by Heidi Kling
Then Tom walked up.
“Deni, there you are. The pesantren owner needs to speak with you.”
Deni jumped up, wide-eyed. “About my father? Is there more word? Has he sent for me?”
When Tom glanced at me, I recognized that look.
It was the same look Spider’s mom had on the rooftop. Whatever they were going to tell Deni, it wasn’t good news.
Tom touched Deni’s shoulder. “I better let him explain, son.”
Deni looked at me, his eyes full of worry and questions.
“It will be okay, Deni,” I said. I wanted to go with him, to hold his hand, to be whatever he wanted me to be, but how could I do that? And then Tom was looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time. Looking back and forth from me ... to Deni ... and back to me. Tom’s instincts were unfortunately dead-on.
“Sienna? What are you two doing out here?”
I glanced at Deni from the corner of my eye. “Nothing ... talking ... and helping Elli with her art before group starts,” I said, guilt creeping up my chest for using her as a cover.
His eyes narrowed. “After breakfast the pesantren owner called a special meeting to explain what’s going on with Deni—didn’t you hear him?”
I shook my head. Deni and I both left early; we hadn’t heard.
“You know you can’t be out here with him alone,” Tom said.
I shrugged and picked some mud off the wall. “We weren’t alone,” I said, gesturing toward Elli. Tom raised his bushy eyebrows as if to warn me: We’ll be talking about this later.
But Deni backed me up. “It is the truth, Dr. Tom,” he said. “I was talking with Sienna about my father. That he is alive. That is all. Her father knows we are friends.” He smiled at me after he said it.
Tom acknowledged him with an unconvinced nod. But then I felt a familiar icicle of dread plunge through my chest when I understood the root.
It wasn’t from happiness Deni grinned; it was hope.
Elli and I waited on the porch of Bapak’s office, listening to Deni and the owner argue loudly in their language. Elli drew stars, moons and planets on the concrete in lavenders and mint greens, the heat crawling over my back as the morning dragged on.
Deni had been in there a long time.
I couldn’t make out much but heard Aceh mentioned several times. Deni’s voice kept cracking and I wondered if he was crying.
“Stars,” I said, pointing to Elli’s drawing. “Stars,” I said, pointing up at the blue sky.
She looked at me like I was being silly. “No stars,” she said. “Sun.”
“Ha, you’re right. Smart girl,” I said as the door finally flew open, slamming into the wall, and Deni stormed out of the building. He didn’t see us. At least I didn’t think he did. His face was angry, and whatever Bapak said couldn’t have been good.
I started to stand, my legs numb from sitting for so long on the hard porch, but then the owner walked out too, staring after Deni, shaking his head. He glanced over at me and Elli with harsh charcoal eyes but didn’t say anything. I started drawing with Elli again.
I wished he hadn’t said whatever he said to wipe away Deni’s hope.
“Elli,” I whispered once Bapak was back inside, “take this stuff back to the room, please. I have to go find Deni.”
She tilted her head, asking, What?
“The bunk,” I said, scooping up the chalk into her hands. “Go.”
I sprinted across the lawn to the trail. It was so humid I felt like I was running through soup. But Deni wasn’t on the trail. He wasn’t on the wall.
Where would he go?
The motor.
I ran toward the front gate. Sure enough, Deni was on the other side, rewing it up, wearing his cracker helmet. His face was a mix of rage and disappointment. There was no extra helmet for me.
“Deni!” I cried from the other side of the closed gate. The gatekeeper was nowhere in sight. “What happened? What did he say?”
He turned to the sound of my voice. Looked at me but didn’t answer. I leaned over the gate.
“Deni!” I yelled. “Please come back in. Or can we go somewhere? Tell me what happened.”
He stared at me blankly, like he didn’t recognize me. Or if he had, he didn’t want to. He revved the engine again and then screeched off into the crowded city streets without me.
RUMORS
With nothing better to do, I accepted Dad’s invitation to walk with him into town. Dad suggested a little shopping. Get some souvenirs for everyone back home. Guilt crept up my neck. I was a terrible friend, forgetting about them with everything else on my mind here. So I bought a coin purse for Bev embellished with a blue elephant dotted with orange and purple beads. I tucked three Indonesian coins inside. For Oma I looked through dozens of batiks, which Dad said are the traditional art of Indonesia, until I found the perfect one: a flowing wall hanging hand-painted in five shades of brown, with a bird free-floating in a flower garden of kaleidoscope shapes. Spider was the trickiest. But when I stumbled upon a small wooden sitar, I knew that was just the thing. I wrote all three postcards, thinking about the one Mom sent to me. Then I tucked them in with their presents and with Dad’s help mailed them from the post office.
Dad took me to lunch at a restaurant that reminded me of the one I went to with Deni. At first the distraction was nice, but I couldn’t keep my mind off of him, wondering where he was, who he was with. If he was going to be okay.
The rest of the day pesantren talk-talk filled the thick air:
“A person looking for a Deni but not at a pesantren.”
“Someone saw Deni’s father in Jakarta.”
“Not Deni’s bapak; it’s his mother who lives.”
“No one is looking for an older boy named Deni. It’s a small boy they are looking for.”
“Deni gets wild crazy like this sometimes. It’s like when the wave came.”
“He runs away when he is angry. He is very angry now.”
“Bapak won’t let him go. He won’t help him find his father.”
“I don’t know if he will come back.”
I flopped onto a patch of muddy grass, overwhelmed with talk-talk and guilt that this was somehow my fault, that I wished his hope away.
I needed to fix it.
I waited for him on our wall, but he didn’t come back.
When the sun went down, Dad insisted I join Team Hope and the kids for dinner. They talked about this and that, but I could only stare at the empty place at the foot of the table where the other soccer boys were eating without him. I asked Dad if he knew what happened with the owner, if he’d heard anything.
“Someone from an NGO, a nongovernmental organization, in Banda Aceh called and left a message on the pesantren’s answering machine last night asking if a boy named Deni lived here. The problem is the person asking for Deni did not leave any forwarding information. No phone number or name. It wasn’t a lot to go on, and I doubt the pesantren owner would have even mentioned it, but one of the older boys was working in the office and heard it and let Deni know anyway.”
The call came while we were out. While he was with me in the alley in the rain.
“So that is something. It could be our Deni, right?” I asked.
“Doubtful,” Vera chimed in between bites of sticky rice. “Indonesians don’t use their last names, and there are many Denis. Before the owner is going to invest valuable resources in looking into it, he would need confirmation. The name of Deni’s father at least ... Deni, son of...”
“So are they going to start looking for the person who left the message?” I asked.
Vera looked at Dad, who looked back at me. “No one has that kind of manpower, honey. They are still head high in disaster relief up in Aceh. And everyone is tremendously busy here at the pesantren. The few adults they have working are up to their eyeballs in stuff to do already.”
“Right, they aren’t about to call every single NGO inquiring ... ,” Vera added, catching Dad
’s agreeing eye.
I bit my lip. “So no one will do anything to help Deni, then?”
Tom shrugged. “The person may call again, but Deni was insisting that Bapak pay for a bus ticket to travel up to Aceh so he could look for himself. There’s just no way. Deni is a ward of the orphanage now—the owner adopted the surviving Aceh kids. If he pays for Deni to go searching based on a rumor, all the kids will want to go back home.”
I sighed. “So he has to stay here? Even though his father may be alive? That’s so unfair! He may not be an orphan at all. Dad, we can give him money, right? For a bus ticket?”
Dad scratched his chin. “It’s not that simple, kiddo ...”
I pushed my bowl of untouched rice away from me. “Why not? How much could it cost? You could go with him, Dad. You said you wanted to go to Aceh ... or we could all go. Talk about something productive—helping Deni find his dad.”
My mind raced with ideas.
Until I registered their faces.
“What? What’s the matter with my idea?”
“We’re leaving in a few days, Sienna. We still have a lot to do here; we’re just placing the older kids with the younger ones and so far the trial is successful. And we are making great progress in the afternoon therapy sessions—we can’t just leave these kids without following through on what we started.”
Vera added, “Your intentions are noble, but we can’t just go jetting off to Aceh,” to which Dad nodded, of course, in utter agreement with Senorita Skunk. “Not to mention the fact that it’s completely out of our jurisdiction to go against Bapak’s wishes.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hey, the pesantren may be poor,” Dad said, “but the kids are enrolled in school here at least. It’s best for Deni to stay and focus on his future. And sweetie,” he said, lowering his voice, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get so attached.”
Vera nodded. Tom caught my eye and nodded too.
“... or to encourage false hope,” Vera said, pounding the last nail in her lameness coffin.
When I stood up, the table rattled. “I’m NOT giving him false hope.” My heart burned with frustration. “I thought we were here to help. This is someone who needs us—really needs us—and you won’t help him? Great. That’s just great. Why the hell did we even come?”
Tears scorched behind my eyes as I ran out of the room.
“I warned you something was going on between the two of them,” I heard Tom’s deep voice say behind me.
“I was hoping you were wrong,” answered my dad.
I spun around on my heels, forgetting where I was, forgetting it wasn’t okay to make a scene. “Well, he wasn’t!” I yelled at their startled faces.
FOUND
I fell into a turbulent sleep, filled with falling stars, exploding planets and drowning fishermen. I woke up in a cold sweat and squinted into the darkness, wondering if I’d screamed out in my sleep. The other girls were still, their long hair spilled over thin pillow tops. If I had yelled, it must not have been that loud.
But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I needed to look for him.
The night was so warm I didn’t need a sweater. I just slipped on my flip-flops and headed toward the wall.
Something slunk across the path, its yellow eyes shining like headlights in the dark, and I jumped. I cursed at the feral cat rubbing against my cotton pants. “Fabulous. Now a black cat’s crossed my path,” I muttered.
I checked the wall. No.
Maybe he made it back to his dorm, then? Maybe I’d see him in the morning.
I was starting to head back when a stroke, gentle as a feather, breezed across my shoulder blades. I whirled around.
“Deni—jeez. You scared me to death. Where have you been?”
He didn’t say anything but instead ran his fingers down my arm, reached for my hand and whispered, “Must be quiet.”
He pulled me toward the wall, but instead of sitting on it, he hopped over and headed down the grassy slope toward the river where the street kids hang. I followed him. His face wasn’t angry anymore; it was determined. He squeezed my fingers tight.
Needing to fill up the silence, I babbled. “It’s going to be okay, Deni. I mean ... maybe the person will call back and leave their name ... and the pesantren owner will change his mind and let you go? If he doesn’t, we’ll figure out something else....”
He didn’t say anything, just kept pulling me toward the river.
When we got to the place where the street kids fish for cans, he let go of my hand and gestured for me to sit.
“What’s going on, Deni?” I whispered. “Where were you all day?”
He licked his bottom lip and my stomach leapt. I wondered if he’d kiss me again ... or try to. Maybe under the circumstances that was a stupid thing to be thinking about, but still, I did.
“I was with friends,” he said. “Looking for money.”
“For what?”
“I’m going to Aceh.”
“What? Dad said Bapak won’t allow it....”
He shrugged. “I care not what Bapak says. If he will not pay for me, I will find a way.”
“Well, what if you go and can’t find your father?” I asked gently. “Will Bapak let you come back and finish school?”
A frown shadowed his face. “He says if I go, I leave for good. I give up my place here.”
“That’s not fair.”
He clenched his fist. “The owner is not a fair man. This you know.”
I nodded. “When will you leave?”
I leaned into him, feeling the heat of him.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly. “I go tomorrow.” The soft of his mouth kissed my hairline. “I am sorry to leave you when only we have just begun to meet.” His voice cracked with emotion.
My throat ached. I wasn’t ready for him to leave either. I turned until my lips found his.
When we finally broke away, I traced the hard line of his jaw with my finger. “If you go,” I said, “I’m coming with you.”
RESPONSIBILITY
“You cannot come. Aceh is too dangerous,” Deni argued in the moonlight. “And the bus ride will be so long. You, rambut kuning, do not do so well in the heat.”
“You’ve noticed that, huh? So we’ll fly.”
“Fly?”
“Yes, fly, on a plane. You need money, right? I have money. I have a credit card. It would take hours versus days on a bus. Please let me come with you—I’ll help you look for your father and I’ll fly back before it’s time to go home. No problem.”
I surprised myself with my confidence, but I meant it. I wasn’t leaving until I helped him. I snuggled in closer.
And we were busted.
A flashlight blinded me first. I buried my face in Deni’s neck to escape the glare.
“Sienna?”
Oh no.
“Deni? What are you two doing out here in the middle of the night?”
Deni didn’t move away from me. He kept his arm tight around my shoulders. “Good night, Doctor,” he said.
Dad ignored him and shined his flashlight straight out toward the river as if searching for an answer. It was the first time I noticed the group of street kids sleeping on ratty blankets.
“Don’t shine the light on them,” I told Dad, feeling protective. I leaned forward and pushed his flashlight down, creating a milky circle on the grass.
Dad frowned. “Do you have any idea how much trouble we could all get into if the owner caught you together? Not only would Deni be thrown out of school, but also our reputation as a group would be tarnished. What are you thinking, Sienna?”
“We aren’t doing anything.”
“This isn’t summer camp at home. Deni isn’t Spider—this is not allowed.”
Deni isn’t Spider. Why’d he have to say that?
“Doctor Andy,” Deni said, “Sienna and I are friends.”
Dad eyed Deni’s arm still wrapped around me. “From the look of it, you are more than friends
.”
Deni didn’t budge. “So? I am a man, Sienna is a woman.”
“She is a fifteen-year-old girl. A teenager! Look, Deni, I like you, but you know the rules. No boys and girls alone without supervision. Ever. And Sienna, you know the rules as well. I’m really disappointed in you.”
With “awkward” swarming around me, Deni stood up and walked toward the end of the wall to give us some privacy. In the shadows, I saw him reach into his pocket and pull out a pack of cigarettes. While Dad lectured me about personal responsibility, I watched Deni’s smoke circle up in the moonlight and wished I could also just disappear into the sky.
Deni finished his cigarette and then came back toward us pointedly. “I’ll walk you back to your room, Sienna. Your father is right. It is late.”
“I will walk her,” Dad said, stepping between Deni and me.
They stared at each other. I was guessing both of them were gauging how far they were going to press this. “Please,” Deni said, after a tension-filled beat. “I am sorry to have caused you so much upset.” He stretched out his hand to Dad, who took it halfheartedly. “I will go, then. Sienna, good night.”
I watched his silhouette limp toward the dorms.
“Sit down,” Dad said when Deni was out of earshot. The anger had left his voice and was replaced by concern. “Look, I know when you are away from home, things are different. It’s easy to lose yourself in the experience, and that’s part of the experience. But remember, kiddo, this is real. The relationships you make here are real. They’ll affect your life now and once you’re back home. And remember, we’re on a plane home in less than a week.”
“But Dad, I know it’s all real. I’m not a little kid. I know what I’m doing.”
And then I was suddenly livid. Who was Dad lecturing me about responsible relationship choices?
“And what about you, huh? You and Vera? Don’t think I haven’t noticed all your ... flirting. You guys work together ! How unprofessional is that?”
Mouth agape, Dad’s face collapsed in the moonlight. Looks like someone else was caught too.