Sea (26 page)

“I just found out myself. I didn’t know where he was. I could not tell him.”

It was the same Deni.

But what does she want with him? Goose bumps rose on my arms, and Rema’s eyes were wide. She clutched her white blouse too hard, crunching the silk material up into a ball. “You’re ... Amelia says you are traveling together. You are ...” She frowned. “Deni’s girlfriend?”

My mouth was dry. After last night. After everything we’d been through, there was only one way to answer. “Yes.”

Rema looked at me with tortured, watery eyes, like I’d just stabbed her in the heart. “We were engaged to marry,” she said. “Before the tsunami.”

Deni was
engaged?

Amelia held on to my arm to keep me from tipping over.

Rema waited for a reaction. I tried to catch my breath and failed.

“He heard someone was looking for him; that’s why we—that’s why he came back. He was sure it was his father.” I faced Rema. “It was
you?”

She nodded. “Yes. I stayed for many months with the family that found me. I was very weak. When I returned finally to Aceh, only two weeks ago, Deni’s family home was destroyed, his family lost to the sea. I could not find many of Deni’s friends, and at first, I didn’t try to find him. But then someone said a group of kids were taken to a
pesantren
in Yogyakarta or Jakarta. They didn’t know which one. I was hopeful Deni may have been one of the lucky ones. He was so good on that
motor.
But there are so many schools it was hardly worth the effort to try, and after losing everything, I wanted him to have a good life. To study and succeed.

“But then I couldn’t bear it anymore. I could not let him think I was dead. I missed him. I loved him. So I spoke to the refugee camps and all the relief organizations here, told them, if he came back, where to find me. I took my job and I waited to hear news—and then, once I learned of his father, I looked harder. I started calling all the
pesantrens
in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, hoping, looking.”

I bit my lip hard. “He wouldn’t have left unless he thought you—he must have thought you were dead.”

She nodded. “Everyone thought I was dead. I thought he may have been dead too.”

“Did Azmi and Siti know you were alive?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Azmi and Siti. I am so happy they are okay. I have only recently been strong enough to work. I have not seen many of our old friends. But then I was speaking to my coworker and she told me Amelia was speaking about meeting an American girl who was traveling with a boy. A boy named Deni. Please. I need to see him. I need to see Deni.”

The three of us rumbled down the potholed road until we came to an even worse road. I couldn’t believe I was sitting next to Deni’s fiancée or ex-fiancée or whatever she was. Is. I ground my knuckles into my temples.

“How do you know where he is?” Rema asked me curiously.

“I just know,” I said.

Amelia stopped the car but left the engine and the air conditioner running.

We sat inside for a few minutes, parked about a hundred yards from the mosque. I didn’t know for sure if he was inside, but if I ever knew him at all, then that was where he would be.

Rema looked really nervous and was wringing her hands. “I hope this does not cause a problem for you, Sienna. You have been so kind.”

I forced out the words. “He thinks you’re dead. He knows his father is dead. Just go. It’s okay, really.”

I’m not going to say it was easy watching Rema get out of the car.

In fact, it was really, really hard, and I felt guilty for hating her, for wishing it was me going into that mosque to comfort him. But I could never give him the gift she was about to.

I wasn’t the girl he needed to see.

“Good luck,” I said to her as she stepped out.

I watched Rema walk toward the mosque.

Amelia gently laid her hand on top of mine. “Sweetie, I know this is the worst timing on the planet, but it’s already four p.m. If you’re going to make it to the airport, we have to leave now.”

No.

“I can’t leave him without saying good-bye. Whatever happens between ... them, I still need to say good-bye.”

 

I didn’t want to spy, but I had to know if she found him. I walked up the stairs and peeked through the cutout windows. They were standing on a prayer mat, in the center of the room, Deni and Rema, framed in the arch of their mosque. He was shaking his head, talking in their language, clutching her arm. The light from the windows reflected on the floor. Rema looked down at her bare feet and Deni reached out, lifted her chin.

I felt sick.

I couldn’t watch for another second. But I couldn’t tear myself away.

Amelia finally led me back down the stairs.

“I’m going to the ocean,” I said.

I wanted to be alone.

She nodded. “I’ll be in the car, waiting,” she said. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” she called after me.

I stepped over sand and rocks and muck and mud. I stepped over sad and broken creepy things like a beat-up tennis shoe, a muddy piece of cloth, half of a plate and a headless doll.

I stepped farther and farther away from Deni.

The air was humid and broiling but smelled like the ocean smelled at home.

Did he think he was seeing a ghost, like Dad did that first morning at the
pesantren
when he thought I looked like Mom?

I sat alone on the pebbly shore.

I was going to miss my plane.

I didn’t even have my backpack with me—it was still at Azmi’s. I just had my camera and the clothes on my back. No Deni. No parents. No way home. Nothing except the blue-brown water lapping against the rocks. Flying creatures buzzed around my head. Too late, I slapped them away.

The air smelled like spices and rot.

It smelled like regret.

We never should have come to Aceh.

He would have been happier not knowing about his father. He could have lived forever with hope.

What was so good about the truth anyway? It just made everyone miserable.

Angry tears stung my eyes.

And then I noticed something in the water.

I had to stand up to know for sure. But humps, dark humps, were rising up and down in the low waves close to the shore.

No. It couldn’t be.

There were two of them, swimming side by side. Just like the ones on the front of Mom’s postcard from Thailand.

Huge ancient turtles floated along as if this place wasn’t damaged at all. They looked exactly as Mom described in her last words home to me.

The Indian Ocean.

Chills ran up and down my spine.

This is the place I hoped for a miracle.

Where my mom would magically appear, explaining that she’d been knocked unconscious for three years. Like Rema, she’d been living with kindly strangers who nursed her back to health, and now
poof,
here she was.

But that miracle wasn’t mine today.

That miracle was Deni’s.

One of the turtles looked at me with wise brown eyes, and I dared to say something stupid. “Mom,” I asked quietly. “Are you here?”

I watched the turtles some more, remembering when I first met Deni at the
pesantren,
the drum circle, kissing in the alley in the rain.

“Mom? You can hear me, can’t you?” I said out loud.

Then the bigger turtle spun around and peeked its head up like it was listening to me.

“Hello.” I knew I must sound like an idiot, but I didn’t care. Deni was with Rema. I’d already lost. “Mom,” I started again. “I’m in trouble.”

Except for the hum of the waves, everything was still.

I listened. Listened for her voice in the waves.

Weirder things have happened, and if her spirit really was here with me, with her crazy mixed-up teenage daughter, I needed to ask her for help.

“How am I supposed to say good-bye to Deni?”

I shut my eyes. Imagined her reply.

Trust he knows how you feel.

I opened my eyes again.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said as the turtles disappeared beneath the turquoise sea.

Deni had a bittersweet smile on his face as he walked toward the ocean alone.

I hoped the tears in my eyes stayed where they were.

We didn’t say anything at first. There were just no words as we walked together over the rocks and debris along the shallow shoreline.

I knew this was the last time we’d be alone together. He was back home. And now he belonged to another girl.

Small fishing boats bobbed around not too far out.

My heart caught in my throat.

Nothing was worse than good-bye.

“Sienna?” Deni said finally, quietly, breaking the silence between us.

He looked at me the way he always had. We were back to being Deni and me.

“I’m so sorry about your father,” I said, sniffling. The tears in my eyes were beginning to fall.

He rubbed his chin, nodding. “So am I. But I’m not sorry I had hope.”

“You were right to believe.”

He touched my forearm gently. “I didn’t tell you about Rema before—it was too hard to talk about.” He glanced out at the ocean as if seeing it happen again. “We were trying to escape the wave. People were everywhere. Tugging on us, trying to get on the
motor
too. Remember when I told you the boys tried to jump on the
motor?
We crashed. My leg was bleeding. I pushed the
motor
off of me and she was gone. I never saw her again after the crash. She must have been picked up by the crowd. I revved the engine, tried to go back to find her, but the water was coming-rushing to me. I ... couldn’t turn around. This giant wall was coming and she was nowhere.” His face broke. “I had to leave her behind.”

I couldn’t believe he’d been living with all this guilt. No wonder. “It wasn’t your fault....”

A shadow of pain crossed Deni’s face. “She says she lay alone in a village ... I looked for her for two weeks! No one had seen her. I saw that wave come. Bodies were everywhere; there was no way she could have lived and then ... she lives ...”

He squeezed my arm. “It
was
my fault she was alone. I should not have left.”

“It’s okay, Deni,” I said, laying my hand on his. “You didn’t know. It’s a miracle you found her. That she found you.”

“I would never have known she was alive if we hadn’t come.” He broke my gaze, looking back at the sea. He didn’t let go of my arm. “But now I have made you a promise too. And I don’t want to break my promise.” His face crumpled. “I don’t know what to do.”

I took both his hands in mine. They were big, warm, soft and familiar.

But his eyes looked like they did when he was telling me about his nightmare that night in the rain. I remembered Dad’s words:
He’s already lost way too much, Sienna. Do it for him.

It made me sick to say the words.

“You have to forget about me. You have to stay here with Rema.”

His eyes flashed, angry, like he wanted to swat away my words. “How am I supposed to forget about you?”

The crashing waves filled in the blanks.

I sat on the sharp rocks, pulling him down next to me. No one was here, no one could see. I put my arms around his neck, kissed his face.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“I am too.”

He hugged me, pulling me closer to him. We hung on to each other like that.

“I wish you have a happy life back in America,” he said, his voice cracking. “A magical life. I have my ole-ole to remember.” He pulled the fake statue from the temple out of his pocket. The one I gave him.

I nodded, swallowing back tears.

He tried to smile. “You like
motor
now, no?” He raised his eyebrows. “What do they call them in America?”

“Vespas,” my voice squeaked out.

“Vespa,” he repeated. “Buy one. You are rich American.” He grinned. “You can remember us.”

I saw us on the moped. Me clutching on to his waist, my face buried in the sweat of his back.

“You can remember me.”

His fingers wiped the tears across my cheek. “And you make me a promise,” he said, his eyes red and moist. “You promise to always hang on tight.”

I could barely form the words. “I ... promise.”

We were quiet for a moment, watching the waves soak the shore. He let go of me and reached into his pocket. Handed me a neatly folded piece of paper. “For you. Forgive me the bad English. Please do not read it until later.”

“When did you write this?”

He licked his bottom lip, his burnt caramel eyes soft. “Last night while I watched you sleep.”

My tear slipped onto the paper. I grasped the note in my palm, afraid to let it go.

“I want you to have a happy life too, with ...” God, this was hard. “With ... Rema. Finding each other after all this time is remarkable.” I squeezed his hand. “Like the mosque still standing after the storm. It means something bigger than us. Bigger than we can understand.”

“I understand,” Deni said tenderly. “It was the same thing that brought you to me. Brought your father to the
pesantren.
Helped to chase away our nightmares. It’s all the same thing.”

“My mother,” I said, because this was my chance, my only chance to tell him. “I told you her plane crashed in this ocean.” I said it quietly and slowly. “The Indian Ocean. It was three years ago, off the coast of Thailand, which would mean really close to the epicenter of the quake. It means her plane crashed somewhere out there—” I pointed out at the endless sea.