy had learned whenever Josh lapsed into nagging was to hold the phone away from her ear and busy herself with something else—as she was doing now, wringing the hem of her T-shirt with great enthusiasm.

  “Kugy? Are you listening to me?”

  Quickly, Kugy returned the phone to her ear. “What? Sorry, you were breaking up just now.”

  “I said, in the future just take a taxi. Don’t rely on Fuad. You’ve been taken in by that car one too many times.”

  “Eh. Taxis are expensive. Besides, whenever I push Fuad, Eko buys me something to drink.”

  Josh took a deep breath. It was useless. “All right. Whatever. Change your clothes or you’ll catch a cold. Oh, also, when are you going to buy a new cell phone? Do you really want to keep using the communal phone at the boarding house? Wouldn’t it be nicer if you could talk to me in your room?”

  The screen on Kugy’s cell phone, a secondhand model from four years ago, had stopped working. She’d resorted to “relying on feel.” As a result, Kugy was always running out of minutes because she kept dialing the wrong number. She also couldn’t avoid unwanted calls because she couldn’t tell who was calling her.

  “I have to save up first, Josh. I’m too embarrassed to ask my old man for money. And if it’s for a cell phone, I don’t think he’s going to give it to me. But I’m writing a short story and sending it to a magazine. There’s prize money involved.”

  “What’s the story about?”

  “Oh, it’s just a love story. If they publish it, I’ll get enough to buy a new phone.”

  “Of course they’ll publish it. You’re amazing. After all—”

  “And guess what else? I’m writing a fairy tale about vegetables! Get this: the protagonist is Prince Radish from the Kingdom of Root Vegetables. And the villain is a witch named Madam Turmeric from the land of Spice . . .”

  Whenever Kugy began yammering away about imaginary worlds he didn’t understand, Josh had his own trick. He would hold the phone away from his ear and busy himself with something else. He began flipping through the stack of car magazines in front of him, his mouth opening occasionally to utter an “Oh yeah? Hmm. Uh-huh. Is that so?”

  “Cool, huh? Awesome story, right, Josh? Hello?”

  Josh quickly pressed the phone to his ear again. “Wow! Crazy! Very cool! Okay, you should go take a shower. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay, darling? Bye!”

  “See ya!” said Kugy. She was about to stand up when a towel landed in her lap.

  Noni was standing in front of her. “Josh chewed you out, huh?”

  “Yeah, what else is new? He’s basically the male version of you.” Kugy cackled.

  “Eko’s taking me out for dinner later. Come with?”

  Kugy gulped. “Will we be taking Fuad again?”

  “Fuad’s dead. We’ll take him to a mechanic tomorrow. The plan is for Eko and Keenan to come here by bus, and then we’ll all walk to look for something close by. Or we’ll order takeout.”

  “Woo-hoo! Free food! And I don’t have to push anything!” Leaping happily to her feet, Kugy disappeared into the bathroom.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SACRED CIRCLE

  An empty cardboard pizza box lay open on the floor in the communal living room at the boarding house. The TV was on with the volume low, but no one was watching. Around the pizza box, four people sat on the floor, chatting and laughing.

  “Your turn, Kugy.”

  “Okay,” said Kugy, clearing her throat. “Each member of this sacred circle must share the weirdest thing they’ve ever done. Full disclosure!”

  “Sorry, but I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Noni, raising her hand. “Nothing is ‘weird’ to Kugy.”

  Everyone laughed, including Kugy. “Bad news for you. And good news for me.”

  Noni thought for a bit. “When I was in elementary school, I was in a play. And I was cast as . . . Pak Raden from the TV show Si Unyil. Complete with a false moustache.”

  Everyone giggled.

  “Physically speaking, you were miscast.”

  “But character-wise, very fitting.”

  It was Keenan’s turn. “Hmm. I once did a lip sync of a dangdut song by Meggy Z. Complete with a joget dance.”

  Keenan’s confession was greeted with silence. Everyone’s mouth hung open as they imagined Keenan crooning like an old-fashioned dangdut singer, swaying his head and hips from side to side.

  Seeing their reaction, Keenan felt he should elaborate. “My school in Amsterdam was having a talent night, and because they knew I was from Indonesia, they asked me to perform something uniquely Indonesian. That was the only thing I could think of. But they loved it. The whole school danced along.”

  “Which song?”

  “‘Toothache.’”

  More silence. And then, Eko started to clap. It wasn’t long before everyone joined in.

  “Thank you, thank you.” Keenan stood up and took a deep bow.

  It was Kugy’s turn. She thought hard. Noni was right. Almost everything she did tended to be weird. It was hard to choose.

  “Hurry up. You’re taking too long,” Eko said.

  “Hold on, hold on,” mumbled Kugy. “This is really tough.” She screwed up her face and thought long and hard.

  “Do you need help?” Noni offered.

  “If you please.”

  “Kugy likes to send letters to the sea god, Neptune,” Noni said, suppressing a laugh.

  Keenan knitted his brow. “How?”

  “Simple,” Kugy said. “When I used to live near the beach, I set them out to sea. After we moved, I set them out wherever there was flowing water. All water flows to the sea.” She was sitting up straight now, explaining herself with great energy.

  “So what was your purpose in sending the letters?” Eko asked.

  “Friends, it’s high time you all knew. I’m actually”—Kugy took a deep breath—“an alien.”

  The silence this time was even deeper than before—stifling, to be exact, rendering them all speechless. Eko was trying so hard not to burst into laughter he felt like he was going to die.

  “I actually work for Neptune, and I have been sent to Earth as a spy,” Kugy explained. “And, by sheer coincidence, I’m an Aquarius. Amazing, isn’t it?” Her eyes were shining.

  “Same! I’m an Aquarius, too,” said Keenan.

  “Yo! Brotha!” Kugy shook Keenan’s hand, then placed two fingers on either side of her head and waggled them. Keenan did the same.

  Eko buried his head in a pillow. He was shaking with laughter. “I feel like I’m in an alien nation right now!” he exclaimed from the pillow’s depths.

  “See, I was right. This challenge isn’t challenging for Kugy at all,” said Noni. “Come on, Eko. It’s your turn.”

  “I say this with all due respect, but the weirdest thing I’ve ever done was . . . to have a crush on Kugy.”

  Keenan guffawed, followed by Kugy, who proceeded to roll on the floor with laughter. Meanwhile, Noni’s mouth hung open. “You had a crush on Kugy? W-When?”

  “When my classroom was next door to hers. Second year of middle school. Good thing you’d moved from Jakarta to Bandung by then, darling. You didn’t have to watch me embarrass myself.” Eko patted Noni on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I regretted it immediately. I used to go to Kugy’s library all the time. Every time I saw her, she was reading a book. But once she opened her mouth . . . it was all over!” Eko began laughing as well.

  Keenan pointed at Eko, then at Noni. “So how did you two end up together?”

  Eko’s expression turned serious. “Noni is the love of my life. I mean it. I’ve had my eye on her since the first year of middle school.”

  “Liar!” Noni sputtered. “We didn’t even know each other back then! You only met me after I’d moved away. And even then, we met at Kugy’s house, didn’t we? I bet the only reason you were such a faithful library patron was because you were still trying to get to know Kugy. Huh! You have some nerve, pretendi
ng we were close, pretending you had your eye on me since the first year of middle school, even though you didn’t know me at all.”

  “Whoa, take it easy,” said Eko with a grin. “Just trying my best. Who knew you had such a good memory?”

  “So Kugy played matchmaker?” asked Keenan.

  “As if!” chimed Eko and Noni in unison.

  Kugy shook her head. “Sorry. I’m staunchly against matchmaking and all attempts to set people up,” she said coolly.

  “I’ll say. This idiot is actually the one who most opposed it!” Eko exclaimed. “She even told Noni that I was a dangerous species of human being! Would you believe it?”

  “I based my analysis on your record of not returning your books. And on what kind of books you borrowed. No offense.”

  “See? She’s too much! Imagine! Ruining my prospects just because of a library record.”

  “What kind of books did Eko borrow?” Keenan asked.

  “In two years of membership, all he borrowed were books from the Captain Shadow comic series. And he checked out the title Children of Satan more than ten times. In the end, he never even returned it. Why wouldn’t I be suspicious?”

  This was greeted by an explosion of laughter from Keenan and Noni. Eko’s face turned red. This time, he could offer no defense.

  Kugy cleared her throat. “So you see? I can’t be a weirdo, because everything that has anything to do with me is awesome. Eko—whose claim to weirdness rests on falling for and associating with a weirdo—isn’t weird after all, because the weirdo he likes is actually awesome. Noni, your fake moustache pales in comparison to Keenan’s Meggy Z impression, meaning the winner of the sacred circle this time around is . . .”

  “Keenan!” the three of them chorused.

  The evening concluded with Keenan lip-synching “Toothache” by Meggy Z.

  “Hi. Can I come in?”

  Kugy had been working on her computer in her room with the door half-open. To her surprise, she saw Keenan standing in the doorway.