Chapter 5
Peter sat on the edge of his bunk, staring at the floor in a miffed state. He had already made peace with the fact that his parents had just dropped him off on another island at a school he was unfamiliar with and people he didn’t know. What annoyed him was the fact that his new roommate was lying on his own bunk, bouncing an old racquetball off the wall, repeatedly. Vince was completely oblivious to the fact that he was bugging Peter as well, which only made things more aggravating.
“Kinda early to be all down in the dumps, ain’t it?” Vince asked casually, still bouncing the ball off the wall while lying flat on his back.
“Huh? What?” Peter stammered. He was trying his best to ignore the bouncing ball. He wanted to stay lost in his thoughts. But the irritating sound was keeping him from them for sure. “Hey, can you cut that out?”
Vince ignored of him, of course. He just kept bouncing the ball off the wall with one hand and catching it with his other hand. “Sittin’ there mopin’, I mean. It’s a long school year bud, gotta get over it.”
With each bounce of the ball, Peter became more and more agitated. He brushed Vince’s comments aside. “Nah, nah, I’m not mopin’. I’m just thinkin’ is all.”
“’Bout what?” Vincent asked.
“Nothing.” Peter really didn’t want to get into a discussion about his feelings nor share them with someone he had just met. “Geez, can you cut that out? I can’t get one single thought straight in my head.”
Vince kept on bouncing the ball, as if it were his own nervous habit. “Well, what are ya thinkin’ about anyway?”
“I don’t know, but the one thought I keep having over and over is terrific,” Peter snapped sarcastically. Suddenly he jumped up and caught the ball in mid-air before it landed in Vince’s outstretched hand. “But maybe I can have a second one now.”
Vince rolled over on his side and smiled. “Nice snag, man!” He slowly sat on the edge of the bed and relented. “OK, I get it. I’ll stop.”
Peter sat down again on his own bed and started bouncing the ball slowly on the floor. “I knew it,” Vince said. “You just wanted it for yourself.” Peter chuckled at him. “Hey, you know what?”
“What?” Peter asked quietly.
“We need to look around, give you the grand tour, man,” he announced. “Plus I gotta fill you in on this stuff.”
Something to do sounded good to Peter. Anything to do sounded good at the moment. He stopped bouncing the ball and looked up at Vince asking, “Stuff like what?”
“Rules and stuff,” Vince answered. “Work detail, what time we have to get up, curfew, weekends, dress code, you name it. Come on, let’s get outta here.”
Both boys walked out into the hallway and Vince led the way. One detail had caught Peter’s attention. “Well,” he stammered, “What time do we have to get up?”
“5:45 a.m. bro,” Vince stated.
“No freakin’ way,” Peter retorted. He didn’t like the sound of that. He had enough trouble already just getting up for the regular school time.
“Oh it be so,” Vince responded.
“What the hell for?”
“Work detail, man,” Vince continued. “All the boarders have to work outside in the mornings. School grounds, the farm, the pigs.”
“The pigs?” Peter asked, as if he had forgotten. He knew from his father’s time here that there were pigs that were kept and raised at the school. But the one thing his dad had failed to mention was the 5:45 a.m. part.
“Yep,” Vince said. “School has pigs down at the pens. And we gotta little farm with taro, ti, corn, you name it.”
“And we gotta do all that?”
“Yep.”
“For how long?” Peter asked.
Vince could tell this was all news to Peter as they walked down the corridor. “Some of us have cafeteria duty too. In the morning, we work for an hour. After school, two hours.” He looked over at Peter a bit concerned. “You didn’t know any of this stuff, man?”
Peter shrugged a bit as they entered a lounge area. “I guess I knew about it. From my old man I mean. Just didn’t’ think it was so much.” He scanned his eyes around the mostly unimpressive room. “I guess I didn’t think about how early it all was though.” Vince laughed out loud at him. “What’s this place?”
The boys stood just inside the doorway of a plain lounge area furnished with a couple sofas, a few armchairs and an old TV set in the far left corner. Behind the sofas were a pool table and dart board.
“Just a play lounge,” Vince answered routinely. “We share it with the girls. It’s the only place we can be with the girls besides in school. They can’t be in our dorm, we can’t be in theirs. Their dorm has one too.” Peter nodded. “The office is right past that doorway over there, so they know who’s in here all the time. And since we got mandatory study time every night, girls too, ain’t too many people in here anyway. Except on the weekends.”
“Yeah,” Peter shrugged again.
“That is, of course, after your three hours of work on Saturdays too,” Vince added.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed, Peter exclaimed, “Saturday too??”
Vince laughed out loud again. Patting him on the back he tried to reassure him, “Don’t worry about it, man. All of us are doing the same thing, girls too. You’ll get used to it.” Vince stared at the room for a while, as if he were contemplating all the years he had been here already. He nodded his head, thinking to himself. “Yeah, you’ll get used to it,” he said again.
Peter stared at the pool table. “Pool’s pretty fun,” he said.
“Yeah, we play sometimes. Watch some football. Hey, you like football?”
Peter nodded, “Yeah I guess so. I watch some with my dad sometimes.”
“Great,” Vince responded. “Our season starts in a couple weeks. The Lunas are supposed to be good this year.”
“High school football? Oh yeah, I guess so. My school back on the Big Island didn’t have a team.”
“Well, we do here. The games are fun.”
Peter looked past the pool table at the old dart board on the wall. It had a small chalkboard hanging next to it. “Anybody play that?” he asked.
“Nah,” Vince laughed. “Nobody around here knows the damn rules. Besides, I don’t think we have any darts either. Come on, let’s go.”
Following Vince back down the hallway, he said, “I don’t know anything about it either, I guess,” Peter said. In truth he did have a dart board in the garage at home that he and his sister had messed around with from time to time, but they didn’t know how to keep proper score either.
Vince turned to him and said, “Next stop, the glorious laundry room!”
Peter was fast asleep when an annoying noise suddenly awakened him. He couldn’t get away from the siren going off out in the hallway. He buried his head under his pillow, hoping it would stop. Thankfully, and mercifully, it did.
With a crazed look on his face, he wearily lifted the pillow from his face and asked his already sitting-up roommate, “What the hell was that??”
Yawning, Vincent replied, as if it were no big deal, “Wake-up call, dude. Time to go do the morning chores.”
“Already?” Peter exclaimed. “Classes don’t start until tomorrow!”
“Work starts today, buddy. Come on, you need to get going,” Vincent said hurriedly.
Peter buried his face in the pillow again and moaned, “Ugh. This was not in the brochure.” He finally got to his feet and got dressed in his work clothes, but did not really know where he should be going. “So where do we go?”
“Well, I already know where I’m going,” Vincent said wryly. “I found out yesterday. Benefits of being here three years. I got cafeteria this year. Not the most glamorous work, but at least there is no mud.”
“Well, great for you,” Peter answered. “But what about me?”
“Everybody meets at the farm the first day, then they
’ll tell you what your assigned area will be. Just about everyone works outside. You get to move around some, but most newbies and freshmen get to work with the pigs.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “Terrific. I know that’ll be just my luck.” He thought quickly on what his options were. Go running down the mountain screaming his fool head off to get away from this place, or go introduce himself to the pigs. Then another thought occurred to him. “Hey, maybe I can get in with you at the cafeteria.”
“No chance, buddy,” he said flatly. “They know you are new. You gotta show up at the farm. You ready?” Peter nodded reluctantly. “All right, I’ll point you in the right direction. Let’s go.”
It was a beautiful West Maui morning. The glow of the sunrise gleamed around the peaks of the mountains, the air cool and crisp. The Myna birds could be heard chirping in the trees. The breeze swayed through the palm trees as the boys made their way down the slope towards the small farm near the school grounds. Peter recognized Fin in the group of boys walking to the farm.
“Hey Fin,” Peter said to him. “You going to the farm too?”
Fin thrust his fist into the air and answered, “Yes! My good man, we’re off to The Reaping to see who will be chosen!”
Peter laughed and shook his head. Two more familiar faces came up behind them, laughing out loud too. It was Oki and Kai.
“Geez, Fin,” Kai said laughing. “Haven’t you gotten over that yet?”
“He’s obsessed with the Hunger Games that came out this summer,” Oki explained to Peter.
“Yeah I heard,” Peter replied. “Speaking of the Hunger Games, I’m kinda starvin’ myself. When the hell do we eat?”
Fin skipped along and cut in, “Not just the Games…”
“But Katniss. Yes we know,” Kai said sarcastically, finishing his thought for him. They had heard it all too many times already from Fin. “We eat breakfast after work,” he said, answering Peter’s question.
They arrived at a small shed near the gardens for the vegetables and various plants. Boy and girl boarders alike showed up in their work clothes waiting to hear their assignments for the coming weeks.
Stretching up on his toes, Peter scanned over the small sea of faces to try and get a look at the girls in the crowd. It was the first time he had seen any of his fellow female boarders. For a brief second, he thought he saw a very familiar face. But there were too many people there. He could not get a clear look at her.
Soon, the farm foreman, Mr. Cantor, began to speak. “Good morning everyone. Aloha!”
The whole group of students replied in unison, “Aloha!”
“Welcome to another school year at Lahainaluna. I see some new faces, so welcome to you as well for the first time. Those of you who are returning boarders, you know what’s expected of you. Those of you who are new, you will learn quickly on what needs to be done. The upperclassmen and ladies will help you along.” Everyone listened intently as the glow of the early morning became brighter with each passing minute. “You new people will learn that there are many grand traditions here at the school and with being a boarder. One of which, as you know, is working on the school grounds to help earn your room and board and tuition at this great school. We have a beautiful campus, one of the most beautiful high school campuses in the country. We are blessed to have this location on the side of Mt. Ball with this majestic view.”
Mr. Cantor motioned down the side of the mountain and all the students took in the vast beauty of where they were standing. Peter looked on intently, as it was the one thing so far that he really liked. He thought the view was amazing. Yet he still kept trying to get a glance over in the girls’ section to see if he could catch a glimpse of the familiar face once again. But still, he could not.
“I was a former boarder myself,” Mr. Cantor continued. “It’s our duty and our privilege to be the caretakers of these school grounds. We have visitors from all over come to see our campus, our museum, and our variety of events throughout the school year. The biggest of which is graduation in May. So we must keep it looking beautiful and be proud in what we do. After you receive your assigned duties that is where you will be until we rotate around. We will let you know. No need to meet here each morning, just go to your assigned work area and get started. We work for one hour before breakfast, two hours after classes and another three hours on Saturday mornings. The rest of Saturday is free unless you’ve been bad. Then you’re back here with me,” he said, grinning wryly. The group of kids chuckled to themselves. He scanned over some papers in his hands. Clearing his throat he stated plainly, “We are all family here, a wonderful tradition of ohana. We work hard, we help each other too. So work together.” He paused for a moment. “All right then, let’s get to work. Let’s all have a great Monday!”