Click.
“Time to go back now,” he said, as if the sound broke our magic spell and it was back to reality for us both.
Outside the pesantren gate. Deni flipped off the motor’s ignition. The high-pitched rattle stopped, but my ears kept ringing.
“You enjoy the motor ride?”
I hugged his waist tight. This time I wasn’t letting go so easily. “It was just like body boarding back home,” I said, pressing my cheek to his back.
“Body boarding is what?”
“Oh. Like surfing—something I did when I was younger, back at home.”
“Hang on.” Deni stepped off and then stretched his leg back over the seat, facing me.
I couldn’t believe we dared sit so close hidden only by the gatekeeper’s booth. What if somebody saw us? I was both terrified and exhilarated.
“Tell me about this body boarding.”
“I used to body board all the time when I was a kid.”
“Used to?”
I busied myself with unsnapping my helmet, struggling with the clasp. “Yeah—with a friend of mine…but not anymore.”
“Let me.” I could feel his breath on my neck as his fingers found the snap.
And then we were face-to-face again.
“There! You are free.” He lifted the helmet off my head, letting my hair fall loose around my shoulders. He offered his hand, helping me off the bike. But he didn’t move back. Didn’t step away. “You don’t body board anymore?”
“No.”
“Something to do with your mother?”
“Another day,” I said.
Deni ran a finger over my hand, and I closed my eyes, shivers running down my spine.
It felt significant. Like whatever happened next would change everything.
“Sienna,” he whispered. “I would very much like to hold you.”
I sucked in a breath as his hand slipped around to my back, his fingers barely touching me—grazing. Tingling. I rested my forehead against his chest like I’d been dying to do all day. As if sensing I wanted this, too, wanted this so much, he gripped me harder, pulling me into him, and a sweet relief broke through the wall of tension building between us since we met, and we melted into one another. We both relaxed, as if our bodies sighed in unison. He cupped the back of my head and it took everything I had not to move just a little, to tilt my face just right, to reach up and wrap my arms around his neck and pull his face down to mine, eliminating the last few inches between us.
Imagining kissing those full lips left me buzzing everywhere.
But I couldn’t kiss him. And I couldn’t let him kiss me. Not here. So instead, I let myself be happy in the comfortable quiet. I didn’t want to talk about the past. I wanted to breathe him in and keep him forever. To hang on to this moment, the smell of him—exhaust and coconut—clinging to his clothes. The warmth of his hand cradling the back of my head was the safest I’d ever felt.
“Thank you, Deni,” I whispered, angling my face just a bit so he could hear me. “I had a magical morning.”
“Magical?”
“Magical means better than perfect. Make-believe. Even without the pictures, I know I will always remember this.”
He pulled me away from him, tilted my chin up, and seemingly searched my face.
And then he smiled, dimple and all.
I’d never wanted to kiss someone so bad in my life.
Laughter and chatter rang out from the other side of the gate, the sounds of real life popping the bubble. Well, this “real life” anyway. Which didn’t seem real at all.
He turned toward the voices.
“One second,” I said. “I have something for you.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tiny golden statue of the temple that I had bought earlier. I set it in his open palm. “I know it’s dumb, but I didn’t want you to forget.”
“Ole-ole,” he said. “When foreigners come, they bring gifts, ole-ole.” He laughed, looking at the little metal temple. “They are just not usually from our own country.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Jerk. I snatched it back. “Well, if you don’t want it…”
Laughing, he wrestled it back from me and tucked it in his pocket. But instead of backing away, he closed the distance between us again and touched my cheek. “I, too, will always remember,” he said, his voice low, his eyes sparkling. “Especially now that I have your tourist toy.”
“Hey!” I punched him in the narrow space between our chests.
Breathing him in, I replayed it all in my mind like a kaleidoscope of snapshots: the mystical temple, riding through traffic as if our motor was being carried by the hands of angels, his warm, sunshine-smile in the grass.
And this moment. I stared up at him. He stared back. Neither one of us was laughing anymore.
His face turned suddenly serious. “Now if I could, I would like to meet your father.”
Chapter Sixteen
We found my dad easily enough.
He was sitting on the steps of the meeting hall, dressed in the same stiff clothes he’d been wearing that morning.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, prepared for the lecture of a lifetime.
But instead of looking pissed, he shielded his eyes and squinted up like he didn’t recognize me at all, like he was seeing a ghost. Dad’s wrinkles deepened around his eyes as he inspected me more intently. “Oh my goodness. The way the light is bouncing off your face, you look exactly like your mother.”
“Really?” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I glanced at Deni, who was standing there with his hands shoved into his pockets, probably thinking Dad was crazy.
“Wow, the resemblance is uncanny,” Dad continued like he was in a daze.
“Well, she was, is, my mom,” I said. “Genetics and everything,” I added, trying to lighten the moment. Maybe it was my windblown helmet hair, or maybe something else. Like the fact I did something adventurous and rebellious and romantic and awesome.
Something that Mom might have done.
“Vera missed you at group.” He glanced over at Deni and narrowed his eyes, then looked back at me. “Where have you been?”
“Dad, this is Deni. Deni, this is my father, Dr. Jones.”
Dad offered his hand to Deni. “I’m pleased to meet you again, Deni. We met at the welcoming ceremony.”
“It is nice to meet you, too, Doctor.” Then Deni went straight to the point. “I hope you can help me and my friends. And that you did not get the wrong idea of me from Bapak.”
Dad waved his hand to put Deni at ease. “I trust my own opinion over the opinions of others.”
Deni’s stiff shoulders relaxed a bit.
“I’ve heard you are the leader of the Aceh boys,” Dad said.
“Leader? I do not know about leader,” Deni said modestly. “But I am their friend, yes.”
“Good. While we’re here, we hope to accomplish a few things. One is rearrange your sleeping arrangements so that an older boy, like you, would oversee a group of younger boys. What you showed last night was dedication to your friends from Aceh. They have no one else.”
Deni only stared at him.
Dad cleared his throat. “Right. So we plan on restructuring all the dorms in this way. And we’re hoping you can help us motivate the other boys and spread the word that this is a good idea.”
“Yes. I will help.”
Dad’s eyes widened. Clearly he hadn’t expected this to be so easy. “Great! We could also use your help with translating to the younger kids. You’re obviously fluent in English, and it’s paramount in therapy sessions that the younger ones understand.”
Deni stood up straighter. “I will do all these things. But what do I get in return, Doctor?”
Dad frowned. “In return? Like payment?”
Uh oh. I squirmed. What did Deni mean? Maybe I should have asked what his plan was before bringing him to my dad.
“Not payment.” Deni pinned Dad in place with the same penetrating look he’d g
iven me the night we met. “I need to go back home, Dr. Jones. I need to go back to Aceh.”
Dad looked at me. I looked at Deni.
“Aceh?” Dad asked. “But it’s still under water. The reconstruction has barely started. You live here now. Your schooling, your housing, everything is taken care of.”
Deni shook his head. “Aceh is my home. Yes, I came here, but now I want to return. If I help you, if I do these things for you, if I get my friends and the little ones to do what you ask, will you help me go back to my home?”
Dad looked torn. I could tell he didn’t want to promise Deni something he might not be able to deliver, but he didn’t want to lose Deni’s help, either. “I will be happy to talk with you about it as things progress.”
Deni’s eyes were intense. He wanted a clear answer. “Then yes?”
Dad paused for a second. “For now, will you take a strong maybe?”
Deni nodded, and Dad, apparently happy with that, excused himself. Deni and I walked silently back toward the dorms, my mind spinning over the strange request Deni had made, but more importantly, how off my dad seemed. Dad, who normally checked on me every five seconds at home, had hardly noticed I was gone for four hours? What if something had happened to me? He wouldn’t have even known I was gone. Not that I minded not getting drilled about where I was. I was happy we weren’t caught, but still, it was odd.
Dad was so distracted here. And Deni wanted to go back to Aceh? The epicenter of the tsunami where his entire family was killed? And what was he doing with Dad? Some sort of blackmail the way he bribed the gatekeeper with cigarettes? It left my insides squirming, him talking to my dad that way. Maybe he was using me to get something from him?
I felt sick as I glanced sideways at Deni. Was I wrong to let myself get so close to him?
We walked by a group of older girls who were staring at us suspiciously.
“Do you know those girls?” I asked, breaking our silence. Maybe one of them liked Deni. Or was Deni’s girlfriend. I hadn’t even thought about that. Did Deni have a girlfriend? And if he did, what was he doing with me?
Deni nodded at the girls and waved. They waved back, and I heard some “Halo”s, Indonesian for hello.
He lowered his voice when he leaned in toward my ear. “They are talking about us because we are walking alone.”
I was glad it was only talk-talk, the Indonesian word for gossip, I’d learned. No wonder Deni liked Gossip Girl. I was sure glad he was walking with me and not with one of those girls. Talk-talk away.
“Why is your father so surprised I want to return to Aceh? Why would I want to stay here? Does Bapak use rich donor money to buy us meat?” he asked, his hands in the air. “Buy chicken to eat with noodles? Do you know what his house is, Sienna? A palace. A golden palace. Some of the children here are his servants. They say even his water is gold. He eats meat every night off golden plates while sometimes we have so little rice we go to sleep hungry. This is not right. I will be better living on the watery streets of my home.”
My stomach lurched. We were working for a giant jerk who stole from orphans and used kids to manipulate donors? I felt horrible. “I didn’t know he was so rich. I don’t think my dad knows, either.”
Deni’s fist clenched. “He is very rich. I do believe he did a good thing taking us here after the tsunami. But Bapak can do more for us than he does. The Koran says: Those who devour the wealth of orphans wrongfully, they do but swallow fire into their bellies, and they will be exposed to burning flame.”
I didn’t talk. I just listened.
Deni shook his head like he was confused. “My plan is I will move back to Aceh, find a job, and send for the rest of my Aceh friends.” He glanced at me, like he was asking if he could trust me to go on.
“You can tell me,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I think you are a friend, Sienna.”
I was suddenly, completely, aware of Deni’s hand swinging by his side. We were walking close to each other again. Closer than I saw any other pair walking together. Close enough to hold hands. When his fingers brushed mine, I tried to hide my smile. “Yes, Deni, I am your friend.”
We walked by another set of girls who were whispering and pointing in our direction. “Are they talk-talking, too? Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?”
“You,” he said fondly, “are a funny American.”
“Why am I funny?”
“Your America is so different from here. Here, if a boy walks with a girl, people think they will marry. That is why they talk-talk.”
“Marry? Wow. That’s why those girls at the temple asked if we were married, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” He looked shy. “In Indonesia, we walk with a group if we do not want people to talk-talk. And we never sit in a room together. Especially here at the pesantren.”
“Never sit in a room together? Sit?”
“If we knew each other from school. Pretend this”—he waved his hand through the air—“is not my life. Instead we are in Aceh. If you are a girl I know, you come to my family house for tea, but we sit in the main room of the house with my family. That is the visit.”
“And you’d be expected to marry me after that?” I flushed, realizing what I’d said. We were talking about us getting married. Hypothetically, but still.
Deni’s eyes were serious. “Yes.”
I gulped. “But I just turned seventeen.”
“Yes. You are a woman. I am a man. That is what we do.”
His right hand clenched tightly into a fist again, and I wondered why. Maybe something to do with his parents? I also kind of wanted to get off the subject of marriage. The conversation was getting a little too real.
“You must really miss your family,” I said quietly, guessing at why he might be upset.
“I miss my family very much. My mother was very kind.”
As if I was on autopilot, I stepped off the main trail and onto a path I didn’t know. It wasn’t the boys’ or the girls’ side. Deni followed me.
“What was your mother like?” I asked, slipping behind an outbuilding. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the coast was clear. Some kids were watching us, but they didn’t detour off the main path to follow. Deni didn’t seem to be worried.
“Ibu, that is the word for ‘mother,’” he said. “She was tall and proud. She was an artist. She wove beautiful baskets and dyed them all the colors of the rainbow. Ibu was greatly…apa?”
“Liked? Admired?”
Deni nodded, leaning against the paint-chipped wall. We were facing the river. The pesantren was behind us. “Some people believe it was meant to be—that the wave came because the Acehnese were fighting a civil war and Allah came to punish us. But I do not believe that. I do not believe Allah would punish my mother. She never harmed anyone. The sea just came.” Both fists tightly clenched now, his veins protruded from his forearms like he was about to punch something. Or cry. I didn’t want him to cry.
A salty drop of sweat slipped off Deni’s arm, and that was it. I couldn’t handle him being in pain anymore.
I reached my fingers out carefully. We were behind the building. No one could see. I lifted his fist up and gently cradled it in my palm.
He glanced down at his hand and then into my eyes, and it was happening again. That rush. That buzzy, hot feeling I had when we first met, when he held my hand and touched it to his forehead. That I had last night in the rain, and today as I squeezed against him on the back of the motor, as we lay side by side on the grass, as he touched my arms, my back, my head.
His Adam’s apple quivered when he swallowed, but he didn’t say anything.
Slowly, I uncoiled his long fingers one by one until his hand was flat. I gently raked my fingertips across his palm, like a thin comb sifting through a plate of silky sand. He sighed as I tangled my fingers in his.
“Rambut kuning,” Deni said with a raspy choke. He lifted a piece of my hair. “Rambut anda cantik.” He shook his head. “No. You are beautiful.
Like the sun.”
“I thought I looked like SpongeBob?”
He gave me a half-hearted smiled. “Him, too. Especially when you are all wet from the rain.”
Our entwined hands reminded me of a statue I saw once at a flea market, marble fitting perfectly into clay. Deni stared at our hands, his face growing serious, then abruptly he let my hand go.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I—I must find your father.” But the way he’d looked at our hands together, like the image hurt him somehow, made me wonder if there was more to it than that.
Chapter Seventeen
The goat was gone.
The goat who’d saved his own life by climbing on the roof during the storm was just…gone. I asked Elli about him as we finished art therapy.
It had been a good session. This time we drew family with our sidewalk chalk. I included Oma, Bev, Spider, and Elli. I wanted to draw Deni but knew that would look awfully conspicuous.
Elli included Vera, Dad, Tom, the cook, her teacher, the pesantren owner, and me in hers.
New morning sun beamed down on the concrete slab we were drawing on.
I pointed to where the goat used to be, tied to the volleyball net. “Goat? Dimana?”
With a gray piece of chalk, I drew a decent-looking goat on the sidewalk. The girls’ eyes widened with recognition. Elli shook her head sadly.
“What?” I asked. “Where is he? Do you know?”
She shook her head sadly, and I worried. “It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll find him.”
“Find him, Se-na,” she pleaded.
I gave her a little hug. “I will. I promise. Hey, let’s do something else, okay?” I pulled out a deck of cards and taught her how to play Go Fish. She caught on right away, and it was a nice distraction for us both.
Later, Vera, Dad, and Tom were meeting to discuss afternoon therapy sessions. Vera left art a little early saying that I was doing such a good job with the young girls, I would be fine on my own for the last fifteen minutes or so. She didn’t even seem mad that I’d ditched her group the day before, but she did eye me suspiciously when I told her I had something important to do that kept me from going. Of course, I didn’t tell her what that important thing was. But I felt good that at least it was the truth.
Where I Found You Page 12