Sea (19 page)

“Deni!” I screamed, tears pouring down my face. “Help me!”

“Sienna, Sienna!” A child’s voice.

I rolled over, orienting myself. Elli looked so scared, her hands on my arms, shaking me. “Sienna?”

My ears rang from my own scream. “I’m okay, sweetie. Sorry, I ... had a bad dream.”

Chills ran up my body. Shaking, I got off the bunk and helped Elli back to bed, soothing her and some of the other kids I had woken up with my night terror.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, kissing her cheek good night.
“Terima kasih
for waking me.”

She still looked disturbed but squeezed my hand and closed her eyes. After a long time staring at the half-moon out my window, I fell back into a fitful sleep.

 

Pink light floated through the room. Someone else was shaking me awake. Calling my name. “Sienna? Sienna?”

“Wake up.” His voice was no more than a whisper. “My father is looking for me.”

I sat up. Rubbing my eyes, I asked, “What time is it?”

“Dawn,” Deni said. “Come?”

The little girls were still asleep, but the call to prayer couldn’t be too far off. Glancing back at Deni, early sun rays washing over his excited face, I wondered what was worth the risk of sneaking over to the girls’ side in daylight.

“My father is alive!”

“What do you mean
your father?”
I whispered. “I thought your whole family was ... killed in the tsunami.”

His shook his head and spoke in a low voice. “My father was a fisherman and was at sea the day the wave came. He fished his whole life. He knows the ocean like he knows his heart. I never believed that the sea took him. And now there is proof!”

“Let me get dressed. I’ll meet you by the wall near the river.”

 

Quickly I snuck off my bunk, slipped on a yellow sun-dress and practically flew down the path to meet him. Deni’s father was alive? The thought was incredible.

When I spotted him waiting for me, an orange-tipped cigarette dangling from his lips, he was looking off in the distance. I stopped short and watched him, feeling weird, like maybe I shouldn’t interrupt. That whatever he was thinking about was important. But then he saw me, tossed the cigarette into the dirt and ground it to ashes.

“I am not like them, Sienna,” he said, gesturing toward the street kids by the river. “I am not alone. Each week I wait to hear news, knowing if he is alive, he will come looking for me.”

“So your father is really here at the
pesantren?
Where is he?”

Deni’s face twitched. “No. He is not here. We have word from Aceh, my friend tells me, that someone is looking for a boy named Deni who came to a
pesantren
in Yogyakarta.”

My excitement faded as I realized he didn’t have concrete proof. “Oh. And you think this person is your father?”

Deni’s eyes hardened. “I do not think. I
know.”

We sat quietly for a while watching the Fudge Popsicle Haze rise over the river. I tugged a piece of my hair, not knowing what to say, feeling bad for bursting his bubble, but it could be
anyone
looking. It could be
any
boy named Deni.

“But Deni, it’s been six months—”

“Still,” he cut me off, “they are finding survivors.”

Why was I being so negative? It wasn’t so strange that Deni thought his father might be alive. I read some of those amazing stories about relatives reconnecting after the tsunami.

But I knew why Deni believed.

Because it was easier.

Easier than grieving.

“Well, that would be amazing if it was him,” I said.

He looked at me strangely, his eyes firm with conviction. “It
is
him, Sienna. You must believe.”

I was being such a hypocrite.

For a long time after her accident I thought my mom was alive too.

I mean, here I was three years later,
still
clinging to some hope.

That instead of dying when her plane crashed into the sea or drowning like in my nightmares, Mom was marooned on an untouched Thai island. That she spent her days picking bright yellow bananas and drinking sweet coconut juice out of green shells. That she walked along white sand in the moonlight, her long hair flowing down her tanned back, sending shiny glass bottles of rolled-up letters to Dad, Oma and me. That she was waiting to be rescued.

That she was waiting for someone to find her and bring her home.

I didn’t even cry at her memorial service.

There was no casket, no ashes. To me it wasn’t a real funeral. I refused to believe she was gone.

It was that phrase. That official phrase that somehow kept me hoping:

So what about the
unknown
ones?

I never got to grieve like Dad or Oma.

Dad might still wear his wedding band, he might still appease my hope, but he knew she was gone.

And I still hadn’t accepted it. That maybe she was never coming back. And now it was too late for me. They were better because they’d grieved. I was worse. Before this trip, I was so stuck and afraid.

I didn’t want Deni to end up like me.

I reached out and touched his hand. “I understand, Deni. Believe me, I really do. I”—I couldn’t believe I was using this word—“
used
to think my mother was alive too. And I didn’t even have a good enough reason to hope ...”

Then the call to prayer cried out, and I sighed, frustrated, knowing our time was up.

“Meet me here after?” I asked.

“Okay,” he said. I watched him dash off.

We both cut out halfway through breakfast and we were back by the wall.

I brought Elli with me for a distraction, not wanting to encourage talk-talk. She was sitting next to me, coloring, while Deni hovered close, talking quietly.

Then Tom walked up.

“Deni, there you are. The
pesantren
owner needs to speak with you.”

Deni jumped up, wide-eyed. “About my father? Is there more word? Has he sent for me?”

When Tom glanced at me, I recognized that look.

It was the same look Spider’s mom had on the rooftop. Whatever they were going to tell Deni, it wasn’t good news.

Tom touched Deni’s shoulder. “I better let him explain, son.”

Deni looked at me, his eyes full of worry and questions.

“It will be okay, Deni,” I said. I wanted to go with him, to hold his hand, to be whatever he wanted me to be, but how could I do that? And then Tom was looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time. Looking back and forth from me ... to Deni ... and back to me. Tom’s instincts were unfortunately dead-on.

“Sienna? What are you two doing out here?”

I glanced at Deni from the corner of my eye. “Nothing ... talking ... and helping Elli with her art before group starts,” I said, guilt creeping up my chest for using her as a cover.

His eyes narrowed. “After breakfast the
pesantren
owner called a special meeting to explain what’s going on with Deni—didn’t you hear him?”

I shook my head. Deni and I both left early; we hadn’t heard.

“You know you can’t be out here with him alone,” Tom said.

I shrugged and picked some mud off the wall. “We weren’t alone,” I said, gesturing toward Elli. Tom raised his bushy eyebrows as if to warn me:
We’ll be talking about this later.

But Deni backed me up. “It is the truth, Dr. Tom,” he said. “I was talking with Sienna about my father. That he is alive. That is all. Her father knows we are friends.” He smiled at me after he said it.

Tom acknowledged him with an unconvinced nod. But then I felt a familiar icicle of dread plunge through my chest when I understood the root.

It wasn’t from happiness Deni grinned; it was hope.

Elli and I waited on the porch of Bapak’s office, listening to Deni and the owner argue loudly in their language. Elli drew stars, moons and planets on the concrete in lavenders and mint greens, the heat crawling over my back as the morning dragged on.

 

Deni had been in there a long time.

I couldn’t make out much but heard Aceh mentioned several times. Deni’s voice kept cracking and I wondered if he was crying.

“Stars,” I said, pointing to Elli’s drawing. “Stars,” I said, pointing up at the blue sky.

She looked at me like I was being silly. “No stars,” she said. “Sun.”

“Ha, you’re right. Smart girl,” I said as the door finally flew open, slamming into the wall, and Deni stormed out of the building. He didn’t see us. At least I didn’t think he did. His face was angry, and whatever Bapak said couldn’t have been good.

I started to stand, my legs numb from sitting for so long on the hard porch, but then the owner walked out too, staring after Deni, shaking his head. He glanced over at me and Elli with harsh charcoal eyes but didn’t say anything. I started drawing with Elli again.

I wished he hadn’t said whatever he said to wipe away Deni’s hope.

“Elli,” I whispered once Bapak was back inside, “take this stuff back to the room, please. I have to go find Deni.”

She tilted her head, asking,
What?

“The bunk,” I said, scooping up the chalk into her hands. “Go.”

I sprinted across the lawn to the trail. It was so humid I felt like I was running through soup. But Deni wasn’t on the trail. He wasn’t on the wall.

Where would he go?

The
motor.

I ran toward the front gate. Sure enough, Deni was on the other side, rewing it up, wearing his cracker helmet. His face was a mix of rage and disappointment. There was no extra helmet for me.

“Deni!” I cried from the other side of the closed gate. The gatekeeper was nowhere in sight. “What happened? What did he say?”

He turned to the sound of my voice. Looked at me but didn’t answer. I leaned over the gate.

“Deni!” I yelled. “Please come back in. Or can we go somewhere? Tell me what happened.”

He stared at me blankly, like he didn’t recognize me. Or if he had, he didn’t want to. He revved the engine again and then screeched off into the crowded city streets without me.

With nothing better to do, I accepted Dad’s invitation to walk with him into town. Dad suggested a little shopping. Get some souvenirs for everyone back home. Guilt crept up my neck. I was a terrible friend, forgetting about them with everything else on my mind here. So I bought a coin purse for Bev embellished with a blue elephant dotted with orange and purple beads. I tucked three Indonesian coins inside. For Oma I looked through dozens of batiks, which Dad said are the traditional art of Indonesia, until I found the perfect one: a flowing wall hanging hand-painted in five shades of brown, with a bird free-floating in a flower garden of kaleidoscope shapes. Spider was the trickiest. But when I stumbled upon a small wooden sitar, I knew that was just the thing. I wrote all three postcards, thinking about the one Mom sent to me. Then I tucked them in with their presents and with Dad’s help mailed them from the post office.

Dad took me to lunch at a restaurant that reminded me of the one I went to with Deni. At first the distraction was nice, but I couldn’t keep my mind off of him, wondering where he was, who he was with. If he was going to be okay.