8 AMY - How to lose your sister and then miraculously find her

This was not a good day. By far. It had started as a pretty good day actually. But, right at this moment, as I watched my Mom frantically watch the phone, I couldn't remember that it had ever been a good day.

Kim had been the first up. Actually, she's always the first up. Be it a school day or a vacation day, my sister will be up and about by 6 am to the latest. Why ? 'Cause she's got practice.

Most elite gymnasts don't go to traditional school. They're homeschool. But that's the one thing my parents never concede to gym coaches. Yes, Kimberley can go to practice every day even on birthdays and Christmas. Yes, she can stay late at the gym. Yes, she can miss some school days for competitions. Yes, she'll follow a strict food diet. But no, no and still no, Kimberley will stay in school. Why ? Well because she'll need an education if she ever wants to do something else than gymnastics.

So Kim, since middle school, has gone to early gymnastics practice. She practices from 6:30 to 9 am on schooldays, 7 am to 1 pm on every other day. She's so used to it now that she doesn't even wake anyone up in the morning anymore. In the beginnings, Mom would wake her up, make her breakfast and take her to practice. If she had recently injured herself or if competitions were near, she would even stay there. Now, Kim does everything by herself. That day had been no exception.

By the time I woke up, she was long gone. But I still ventured in her room, to check if she was there. Sort of a habit. When you're the elder sister of an airhead girl like her, you tend to be a little overbearing. I know she hates that about me but I still check her homework on Sunday mornings just like this one. To make sure she's actually done it so that we can go out in the afternoon.

If her bed and desk were covered in drawings, that's how I knew she had some strange dreams and couldn't go back to sleep. She'd been like that since we were kids. She would wake up in the middle of night and sketch everything she could remember from her sleep. These days she drew a strange city. Always the same. One side of the city was beautiful and beaming. The other destroyed and covered in darkness. Sometimes, she'd also draw persons. Always three boys and one girl. But their facial features were always blurred. She'd tell me she couldn't see their faces. Just their shadows. She'd been drawing those four since we were 8.

I have always felt lucky not to have those dreams. When I sleep, I don't wake up. Ever. And I don't remember any dreams I've ever had. Neither the good ones nor the bad ones. Lucky me.

I spent most of the morning finishing up some homework and streaming on the Internet. I've never really enjoyed weekends. We can't really go out since Kim is gone all morning. Depending on the season, it's too hot to actually do anything when she comes back home. And some days, she's so tired she basically passes out on the couch. And, on some rare occasions, Mom has to go get her from the hospital.

So weekends tended to be boring. Vacations too. I preferred school by far. Learning new things, eating with friends, having extra-curricular activities. In September, I was going to be a senior. Kim too but I knew senior year would be far more important for me than it would be for her. She already knew what she was doing for college. She had gotten a scholarship for UCLA. She'd get to continue competitive gymnastics and get a degree in foreign languages or something. She was set.

It was different for me. With a 4.0 GPA, my teachers told me I could literally apply to any college and get in. The thing is I had no idea what I in the world I was going to do. Just like my sister could sometimes predict things, I could feel someone… no something call me. Something that badly needed me. Emphasis on the badly.

Still, I needed to make up my mind pretty soon if I wanted to actually be able to apply to college.

By the time Kim came home, I had sent in three motivation letters and a whole bunch of resumes. So when Mom suggested going to the beach, I was pretty eager to do so. As usual our parents took the car and I rode the scooter. Beach time on Sunday afternoons, especially ones just after school breaks meant we tried to spend as much time as possible with our friends. Next week at school would be hectic and most of them had left the island over the summer to visit family members all over the country. So my parents would leave earlier than us and we would go home on the scooter.

Per usual, Kim had brought the dog. Peg wasn't supposed to go to the beach. That dog was just too curious. If something - anything - caught her attention, she would follow it to the ends of the Earth. And that usually meant somebody – a.k.a ME – had to find her afterwards. And sometimes that meant walking five freaking miles while yelling for the stupid dog to come.

Actually, walking five miles would have been preferable to what happened that day. I had let Kim borrow one of my books. I don't really know why but she chose a romance book. My sister. The one who cringes to anything that's a bit romantic. Chose a romance book. The thing is, she discarded it the moment she saw some of her friends walk towards us. And left it unattended on her towel. And, of course, Peg had to decide this book had just became the most freaking interesting thing in the whole wide world. And that, of course, it would become a lot more interesting if she played with it.

As a result, I had to abandon my own friends to play tag with a dog. A dog that had one of my books in its mouth. On the beach. Shockingly, my book ended up being completely soaked. Soaked as in there was no amount of hairdryer that would ever save it.

So, it wasn't really surprising that, by the time I had relinquished the remnants of my book to my parents, I was in a bad mood.

Seeing my boyfriend flirting with some tourist hadn't really help. Whatever my sister might say, I'm not really the jealous type. And I most certainly didn't get a new boyfriend every semester. Steve had just happened to be a more recent boyfriend. But not recent enough for me not to have noticed how he would drool whenever a pair of feminine long legs would appear in his line of sight. I had been warned about him. He was a cheater. I hadn't really payed it mind but I had told him two things when I had agreed to date him. One, I wouldn't cheat on him. Ever. Two, that meant he shouldn't cheat on me either. Ever.

And for me, kissing another a girl in front of your girlfriend counted as cheating. Especially when you just saw that said girlfriend was just in front of you.

So most of you wouldn't be surprised to know that I might have shrieked. And I might have flung a small octopus at the tourist. Of course, the thing wasn't alive. Someone had certainly brought it for a barbecue or whatever. Not that I cared. I just wanted to scare her a bit.

No need to say, I won the following argument. But Steve's reaction didn't really help to calm my mood. The way he yelled "Chill Amy! You're getting nuts. Kim's way more relaxing. I think I'll go take a stroll with her while you calm" certainly made me a lot madder. Not at my sister of course. At him. He wouldn't even recognize he was the one who had made a mistake.

I just wanted him to be gone. I didn't want to see him any way near me anymore. So I closed my eyes and silently wished for him to go somewhere I couldn't see him. But, of course, when I opened them again, he was still there. Should have seen this one coming Amy. Kim wasn't there anymore though. She must have fled the battlefield and I couldn't blame her for it. This was going to get ugly.

After I told Steve that no, we weren't together anymore for the twelfth time in a row or so, I decided it was time for us to head home. Which is how I encountered one of the many difficulties of my day. Kim wasn't there anymore. Where she might have gone, I didn't know. Neither did her friends. The worst part was that I quickly realized her bag was still there. With her phone in it. Which meant I had no way to contact her. My sister was gone and I had no idea of where she could be.

Maybe one of her friends had given her a ride back home. But again, who would leave their stuff on the beach and just go back home. I was getting increasingly worried as I rode the scooter back to the house.

But she wasn't there either. My parents were also getting even more stressed by the minute. She couldn't contact us but Mom still paced nervously in front of the phone, waiting for anybody's call. My dad had gone to check if she wasn't at one of her friend's house.

I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed the car keys and bolted out of the house yelling "I'm going back to the beach. If she's there, I'll find her !".

I didn't have to go to far. Actually, I didn't have to even take a step. My sister was in front of the house. With a bunch of persons but that didn't really matter. She looked fine. She didn't seem hurt or whatever. I rushed to hug her. Right at that moment, I wasn't sure if I was going to start crying out of relief or if I would strangle her for making us worry so much.

"Where have you been ?" I yelled.

° ° °

After I finally checked that my sister was perfectly fine, I turned around to stare at the four persons who stood in front of our house. Three guys and one girl. Their strange hair color wasn't really shocking to me. Nowadays, teenagers enjoy coloring their hair in the strangest shades. What was more strange was that they were all wearing swimsuits. Sure it's Hawaii so it's not really shocking. But most tourists don't really stay too long in Honoka'a. And almost never after 8 pm.

Moreover, they clearly hadn't come here by car. Actually, I had no idea how they had come here. The walk from Waipi'o black sand beach to Honoka'a was long. Long as in almost 10 miles long. For them to be in front of our house at 8 pm, they would have had to leave the beach at 5 pm. Maybe even earlier. And I knew for a fact that my sister had been at the beach at 7. So how had they gotten here ?

Considering how much of an airhead Kim was, they could be… well, basically anyone. So that plus the fact that they had purely and simply appeared out of nowhere meant they were highly suspicious. Emphasis on highly.

So until I had determined who they were and what they wanted with my sister, no way in hell I was going to trust them.

There was going to be a lot of questions to be asked and answered. But I knew from experience that it would be much easier to ask those questions if I seemed welcoming. Which is why I flashed them with my brightest smile – the one which contains more teeths than your average smile - and politely said "I guess I should thank you for bringing her back home.".