8:51 A.M., Sunday, June 21, 2015

Just Outside Honolulu, HI

When Paul Macon and Paula Akron awoke, they both had Michiko Takahashi‘s “I Think I Love You” stuck in their heads, so they took a little time to sing together. They suddenly realized that they hadn’t sung together since their parents had been arrested.

Breakfast, as planned the night before, was a malasada puff with pineapple cream stuffing and also a banana. As they had picked the bananas the night before, they didn’t even bother to dress but breakfasted in the nude. A shared Pepsi finished it off, and the kids considered what to do next.

“If we could just live off bananas and mangos,” Paula noted, “we could stay here.”

“At least until somebody buys the place,” Paul agreed, “or decides to camp out like we’re doing. We’d have to get water somehow.”

There was no water running at this house, either inside or outside. There were several dried turds in the toilet but the smell, while bad, wasn’t as strong as they would have guessed. They concluded that these turds had been deposited some time ago and that the smell had mostly worn off. But with the cigarette butts and beer cans and unflushed turds, it was obvious they were not the first to stay the night here in an unofficial way. This meant that homeless adults could well drop in again and if that happened the children would have to leave. They had both recently had proven to them the futility of nine-year-olds physically resisting adults. If grown-ups arrived they would leave, hopefully with said grown-ups never knowing that any child had been there.

With further thought they also realized that even though the back yard was of a good size and there were no houses to immediate left or right, the chances of being noticed were probably too high right next to the road. No, they needed to stick to the plan and find a rich man’s property, with land to hide on and trash to dig through. Preferably, this land would include or be near a stream, for drinking water.

“And no guard dogs,” Paula added. “I like dogs, but a guard dog would bite anybody.”

“Even if he didn’t bite us,” Paul noted, “the barking would ruin hiding. So yeah, no place with dogs.”

The girl changed the subject and her boyfriend was happy to go along, because what she brought up was something he’d been thinking about all morning.

“That really was Michiko Takahashi we saw, wasn’t it Paul?”

“You bet it was!”

The little girl chuckled. “Maybe we’ll end up hiding on her land. Eating her leftovers.”

The young boy wasn’t so sure. “I read somewhere that she still lives in the same house she grew up in, in the same neighborhood and all. Unless she was already rich?”

“Nah,” Paula shook her head. “She was middle class; I read it in a magazine. And that means she wasn’t rich and she wasn’t poor. Probably the same as us, or at least close.”

Paul looked around.

“This place is a mess,” he said, “but whoever used to live here was richer than I ever was. This place has four bedrooms and three bathrooms and the kitchen is bigger than in any house I’ve ever lived in.”

“That’s right,” the young girl nodded. “And it has a big garage and a nice big back yard. But it isn’t like a millionaire house, with lots of land and swimming pools and stuff.”

“Swimmin’ pools,” the little boy sang out, “movie stars.”

Paula jumped up and started playing an imaginary banjo, making noises with a familiar tune. Paul soon joined her and they did a sort of medley, moving from The Beverly Hillbillies to The Brady Bunch to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and finishing up with “We Are the Crystal Gems” from the animated series Steven Universe. Before the song about a man named Jed was over they had abandoned the pretend instruments and just sang.

Paul looked his girlfriend over.

“Naked, singing,” the little boy chuckled. “If we just had Hustler...”

“Just like the good old days!” the nine year old girl laughed. “Except in the good old days REDACTED

They were sure that their absence had been noted by now. With any luck the authorities were combing the Big Island or, if they had broken the very easy code in the notes, California.