Kidnapping on Kaua'i (featured by Wattpad 2014)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Saturday

The next morning, the rooster's crow woke me up early-too early. With a groan, I rolled over toward the wall and pulled my sheet over my head. I fell back into restless bouts of sleep stitched together with memories of the tiki.

At seven o'clock, the blare of my alarm clock released me from my nightmares. Blinking in the newly-born rays of sunlight, I began to wonder if I'd imagined everything about last night.

It had to have been a dream, right?

I answered my own question out loud-right!-but I wasn't really convinced.

The tiki had startled me so badly, I'd forgotten about Madam Chen's strange verse until now. I mulled over each of her words again, but instead of giving me clarity, her riddle had me more confused than ever.

Reaching for my nightstand drawer, I pulled out the photos I keep of my parents. These two worn images are the only reminders I have that my parents even exist. My mother is about twenty in her picture, standing on Tutu's porch in a white tank top and cut-off jean shorts. She has a long, straight nose, light brown skin and a plumeria blossom tucked behind her ear. Her hair tumbles past her shoulders in waves with glints of red. I inherited my 'ehu coloring from her.

My father's picture shows him on a beach at about the same age. He's standing waist-deep in the ocean, laughing at the waves. His arms are covered with bands of tribal tattoos. Tutu says he had them done the old way, with a bird claw needle, a mallet, and ink made from the ashes of burnt candlenut and coconut juice, which sounds painful to me. His face is square and somewhat fearsome, but his smile holds a mischievous slant.

Whenever I ask Tutu about my parents, she says that they love me, but they gave me to her just after I was born, because they can't take care of me. Why not, I always ask, but Tutu never answers. I put the pictures away with a sigh. It seemed I was no closer to finding my parents now than I had ever been. So much for my big plan.

My stomach rumbled for breakfast, but I hesitated to leave my bed. Waking up in this house is a lot. In addition to me, Tutu, and Pano, plus the rooster, chickens, two cats and a dog, we also share the place with Auntie Rita, one of Tutu's daughters, and Auntie's four kids. Auntie has two sets of fraternal twins, Fred and Frank, both eleven, and Franny and Faye, both fifteen. They call themselves the Fabulous Four, but I call them the Frightening Four behind their back. Auntie tells us at least once a day she doesn't want to have any more kids. She jokes that the Lord has mistaken her for Noah, and he only sends her things in pairs.

After five more minutes, I finally crawled out of my window into the banyan tree. I do this every morning so I can enter the house from the front, because I know Tutu will be in her rocking chair on the lānai, drinking her coffee. It's my way of getting a quiet moment alone with her.

As I swung onto the closest tree branch, a flock of birds roosting in the sparkling emerald leaves above me lifted into the air, and I watched them soar. I love this tree-it's my own private universe. Banyans are the only tree I know of that grow from the sky down to the ground. They start as a seed dropped onto a larger tree, usually by a bird. Then, the banyan slowly takes over the other tree as it grows, sending down aerial roots like fingers reaching for the ground. Over time, each of the roots thicken into trunks, turning the banyan into its own forest with one universal canopy, all of it grown from the top down.

I slid down the nearest trunk and hopped onto the driveway, where the chickens were wandering through patches of sun, looking for bugs to peck in the weeds. Tutu is not a believer in keeping up a lawn. Or a house, really. She feels God did not create her just to mow a lawn or dust furniture-she was born for a higher purpose. The result of her philosophy is jungle-like foliage growing along the dirt driveway all the way up to the stilts our house sits on, in case of a tsunami.