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That wasn’t the way I was expecting things to work out. “I think that’s a great idea,” Terri said.
Everyone looked at me. What was I going to say? That we weren’t foster parents? That we weren’t ready to look after a troubled teenager? That I was scared things would change between Mike and me if we opened our home and our lives to a kid?
“I agree,” I said. “We’ll keep things between us for a few days and see how things work out. And then if we need to, Mike and I will go through the process to be official foster parents.”
“I can help with that,” Terri said. “Since I’ve been through it already.”
I looked at Dakota. “You have stuff somewhere? Back at that warehouse?”
“Some clothes. But I don’t want to go back there tonight.”
“There’s a twenty-four hour Walmart near Ala Moana Center,” Mike said. “We can swing by there on the way home and get you whatever you need to hold you for a couple of days.”
We stood up. “If you need anything, call me, Kimo,” Terri said.
“I will. You can count on it.”
We all hugged and kissed goodbye, and Dakota shook hands shyly with Terri and Levi. “Thank you for being interested in me,” he said.
“Kimo and Mike will take good care of you,” Levi said. He opened his wallet and pulled out a business card and a couple of bills. “In case there’s something you want at the Walmart that they won’t buy for you. And feel free to call us any time.”
Dakota took the money and the card and stuffed them into the pocket of his board shorts. We split up a block later as Terri and Levi headed to her SUV, and Mike, Dakota and I walked along without saying anything.
≈≈≈
The Walmart was bright and busy, even late on a Saturday night. I got a shopping cart and followed Mike and Dakota over to the clothing section, where Mike started loading up the cart with underwear, shorts and T-shirts. “He’s going to need something to wear to school,” I said. “Get him a couple of collared shirts and long pants.”
“I don’t want to go to school,” Dakota said. “You guys can home school me. I know kids who do that.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “In our spare time. Mike and I both went to high school here in Honolulu and you will too. What grade are you in, anyway?”
“Eighth.”
“That’s Aiea Intermediate,” Mike said. “I went there.”
“How come you didn’t go to Aiea High?” I asked, as I followed them to the grocery section, pushing the shopping cart.
“Got into a special science magnet at Farrington,” Mike said. He turned to Dakota. “Geez, if you’re in eighth grade already we’ll have to start looking at high schools, see where the best one is for you.”
“Don’t go overboard, bud,” I said. “Let’s get Dakota settled first.”
Dakota got to pick out a couple of snacks he liked, and we stocked up on food supplies. By the time we hit the register the cart was piled high with stuff. Dakota pulled the cash Levi had given him out of his pocket and tried to hand it to me.
“Hold on to that,” I said. “Every kid needs a little money of his own.”
We drove home, and Dakota met Roby. It was love at first sight. He got down on the ground and Roby jumped all over him, licking his face as Dakota giggled and scratched the dog’s stomach. By the time we had everything unloaded and put away, and got Dakota set up in the guest room, it was after midnight, and I was grateful to crawl into bed.
“You’re not mad, are you?” Mike asked, sliding in next to me. “About Dakota coming to stay with us?”
“We don’t know that it’s permanent.” I yawned. “It just means no more sex in the living room for a while.”
“You think he can hear us in here?”
“Yup. Go to sleep.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek, and then we spooned together and drifted off.
I half expected Dakota’s bed to be empty the next morning. I wasn’t sure he’d stick around, even though he’d seemed happy the night before. But he was still asleep when I looked in on him, his hair spread around him on the pillow, tiny snores coming out of his mouth.
I went downstairs, walked Roby, then started fixing breakfast. By the time the bacon was fried and the eggs scrambled, both Mike and Dakota had come down to the kitchen.
“Can you get the orange juice?” I asked Dakota. “Glasses in the cabinet above the dishwasher.”
The three of us sat down to breakfast, Roby sprawled behind Mike’s chair waiting for some bacon bits.
“This is cool,” Dakota said. “Back home we used to go to my uncle’s house sometimes for breakfast. Then he and my mom had a fight and after that she picked us up and moved here.”
We talked for a while about growing up, and then Dakota asked, “Are you going to be able to find that guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one from the car last night.”
“Oh, yeah. Him. I’ll have to run a trace on that license plate. And I’ll send the picture to a guy I know at the FBI, and ask him to run it through their facial recognition software.” I looked at him. “But I can’t do that until tomorrow. In the meantime, you ever been surfing?”
He shook his head. “I can’t swim.”
I nodded. “Well, that’s something we can work on today. Your first swimming lesson.”
Dakota went up to his room to put on the bathing suit we had bought the night before, and I said to Mike, “What are we going to do with him tomorrow? We can’t enroll him in school because he’s not legally supposed to be living with us.”
“We don’t even know if he’s at an eighth-grade level. They probably have placement tests online somewhere.”
I nodded. “That’s a good idea. We can find him a placement test online, and then if he’s behind in some area, we can get him a book or something and have him study. Then in a couple of days we’ll know where we are.”
Dakota wasn’t thrilled about taking an online test, but Mike convinced him while I surfed around and found a good site. “It’s going to take you half an hour,” I said. “And then we’ll go swimming, all right?”
He grudgingly sat down at the laptop and started taking the test. Looking over his shoulder I saw that there were questions in science, math, social studies, and English, along with some optional sections on computer science, foreign language and health.
He was adept at using the computer, and I was hopeful that meant he’d gotten some good schooling somewhere. When he finished the test, Mike and I looked at the results with him. His reading comprehension was pretty strong, as was his knowledge of grammar and punctuation. But he was way behind his grade level in math and science.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried, I did. But some of the stuff I never heard of.”
“No problem,” I said. “We’ll get you some books to study over the next couple of days and see if we can get you up to speed. Mike’s Mr. Science Guy anyway—he can help you with that stuff.”
We decided to drive out to Maunalua Bay Beach Park, in Hawaii Kai, because it was so shallow and calm that Dakota could learn to enjoy the water without surf or fear of drowning. As we pulled into the parking lot, he was as excited as I’d ever seen him. We parked next to a huge minivan with a line of little decals on the back window: father, mother, ballerina daughter, soccer player son, baby in diapers, and a cat licking its paw.
We hauled our stuff down to the sand and set up an umbrella and a couple of towels, and we had a lot of fun hanging out, laughing with Dakota as he figured out how to move his arms and legs under the water, and marveled over all the fish and the scenery.
“This is so cool,” he said. “I never even knew there were places like this.”
He made friends with two girls, tourists, and impressed them with his knowledge of Hawai’i. As we left the park, he was smiling and happy, which carried through our dinner at the Boston Style Pizza parlor in Hawai’i Kai, where we ordered the three-pound special. Mike insisted on ham and pineapple, his favorites; Dakota got to add black olives and mushrooms. It was heart-warming and sad at the same time to see how much he enjoyed small things I’d always taken for granted, like the chance to choose his own pizza toppings.
We stopped at a big chain bookstore on the way home and bought him a self-study book for science and one for math. I was tempted to buy one of those “parenting for dummies” guides. Mike and I needed to study up as much as Dakota did. But I figured our best lessons would be the ones he taught us. And maybe, just maybe, if things worked out, I’d feel better about having a kid, and Mike and I would have a better idea what we were getting ourselves into.
Later that evening I was relaxing on the sofa with Mike, reading a gay mystery novel by Mark Richard Zubro. Dakota was sprawled on the floor with Roby, reading the first chapter of his science text, when my cell phone started to ring with Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors.”
I followed the ringing sound to the kitchen table, where I grabbed the phone before it went to voice mail. “Hey, Gunter, what’s up?”
“I kind of need a favor,” he said. “Could you bail me out of jail?”