12 Hours In Paradise (2 page)

And was I thinking about Arash when I fell asleep? The way he told a story that felt like he’d never shared it with anyone but me. The way his soft, dark eyes trapped me in a blink, as though preserving me inside a picture. The way he listened to the whole of me, not just the Dorothy I conjured up for the world.

I don’t remember.

But I do remember when my phone buzzed me awake. Hidden under my covers and muted so as not to wake Granny.

Ari: Come out and play
.

Me: Are you crazy? I’m sleeping in the same room as my granny. We leave tomorrow morning.

Ari: Granny won’t miss you. But who knows what we’ll miss if we don’t go out and explore the city together. What might happen? We’ll never know unless we go see for ourselves.

A pause.

And another one.

A sleepy smile inched across my face.
This boy is crazy.

The seconds ticked by.

Ari: Have you made a decision?

Me: Meet me outside the elevator on the street.

Just one hour, I thought. How wrong could it be to grab one more hour of vacation before going back to cold and snow? If anyone noticed, which I knew they wouldn’t, I would say I went down to the lobby to read. Didn’t want to wake Granny.

I dressed in the dark by feel. I couldn’t sleep with any hint of light, so the room was as black as could be. Granny slept with a flashlight by the side of her bed in case she ever needed to get up.

I turned the door handle slowly, pulled it open and stepped through, grabbing the handle on the other side and releasing it only when the door was shut behind me. Then there was the slow creep past my parents’ room where Chester also slept.

Nobody heard me.

I knew they were sound asleep.

And then a silent but decisive sprint past the lobby elevator to the one that went down to the street. I was hoping for a companion to share the ride with me. When none came, I took a deep breath and counted backward by threes until the elevator lurched to a stop, chimed to signify I’d arrived, and kindly opened its door.

There he was. Was there any doubt he would be?

***

“You came,” he said.

“Now what?”

“Now…” He took my hand in his. “Now, we go have an adventure.”

His hand was warm and smooth. Mine was clammy, and not just from the elevator ride.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” I said, wondering if I’d just made a very bad decision.

“An adventure doesn’t require a lot of time,” he reassured me. “All it requires is your total commitment.”

“All right.” Slender palm trees lined the sidewalk. Their fronds rustled in the breeze. Tiny, white lights spiraled up and down their trunks. “I’m committed, I guess.”

“There can be no guessing once you’re committed.” He laughed. “Are you committed to having an adventure or not?”

“Okay, I’m committed to having an adventure.”

“Then let’s begin, shall we?”

He gently released my hand, which was a little disappointing but also made me relax a bit. It wasn’t like we were boyfriend and girlfriend; I didn’t even know him. And I did have the totally unreasonable fear my father would pop out of a store and catch me with a strange boy on the street at night. That would be bad enough. At least I wasn’t holding his hand.

But I wouldn’t have minded.

My arm brushed up against his. He smelled like coconut oil.

“Are you allowed to go out at night by yourself?” I asked.

“Oh no. We have a strict curfew and have to check in with our chaperone when we’re back in our room for the night.”

“So you snuck out too?”

He sighed. “Until we’re eighteen we’re at the mercy of adults. Adults who might have no better sense of what’s best for us than we do ourselves.”

“When do you turn eighteen?”

“Two months. Just in time to retain my sanity. And you?”

“One year and…three and a half months.”

“A junior then? I thought I detected an air of innocence about you.”

“Innocence? Give me a break.” I laughed without any passion.

I was.

***

We started walking in a direction that eventually took us to the main tourist street in Waikiki, which is called Kalakaua. My mom and I had done a lot of shopping there, but late that night it seemed different. Magical. Or maybe it was being there with Arash that made it seem that way.

“What instrument do you play in your school band?”

A cluster of Japanese tourists passed us, walking in the opposite direction. In their midst, Arash and I were separated by a swirl of excited chatter, brilliantly colored sundresses, and silky, black hair. At the other end, we came back together like two magnets reunited.

“I’m a percussionist,” he answered.

“Drums?”

“Anything you strike one thing against the other. Drums, yes. But also xylophone, marimba, triangle.”

“I’ve never heard a marimba, but just the word sounds so pretty.”

“It’s the most beautiful of them all,” he said. “You’ve undoubtedly heard it but just didn’t realize that’s what it was.” He came to a stop. “I think we need a change of clothes suitable for a real adventure.”

We were standing in front of one of the many ABC Stores that seem to exist on every corner of Waikiki. Tourists loved them. I loved them. You could buy anything from clothes to toothpaste to papayas at an ABC Store. They were always packed with people, no matter what time.

“Change of clothes?” My eyebrows went up. “You look fine the way you are.”

“How could I continue without an aloha shirt?” He thumbed studiously through the broad, flowery men’s cotton shirts hanging on a rack just outside the store. He stopped at one with red-and-yellow parrots, wings spread as if in flight. “This is it! This is the one.” He pulled it from the rack and stripped off the t-shirt he was wearing.

I hadn’t expected him to have a body as nice as his eyes. He seemed too smart for a hot bod, as crazy as that sounds. But he did. The muscles of his back and shoulders were smooth and firm. His skin was creamy, darker than mine.

“Could I convince you to join me?” He held up a matching dress, sleeveless with a tight elastic bodice.

“No, thanks. I’ll pass.” I laughed.

“You said you were committed to the adventure.”

“I am but…what’s the adventure?”

“The adventure is us, and
we
are the adventure. Without us it’s nothing, and without it, we’re—”

“Nothing?”

“I didn’t want to say it, but since you did…” He looked impossibly cute in the shirt. His hair was mussed from taking off the t-shirt, which just added to his cuteness. His glasses sat a little crooked on his nose. He reached up to straighten them.

“Well, since you put it that way, I guess I have no choice.”

“Let’s see…twelve dollars for my shirt. Eighteen dollars for your matching gown. I’ve got it.” He passed me the dress. “I’ll pay while you find the changing room.”

***

I came out feeling like a princess. A silly princess but a princess nonetheless. My prince—and twin—was waiting for me in the front of the store. He had a newspaper under his arm and a bag I assumed held his t-shirt. He looked me up and down as though I were Cinderella being announced at the ball.

“I knew you were beautiful,” he said. “But I had no idea just
how
beautiful.”

I burst into laughter. The ridiculousness of our matching outfits must have been obvious to everyone.

“No, I mean it,” he said, and my laugh turned into a smile. With his unusual way of speaking I couldn’t be sure if he was serious. But it didn’t matter. I was happy. He was fun.
We
were fun, I was beginning to realize. I twirled like a model with my hand on my hip. I let my hair hang down over one eye and gave him the vampiest look I could muster.

“Perfect! And now I have a surprise. While you were changing, I found the roadmap to our adventure. Placed in our path by fate.” He brought the newspaper from underneath his arm and unfolded it for me to see.

“What am I looking at?”

He pointed to an article, and my eyes followed his finger. “‘The Thirty-Six Questions That Lead to Love’?” This was bold and unexpected. “I don’t get it.”

“According to the article, which I’ve only just glanced at, there are thirty-six questions to be answered in each other’s presence. By the end of the questions, love is guaranteed.”

“Hmmm…but I should get back no later than midnight. Can we answer them all by then?”

“We can try, can’t we?” He raised his eyebrows as if in a dare. “Why not?”

“But do we really want to fall in love, considering we’ll probably never see each other again?”

Yes, yes, yes
, I wanted him to say.

Yes, I wanted to fall in love.

Even just for a night.

“Do you think love can be reduced to a science?” he asked seriously.

“No, I don’t.”

“Then let’s prove them wrong. Or right. However it turns out, it will be an adventure. So shall we get started?”

“Where?”

“Let’s just walk. I always think better when I walk. You?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Shall I carry your dress in my bag?” he asked.

“Thanks.”

He took me by the hand again to lead me across the street. I shivered with excitement and a little fear, I must confess. Was I crazy?

A sidewalk mime who looked like a gold-plated pirate suddenly sprang to life and bowed at the waist as we walked by. Arash, feeling the startled tug of my arm, gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.

Thirty-six questions. That shouldn’t take too long.

***

“Question number one?” I asked, anxious to get the adventure started. Time was ticking away, and I was painfully aware of its passage.

“Question number one…” Arash stopped in his tracks and released my hand. He carefully tore out the article and threw the rest of the paper into a disposal bin marked
opala
. “Such a beautiful word, don’t you think?” he asked. “The word is too romantic to mean
trash
.”

“But it isn’t just trash,” I exclaimed with mock horror. “It’s the delivery system for our treasure map.”

“You’re so right!” His eyes grew big. “Shall I retrieve it?”

“You mean stick your hand in the garbage? Not. Let’s just say that
opala
doesn’t mean garbage. It means treasure. Buried treasure. We’ll leave it there for the next adventure seeker.”

“Problem solved,” he said. “And now for the first question, since I know you’re in a hurry. Are you ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready.” Which I was and growing a little impatient.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Come on, Arash, I have to go pretty soon.”

“Okay. Okay, here it is…‘
Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?’”

“A dinner guest?”

“Yes. A guest you invite to your house for dinner.”

“Could it just be someone I go
out
to dinner with? Do I have to invite them to my house? Because I can tell you right now the answer will be different if I have to invite them to my house, especially if my mom and dad and Chester are there.”

He pretended to study the article very carefully, moving his finger back and forth as though searching for an answer. A thirty-something couple bumped up against me in a crush to pass the island we’d created by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. The man had a blond mullet and was dressed in the type of business suit my father would wear to work, complete with necktie; but instead of long pants he wore long shorts. The woman was sealed into a really tight and extremely short black dress with a steeply plunging neckline and massively enormous boobs. Her heels must have been five inches. She towered over the man.

“Excyooz,” the man said in some kind of a foreign accent. I watched their backs disappear into the crowd as Arash poured over the newspaper clipping supposedly searching for clues, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“There’s nothing here that prohibits you from going out to dinner with this guest instead of dining with him or her in the privacy of your home.” He pronounced privacy with a short
i
.

“Then I’d like to go out to dinner with you,” I announced proudly.

He furrowed his brow again and looked down at the article before looking back up at me.