by Edie Claire
“Okay, time’s up!” Tara proclaimed, banging through the front door with Kylee at her heels. Tara was tall, slender, blond, and very pretty, but she managed to hide almost all of the above behind cheap glasses, a perpetual ponytail, and clothes borrowed from her brothers. “We gave you enough time for a thank-you kiss,” she announced, but the least we can do is carry our own bags inside. Kylee’s weighs, like, eighty pounds.”
“It was fifty-nine!” Kylee protested. “And it’s important stuff! Well worth the surcharge, I’ll have you know.” Kylee was a good foot shorter than her travel companion and considerably curvier. She had glossy black hair and light brown skin from the Vietnamese side of her family, as well as sparkling dark eyes and a sunny smile.
Seeing the two of them make their way up the yard had me bouncing on my toes with happiness all over again. How the heck had Zane been able to afford two tickets? I knew he had inherited money from his father, but he always watched what he spent. To get me a gift like this was insanely extravagant of him, and we needed to talk about that. But now was obviously not the time.
“You should have seen the grief we had getting Tara packed,” Kylee bemoaned. “I pretty much forced her to go buy a new suitcase that was plane-worthy. First she wanted to take this tiny beat-up roller thing that fit two shirts and wouldn’t have made it to the far end of the conveyor belt in Denver—”
“It was fine,” Tara protested. “It was just a little small is all.”
“And then she was going to bring this totally disgusting green duffel thing her great-grandfather brought back from World War II or something—”
“My dad got it for scout camp!”
“But it was big enough to hold a tent and ugly as sin besides,” Kylee continued, “and I told her no way was I walking around an airport with her if she was lugging that thing. So finally we went out and she bought, like, the cheapest, most generic-looking black roller on the market that looks exactly like eighty percent of the bags on the planet.”
“It’s functional,” Tara concluded. “Hey, Zane, can you pop the back open?”
“Sure,” he agreed, hitting the remote on the keys he had only just managed to pluck out of the grass. I grinned at him, and he winked back at me. Kylee had been standing on them for a while, making an awkward explanation appear unavoidable, but at the last moment she had stepped to the side, and she and Tara were too busy arguing to pay attention to Zane’s swooping save.
We all moved closer as the trunk popped up an inch. Tara pulled it up and started to lean in, then stopped abruptly.
All four of us let out a simultaneous groan and backed away from the car.
“Eewwww!!” Kylee squealed. “What is that? What died in there?”
Zane braved a step closer and looked inside his trunk. “Nothing’s in here but your suitcases!” he defended. “And I just cleaned it out, I swear!”
“But they didn’t smell like that before!” Kylee argued.
Tara stepped up by Zane. “Well, they have been baking in the heat a while,” she conceded. “And we don’t know what they smelled like when they came off the plane. All we did at the airport was wheel them outside and throw them in, after all.”
“No!” Kylee cried, covering her mouth and nose with her hands. “What if something did crawl in one of them and die! My bikini! It fit like, so perfectly! I can’t stand it!”
“Tragic a loss as that would be,” Tara said sarcastically, reaching a hand in the trunk and prodding the suitcases around, “it doesn’t smell like something dead to me.”
“What does it smell like?” I asked her, feeling a little nauseated. I had smelled bad stuff before, but this… this reeked. It was like body odor, but worse. It was like a locker room for incontinent chimpanzees. It was—
“It smells like my brothers,” Tara finished. “Specifically, like that time when Devin and Jory forgot to bring their middle school gym clothes home all year, and then they put them in a plastic bag with their sneakers the last day of school and Devin brought them home and threw the bag into the laundry room and it landed between the dryer and the wall, and then a couple weeks later I wondered why the room smelled so bad and I reached my hand down—”
“We get the picture!” Kylee interrupted desperately. “But our clothes are all clean!”
I took a step closer and looked into the trunk myself. The smell was still horrid, but at least with the trunk open it was dissipating a bit. Kylee’s giant, flowered suitcase looked pristine, as expected. Tara’s much smaller black one looked brand new. It was indeed about as generic a suitcase as one could buy, but at least Tara had spiffed it up with a colorful ribbon tied to the handle.
“Maybe they kept bad company in the cargo hold?” I suggested. “All we can do is get them out and see if everything in them is all right. Before we take them up to my room. Okay?”
Tara shrugged and reached in to grab her bag, but Kylee merely shrank from hers. Zane lifted it out himself and closed the trunk again.
“Nice touch,” I teased Tara, pointing to her ribbon. The rainbow pattern in shades of purple and pink was pretty, but it was hardly Tara’s style.
She rolled her eyes at me. “I did not pick that out. Kylee stuck that on.”
“And a lucky thing for you I thought of it,” Kylee said without looking at us. She was staring at her own bag as if afraid it would explode. “If I hadn’t put something identifiable on it, you’d be wearing some strange dude’s pjs all week instead of that sexy new one-piece.”
“You want me to open yours for you?” Zane asked Kylee. His voice was polite, but I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh. The girl looked terrified of her own clothing.
“Um,” Tara interrupted, carrying her own bag a few paces to the side with a grimace. “That may not be necessary. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the culprit.”
Kylee darted forward to sniff her own suitcase. “Oh!” she said gratefully, dropping down to practically hug the thing. “Mine’s not that bad!”
“Ugghh!” Tara exclaimed, getting another whiff of her own. “I don’t get it! There’s nothing in here but clean clothes!” With a grimace, she extended an arm as far as possible to reach for the zipper.
“TARA!” Kylee practically screamed, now pointing at her friend’s black bag with an accusing finger. “That is a rainbow!”
We all looked at Kylee as if she’d lost her mind.
“Your ribbon was PINK ZEBRA!” she screeched louder, jumping up and down for emphasis.
Tara blinked dumbly for a moment. Then she swore under her breath and looked back at her bag. “Seriously?”
“I told you that!” Kylee exclaimed, still jumping up and down. “You saw me tie it on!”
“Yeah,” Tara replied sheepishly. “But I wasn’t paying any attention. I mean, how many suitcases have ribbons tied on their handles?”
Kylee collapsed on the grass with a groan.
I squelched my own desire to laugh. Tara was one of the smartest people I knew, but she had never flown on an airplane before. And the art of baggage handling did have its subtleties.
“I guess I should have checked the tag,” Tara admitted. “But Zane got there just before the bags came, and—” she threw me a sheepish look. “Well, we were both a little… distracted.”
I smiled knowingly back at her. “Entirely understandable.”
Tara looked at the identification card that was contained in a plastic sleeve on the side of the suitcase. “Blank,” she reported. “This one’s brand new. Just like mine.”
“On the handle by the ribbon,” I pointed out. “Check out the sticker with the barcode. There should be a name on there somewhere.”
Tara looked at the strip of sticker tape. “It says ‘Jones, Tim.’”
“Well, somebody needs to tell Mr. Tim Jones to fill out his identification card,” Kylee proclaimed with annoyance. “Not to mention doing his dirty laundry before he packs! Or at least not throwing in wet stuff to rot on the runway. Sheesh!”
/> “Well, at least we don’t have to open it to solve the mystery,” Zane said reasonably, taking the bag from Tara and walking it down to the carport. “We can leave it here for now.”
“But,” Tara fretted, “where does this leave my suitcase?”
“It’s probably still at the airport,” I answered. “We’ll call the airline and see. I can drive us down after dinner, and we’ll swap them out. Maybe we can see some of the city while we’re at it!”
Tara smiled at me sadly. “I’m really sorry, Kali. I didn’t mean to screw up everyone’s plans for our first night here.”
“What plans?” I argued cheerfully. “Who had plans?”
Zane brought Kylee’s bag down from the street next and carried it into the house for her. “Thanks!” she said, beaming at him as she followed him inside. “Come on, Tar,” she called over her shoulder, “I’ll help you call the airlines. We might as well get it straightened out now.”
Once we were all back inside, I directed Kylee and Tara to the landline and then stepped to Zane’s side. “You’ll see the city with us, won’t you?” I asked hopefully.
His green eyes twinkled at me even as he shook his head. “Sorry. I was thinking of taking off right after dinner.”
“But why?” I asked, disappointed. I knew he’d spent time with Kylee and Tara already, but I wasn’t there to see the grand unveiling, which seemed a bit of a cheat. Besides, I had missed him today.
“Look, Kali,” he said evenly. “No offense or anything. But you guys have ‘reuning’ to do. And with girls, that means squealing and shrieking and stuff. I’d really rather you got that out of your systems without me.”
I threw my shoulders back with mock outrage. “We do not—”
He dipped his chin and threw me a look.
I smirked. “Well, okay. Maybe a little. It’s possible.”
“Two bowls of cinnamon chili,” he promised. “Maybe three, if your dad leaves me enough. Then I’m out of here.”
I conceded by giving him another quick kiss as my dad rounded the corner to announce that dinner was ready. The Colonel had just opened his mouth to speak when Kylee started screeching at the baggage claim agent over the telephone and Tara tackled her trying to pry away the handset. The Colonel let out a ridiculously loud whistle instead, which caused Tara to drop butt-first onto the floor and Kylee to accidentally hang up. Both girls froze in place and stared at him.
My dad smiled pleasantly. “Soup’s on!”
Kylee and Tara collected themselves immediately, threw embarrassed looks at me, and followed him docilely into the kitchen.
“Are they scared of him?” Zane asked in a whisper.
“Terrified,” I replied with a giggle. Then I turned and hugged him. “I am so happy to have them here. I’ve missed them so much. You have no idea how much this means to me.”
“I think I might,” he said softly.
I looked up at him. “You shouldn’t have done it, though. Really. It must have cost a fortune. You can’t have that much money. I know you’re moving into the dorms. And it’s not like you’re driving around in a Porsche or anything…”
He shook his head dismissively. “Just because I don’t waste money on stuff I don’t care about doesn’t mean I don’t have it, Kali. I told you, I want to live in the dorms, just like any other college freshman. I never really got to be just any other high schooler. I’m kind of looking forward to being normal. As for a Porsche, what would I do with it besides get sand all over the upholstery and scrape up the paint job loading my board?”
“I guess I see your point.”
“What I really wanted,” he continued with a grin, “was to give you what you really wanted for Christmas.”
“It’s nowhere near Christmas!”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t bring Tara and Kylee here at Christmas — their break was pretty short and everyone has family stuff anyway. And so I started thinking that maybe you’d be happier if they met your friends here and saw your school now, before you even started senior year. Then all along, they’d know what you were talking about, you know?”
My heart melted all over again. He knew me so well.
My dad whistled again. From three feet away.
“Yeah, Dad!” I replied, rubbing my ear. “Got that!”
He smirked at both of us and retreated. I supposed his timing was appropriate, because I was totally about to kiss Zane again, and I had totally forgotten where we were and how many people were waiting for us right around the corner.
“You figured exactly right,” I whispered to Zane as we moved. “And you’re right about the other thing, too.”
He lifted an eyebrow curiously.
I grinned. “There will be squealing.”
Chapter 6
There was squealing. Enough of it to make me hoarse long before the sun set. But there was no trip back to the Honolulu airport and no suitcase for Tara. Several more calls to the baggage claim desk revealed that (1) Tara’s bag had been delivered to the airport, (2) Tara’s bag was not currently at the airport, (3) no one working for the airline had any idea where Tara’s bag was, (4) no passenger named Tim Jones had reported a missing bag, and (5) the airline did not seem to believe that any of the above were their problem.
Thank goodness, Tara was not hugely upset about it. All of her true valuables had been in the backpack she’d carried onboard the plane, and since she and I were almost the same size, it wasn’t like she’d have nothing to wear all week. The loss of the new one-piece swimsuit she and Kylee had apparently spent hours picking out seemed much more distressing to Kylee.
So instead of driving and sightseeing, we spent the entire evening outside on the kitchen deck doing nothing but talking, laughing, and catching up while the hours flew by and the moon rose. Only in the wee hours of the morning, when the air upstairs was cooler and Kylee and Tara were finally settled onto air mattresses on the floor of my room, did I finally get around to asking the question I’d been dying to ask them all night.
“So tell me what happened when you first saw Zane,” I prompted. “What did he say? What did you think?”
My friends exchanged a look. “You know what we thought,” Kylee said with a smirk. “We almost dropped dead, that’s what we thought. Damn, Kali. I know you sent pictures, but…”
“We seriously considered never talking to you again,” Tara teased. “But hey, you did get us to Hawaii. Indirectly.”
I tried to control my delight. Kind of. “I still can’t believe he brought you here,” I gushed. “He is so sweet!”
Kylee and Tara exchanged another glance. “Shall we kill her now?” Tara asked.
Kylee shook her head. “Not yet. After the visit.”
I laughed out loud and jumped out of bed to give each of them another hug. “I don’t care what you say,” I replied. “I know you’re happy for me. Thanks for that.”
“What you should thank us for is keeping his secret,” Kylee said. “Do you have any idea how many times I almost spilled it? I’ve been, like, jumping out of my skin for weeks now!”
“So have I,” Tara admitted. “My entire family’s been ready to throw me out in the street, they’re so sick of hearing about Hawaii!”
I laughed. “They’ll get even sicker of hearing about it after you get back home! Oh, we’ve got so much to do this week! We’ll do the city and Waikiki and I’ll show you my school. We’ll drive up Tantalus and around Diamondhead and go see the blowhole. We’ll watch the windsurfers at Kailua Bay and we’ll drive up the whole windward side and check out La'ie Point. And then there’s the North Shore… we could spend days just hanging out on the beaches!”
Kylee sat up. “I want to meet surfers. Gorgeous, young, unattached ones.”
“Are any of them smart?” Tara added.
“Zane is,” I said.
They rolled their eyes with a groan. “Do not make us kill you sooner than planned,” Tara warned gravely.
“What about your swimsuit?” Kylee said to
her, back on the familiar track of woe. “We cannot go to the beach until we get you a new one just as sexy!”
“Maybe we should look in Tim Jones’ suitcase?” Tara teased. “Maybe he’s got some trunks I could wear.”
Kylee made a barfing sound. “If the airline doesn’t call back soon about that thing, we really should just throw it out. I mean, if Tim Jones doesn’t want it, what are we supposed to do with it? It’s going to stink up your parents’ car just by sitting out there next to it!”
“We could always—”
Tara’s next words were cut off as Kylee let out a bloodcurdling scream and bounced off her mattress and onto my bed so forcibly she knocked me into the wall. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” she yelled. She looked around frantically, seized my laptop from my nightstand, stood up on the shaky mattress and wielded the heavy device over her head. “Get away from her! Get out!”
“Kylee, what is wrong with you!” Tara demanded, jumping to her feet.
Kylee’s gaze shifted from the wall behind Tara to Tara herself. Her chest heaved with ragged breaths, and her eyes were wide with fear. But as she looked back and forth between Tara and the wall, she slowly lowered the laptop.
Hostility.
My empathic defenses weren’t as good without Zane around.
I stood up on my mattress beside Kylee, hoping the bedframe wouldn’t break. I gently removed the laptop from her hands. “What you’re seeing isn’t real,” I told her. “It can’t hurt us.”
My dad appeared at the top of the stairs as alert and ready as a one-man SWAT team. “What’s going on up here?” he boomed.
Kylee collapsed where she stood. I sat down on my bed beside her and set the laptop aside. “We’re fine, Dad,” I assured. “Kylee just had a really bad… like a nightmare. I’m sorry. She wasn’t faking; she was honestly terrified. But she’s okay now.”
“Thank God,” my mother murmured, pushing past my dad and into the room. “For God’s sake, Mitch, put that gun away.”