For the third time this week, Kiri is woken up by the deafening beats of Golden blaring through the family’s portable bluetooth speaker. “… We’re going up, up, up, it’s our moment. You know together we’re glowin’, gonna be gonna be golden” the singer’s voice screeches higher as the song reaches its peak.
With eardrums drowning in loud singing, the twelve-year old Kiri is left with no choice but to get up from his sleeping mat. He pushes a ragged Pokemon sheet off his chest and trots groggily to the back of the house. His older sister, Tevi, is in the bathroom brushing her teeth. “Your music is too loud!” He whines in complaint from the hallway. “That’s how I enjoy it,” she retorts through toothpaste suds, “and it’s none of your business.”
“It’s the same song every day, all day! Don’t you know how to listen to anything else?” He asks incredulously.
“This song is fire right now. Stop being cringe.” She shoots an angry look.
“You’re the one who’s cringe. You’re an evil, selfish bitch!” He declares in frustration, feet stomping.
His emotional outburst causes their mother, Chenda, to emerge in the kitchen doorway. She’s holding a bent-up ladle in her right hand, and a giant blackened wok in her left. Clearly in the midst of cooking for the family, she has the look of someone who is ready to dish out punishments to anyone who crosses her. Kiri holds his breath, unsure if his mother has heard the last word in his declaration.
“What do you think you’re doing causing trouble this early in the morning?” She asks in a stern voice. Kiri breathes again. At least she didn’t hear him say the b-word. “It’s not my fault that I don’t want to listen to her music!” He explains to his mother in defiance.
“You should already be up by now,” Chenda reprimands. “Were you planning to sleep until high noon?”
“But there’s no school today,” Kiri protests.
“It’s the first day of a long weekend, which means that you’re going to be helping your father at the coconut shack, young man.”
Unbelievable. In all his twelve years of life, he can never catch a break with this family.
“I don’t want to go,” he objects fervently. “Why can’t Tevi go instead?”
“I am going to grandma’s today, remember?” Tevi reminds him with a mocking grin as she steps out of the bathroom.
Of course today is the day. With awful realization dawning on his face, Kiri resigns to the dreadful fate that is commonly known as his life. How can he forget that today is his sister’s birthday? The day when every being on earth is expected to celebrate the amazing Tevi, as if they don’t already on other days.
Propping his back against the wooden wall of the hallway, Kiri sinks slowly into a sitting position while mulling over the unfair treatments that fate brings him. Life seems unreasonable when he has to work at the shack while Tevi gets to have fun with their cousins all day.
“Why are you squatting on the floor?” Chenda asks curtly, her patience wearing thin. “Hurry up and get ready. Your father leaves for the beach in a few minutes.”
Too scared of his mother to be told twice, Kiri pulls himself up from the floorboards and drags his feet as slow as he can to the bathroom to get ready for the day.
…….
“Here,” Tevi hands her little brother a plastic cup of iced chocolate as soon as he enters the kitchen. “My bad for earlier.” Kiri is immediately suspicious. “Where did you get this?”
“I sneaked it from mom’s store. Stop asking questions or she’ll know.”
Kiri reluctantly accepts the cup from his sister’s hand and takes a careful sip. The iced chocolate is sweet and rich, and the coldness of the drink makes him feel instantly better in the smoldering island heat. Maybe Tevi isn’t so evil after all, she does take care of him from time to time. Kiri starts to feel a tug of guilt for having called his sister a selfish b- word just now.
Their father, Ratha, pokes his head through the doorway to check on Kiri’s progress. “Good, you’re washed,” he says briskly. “Eat your breakfast quickly, we’re leaving in 5 minutes, son.”
Kiri starts gobbling down some leftover white rice with the salted fish that his mother has fried earlier. The iced chocolate that Tevi has offered him is especially effective in helping ease the dry, sticky rice down his throat. He finishes his meal by taking one last gulp of the delicious drink in a flourish. That is when he notices something peculiar at the bottom of his cup. Under the melting ice cubes, there appears to be a number of dark wrinkly insects floating lazily in the diluted sludge of his chocolate drink.
Spooked, Kiri flings the accursed cup across the room in a panic while jumping out of his red plastic chair. He then watches in horror as the cup flies in a perfect arc into the simmering pot of stew that Chenda has left on the stove. Splash! Brown spatters land in every direction within the vicinity of the cooking pot. Chenda turns around from the chopping board just as stew essence scatters across every surface of the room, splattering across the walls, ceiling, and cupboards like tasteful artistic expressions from an expert painter.
Kiri widens his eyes in disbelief at what happened. His mother takes in the sight of the room for a second, then turns deliberately to her son with the words, “what in God’s name!” Kiri gulps. He stands frozen on the spot, unable to move, the red plastic chair still upturned beside him.
“What have you done this time?” Chenda seems to have moved past the shock of the incident and finally finds her vocal chords again. Kiri can’t say the same about himself. “There were bugs in my cup,” he manages a croak.
“Look at the mess you’ve made. It’s going to take me hours to clean this up!” His mother’s voice grows shriller with each word. “When will you learn to be more responsible, you’re not a kid any more! Never in my entire life have I seen stew flying onto the ceiling!”
Kiri feels his face turning hot. He wants nothing more than to disappear into thin air. To add fuel to fire, Ratha arrives at the scene of the crime looking for him. “Look at what your son did,” Chenda points to the pot of stew that is now half empty, a green plastic cup bobbing on the bubbling surface, “he’s an impossible kid!” Shame wells up inside him. Kiri will never forget the humiliation of this mistake. He will be mortified until the day that he dies.
As if on cue, Tevi steps onto the threshold of the kitchen like a fashion model onto the runway. Her jaw drops at the mess that Kiri has created. “Oh my god, you’re cooked bro.” Kiri can’t believe his luck. Not only is he making the biggest fool out of himself this morning, but everyone in his family is getting a first-class ticket to witness his stupidity too.
“What kind of insects are these?” Their mother has lifted the cup from the stew crater and is scrupulously examining its contents like a fortune teller reading prophetic tea leaves, her eyes squinting at the floating hitchhikers.
“They are just raisins, I put them there.” Tevi volunteers a mumble of an explanation and vanishes from the doorway. Kiri detects a hint of hesitancy in her voice.
“You’re right, they are raisins!” Chenda proclaims, her eyes still on the shriveled floating beads. “How did they end up in the cup?”
That’s right, how did they get in the cup? Kiri thinks to himself. How does Tevi know what they are without having to look at them? There is only one plausible explanation. She is the person responsible for all of this. She and her evil iced chocolate cause him his dignity this morning. Tevi, and his family as a whole, is the source of the humiliation that he will have to endure for the rest of his life. Come to think of it, everyone in this family does nothing but embarrasses him at every opportunity that they have.
Kiri reaches an inevitable conclusion right then and there. He can no longer live his life peacefully with his family. Leaving is the only option. This is what you do when life deals a devastating blow despite your best efforts at being a good person.
He wanders out of the kitchen in a daze. His hands fish out a faded purple backpack from a corner. It is a hand-me-down from his sister, featuring a colorful unicorn on the front with pink and blue hearts dotted all over. “Purple is not a girly color,” his mum insisted when she forced the bag on him.
Kiri starts packing the essentials for survival in the wilderness: his beloved slingshot, Pokemon cards, and his life savings of about three dollars.
Does he need anything else? As an afterthought, he grabs a pair of underwear and shoves it into the backpack.
“Kiri, what are you doing?” Ratha is standing by the front door, but Kiri only hears his voice as faint echoes from a distance. “Hurry up, we need to leave now.”
“Coming, dad.” Kiri responses in a trance.
He imagines himself as a rugged adventurer living for freedom. Perhaps he’ll make it big and then everyone will realise how badly they treat him. Once he leaves, nobody will get to humiliate him any more. No more evil sister. And most importantly, no more waking up to bad concerts first thing in the morning.
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