The Half-Hearts Chronicles

by Kealohilani

  Her hair floated around her like a mermaid’s. On second look she confirmed that her entire body was floating— vertically— as she had guessed in the dark moments before. She tried to scream for help again. Her mouth would no longer open.

  Lani’s reflection slowly lost consciousness, remaining vertical and lifeless— hanging there like a drowned woman sinking beneath the waves. Am I in water?!

  Her heart beat faster as the electricity built up and became stronger and more blinding. She closed her eyes and braced herself as she felt her entire body jolt.

  Lani jolted awake and braced her body to keep herself from falling. The sun was so bright she could not make anything out at first. Realizing she was sitting up, she gripped the ground beneath her— feeling the softly-woven fibers of her blanket on her fingertips.

  Gratitude washed over her and she exhaled deeply. Her laptop was somehow still on her lap. The feeling of the tree trunk through her shirt brought comfort that was nothing short of transcendent as she leaned back. She reached up behind her to touch the rough bark of her protective tree with her hands.

  Everything was okay. She was safe. She was home.

  That wasn’t the first time she had had that dream. How did it continue to feel so scary and so real? Every— single— time. Shouldn’t her brain be able to realize this was just a ghoulish nightmare-merry-go-round even before she awoke?

  She sighed and tried to shake it off. It lingered.

  “Whatcha doing, Sis?” Tyler asked.

  As usual, Lani jumped and her computer nearly fell off her lap. She knew he had promised to come back and check on her, but she hadn’t seen him cross the bridge and he was suddenly here— chomping down on a gigantic turkey sub.

  “I took the summer off school so I could write a novel.”

  “You’re writing a book?” Tyler’s full mouth fell open. A couple of crumbs flew out of his mouth as he laughed and spoke, somewhat indistinctly, between bites. “I dunno why em sprised.” He gulped. “After all, it is you…” He took another bite. “So whussit gonna bebout?”

  “Kind of about what you were just talking to me about.”

  Tyler swallowed his food and continued at an enthusiastic volume.

  “You mean about what a good friend you are and how great you treat the guys you date and how most of those people don’t deserve it? Especially whoever that Jessica chick is and ultra-especially that stupid Josiah—”

  “Tyler!”

  “Well he is! Sorry. What is your book about again?”

  “I’m still working out the framework. But one of the premises is that everything ever written in fairy tales and legends is true— only Earth doesn’t believe it. And Earth has a sister planet called Alamea and the two planets’ destinies have already collided and people are dying on Earth because of it— and true love will be the only power that can save everyone.

  “But it’s basically a magical explanation for why some people have treated me— and anyone, really— so badly. I give them the excuse of a master villain who uses magic spells to make them change drastically and act horribly— instead of whatever the real reason might be.”

  In actuality Lani had no idea what made people behave this way. She couldn’t even explain the things she did. But she was sure that in real life, everyone had control over his or her own actions and reactions— even control over feelings, for the most part.

  “Cool concept. Sounds like you still can’t get Josiah off your brain.”

  “Way to boil it down, Ty-Ty. Actually it will be a way for me to explain why I can’t stop looking for my soul mate. And yes, I will also be trying to explain why I can’t let Josiah go.”

  She sighed. People always asked her why she didn’t simply take a break from dating. She had no real answer for them other than the cliché saying of, “You gotta kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince,” to which she would add with a laugh, “and I’d like to get the frog-kissing part over with as quickly as possible— no offense to all of the gentlemen I’ve dated.” But she was as baffled as they were at her constant need to find someone to share her life with.

  “At least you being under some magic spell would explain why you even give that jerk a second thought.”

  “Tyler!”

  “Alright, alright! I was just leaving to pick up Michelle anyway. Good luck with your book, Sis.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tyler shoved the last bite of his gargantuan sandwich into his mouth, leaned down to give Lani a quick hug, and left. Lani laughed as she watched him run off and got back to her computer to contemplate chapter two.

  Her novel was to be about the search for the true love she so desperately wished to find. The kind of love that was worth fighting for, living for, and even dying for.

  However, she intended it to be much more than a romance novel. She loved all genres of books and movies, including sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, adventure, and comedy— and wanted to somehow incorporate them all.

  Usually, the ideas came to her so quickly that she could barely get them to paper fast enough. It was as if she were watching a movie and trying to transcribe everything as she watched it— almost as though she wasn’t the one writing it at all.

  In just a day or two, she had already finished the prologue and the first chapter and was about to begin the second. She called the novel The Half-Hearts Chronicles.

  The Three Musketeers

  Chapter Six

  Lani’s grandma had once told her not to worry about being single, because someday her Prince Charming would come for her— to which Lani had replied, “I don’t want a Prince Charming! He couldn’t even recognize his woman when she was right there in front of him without making her try on a shoe! And Snow White’s guy didn’t have to work for her or get to know her at all! He just stumbled across her in the forest one day and kissed her. What kind of freak does that?

  “I want a Prince Phillip. I want a guy who can recognize what he has right in front of him when he meets me. One who knows that I am worth doing anything for.

  “Phillip had to defy his father, escape the evil enchantress, cut through thorns the size of his horse, and then fight a dragon! When that was all over, did he sit down and think about what to do next because he didn’t want to rush into a commitment? No!

  “He ran up a million stairs to the topmost part of the castle, kissed the girl to break the spell, and married her right away! I’m tired of all the dead bodies strewn around my metaphorical castle of the would-be princes who died from a horrible case of quitting!”

  Her grandmother had burst out laughing. She remarked that it was good that Lani knew what she wanted— and that Lani deserved to get a man like that— adding that she had never thought of those fairytales in quite that way before.

  Lani wasn’t sure why that memory had just popped into her head. Maybe it was all the Josiah drama. Maybe writing her novel brought it to mind. Maybe it was prompted by the book she was currently reading.

  Or, maybe it was just the fact that she was a diehard hopeful romantic— as Lani called it— looking for a glimmer of hope in a world full of broken hearts. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for the laugh it had provided her and for the recollection of that fun memory of her grandmama.

  Lani returned to reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, one of several classic romantic books she loved to experience again and again. She was still sitting outside on her fuchsia and white plaid blanket underneath her favorite tree— but she had abandoned her own writing after staring at the blinking cursor on her computer screen for quite some time.

  She had blazed through the creation of two new backstories in chapter one— prior to her little mirror nightmare— but had been uncharacteristically unable to write even the first sentence of chapter two afterwards. Consequently, she was now immersing herself in somebody else’s writing in order to clear her head.

  Lani jumped as her cell phone rang. Her imagination allowed her to see the characters and walk through the surroundings of book
s as she read them. It always felt disorienting whenever she was pulled out of her fictional world by a sound from the real one.

  Ring— Ring-Ring!

  The hilarious ring tone Adam Sandler’s character had on his phone in the movie Bedtime Stories rang out— the one she had set to let her know when an unknown caller was trying to reach her. Sure enough, only a number showed on her phone’s screen.

  It rang again as if it were growing impatient. Lani stared at it as if she could will the name to appear. She finally answered on what seemed to be the last ring the phone was willing to give.

  “Hello?”

  “Guess who?!” rasped a deep creepy voice.

  “JUSTIN!” Lani bubbled.

  “Well that didn’t take long,” Justin lamented in his normal baritone voice, sounding very disappointed that the game was already over.

  “When did you get back?!”

  “Like thirty minutes ago! So good to be back in the U-S-of-A!”

  “Perfect day for it too! Happy Independence Day!”

  “Totally! I am so stoked! I’m ready to blow something up!”

  “Me too! Safely and legally, of course.”

  “Right… safely…”

  “So where are you right now?”

  “I’m at Best Buy! I had a cheap piece-of-junk phone in Japan and I can’t get it to work here, so I begged my mom to drive me here straight from the airport so I could buy a new phone.”

  “Because priorities,” Lani laughed.

  “Exactly! I broke my old one just before I left so I lost all my numbers and I had to get your number from my mom. Glad you didn’t change it while I was gone or I might have had to drive over there to get it myself.”

  “And we wouldn’t want that now, would we? It’s only been two years of Facebook-only, so what’s the hurry? And how many phones is that you’ve broken now?”

  “Shhhhh! Never mind how many. And don’t get offended that I haven’t driven over there yet. You’re my first call!”

  “Okay, you’re forgiven,” Lani cooed with an audible smile.

  “I heard Raoul is still having trouble adapting to the fact that he doesn’t have a ten o’clock curfew anymore!”

  “It’s true. It’s been weeks and his brothers have a really hard time pulling him out of his house to go have fun, and they say he’s even worse at night. I’ve been able to get him out a couple of times but some things never change— especially when it comes to Raoul.”

  “Well Imma have to change that because ten o’clock is RIDICULOUS for a twenty-three-year-old dude! That reminds me— I need to call him after I talk to you.”

  “You get him, Justin!”

  “But first, I called to tell you about my epic idea! Wait for it… wait for iiit…”

  Lani’s eyes widened slightly as she waited for him to elaborate. She knew Justin too well not to worry when he had an “epic idea.”

  “Yesss?”

  “You. Me. Raoul. Disney World. Leave tomorrow!”

  “Are you serious?!”

  She couldn’t help feeling excited about the prospect of going, but she was still cautious. Justin’s dad was always giving him extraordinarily-extravagant gifts, and so what he was saying was not out of the realm of possibility.

  But Justin loved to tease her, and he found her gullibility hysterical. And so she held her breath.

  “Boo-yah I’m serious! My dad’s trying to make me like him again. Trying to make up for ‘lost time’ I guess. As if he could make up for abandoning his seven-year-old son and his five-year-old daughter… He’s been giving bigger gifts ever since about six months before I turned eighteen ‘cuz he knew the court couldn’t make me go see him anymore…”

  Lani listened intently. Thinking about Justin when he was young and what he and his sister had to go through always broke her heart. But she knew he needed to get it out. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t have told anyone while he was in Japan. Justin barely told anyone ever.

  “Anywhooo… if he wants to try to buy my affection, who am I to say no? He owes me far more than that. And my mom too! He nearly let us starve to death for ten years! That loser never paid half the child support he was supposed to and we all knew he had the money. He just wouldn’t cough it up! But he had plenty of money for his new wife and kids in Manhattan!

  “ANYWAY… you know all that. I don’t even know why I brought it up again… Soooo back to the fun part! He sent airline tickets for me and four friends and paid for two hotel rooms in a hotel inside the park WITH the meal plan, and get this— everything is paid for, for a whole week! We’re talkin’ free admission to all the parks plus he gave me two thousand dollars for souvenirs!”

  “That’s amazing!” Lani squealed. “You said two rooms, right?”

  “Yep. Raoul can have one and you and I can share…”

  “JUSTIN!”

  “Calm down, sugar bunny. Of course Raoul and I will share! Wouldn’t be decent otherwise.”

  “Good. Don’t joke about stuff like that. You remember how old-fashioned I am,” she said, just in case the two years away from her had damaged his memory.

  “Yeah, no worries I haven’t changed either. I picked my mom as one of the people to go— just to tick my dad off— and then I chose my sister for the last ticket. So everything will be perfectly proper. The downside is you will have roommates.”

  “Cool! I love your mom and your sister! I know I can trust you and Raoul to be gentlemen even if it was just the three of us and I know my parents totally trust both of you too. But that makes me feel even better about telling them we’re going and I feel like it also makes it look better to anyone else who might ask. Thank you so much for doing that!”

  “I thought you might like that,” Justin said laughing, in a loving way but also in a way that she could almost hear his eyes rolling. “Don’t get too attached to your roomies, though. I told my mom I want to take off, just the three of us, the second we get there— and for most of the trip. They like shopping and taking their time walking through the parks, looking at the gardens, and watching parades WAY too much anyway.”

  “Be nice,” Lani laughed. “Not everyone is a park-open-to-park-close-no-holds-barred-run-don’t-walk-get-every-possible-attraction-in-die-hard-Disney fan like we are.”

  “True. They don’t know what they’re missing! Anyway, my mom knows I love her— and she knows that the three of us haven’t had any time together for ages so she’s cool with it. She’s way excited to spend some mother-daughter time with my sister too. And the fact that it’s all on my father’s dime makes everything that much better.”

  “Well, I love being with them too but that sounds great to me! Thanks again for arranging it in a ‘perfectly proper’ way, as you put it.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead! Get packing, sugar bunny. The plane leaves at seven-thirty tomorrow morning!”

  “Yay! I can be ready at four-fifteen. Is that early enough?”

  “Yep! Raoul and I will be there to pick you up then-ish. We’ll meet up with my mom and Jezzy at the airport.”

  Jezzy was the nickname Justin had given to his twenty-year-old sister, Jeshelle. He took a quick breath and then continued with enthusiastic volume.

  “This is going to be AWESOME!”

  “I know, right?! Holy cats! I had better start packing! Bye, Justin!”

  “BUH-BYE!”

  Lani screamed for joy and jumped up and down as she hung up the phone. She glanced at the time.

  “Three-thirty!” Lani exclaimed.

  She ran inside, rushed up the stairs to her room and hurried to her closet, which she flung open. She reached up onto the top shelf and pulled down a suitcase, narrowly avoiding knocking herself out with it as it more or less fell down while she tried to control its descent.

  She began to pack as quickly as she could. Seven days’ worth of shirts, pants, underwear, and swimwear found their way into the case in no time.

  Lani’s cream-colored cat— which she had adopted f
rom the Oceanside branch of the San Diego Humane Society— jumped up onto her bed and peered quizzically into the suitcase.

  “Okay, Portia… so maybe it’s more like fourteen days’ worth— but you never know when you might need to change your outfit!”

  Portia looked up at her and meowed.

  “Don’t judge me! Just because you don’t have to change! I don’t judge you for eating lizards. I saw you today.”

  Portia looked pleased with herself and jumped into the suitcase. She curled up on one of Lani’s blouses, keeping her eyes on Lani and meowing once more.

  “No, you can’t come with me, baby. It’s okay though— I’ll be back soon. You need to stay off the bed and out of my suitcase. You know kitties belong on the floor and in their own beds.”

  Lani snapped her fingers and pointed at the floor. Portia meowed, jumped down, and sauntered away with her tail high in the air. Lani smiled and shook her head at her adorable cat’s attitude.

  She momentarily flashed back on the day that she had picked her out. She had been immediately drawn to an adorable kindle of fluffy Burmese kittens with big blue eyes. As she walked over to their cage— and was about to ask to hold one— she was surprised to hear the sound of purring above all the other sounds in the shelter.

  She turned her head and instantly fell in love with the-then-six-month-old Portia, who had somehow been overlooked by every other visitor since the day she was born— and who had been called “Sandy” by the loving staff members who had cared for her in the kitten nursery. But Lani thought that Portia seemed the perfect name for a cat with such a loud purr box— because of the way a Porsche’s engine purrs— but with the Shakespearean spelling.

  Shortly after taking her home, Lani discovered that her new kitty had an affinity for playing in water. Portia especially loved watching the mini-whirlpool that formed as the bathtub emptied and would jump into the two or three inches of water to play with the little cyclone as it swirled down the drain.