Chapter One

"You're drifting, Ray. Back to work."

Raymond didn't bother to acknowledge his mother—she'd been like this all morning. He turned on the tap full blast, partly to rejuvenate the waning suds and partly to drown out the nagging. Swishing his hands around in the soapy water, he stared out the kitchen window at the palm fronds waving in the wind. He'd been watching the high school kids gather on the curb across the street, but the bus had just come and now the sidewalk was empty. His mother nudged him in the back with her broom handle and he jumped, stabbing his right index finger on a knife at the bottom of the sink.

"The water, Raymond! You're going to flood the whole house!"

He turned off the faucet and pulled up the stopper, letting some of the water drain out, then looked down at the puddle he'd made. There was no way she'd get him into a fight like the one in the airport in Phoenix. He grabbed a roll of paper towels from the top of the refrigerator, tore off five or six sheets and bent down to clean up the water.

"Great—now you're dripping blood all over the floor!"

He stopped wiping to look up at her. "Will you get off my back?"

"Just look at the mess you've made!"

Raymond stood up and threw the towels at her. "You wanted to live here—you clean it up."

His mother leaned against the stove and glared at him. "I can't believe you. Any other kid from the desert would about cut off his right arm to live in Hawaii—half a block from the beach! And from the beginning I've had zilch cooperation from you. Heck—Danny's been more help than you have."

His mother smirked at him, like he was a child throwing a tantrum. "You've really got nerve."

Out of the corner of his eye, Raymond saw his six-year-old brother peeking from the hallway. Raymond flipped his bangs out of his eyes with his left hand. "You're the one who moved us to this place. You're the one who sold the house and yanked us out of school and dragged us out to a rock in the middle of the Pacific so you can play with your friggin' windmills!"

She shook her head slowly. "I explained all of that to you," she said. "My position with Centrifuge was only temporary. Trade Wind offered me permanent—"

"You wouldn't let me stay with Tom or Myles; you were too jealous to even consider letting me stay with Dad …"

Tears seeped into Mrs. Harmon's eyes, just as they had at the airport. Raymond looked toward the hall, but Danny was gone. He noticed that his sister had stopped scrubbing the shower; he could imagine her, crouched on the moldy tile, listening. "I wasn't about to leave you back in the States," his mother sobbed at him. She shook her head at her own mistake. "The Mainland. The Mainland." She put her hands to the side of her face, shielding out everything that wasn't directly in front of her. "I refuse to allow this family to be destroyed."

"Too late," Raymond said. It was later than she knew—he was getting out. He walked past his mother, deliberately dribbling blood on the linoleum, and stormed out of the house before she could call him back. He chose a direction and walked, head down—not looking back, not really looking ahead.

It was still early. Hardly anybody was on the streets. Breaking into a jog, Raymond imagined somebody was chasing him, scaring his legs and arms into pumping even faster and harder. Sweat beaded on his forehead and on the back of his neck, and he felt it drip down. He slowed at a corner, jogged in place to let a rusted-out Impala rattle by, then sprinted across the street, ducking into a muddy alley. Grimacing, not thinking or caring about where he was headed, he stumbled through ankle-deep sludge, almost losing his shoes.

Back home, he could have sought shelter at a friend's house. Back home, he could have escaped to his dad's. Back home …

Raymond dashed out of the alleyway, into the street. A horn blared behind him. He wheeled to see a red pickup truck swerve past, missing him by inches. "Watch it, asshole!" the driver yelled at him. Raymond casually flipped him off and tried in vain to clean his muddy sneakers on the grass in front of a tin-roofed plantation home. He heard the whine of brakes, looking up to watch the red truck stop at a corner and swing around, heading back towards him. He swallowed his stomach when the truck scraped to a stop in front of him. The driver rolled down his window.

"Eh, haole boy! How come you wen' steeck feengah?"

There were three of them in the cab and two hanging onto the pipe rack in the back, all of them brown. They looked kind of like Mexicans. Really big Mexicans. "What did you say?" he asked.

"How come you wen' steeck feengah?"

"How come I what?"

Obviously frustrated, the driver of the truck leaned out the window. "Steeck feengah! Steeck feengah!" he bellered, pointing his middle finger at the sky.

Raymond glanced back at the empty alley, then back at the angry Polynesian. "You called me an asshole. What'd you expect?"

One of the passengers jumped down from the truck bed and sidled up to Raymond. He was probably sixteen—about Raymond's age—and they were about the same height, but the other boy was at least a foot broader in the chest. Raymond crossed his arms, feeling vulnerable and stupid. When his mom had dragged him out of bed at dawn to start setting up house, he'd thrown on yesterday's tee-shirt, not bothering to comb his hair. He hadn't even put on any underwear. As Raymond stood there in his tee-shirt and muddy shoes—naked and dangling in his sweats—he knew he was completely out of his element.

The brown kid hacked and spit, narrowly missing Raymond's feet. "Brah, you wen' steeck feengah to my cousin. You get bolos, eh?"

Raymond seriously considered bolting. He stood his ground. "Whatever you say."

The driver of the truck revved the motor and the boy moved a step closer to Raymond. "You stupid haoles, good fo' not'ing know-it-alls." He reached out and shoved Raymond back a step. Raymond batted the guy's arm away with his fist, and the Polynesian laughed at him. "Ho, dis haole tahff!" He tried to push Raymond again, but Raymond stepped aside.

The truck's driver beeped his horn and gunned the engine again. "Brah, Ant'ony. Try come—we go awready."

"T'row 'em back," the youth in the middle of the cab said. "Dis haole not beeg enough—we go."

The Polynesian reluctantly clambered into the bed. "Necks time no steeck feengah," the driver said. He stepped on his accelerator and the truck squealed off, the two kids in the back saluting Raymond with both hands—four middle feengahs. Raymond resisted the curious urge to moon them.

His legs went wobbly as he sloshed back through the alley, retracing his steps. One of the boys he might been able to take. But the whole bunch? Even more frightening was the thought of having to face his mother, back home. No, he thought, not back home. The tiny duplex on Lilikoi Street wasn't his home, it was just a house. Home had nothing to do with coconut trees and banana plants and hibiscus bushes. Home was trees that reached up like clean-picked skeletons and grass that felt like the stiff side of Velcro. He'd barely been on the island for twelve hours, and if things went as he planned Raymond would only stay for—he calculated in his head—three hundred and thirty six more. Two weeks and he'd be back home in Mesa, Arizona, where his friends and his ex-girlfriend and his father all lived.

They'd made a deal, he and his dad. Raymond would be a good son and help his mother and make sure the whole family got good and settled—for two weeks. His dad, in turn, would send him a one-way ticket back to civilization. He'd practically promised.

Raymond located the dreaded duplex by spotting the boxy white rental car parked in front. In the front yard were three palm trees. Baby green bananas and a drooping red flower hung from a tall stalk just outside the kitchen window. As he stood in the driveway he could hear the waves pounding the beach half a block away. The unfamiliar smell of salt was sour in his nostrils.

His finger had stopped bleeding, anyway. He pounded the rental car on the hood and cast around one last sweeping glance before going in the house to face his mother again. There was just no getting over everything being so intensely, incredibly Wizard-of-Oz green. It made him want to retch.

© Copyright 2002 by David S. Baker