Chapter 8
…And I was right! I calmed the man down, and helped him find the bathroom. After he did his stuff, I guided him to his room, where a woman was laughing her head off. She was rolling on the ground, giggling. I could not see what she was laughing at. She stopped laughing when she saw him appear in the doorway. The hotel room was a mess. It stank of nail polish, and I could see where it was coming from. The bed sheets were stained bright pink, red, and there was a part of the bed that was covered with clear nail polish. The woman was wearing a bikini, and she was all wet. More nail polish plastered her body. I almost stepped into a puddle of wine. The wine glass was all broken. The blankets and pillows of the bed were shredded, and strewn all over the place. I wondered how much money they had to pay the hotel. I noticed that the TV’s glass was broken. I peered inside it. I had always wondered what was inside a TV.
The woman broke the ice. She said, “Welcome, dear.” She reminded me of Cruella Devil. “So, where’s your hotel room?”
I answered, “Its on floor 2.”
She did not hear me because she said, “Come again?”
I said, “I said, “Its on floor 2.”
Then she started laughing like a hyena again. The people next door must have been sleeping, because a groggy looking man wearing only a pair of boxer shorts examined the hotel room. He ordered them to be quiet, and he saw me. He saw the blood on my sock, and said, “What happened to your foot?”
I said, “Somebody’s arm fell off, and some of the blood got onto my sock.” The man laughed uncontrollably, even louder than the woman did. He reminded me of Santa Claus. Another woman, who I guess was the man’s wife appeared in the doorway. She was wearing the unmentionables. She rubbed her eyes. I could see her eye color. Her left eye was brown, but her right eye was black. Just like mine. Her hair was the same color as mine, coffee colored, with brown natural highlights. The shape of her husband’s nose was exactly like mine: round, but flat.
The man said to his wife, “I think our job is done here. Um…what is your name? Let’s look at your leg.” He beckoned for me. He seemed nice enough, so I followed. I had nothing to lose anyway. He closed the door, and told me to sit on the couch. His wife sat next to me. She took off my sock, and grabbed the first aid kit.
She said to her husband, “I don’t see the cut,”
“That’s because there is no cut.” I said.
“Then where did the blood come from?” she asked me.
“Follow me,” I said. The couple put on their robes and followed me. I pointed to the kidnapper, his missing arm still bleeding.
“So his arm really did fall off!” the man concluded.
“What’s in his mouth?” the lady asked.
“It must be a bottle of ether.” A third voice said. I looked behind them, and saw a girl that closely resembled Ms. Odette. She and I looked the same! “Are you an orphan?” When she saw me nod my head, she said to her parents, “Can we adopt her? She looks exactly like me!”
“She sure looks cute,” the lady said to herself. I just blinked my eyes. “But we have to find whoever is in charge of her.”
I couldn’t seem to put two and two together in my mind. I was missing my parents, and I looked identical to this lady and this girl. Then, a thought struck me like lightning. I realized that these people had a ninety-nine percent chance of being my parents!
“Where is your orphanage lady?” the dad boomed gently.(I don’t know how that’s possible.)
“She…got…kidnap-“ before I could finish my sentence, I started wailing. Even above my crying, I could practically hear the gears turning inside the girl’s head.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” the girl cried, as if she were standing on top of a hot plate. “Her orphanage owner is big sis!”
“You mean Odette?” her mother started crying too. Even the man started sobbing.
I tried to stop their crying by saying, “I was in France. Ms. Odette was really my orphanage lady. And now I know why she was so nice to me: because I think you’re my family.”
Right then, Charlotte ran towards me. Out of breath, she said, “Why are you crying?”
“No, the better question is: Why is the kidnapper chasing us?”
The lady gasped. “There’s a kidnapper chasing you two? I’m going to skin him alive!” She squinted at Charlotte. “Who are you?”
“She’s my friend,” I answered for her.
“Are you an orphan too?” she asked.
“Yes,” she said timidly.
“Hmm… you remind me of someone I know.” The girl said.
Before they could go wherever they were going, Charlotte answered, “The kidnapper wants Marie so that he can hold a ransom.”
“Marie, Marie.” The lady said. She looked her husband in the eye and said, “I think our daughter’s name is Marie.”
“I’m Marie!” I suggested.
The lady picked me up and slobbered all over me like a happy dog. I smiled. I had finally found my family. “My beautiful baby!” she cried. My long lost family had finally found me! However, when I saw Charlotte’s forlorn face, I knew she envied me.
That night, as we sat down for dinner, my mother taught me how to cut my steak properly. “You’re just like a barbarian,” Claire, my sister, joked. “You don’t even know how to eat without splattering food all over the ground!” Charlotte just sat there like it was the end of the world. She didn’t even eat a bite. She was known to be the winner for all the annual food-eating contest. I guessed that she could never have anorexia.
In the morning, the mailman brought us a newspaper. It read, “Couple Rescued from Easter Island.” In the picture, the couple looked vaguely familiar. I showed it to Charlotte, and read the title. I think the information went through one ear and out the other, because she had retrieved her magnifying glass and was staring intently at the picture.
In less than a minute, I guess you could say the newspaper was soggy. I had read it to Charlotte, and now tears were falling like a rainstorm. She tumbled off the bed and nearly fell from the balcony. I asked what she wanted, and she said, “A ride.”
A ride? What was that supposed to mean? I skimmed the article. I read in my head over and over again: “They’ll be arriving in the San Francisco airport at noon on Tuesday, September 17.” September 17. That was tomorrow! I understood what she meant now. I was just going to go upstairs to get my parents to drive us to San Francisco, when I realized that Charlotte was missing! I chanted: Think like a Charlotte! Where would she be? I thought like a Charlotte, and an idea popped into my head.
She would probably be begging my parents to give her a ride, so I hopped into an elevator, and ran as fast as I could to my parents’ room without tripping. I knocked once on the door. No one answered. I knocked another time, this time harder. Still no one answered. I saw a doorbell, and I pushed it. I was getting frustrated. I pounded, knocked, and pushed the door and doorbell again and again. “Yes?” Claire said, half-asleep. When she saw me standing there, she picked me up and spun me around like a little baby. After I felt dizzy enough to go to sleep, she put me down. I saw a Charlotte laying on the ground, her hands praying. When I saw my father saying that he couldn’t drive her to San Francisco, I purposely pointed out the window and said, “What’s that?” even though I already knew what it was: my family’s private jet.
Then, Claire launched into a debate, although no one really said anything except for her. “Do you know how little time it takes to get to San Francisco by jet? And look at that poor little face!” Charlotte made a point to put on her cutest little puppy face. “And look at little Marie! Doesn’t she look cute? And remember when you said, ‘Help those in need?’ This little girl has a need!”
Daddy must have been caught deciding between the devil and the angel in him, but he finally sided with the angel. “Alright, let’s go,” he said with a smile. The jet drivers were helping us on board. Apparently, Charlotte had turned her frown upside down! We acted like newbies on board the jet. We looked up, and down, and all around. Suddenly, the jet jolted, and we were on our way to San Francisco Airport. In about 45 minutes, we got off the jet. A crowd of people and newspaper reporters crowded the airplane that had landed right before we landed. “Okay,” Daddy said. “Do your stuff.”
We made our way through the crowd, trying very hard to stay alive. When we saw the couple, I realized they had landed a day early. The whole world seemed to pause as Charlotte flung herself into the arms of her parents. Her blue dress seemed to cry, “This is the best day of my life!” for Charlotte. The couple seemed to read her mind. The woman tried to shield her daughter and herself from the cameras, and they climbed back onto the plane. “Can she come on to?” Charlotte begged to her family, pointing to me. The woman’s hair was entangled, her face was smudged with dirt, and her clothes were basically shredded, so she had a good reason to stay hidden.
The plane suddenly flew back into the sky, and the rest of my family climbed aboard their jet to follow the plane I was in. We passed on top of the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge, and we saw the HOLLYWOOD sign on the mountain after a while. Amazingly, the plane landed right where our family jet had been! Our jet landed a few minutes later behind Charlotte’s family’s plane. As my dad was busy accommodating a room for Charlotte’s family, my mother went to her favorite shop, Forever21, to buy brand new clothes for Charlotte’s parents.
When she came back, she was holding around twenty shopping bags full of fashionable clothes. She seemed to bore Charlotte’s parents by saying, “Hey Peggy, do you like this tank top? Or these jeans? How about this pink denim miniskirt? Maybe you’d like this sundress! Look at this tankini I bought you?” As my mother began to flip through all her merchandise, mountain loads of it began to clog the doorway. Then, she got lost in her shopping. “Ooh, these high heels look good on me. Do you like these leggings? If you don’t, I’ll have them.” She didn’t seem to notice that Charlotte’s mom had already gone into the bathroom to take a shower.
“What are all these clothes in the doorway? Move them!” my dad shouted.
“Hey, be careful, these sunglasses are my favorite types! Do they look good?” she put the sunglasses on herself. They seemed to cover half of her face.
Peggy, Charlotte’s mom, came out of the shower, dressed in one of my mother’s robes that she had just bought from Forever21.
“Here!” my mom said cheerfully, handing Peggy an armful of clothes.
She walked into her room and changed. In a matter of minutes, we struck up a dicussion about Odette’s whereabouts. “What we need is strategy,” Charlotte’s dad, Bob, a famous war hero, said. “If we want to outsmart the kidnappers, then we have to think one step ahead.”