CHAPTER 1: Aelan Akamu
Tick, tock, tick tock. I stared sullenly at the clock, willing time to go faster. My eyebrow twitched, my foot tapped. Someone coughed loudly, like they had strep. Ugh! I tried to hold my breath. It was the day of my last final, the day before summer vacation, where I could get away from so much tiring work for almost three whole months. I glanced back down at the answers written on my test paper. That can't be right, I thought, tilting my head in confusion. How could I have said that The Giver had a straightforward ending? I hadn't understood it at all! I sighed, picked up my pencil in my left hand, and was about to begin scrubbing away the answer when my 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Hewberd called "Time's up! Return your tests to the front, please!" I sighed and handed it slowly to Jason, the boy in front of me. He turned his head and flashed a Crest-commercial white smile at me.
"So, how did you do?" he asked, shaking his wavy black bangs out of his eyes. I shrugged. It wasn't like he was going to find out that I totally screwed up. Even though I'm in three Honor Roll classes doesn't mean that I deserved them. I have dyslexia, but I convinced my mom not to tell the school principal, because I loved reading and making up stories. The school did know about my ADHD, though. That's probably why they hadn't suspended me for somehow causing a propane gas leak in the Science wing during a Physical Science lab, or when I nailed the substitute teacher with a protractor during the Geometry unit. The bell rang, and everyone rushed out of their seats. I was the first out the door. We all raced to out lockers, rapidly spinning the dials. My locker swung open with a light creak. I grabbed my bag, filled only with my phone and iPod, we had finished our locker cleanouts last Friday.
Just as I slammed my locker shut, somebody gripped my bag, pulling my shoulders back. "Hey!" I exclaimed. A familiar giggle sounded behind me.
"Are you ready for summer or what? I could barely sit through the test!" My sister, Ailani practically shouted, her wide green eyes shining with excitement. I grinned. My sister, sweet as she was, was an absolutely terrible student. Of course, she never thought about her future, so it wasn't like grades were important to her, like they are to me. As we approached the door, a horde of well-dressed, rich kids swarmed us. Now, I'm not going to lie and say that my siblings and I were unpopular, or just mildly popular. We never walked the halls alone, always in groups of three or more. We were the 'it' crowd at school.
In that herd of people crowding to the door, making summer plans with us was my brother, Analu. He was twelve minutes older than me and nineteen minutes older than Ailani. My mom had always called us the 'unstoppable three', for obvious reasons. Ailani and I were identical, down to our last freckle. We had tan, half-Hawaiian skin; wide, peridot-green eyes and plump pink lips. Our thick, wavy dark hair that reached just below our shoulder-blades had some lighter, almost caramel-colored highlights from endless hours in the scorching sun set over the Hawaiian borderline. We were thirteen but only barely four feet. Having a very dainty build, we weighed about 35 pounds, but had toned muscles from endless hours swimming, surfing, and playing just about every sport our school had to offer. Our brother, on the other hand, was the same in looks but almost five feet. He had a more muscular build, and played just as many sports as Ailani and I.
Our family lived on a small, secluded island about 30 miles away from the mainland, and the tiny town was almost always forgotten on the maps. We lived on a nice beachfront house with our mother, father, five horses, seven cats and three dogs, though we had absolutely none of our father's traits, blue eyes, reddish-blonde hair, or his annoying, ear-splitting laugh. Whenever I asked my mother about that, she'd glance away from me and mumble something about genetics. Although, come to think of it, my dad was probably the only reason my siblings and I haven't been kicked out of our all exclusive private school yet. He works with the board (and my mom is a marine biologist, so we're pretty rich) and no matter how many disasters popped up (usually with my sister and science labs), he managed to convince the superintendants that they couldn't pin the blame on a dyslexic, ADHD diagnosed teenager.
Come to think of it, most of our problems got scary bullies expelled. And most of them happened during a texting conversation in study hall. But, I guess that's life for us, I thought as I hopped onto my mother's golf-cart and we headed home, the warm sun beating down on our tan backs.