Elli giggled some more.
We parted ways at the meeting hall, the chanting floating above the flooded grounds.
While they prayed, I waded around alone.
Finally the chanting stopped, prayers ended, and swarms of kids once again raced outside toward the dining hall, kicking water on each other, not unlike kids at home playing on the beach, soaking in the after-storm sunshine. There was Dad, standing with his arms folded, a big grin on his face.
The girls were wet but happy as they gathered around him.
“I didn’t make them wear their shoes. Sorry.”
Dad waved off my apology. “You did great, kiddo. I’m proud of you.”
“For what?”
“For your help last night. You showed a side I don’t see much anymore, rallying to help, jumping in. Vera said your instincts with the girls was good. They told her they like you a lot.”
“Oh. Good! They’re awesome. And Vera…well, she’s good with them, I guess. They seem to like her, anyway. Thanks for getting her to hang out with them until I got back.”
I followed the kids into the flooded dining hall and made sure they were all situated around the table in front of steaming bowls of sticky rice before I joined Team Hope.
After a few bites, I glanced down to where the older boys sat, but I didn’t see Deni. “All my stuff is wet—all the girls’ stuff is wet. How are we going to wash it?” I asked.
“The same lady who cooks does the wash.” Dad said. “Of course, there’s no way she’ll be able to wash all the wet clothes. The kids will probably hang them outside to dry. Doesn’t look like it will rain again today.” He glanced out the window before looking up a beat, his graying beard longer than usual, his eyes tired from the water bailing. “But I could take you shopping—to buy some new T-shirts.”
“I can just hang mine up, if that’s what the kids are doing. But man, that water is all kinds of nasty—I can’t imagine what might be swimming in there. I keep checking my arms for leeches.”
Tom shook his burly head. “Malaria kills all the leeches. You did great last night, kid,” he said.
“Oh, well, they were so scared, and I just kept thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t here? They’d be all alone.’ It’s such a good idea that you’re going to mix the kids up—the older kids living with the little ones. Why didn’t the teachers come over to help?”
“It storms here all the time,” Tom said. “The dorms flood a lot. The kids who are from here are used to it, and the teachers don’t stress out about it, either. They aren’t hired to be on night duty.”
I frowned. You’d think they’d be a little more sensitive to a bunch of terrified orphans. “I’m just glad we’re going to move the older teens in with the younger kids. I bet the older girls will like it. I know I would if I lived here. Being able to help someone, having someone depend on you, especially a little kid. Makes you feel sort of…important I guess. Deni, um, might think it’s a great idea, too…”
I stopped myself.
Dad, Big Tom, and Vera were all staring at me.
Why was I suddenly a gush of personal information? Too late.
“You found Deni?” Dad asked.
My heart sped up talking about him. “The boy who made the peace yesterday with the cook is Deni. I was right.”
“Oh, good,” Dad said. “But—”
I cut him off. “And he said he is happy to meet with you. Whatever the pesantren owner told you guys about him is wrong, by the way. You should have seen him last night, bailing the water, making sure the kids were okay, comforting them…”
Dad frowned. “Where did you see him last night? You didn’t go into his dorm, did you?”
Uh.
“Did you know he has PTSD?” I said, ignoring the question. “He freaked out every time the thunder crashed.”
Confusion spread across Dad’s face. “Rewind a minute, please. So you were in his dorm?”
“Well, it wasn’t intentional. I was helping the little boy who was hurt, in his dorm, like you asked me—and then he was just…there.” I gulped, remembering looking up from the soggy cardboard and seeing him looking down at me. “Sort of.”
Vera’s mouth dropped open. “Sienna, if the owner finds out, he may ask us to leave. You have no idea what a big offense that is.”
“Well, don’t you help in the off-limit boys area?” Then I felt bad. Especially after how nice she was to Elli and to the teen girls in the therapy session. Still. It was unfair of her to chastise me for doing the same thing. It wasn’t my fault Deni appeared out of nowhere.
Vera flushed. Dad noticed her discomfort and turned to me. “Vera’s a therapist. It’s an entirely different situation, young lady. How did you end up with Deni?”
“I was helping! I just told you. Their dorm was flooding. Does it matter? The point is Deni is great with the little kids, and we worked well together. I was just giving you an example of how the family system could work.”
Suddenly there was a noise at the other end of the long table. I knew who it was before I looked.
Sure enough, Deni and his friends walked in late. I sucked in a breath when I saw him.
“Hmm.” Vera twisted a piece of hair around her fingers. “Interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?” I asked, ripping my eyes off his back so I wouldn’t be caught staring.
“Well, yesterday Deni worked hard to intervene and keep the peace defending his friend, and today he’s causing the same sort of trouble that elevated the problem in the first place. I wonder why the tide turned.”
My eyes narrowed. “How is walking in late the same thing as pushing another kid?”
“They might not be the same, but both things are breaking the rules of the dining hall,” Vera said.
“Maybe he doesn’t always feel like doing the exact right thing. And I thought we were here to help with their PTSD, not be volunteer hall monitors. Deni is obviously their leader. It’s stressful to have so much weight on your shoulders.”
Dad looked at me funny. So did Tom. Vera followed suit.
I squirmed in my seat. “I mean, it must be hard to have everyone looking up to you all the time, expecting you to know exactly what to do.”
“You said Deni exhibited PTSD symptoms—which ones, exactly?” Vera prodded.
I should never have told them anything about him. He shared his stories in confidence.
His weren’t my secrets to share.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Never mind about the PTSD. I was helping him bail water out of a flooded dorm room. We didn’t talk about religion or politics, either, before you ask.”
“You can talk to Vera about this, Sienna. It’s important.”
“What? What happened to confidentiality?” I was the daughter of a psychiatrist. I knew about doctor/patient confidentiality.
Still, they both stared at me. Waiting for me to share Deni’s secrets.
Never.
I was exhausted. I was wet. I wasn’t going to sit here and let them give me the third degree. I pushed my empty bowl away.
“If you guys are all so interested in Deni, why don’t you just talk to him yourselves?”
I stormed onto the slushy path.
Who did they think they were?
I stomped harder through the warm puddles. Without the cloud cover, the sun was blazing hot on my skin.
Why were they giving me such a hard time? Dad asked me to help with the bandages, and they deliver the lecture of the century. Lame. And, man, just as I thought Vera was coming around, or I was coming around to accepting her, she goes and blows it again, and what was with Dad encouraging me to tell her everything Deni shared with me? So. Wrong.
Tears pillowed in my eyes. I wasn’t sad. I was frustrated. At home, I’d go up on the roof and chill, but here I had nowhere to go to vent.
The field was a swamp, my dorm smelled like mold, and my mattress was drenched. If I was home, I’d go for a run, or a bike ride, or take a walk on the beac
h and curse at the sea, but here I was stuck.
Well, no one could stop me from cursing. I still had that. I kicked water into the air like a spastic fountain.
“Such terrible words coming from such a pretty girl.”
I wasn’t sure if his timing was perfect, or terrible. “Hi, Deni.”
“Go on. I do not mean to interrupt you.” He grinned right at me.
“It’s okay. I’m done.” Mostly.
“You are sure? You seem to have a lot to say. And a lot of water to kick.”
I sighed. “I had a disagreement with my dad and his friends.”
“What about?”
You. “Uh, we just don’t agree about something, and I think my dad would be on my side if Vera wasn’t here. You know that woman who travels with us? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I can’t stand her.”
“Can’t stand?” He cocked his head, curious.
“Yeah. It means I don’t like her.”
“She is not nice?”
“It’s not that she’s not nice. She just drives me crazy. Kind of irrationally so, I admit. But she gets under my skin.”
“Under your skin? Like a fire ant?”
I laughed. “Kind of.”
I felt my bad mood defusing.
“Your father likes her, though?”
He asked it innocently enough, but the words burned my ears.
“Apparently so,” I choked out.
Before he could ask the next obvious question, ‘Where is your mother?’ I changed the subject. “They think you’re a troublemaker because the pesantren owner said so, and they asked a bunch of questions about you. It made me mad.”
He shifted his weight. “Why does it make you mad?”
“Because. I don’t agree.”
“That is kind of you. But I do not care what he thinks of me. Or the American doctors truly. But you, rambut kuning, your opinion I do care about.”
Raw heat rose to my cheeks. “Oh,” I said, extra glad I defended his character earlier. He cared what I thought. How about that?
“Look! The storm is over, and you do not need to be angry anymore,” he said. He glanced up at the bright blue sky. “It is a beautiful day. A beautiful day is a gift.”
“Why aren’t you angry about what the owner said?” I was confused. I would be so mad if my principal started a rumor about me and then told a substitute teacher about it.
He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Bapak? He misuses me and my friends, yes. He wants only rich Westerners to come to bring donations to make himself richer. He speaks badly of me because I ask questions. I ask why: Why do we not we have better food, more meat, more vegetables for the children? I ask why, if the donors are donating to tsunami victims, why he doesn’t share the money with us? He doesn’t like my questions, so he calls me a troublemaker.”
I had a math teacher at school like that last year. He was happy if no one questioned him. But if someone did, look out. Dad said the behavior comes from insecurity. An irrational need to have power over someone who isn’t the position to challenge them.
It seemed like this Bapak fell into that same psycho category.
“What does bapak mean, anyway?” I asked.
“It means ‘father.’” His eyes flashed with emotion. “Though the pesantren owner is not my father.”
Strange that he would call this man he didn’t like “father,” but before I had time to ask more, he was digging in his pockets.
Then he was dangling keys in the air.
“What are those for?”
“A surprise.”
“What?” I raised one eyebrow.
“This is why I left the meal to find you. Come, Sienna. It is the right word, surprise?”
“It’s a surprise you followed me out here, yes, and that you’re holding keys to something.”
He grinned.
“You remember my name?”
“It is not every day a beautiful American girl comes to visit.” Deni gestured for me to follow him, and we approached the gatekeeper, who was busy smoking cigarettes. I didn’t have permission from Dad to leave the grounds and knew I’d get the lecture of a lifetime for bailing without telling him, but I didn’t care.
At that point, even dressed in crusty clothes, I was more than curious about his surprise.
Deni said something to the gatekeeper and handed him a box of Djarum cigarettes. Grinning, he patted the bottom of the pack and offered a cigarette back to Deni.
“You know sepeda motor?” Deni asked me.
“Motor? I heard about them, yes.”
“Motorcycle.”
He exhaled again, and I coughed. Deni noticed and threw the lit cigarette to the ground, grinding out the orange ember with his tennis shoe.
“Cigarettes, to my friends,” he said, gesturing toward the gatekeeper, “are like gold.”
“So you bribed him not to tell the bapak we are leaving the gate?”
“Maybe,” he said. Deni led me behind the gatekeeper’s shack. There, parked in the mud, was a bright orange scooter.
“This one is fast,” he said like he was trying to impress me. It was working. “Come.”
“Come?” I asked.
He nodded. “We go. Not as fast as American laki laki.” He opened his arms and pantomimed riding a big motorcycle, like a Harley. “But fast enough.”
“Faster than a tsunami. I’d say that’s pretty fast.”
Deni hopped on the front and motioned for me to sit behind him.
“Is this the one you escaped on?”
“I left that motor behind.”
I wanted to hear more, but he handed me a thin plastic helmet. I recognized what it was immediately: one of Tom’s head crackers.
“Um. Deni. Do you have a thicker helmet?” I had to ask. First the thing with the smoke, and now an allergy to anything outside my safety zone? Maye Spider was right. Maybe I did lock myself up in a self-imposed isolation cell.
He scratched his chin. “Thicker? What is thicker? It is okay. Put it on.”
Instead I glanced back through the gate.
I could make up something.
I could change my mind.
Not risk getting busted by Dad or Team Hope for not showing up to Vera’s art group.
Not risk having my head split open.
But then I looked at Deni’s smile, and I was sick of being afraid.
I had my backpack with me, my wallet, my camera—what else did I need?
My whole body tingled as Deni snapped the helmet strap under my chin, his fingers as confident as his gaze. I looked around for something to hold on to.
“Put your arms around me,” he said. “And move closer.”
Happily.
I scooted forward and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing as tight as I could into the heat of his back.
“Hold me tight?”
“Yes.” He probably meant “Hold on tight” but it was so cute, I couldn’t stop smiling. “Where are we going?” I asked as he revved the engine.
His eyes sparked over his shoulder. “Today,” he said, “we go everywhere.”
Chapter Fourteen
After last night and all the insanely wet weather, the hair dryer air in my face felt like heaven.
Squeezing my eyes tight as we turned out of the driveway and onto the busy streets, I tried to keep the rest of my body loose to ride out the twists of the congested roads. The smell of cooked meat and spices mixed with the stink of diesel exhaust.
It all smelled divine.
I hung on to Deni’s waist for dear life, squishing my face hard into him, breathing in the salty heat of his back.
“Are your eyes open?”
“No,” I yelled over the noise.
“Ayo—come on.”
“No way.”
“You will like what you see if you are brave enough to look. Look and see.”
I forced my eyes open just in time to see Deni narrowly avoid hitting a bright orange mini-bus that blared its hor
n at us.
“Deni!” I cried. “Watch out!”
He laughed as I squeezed him tighter. “Maybe time to close your eyes.”
We tilted so far to the left, I thought we were going to tip over. Squeezing my thighs around the seat, I leaned into the next turn.
Like the rules of body boarding, if my body was tense, and I resisted the lucidity of the ocean, I’d wipe out. But if I was loose and fluid and moved with the waves, I’d catch an awesome ride all the way to shore. I used the same logic now, but instead of waves, I was surfing the streets of Yogyakarta.
“My eyes are open!”
“Good. Now you can truly see. Do not let go.”
Believe me, I had no plans to.
We rode out of town deeper into the lush jungle, passing men and women wearing triangular woven hats as they worked in fields of rice paddies. The loose ponytail hanging out of the helmet whipped my face in the hot air as I took in the scenery: mini mountains peeked through a mist of ashy clouds, breathtaking views as we cruised about thirty miles an hour down the straight country road when suddenly, the silver air thickened like we entered a rain cloud. Shivering, I pressed my cheek into Deni’s back, thinking how ironic it was that I felt this safe doing something everyone who loved me would deem reckless.
“Is that an ox?” I asked as Deni slowed to pass a man driving a wooden-wheeled cart pulled by a sharp-horned bull. The man whipped the animal with what looked like a willow branch.
“You will see many of them in the country.”
Then I saw it.
An ancient temple loomed in the distance on top of a short hill. Like something out of The Jungle Book or Indiana Jones, the temple was built of stone into the shape of a pyramid.
“Here is Borobudur,” Deni said, pulling the motor into a parking lot.
“Borobudur? My dad has talked about this place forever. How did you know I wanted to see it?”
He lips turned up over his shoulder. “Bule always come here while they are visiting the pesantren.”
“What’s bule?”
“Foreigners. Tourists. Like you,” he said with a grin.
Even though we were stopped, I still hugged his waist. “Have you been here before?”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly. “I am not bule.”
Where I Found You Page 10