Sea (5 page)

“It wasn’t the same dream. It was the plane crash like always, but there were Chinese flight attendants.”

“Reflecting your current reality. Dreams are fascinating, aren’t they? Portholes into the subconscious.”

“I guess,” I said. Clearly I suffered from a pretty wacky subconscious.

Dad pulled a cinnamon-raisin bagel out of his leather backpack and handed it to me. “You might feel better if you ate something. And remember, we’re perfectly safe up here.”

The perfectly safe line again. But I didn’t say anything. Biting my lip hard, I checked it out for myself.

Outside my circle window the sky was death black. I couldn’t see the ocean, but knew it was down there lurking. Waiting. Ready to swallow us up if it had the chance. I slammed the window shade down and turned my back to it, then choked down a few bites of dry bagel.

“See? Everything’s fine,” Dad said, squeezing my arm more meaningfully than he did back home. “Try and get some more sleep.”

I curled into the seat the best I could, but I couldn’t get comfy. The AC drifted through the cracks where my flimsy blanket was too small to keep me covered, freezing only parts of me. After squirming around in the dark for what felt like hours, I finally rested my head against the plane’s cool vibration and closed my eyes.

I woke up to Dad and Vera talking about me in hushed voices. I kept my eyes closed so I could listen.

“So I’m thinking Sienna can work with you,” Dad said. “She’s good at art. Maybe she could do some art therapy with the younger kids in the morning and attend therapy groups in the afternoons?”

“The art part is fine, Andy, but I’m not sure about the therapy. She was pretty resistant the last time we worked together, if you recall.” Her voice changed cadence like she was making sure he got her point. “I don’t want to cause a bigger strain.”

“Yes, but she’s older now . . . ,” Dad said.

Vera’s voice reduced to a whisper. “Don’t you think that would be too much for her? Listening to those trauma stories?”

“I can handle it,” I said, leaning forward.

Dad’s and Vera’s eyes were wide like I’d caught them making out in their car. Their shoulders were touching, their faces nestled in close together. Ew.

At the sound of my voice, Dad faced me, his tone guilty. “I thought you were asleep, kiddo.” He leaned away from her and sat straight up in his seat. I don’t think I made up the flare of disappointment shooting across Vera’s face. “If you’re sure, that would be a big help,” Dad said. “Also, we’re going to place you in a dorm with a group of the younger kids, to try out the family group approach.”

Vera’s blackout mask pulled back her wild hair like a headband. She asked the flight attendant for coffee; Dad and I ordered orange juice.

“Don’t the little kids already have older kids rooming with them? Or an adult?” I asked.

“Strangely, no,” Dad said. “But we’ve persuaded the
pesantren
owner to try out our theory. We’ll mix the teens with the younger kids and observe the pros and cons of doing so during our two weeks there.”

“Two weeks doesn’t seem like long enough to do something like that,” I said.

Dad shrugged. “We couldn’t close the practice for longer than two weeks this time around. Two weeks will make a difference. You’ll see.”

“I don’t see how changing the bunking arrangements is going to help a six-year-old deal with the fact that her entire family was killed in a tidal wave,” I said.

He studied me for a beat. “A tsunami isn’t a tidal wave,” he said, totally ignoring the meat of my comment.

“It’s not?” I asked.

“No. There was an underwater earthquake. It hit about a 9.0 on the Richter scale and changed the level of the water, so instead of a single wave, like you might imagine, the entire ocean rose a hundred feet higher than it had been for centuries, if that makes sense.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Apparently, you had to see it to believe it. The entire ocean rose and poured through the city.” He glanced at Vera. “And, well, you know the rest.”

“But the kids on the video. Most of them looked so happy? I can’t imagine that.”

I couldn’t imagine losing your parents and still being okay.

Vera leaned forward and peered at me over her reading glasses. “Remember the children were being filmed. My guess is they’re not happy all the time.”

Dad turned back to Vera. “Good point,” he said. “Here comes the breakfast cart.”

I ordered eggs, which turned out to be some sort of noodle dish. While I picked at it, I wondered about Mom and Dad. What they were like on their trips back when it was just Tom, Dad and Mom instead of Tom, Dad, Vera and me. What did they talk about on long trips over the sea?

I pushed the tray aside, the smell making me queasy.

The sky outside the plane broke into the full colors of day: swirls of orange, red and yellow. The glaring sun warmed my forehead as I thought about the Orange Popsicle Haze and daydreamed of Mom sitting next to me on the plane. Of her laughter instead of Vera’s as Dad told a joke. I closed my eyes again but didn’t bother trying to sleep.

“Are we almost theeeere?” I whined. My butt was killing me. The too-small blanket was driving me so crazy, I chucked it onto the floor. Dad’s hair was starting to look all oily—the shadows under his eyes darker. We’d been flying nearly eight hours.

“Easy, tiger. We still have a long way to go. How much of the guidebook have you read? If you’re bored, this would be the perfect time to crack it open.”

I grumbled and, needing to stretch my legs, I excused myself to the bathroom.

“Hey, kid, if you want to switch places with Vera later, we can watch this game show together,” Tom said as I passed him. “It’s hilarious!”

A spiky-haired male host wearing a plaid suit was jumping around on a circus stage, screaming into a microphone. “How can you understand what’s going on? You aren’t even wearing headphones.”

“I can’t.” He laughed. “That’s the fun of it.”

The line outside the bathroom was three deep. Nasty poop smells were leaking from the crack under the door. Great. I thought the one in the front of the plane might be better, so I headed up the aisle, passing ten rows of young Chinese men wearing matching red uniforms. A soccer team, maybe? One of the guys smiled at me and I smiled back. The door to this toilet was unlocked and it didn’t smell as bad as the first one. I pulled down my pants and sat on the pot. Before I even had a chance to go, the tiny bathroom started rattling. The plane jerked, and I fell forward, grasping onto the wet sink. Another big bump followed by a bunch of smaller ones; my hands were slipping around on the slick metal basin. Even the mirror and the soap and the paper towel dispensers were jiggling around. My heart was racing like crazy. It was just like my nightmare. I knew we were going down.

The flight attendant said something frantically over the loudspeaker in Chinese. The flashing light above the door read:

What was I supposed to do?

If I got up, I’d fall. But I had no choice. I had to get back to my seat and prepare for whatever would happen next. My chest pounding, I pulled up my pants and flung open the door. I ran back as fast as I could, bumping against the aisle chairs. Like in my nightmare. I was expecting the other passengers to be in turmoil too, shoving dangling oxygen masks onto their faces like in the instructional video, but no one seemed to notice. Or care. And no oxygen masks were in sight.

When I reached our section of the plane, Vera and Dad were blabbing away and Tom was still hypnotized by the game show.

“Dad!” I yelled. “Didn’t you feel those bumps? Buckle your seat belt!”

“It’s okay. It was a bit of turbulence; it’s already stopped.”

I plopped down into my seat as fast as I could and buckled up, tugging the belt tight across my lap. “I was stuck in the bathroom!” I said accusingly. “Weren’t you going to come look for me?”

I blinked away anxious tears, hating how my fear got the best of me.

Dad squeezed my arm reassuringly. “It’s okay, sweetie,” he said, his green eyes calm. “Turbulence happens from time to time. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the plane. Take a deep breath and relax.”

I knew he was right. Turbulence happened. But as Dad knew well enough:
planes did crash.

“Just forget it,” I said. Feeling stupid, I stared back out the window.

 

 

Dad held my hand as we prepared for landing.

As the plane started to descend, I lost my stomach. Literally. A death drop, yes, but this time, no death. Just pools of barf all over my pants that dripped down my knees onto and
into
my favorite pair of yellow Converse. Blech. Dad mopped up the nasty throw-up with the blue blanket. Vera and Tom wore masks of sympathy. My face was greasy, my hair disgusting and oily, and now my mouth was filled with cream-cheesy puke. You’d think with two world-adventuring relief-worker parents that some sort of recessive tough gene would have kicked in with me by now, but nope. No such luck.

I’d never felt so revolting in all my life.

Our plane bounced to the ground, pinning me to my seat as it screeched to a halt. I squeezed Dad’s hand so hard, his knuckles turned white. The flight attendant spoke over the loudspeaker in Mandarin. Part one of our flight was over.

I was covered in barf, but at least I was alive.

The airport was crowded. And broiling. And so humid it was like walking through a vaporizer on full blast.

“Great, now I will reek even more like rotten milk,” I moaned, imagining curds popping up all over my clothes. Me. A human quart of cottage cheese. When you start grossing
yourself
out? That’s when you have a problem.

“You can change in the bathroom,” Dad said. “Hang in there. And make sure you stay right next to me. I don’t want to lose you in here.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” I said. As our group was pushed along by a huge wave of Asian people swarming the terminal, I clung to Dad like a stinky little kid.

 

In Taipei, we boarded another plane, swapping Chinese passengers for Indonesians, and again, we were the only Caucasian people on the flight. I’d never felt like such a fish out of water in my life, and I tried not to stare. In California, I’d seen Muslim women before dressed in traditional robes with silky scarves covering their hair. But I’d never seen so many all at once.

I felt out of place. Like I should go change into something more, I don’t know, formal. “Do all the women in Indonesia wear those wraps on their heads?” I whispered to Dad.

“The Muslim women usually do. In Indonesia they are called
jilbabs.”

“For religious reasons, right?”

“Yes,” Vera said. “The more devout they are, the more their skin is covered. See that woman over there?” She gestured across the aisle subtly and lowered her voice. “Hers is wrapped loosely, showing some of her neck and hair, but more-conservative Muslim women show only the front of their faces.”

“Will all the girls at the orphanage be dressed like that?”

“Most likely, since it’s a
pesantren,
a formal Muslim orphanage,” Dad explained.

“Will I have to wear one too?”

“You won’t have to at the
pesantren.
Just keep your hair back in a ponytail and it should be fine.”

I wasn’t sure which way would be worse. Standing out because I was the only girl
not
wearing one or awkwardly trying to fit in by trying it. I guessed the ponytail route would be a happy medium. “Okay,” I said.

The dot to dot of islands below my window was lush and green. Normally I wouldn’t dare look down, but I felt ten times better than I had on the last leg of the flight. I de-barfed the best I could at the last airport, changing into a clean long-sleeved T-shirt and dark tan cotton pants, which I would never wear at home.

It probably sounds gross that I ate so soon after puking, but when I spotted the Golden Arches at the Taipei airport, I was suddenly
starving.
I almost hugged the Chinese boy taking my order when Big Doctor Tom, my new personal hero, ordered my meal in Mandarin.

After dipping them in my vanilla milk shake, licking the salty fries was the best moment I’d had since listening to Spider’s story on the sand. I ate until I was stuffed and when it was time, I boarded this plane without complaint.

I had a fresh blue blanket, a fresh white pillow, and an Ashton Kutcher movie dubbed in Indonesian playing on the wide screen a few aisles away. I sat back and savored. Not because I liked him, I didn’t really, but because outside of Team Hope nobody on the plane was even slightly familiar to me and it made Ashton feel like home.