At dinner, my dad had said the storm might be bad, but I didn’t think he meant this bad.
“Okay,” I said as I got the last girl on the top bunk. You guys stay here.” I held up my hand for emphasis. “Stay. Here. I’m going to go find some help.”
Elli was still clinging to me, so I carefully unhooked her hands from around my neck and handed her my flashlight and my journal. “Here, you can look at these pictures. I promise I’ll be right back.”
She nodded, flicking the light on and off.
I slipped on my Converse, grabbed a towel to use as a tarp, and stepped out into the storm.
Another crack of thunder and a crazy-bright flash of light. The lightning was so close, I hugged the side of the building as I went.
The wide path was ankle deep with water. My Converse were drenched immediately, and the rain was hitting my face so hard it was like standing under a faucet on hyper-speed. I ducked my head and ran.
I could have gone looking for Vera. That would have been the most logical choice, but I wanted to find Dad, to make sure I was doing the right thing with the girls.
So even though it was totally against the rules, I ran down the central path and then headed down the muddy trail towards the boys’ dorms, screaming into the streaking blackness, “Dad! Tom!”
Lightning shot across the sky as I stumbled through the mud—now as deep as a half-filled baby pool. “Dad!”
From outside, the boys’ dorms looked just like the girls’. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but I was surprised: white with blue roofs and basically falling apart. I heard terrified shrieks coming from a stocky building with a flapping blue door. Shadowy figures were scurrying in and out of the flap. They were using the sort of scoopers I saw in the buckets in the bathroom to bail the water off the floor. Ick. Then I saw who was doing the scooping.
“Sienna!” Dad yelled when he saw me. “What are you doing here? Are you okay? Are the girls okay?”
“They’re scared but okay.”
Dad handed his scooper to Tom and gave me a quick wet hug. “Good. Just go back to your dorm. It’s on higher ground than this one. Shut the door tight and shove anything you can find under the crack to keep the water out.”
“That’s what I did.”
“Great. And put the girls together on the highest bunk farthest away from the window.”
“I did that, too.”
Dad’s answer was a kiss on the cheek. “Well done.”
“What else should I do?”
“I’ll walk you back, and get Vera to help with the girls.”
Peeking inside the dorm, I noticed the youngest boys were huddled together on the top bunk. One of the boys’ heads was bleeding, and he was holding an X-Men T-shirt to his scalp. The Wolverine boy from the soccer game.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“When the thunder cracked, he jumped and fell off his bunk and banged his head.”
“Looks bad. Does he need stitches?”
“We don’t think so. Tom put on a butterfly bandage. But if you wouldn’t mind checking his bandage, I’ll run ahead and get Vera and check on your dorm while I’m there.”
“Sounds good,” I called above the pounding rain. I checked Wolverine’s bandage, which seemed secure, before heading back into the storm. Dad was just out of sight when I heard another cry from the dorm next door.
I knocked on the door but no one answered, so I pushed it open. Younger soccer boys stood in three inches of slushy water, using soggy pieces of cardboard to scoop rainwater out of their room.
A couple of the smaller boys were crying. An older one, barely older, maybe ten years old, was yelling commands.
“You guys need help?” I asked.
He looked up, startled, like his face was a flashing alarm—no girls allowed—but I was older and this was an emergency. If Dad could help my group, I could help this one. I pulled back my wet hair and twisted it into a tight knot before dropping to my hands and knees.
Four of us crawled around the flooded floor, bailing water into a bucket as more poured in. Wind whipped the door open and shut, over and over. When it didn’t slam shut, I looked up expecting it to have fallen off its hinges, but there he was. Deni. White T-shirt sticking to his chest, water dripping from his hair, he looked even better than I remembered. He held a scooper like the one my dad had.
“Would you need help?” he asked.
I glanced at the piece of cardboard that was falling apart in my hands. “Um, yeah. Thanks.”
“Do you not mean terima kasih?”
When he smiled, shivers that probably had more to do with him than the storm raced down my spine. I shoved back a lock of dripping hair that had fallen out of my impromptu knot, but if flopped back across my eye. This wasn’t how I wanted to meet again, on my hands and knees, looking like a drowned rat.
“You are happy to have come to my country now,” he said, a glint of humor in his eyes. “Such a warm Indonesian welcome, yes?”
“Bailing water is on top of my bucket list,” I managed. I struggled to stand but slipped on the soggy cardboard instead. He offered a rain-slick hand to help me up, and suddenly we were face-to-face. As if it had a romance novel timing, my hair tumbled loose, falling around my face. I groaned and tucked it behind my ears. “I did not do that on purpose.”
When he licked his bottom lip and smiled again, I shivered in the wet heat, trying not to stare at the muscles in his forearms.
“Girls are not allowed,” he said, not giving up a millimeter of eye contact.
“Right.” I glanced over his shoulder out the door. “I’ll go.”
His eyes rooted me to the flooded ground. “I was not wanting you to go,” he said.
I didn’t know whether to smile or frown, so I just…stood there. Way to make an impression, Sienna. “Oh. So, do you need my help?”
“Thank you, but we do not need your help, rambut kuning. I am here now,” he said confidently.
I was just about to ask what that phrase meant when a burst of wind opened and smacked the door shut again. “Please. Let me help, too,” I said.
“Do not do this dirty work, then. You can please hold the door shut?”
Holding the door shut was at least something.
I stood with my back to the wood, pushing out the wind and the rain. He shoveled water, and when he was ready, signaled me with a quick flick of his wrist, and I’d open the door so he could sweep the flood out. Then I’d slam the door shut again.
Wordlessly we worked together, sinking into a comfortable rhythm. I was hyper-aware of his every move: his arms shoveling, the slight tilt of his face, the furrow of his brow as he concentrated. When I looked down, I felt his eyes on me.
Thunder rumbled, rattling the windows. He jumped.
“Are you okay?” I asked, shaking a little, too.
He stopped scooping. His fists clenched so tight around the handle that I thought he might snap the plastic in two. Knuckles bone white like they might burst through his skin. I wanted to move forward, touch his forearm, or, like in my dream, touch his face, move his hair off his eyes, tell him it was okay to trust me, to tell me anything.
I didn’t have to, though. Not with words anyway.
“The big wave washing over our village sounded like the thunder,” he said. “When the thunder comes, it is like the wave is coming again. For the small boys, this is why they cry.” He gestured toward the little boys, who were shivering, huddled together on the upper bunks while a slightly older boy comforted them.
“That must have been so scary,” I said.
He nodded. “It was like a terrible dream.”
The door banged behind my back, and I shoved my weight harder against it, the wind whistling through the rickety dorm. “How did you escape?”
“I had a motor. Faster than the wave.”
I imagined him fleeing the tsunami on a moped. Did he look over his shoulder and see the giant wall of water chasing after him? Or a sequen
ce of seemingly never-ending waves? I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
He grinned. A small, tender grin, a tiny dimple forming in his face. “For this moment, I am glad I am okay, too.”
But then the thunder cracked again, and he flinched like someone punched him. More water poured under the door. “This is not working,” he said, frustration creeping into his voice. At first I thought he meant me, talking with me. But then he glanced around the room, grabbed a stained mattress from a bottom bunk, and pulled it across the floor. He shoved it against the crack to keep more water from seeping in.
“Now something else can hold the rain out,” he said, his voice smiling, “rather than our guest.”
Except now we were trapped together.
In the middle of a thunderstorm.
Could be worse.
He walked over to the little boys and patted their backs, saying something that must have been funny, because they smiled and one boy even laughed. Then they pointed at me and giggled. Not knowing what else to do, I waved at them. A little guy with curly hair and an eager grin waved back. “American!”
“Yes, American.” I nodded, sort of embarrassed without knowing why.
Deni raised his eyebrows, that mischievous look in his eye again. “He wants to know if you know the SpongeBob with the SquarePants?”
“The cartoon? Sure. Yes.”
“He wants me to tell you he has a shirt. A volunteer gave to him.”
“Cool.”
“He says to tell you he thinks you are pretty, and he likes your yellow hair. Rambut kuning. Yellow hair like the Sponge.” His eyes twinkled.
Rambut kunig.
Yellow hair.
It means yellow hair.
“Tell him thank you, I guess?”
I noticed three other kids goofing around on another top bunk, playing cards and laughing. I watched their faces when thunder cracked. Nothing. They just went on playing.
As if reading my mind, Deni explained, “They are from Jakarta. Students here at the pesantren. They were not there for the tsunami, so for them, the thunder, the storm, it is nothing. It happens here all the time. The flooding, too. But for us, from Aceh, it means everything. It is like the wall of water is coming for us again.”
“PTSD,” I said. “From the tsunami.”
“Apa?” He walked toward me and stopped an inch or two closer to me than someone normally would. I caught my breath. When Spider moved closer in his room, I’d felt nervous. Maybe even a little scared. I wanted to run away. But not now. Not with Deni.
That realization scared the crap out of me.
It took me a few seconds to pull myself back together. “PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder,” I managed. “It’s like when something happens that reminds you of something bad that happened before, and you have a physical or psychological reaction to it, like…” I glanced down at his fist.
Like your knuckles practically popping through your skin when thunder breaks.
Like the little ones crying, thinking the tsunami is coming back for them.
Like my cold sweats and screams in the night.
“Yes.” He nodded.
He knew what I meant. Even though others have tried, they never quite got it. It felt good to meet someone my age who experienced some of these same awful things that I did. Someone who understood me, someone I could understand back.
He licked his bottom lip again, and I thought I might go mad if he kept doing that. And then suddenly, a shadow crossed his face, and his expression changed. “You go out the window,” he said abruptly.
“Huh?” I didn’t like the sharp tug back to reality. Or the fact that he wanted to get rid of me so soon. Had I done something wrong?
“You must go back to check on the girls, and we cannot move the mattress to unblock the door.” He gestured to the window next to the top bunk. Outside, lightning flashed. That time, we both jerked at the thunder’s smash.
“Out that window?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “It’s okay. You are a brave girl.”
A brave girl? No one had called me that in a long, long time.
“Okay.” What other choice did I have? Besides, he thought I was brave, and I wasn’t going to be the one to change his mind.
He helped me onto the bunk, and then he pushed hard on the shutters, forcing them open.
I waved goodbye to the SpongeBob fans and slipped one leg out the window.
The concrete wall scratched my legs as he lowered me down, his hand wet and warm around mine. The water was almost knee high as I sank deep into it, my heart pounding along with the rain.
He landed beside me in the darkness at the same time a bolt of lightning ripped through the night. I practically dove into his arms.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, biting my lip. I stepped away, and my hands fell to my sides.
“It is okay to be scared.”
My chest felt heavy, like my heart ballooned twice its size in that one moment.
It is okay to be scared.
No one ever told me it was okay. They just told me to stop. Stop being afraid.
Deni looked at me under long wet lashes. Waiting.
Neither of us stepped away as rain poured down around us. Instead I reached up and gently moved a wet piece of hair off his forehead. I had to find out if I was right, if he was the boy peeking through my window…if it was real at all. If it wasn’t a dream.
Even in the dark shadows I could faintly make it out. A scar.
He winced a bit at my touch as I traced my fingertip across the deep line on his brow, until, as if I’d discovered too much, he gently moved my hand off his face. His fingers, his palm, slipped up my wet forearm, soft as velvet.
I shivered, feeling electricity. Real electricity. As real as the bolts ripping through the sky. I knew as he twined his fingers through mine that without a doubt, I’d been fully awake when I saw him.
“Why were you watching me sleep?” I dared to ask. I held my breath as I waited for his answer in the rain.
“I wanted to see you,” he admitted. “You were… I do not know how to say it in English? Sleep-talking?”
Oh my God. I buried my face in my wet hands. He slowly peeled my fingers back and looked at me. Really looked at me.
“Do not be sad. I have bad dreams, too.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “PTSD, as you say?”
I smiled. “Yes. But you aren’t allowed in the girls’ section. What if you got caught?”
His whole body shrugged as if that was the most ridiculous question he’d ever heard. “Who could catch me?”
True. If he could outrun a tsunami, who could ever catch him?
“You’re Deni, aren’t you?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“I am.” He raised his eyebrows the same way he had at the welcome ceremony.
Even in the hot rain, his look gave me the chills.
“My dad asked me to look for you. He wants to work with you. Get to know you.”
“You have found me.” Lightning intruded above us, followed by meddling thunder. Deni flinched. “And now you must go.”
The last thing I wanted to do was leave.
My eyes must have argued for me, because he leaned in close. So close, I sucked in a breath as his hair grazed my wet cheek and he whispered, “I will find you.”
Then, just like that, he disappeared into sheets of rain and darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
Like winged versions of Noah’s rainbow, butterflies were everywhere.
Yellow, blue, orange, red, pink, and white wings fluttered by my window. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up and pushed the shutters open. The heat was intense and moist, the sky blue with not a cloud in sight. The call to prayer blared in my ears telling me that I clearly wasn’t dreaming now, but maybe last night was a dream? Deni, the flood, our fingers tangled in the rain…
And then I turned around and look
ed at the floor.
At least four inches of dirty water flooded the dorm.
“My suitcase!” I hopped off my bunk, splashing onto the floor, whimpering. “No. No. No. No.”
How could I be so stupid? My clothes, all my random stuff, was totally, completely drenched. I reached under my sweatpants/pillow. Thank God. My journal and my camera were safe and dry. A minor miracle. I tucked them into my backpack, which was also safe on my top bunk. I would keep it with me today.
The girls all seemed fine, slowly waking up to the prayers. They were fine when I got back last night, too. Vera had kept them company with songs and stories. Still rattled from my run-in with the drummer boy turned Deni, I’d stood in the doorway watching Vera with the girls. She was good with them. As much as she annoyed me, I had to admit she was decent at her job.
My clothes were the only casualties of the storm.
Opening the door, I got a panoramic of the grounds: the soccer field, the dirt paths, the tree that had housed the goat… Everything was under water—maybe ankle high now, having receded some during the night.
I wondered what Deni was doing as I recalled his wet hands on my arm, his fingers on mine, his warm breath in my ear. I wondered where he ended up sleeping, where he ran off to in the rain.
I will find you.
But then Elli trotted over holding her rolled-up prayer mat and pointing out at the swampy, flooded path.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Okay, okay. Just don’t put your shoes on. Barefoot, okay? And like this.” I pantomimed lifting my skirt even though I was wearing pants. She took my suggestion as the other ones sloshed through the water behind us.
I tried to keep my facial expression neutral. That is, I didn’t moan and groan about wading in possibly bug-, worm-, frog-, dead-cat-infested waters. I focused on the path until Elli started pointing and laughing. “What?”
It was the goat. Standing on top of one of the dorm buildings.
“Smart goat,” I said. “How in the world did he get up there?”
Where I Found You Page 9