The Lotus Flower Champion, page 3
“Papa,” I say, hating myself for the selfishness. “We need you.”
“I’m the only obstetrician here.” His words cut through the din like glass. “I took an oath. First, do no harm. There’s no corollary to that vow.”
He’s right. Even before he opened his mouth, even before Suzie clutches her stomach and moans, I know the morally correct choice. It’s been drilled into me since birth. Suzie needs him more than I do.
“Go find Mama. Stay with her.”
I throw myself at Papa, wrapping my arms tightly around his back. He’s a good six inches taller than Mama; his coloring is fair, while hers is dark. And yet, I always thought they looked a perfect match. It baffles me that strangers are often surprised to learn that they are a couple. The goodness in their faces binds them together more than any race, any religion.
“Hurry after us, okay?”
“I’ll be there before you know it.” His eyes are a deep, hazel promise that he doesn’t have the authority to make.
“Hey, Alaia?” he adds as though it is an afterthought. “How come ants never get sick?”
My father, the comedian. He never met a punch line he didn’t like. “I don’t know, Papa. How?”
“Because of their little ant-y bodies.” He grins, and it transforms his somber face into something youthful and vibrant.
I laugh a little, since that’s what he wants. But the humor is largely swallowed by the lump in my throat.
“Now, go make sure your mother’s safe.”
I nod. With a “good luck” to Suzie and a final good-bye to Papa, I plunge into the crowd once more, trying not to wonder if those will be the last words I ever hear from him.
The next few minutes pass in a blur of automatic movements. I find Mama by the lifeboats, just like Bodin promised, even if the boatswain himself has disappeared. She puts orange life vests on me and herself, as I’m too overcome to function, and crew members lower us into a long, oval-shaped lifeboat.
A couple more hours, I think as I perch on the hard bench. A hundred and twenty minutes, and this will surely be over. We’ll be back on a dry, safe vessel. My family will be reunited once more.
The lifeboat fills with about a dozen people—including Bodin—and Xander himself settles at the stern to steer. Ew. I can’t help but remember those poor fish. I’ll forgive him for whatever that was—as long as he gets us to shore safely. But right now I can’t look at him. I stare out at the water instead, and for an instant, I glimpse a large, golden fin. Again? It’s less than ten feet from our raft. One blink later, it is gone once more.
We speed away from the yacht, and a stiff breeze buffets us. Mama wraps her scarf around both our shoulders. She has both of our duffel bags, too, so at least I don’t have to worry about my possessions. I lean my head against her shoulder and feel a tiny bit better. As always, Mama can make even the worst things feel manageable, just by her presence alone. I don’t know how she does it. Magic, she always says with a wink. Even though I know better, I’m always tempted to believe it.
Behind us, the yacht looms, no longer weathered but proud, like it had been on the loading dock. No longer fast and efficient, now that it’s idling in the middle of the sea. It becomes smaller and farther away, and I catch Bodin’s eye as he passes out bottles of water.
He nods once.
It’s okay. It will be okay. It has to be okay, his gesture seems to tell me.
I want to believe it so desperately that I’m willing to take this assurance from a guy I barely know. So much bad stuff has happened to our family this last year—Mama’s cancer, the resulting flare-up of my OCD. I’m not sure if I can handle any more.
If only Papa was safe. If only he could be with us once more. Maybe, then, I’ll be able to relax and know that I’ll be able to survive whatever life throws at me.
I gulp down some water. All around me, people are slouching over, eyes closed. I place my elbows on my knees. Now that the adrenaline is fleeing, my limbs, my muscles, my very bones are tired.
The yacht is little more than a glow in the distance. To the left, I see dots of light—another marine vessel?—but those, too, seem to be getting smaller.
I drink some more water. The liquid is nice and cool on my parched throat. There’s a slight aftertaste to it. Something…almost sweet? Is water sweeter in this part of the world?
The legend goes that seawater is salty because a merchant wished upon a magical mill for all the salt he could sell. His boat filled with so much salt that it sank. Is there a similar legend about spring water and sugar?
Bodin swims in my vision. Floating by on his back, legs scissoring up and out in the air. Bumping into the other passengers. No, that’s not right. They’re not swimming.
They’re sleeping, every last one of them. A woman in the middle of unwrapping her beef jerky and sticky rice. A boy conked out over his iPad. Even Mama, who has to take ten milligrams of melatonin to get some much-needed rest.
“Why is everyone asleep?” I try to say, but the words sound funny on my lips. Maybe because they’re the consistency of coconut and pandan woon. So are my vision, my limbs, my brain. Everything sags in the middle and droops on the sides, as though the layers of my body are melting into one another.
Xander appears in front of me and takes the bottle from my hands.
“You drank all of it,” he says, pleased.
The truth comes to me slowly, reluctantly. Something’s not right. We’re moving away from the lights. Away from…help.
The chingchoks tried to warn me.
They tried to prepare me for death and destruction.
That’s my last conscious thought before I black out.
Chapter Four
My hip bone presses against soft, yielding ground, and my head is heavy. Groggy. As though my brain’s been dipped in a puddle and mud has lodged in the crevices. I roll over, tucking my left hand under my chin, trying to get comfortable. Except…my hand slides right through the ground, showering fine grains across my face.
My eyes pop open. A piercing blue sky floods my vision, just as blue, just as cloudless as it had been earlier. A palm tree with enormous fronds shades me from the harmful UV rays of a sun that’s high in the sky. And beneath me…grit. On my face. In my hair. Sand. Doesn’t matter that it’s the whitest, finest sand I’ve ever encountered. It’s all over me.
I leap to my feet, frantically brushing the grains off my arms, my legs. My neck, my face. In all the crevices that most people don’t bother to care about or notice. At least my canvas sneakers are still on my feet, which means my bare soles have yet to touch the offending ground. Small comfort, this. My heart’s still trying to bust my chest cavity wide open.
Something is majorly wrong. I would never willingly lie down on the sand. I would never relax enough to drift off to sleep.
The pristine beach stretches to the horizon of the world, clean and untouched. It is flanked on the left by lush vegetation, heavy with ruby red fruits. A majestic mountain rises in the distance, behind the woods. To the right of the beach, crystal-clear waters crash onto the sand. It’s all I can do not to plunge straight into the sea, to wash every last grain off my body.
But who knows if the deceptive water is any cleaner? Plus, memories tug at the edge of my mind. The smoky heat of the explosion. Leaving Papa on the deck with the pregnant woman. Passing out in the lifeboat.
This place looks like the epitome of paradise. No, it’s even better than what I could cook up in my wildest dreams. But if that’s true…if I’m actually in paradise…does that mean…
“Am I dead?” I ask out loud.
My only answer is the surf rushing up and retreating along the wet sand.
I can’t be dead. Surely, I would feel it, in my heart, in my soul. If I were in heaven, my compulsions wouldn’t be shouting for my attention, distracting me even as I try to unravel my circumstances. Besides, this…this feels real: the hot sun baking my shoulders, the damp, humid air enveloping me like a sauna. Heaven wouldn’t contain such physical discomfort. Right?
“Alaia?” a soft voice calls. “Sweet girl, is that you?”
I shade my eyes. A frail silhouette is making its way toward me. I’d know that elegant gait, those angular shoulders anywhere. And if my cognitive abilities have been impaired, the sunset scarf is a dead giveaway.
“Mama!” I take off toward her, kicking up sand behind me. My sneakers sink into the beach, making the run harder than I expect.
Or maybe that’s just my dehydration and fatigue. My stomach bounces around, emptied out. That, more than anything, tells me that hours have passed since my time on the lifeboat.
I reach Mama, and she wraps her arms around me tightly.
Tears spring to my eyes, hot and burning. She’s here. She’s safe. Even though she must’ve just wandered up the beach, part of me was panicking at her absence.
Which isn’t healthy. Because Mama’s not always going to be here. Someday soon, I’m going to have to face the world without her presence, her support. And I need to start learning how.
I pull back a few inches. “Where are we?”
“Not sure,” she says, patting her eyes. She’s always been a crier when it comes to me. “I’ve been looking for the other passengers.”
“Yo! People!” a voice calls, as if on cue.
We turn. A group of three teens with their backpacks emerges from the palms, and they make their way toward us, led by a preppy guy with pale skin in khaki shorts and a designer polo.
“Hey—I’m Preston. Valedictorian of my high school class, attending Harvard in the fall.” He smiles at us expectantly, showing us his toothpaste-commercial teeth, as though waiting for our hearty congratulations. His heavily gelled blond hair might have been perfectly styled at one point. Now it’s just a puffy mess on his head.
“Oh my god, don’t mind him. I’m Lola and this is my sister Rae,” one of the girls says, grinning at us. She’s about my age, with golden-flecked eyes and hundreds of shoulder-length braids. Her sister looks to be older, sharing Lola’s warm brown skin tone, but her hair is cut short and bleached blond. “And unlike some people, we don’t walk around with our resumés tattooed to our foreheads.”
“Hey. You two latched onto me,” Preston protests. “People can’t help but flock to greatness.” Overcompensating, maybe? Not because of his socioeconomic status, judging by his clothes. But maybe his height. It’s hard to tell in the sand, but he’s probably shorter than my five feet, five inches.
Me, personally? I like short guys. I find them less intimidating. But I know some people gravitate toward taller people. “More like Rae had to hold your hand and guide you onto the lifeboat, when you were cowering in the corner, trying not to pee your pants,” Lola responds archly.
“Children!” Rae says, even though she’s probably only a couple of years older than Lola and me. Mama introduces us, and then Rae demands, “Do you have cell service? The signal here is crap.”
She sounds just like her sister, but harder. Harsher. Like she’s been through a tragedy or two. While Lola’s wearing a cute fuchsia spaghetti-strapped dress, Rae has on a pair of ripped black jeans and a sleeveless black top. Tattoos of twisted vines (or is that barbed wire?) cover her right shoulder and upper arm.
“None,” I say, sliding my phone from my pocket and squinting at the zero bars and the low battery.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Rae demands.
I look at Mama, as though she can somehow jog my memory. “Drinking the water,” I say slowly. “It was a little sweeter than it is back home. Halfway through the bottle, I started feeling woozy. And then I passed out.”
Lola gasps. “I drank the water, too. Do you think we were poisoned?”
“Loss of consciousness, headache, stomach pain. Don’t know how you all are feeling, but those are my symptoms,” Mama says in a measured tone. “Classic signs of poisoning. And then there’s the circumstantial evidence. We wake up here. No captain. No Bodin. No lifeboat. This is no accident.”
“I’m here! I’m here!” The cluster of palms near us rustles, and a moment later, Bodin jumps nimbly onto the beach, his arms full of red fruit.
“What—were you spying on us?” Preston bunches his hands into fists.
“No.” Bodin’s face screws up in defense. “I was picking some fruit for us to eat. Why would I spy on you?”
Rae puts her hand on her hip, her blunt, black-polished nails curling against her black jeans. “I mean, you did pass out the bottles of water.”
Bodin blinks as though not understanding. “Yes?”
“That water that was spiked with drugs,” Lola clarifies, as though it is a foregone conclusion, rather than a suspicion that’s feeling more and more likely.
“It was you. You drugged us!” Preston lurches forward, fists already swinging, even though Bodin towers over him by several inches.
Bodin ducks the blows easily and dances out of reach. “Woah. I’m here, too. If someone tampered with the water, it wasn’t me.”
“Why should we believe anything you say?” Preston snaps, his broad shoulders hunched around his neck.
“Look around.” Agitated, Bodin crushes the fruit against his abdomen, and red drops spurt onto his shirt. “There’s no sign of civilization for miles. No means of transportation. Not even a freaking radio I can use to call for help. If I plotted to strand you here, why would I strand myself?”
Mama puts a hand on his shoulder, and Bodin takes a shuddering breath, visibly trying to calm down.
“Where’s the captain?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says miserably. “I woke up on the sand a while ago. The captain and the lifeboat are gone. My best guess is that he went to get help. We just have to sit tight until he comes back.”
“What is this place?” I ask.
“I wish I knew.” Bodin squints up at the sun. “The sun’s high in the sky, so at least half a day has passed. I’m guessing we’re still in the Gulf of Thailand, on one of the countless uninhabited islands.”
“I don’t care if we’re on Mars!” Rae screeches at him. “How do we get out of here?”
He moves his shoulders, as helpless as the rest of us.
We look at each other for a moment. The sun beats down on us—I can feel my skin turning red—and a breeze blows against the droplets of sweat gathering at my neck.
“Someone will rescue us, right?” Lola asks hesitantly, tucking one of her braids behind her ear. “They wouldn’t leave us here like this.”
A beat passes. No one answers because, well…no one knows.
“Look on the bright side,” I try as I gesture at the fruit in Bodin’s arms. They look like big, red oranges. Grapefruit, perhaps? “We’ve got plenty to eat, and there are worse places to be than in paradise.”
“Aren’t you Little Miss Sunshine,” Preston grumbles, ripping one of the fruits from Bodin’s arms and tossing it to me. “As an award for being the most optimistic person here, you get to go first.”
Mama reaches out her hand, alarmed. “Alaia, wait—” she and Bodin say at the same time.
I pay no attention. I realize, for the first time, that I’m parched, and I’m positive I had a grapefruit just like this for breakfast. Som oh, our waiter called it. My therapist is always harping about proper self-care, and if I’m going to survive this ordeal, I need hydration. Wrenching open the skin with my fingernails, I take a huge bite of the glistening flesh.
A sweet, tangy taste fills my mouth as satisfying rivulets of juice run down my throat.
“Is it som oh?” asks Mama, her eyes wide. In fact, all of them—with the exception of Preston—look on with varying degrees of concern.
“It’s delicious.” I grin, and their shoulders droop in relief.
That’s when I feel it.
A small, nearly imperceptible itch scratches my throat. And then, it grows and intensifies.
I cough, trying to clear the irritation, but then my throat constricts more, and I cough again.
“Alaia.” Mama grips my forearm. “Are you having a reaction?”
Bodin is next to me in an instant. “Can you breathe?” he asks, hitting the mark on his first try.
I cough once more as my airway tightens like a vise. And then I’m choking. Try as I might, I cannot get a single. Lick. Of. Air.
In my ninth-grade biology class, we learned the body can be deprived of oxygen for two minutes before death. Has that timer already begun?
“Alaia!” I hear Bodin yell as I sink to my knees.
Both my hands scrabble around my throat, but the air will not come. And with no cell service and no hospital in sight, there will be no help, either.
No. No. This can’t be the way I go. Before Mama. In these grubby clothes. I haven’t washed my hair—I haven’t even had my first kiss.
My vision blurs, and my hands fall from my throat. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—
“It’s the fruit,” Mama says grimly. “She’s in anaphylactic shock.”
Every cell in my body screams in protest. Come on. Just a reprieve. That’s all I want. A tiny sip of air. That’s all…that’s all…that’s all…
“Use this!” a distant voice yells.
Someone hovers over me. I wrench open my eyelids and look into the most beautiful, fathomless eyes I’ve ever seen.
“This might hurt,” Bodin says.
And then, without further warning, he stabs an object into my thigh. Owwww. The pain flares, adding to my torture.
But the next moment, the tightness in my throat decreases, and the grip on my lungs loosens. I can actually breathe.
Who knew something so simple could bring me so much joy? That shuddering breath, although achy and shallow, is the best one of my life.
“What…what happened?” I rasp.
