Chapter Text
“Unacceptable, Maya,” Mymy reprimanded, pacing back and forth across the dinner table, “How can you call yourself Dutch with a performance like that?”
Coco blinked confusedly, looking between the two sisters, one stood on the table, the other curled into the fetal position on the couch, and the mass of kruidnoten spilled all over the living room floor. She cocked her head sideways for a moment, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t see what that has to do with being Dutch.”
“Handball, Coco! We’re Dutch; we play handball. But our dear Maya has been slacking, clearly. That was an excellent throw. She should’ve caught it. I take no blame.”
Coco looked down towards the floor and then back up to Mymy again, her eyes wide and soft. “But if it was supposed to reach Maya, why did the bag land two meters away on the grou—“
“Don’t take her side, dear sister! Must be the South African in you talking. Maya is at fault. You’d think with all those arm workouts she does in her bedroom—“
Maya stood up suddenly, trembling, glancing around the room for a second, before suddenly declaring, “I— I have some work I need to do. I have an appointment… upstairs! Um. Goodbye!”
She took off running towards the stairs, only to slip on a loose kruidnoten ball, trip, and land on her face.
Coco and Mymy stared wordlessly at Maya’s prone form on the floor, her hair obscuring her face so that she looked more like a mop that had been knocked over and left behind, maybe to clean up some of that kruidnoten, than a person.
Mymy lost interest and turned away, but Coco stayed staring and thinking for another moment. Finally she gasped and said something, “Oh, but Maya, you can’t have an appointment. We leave for school in five minutes!”
Maya touched her face gingerly, feeling the splotches of a bruise starting to spread. As soon as they got to school too, this was just what she needed.
Mymy had been lingering by the bike rack for an uncomfortably long time, Coco standing hesitantly next to her. Maya decided to start inching away as quick as she could get away with without the other two noticing.
Coco smiled and then frowned confusedly. “Uh, Mymy, you’ve been standing like that with your fists on your hips for a whole minute. Are you… okay?”
“My dear sister,” Mymy’s head slowly pivoted towards Coco, revealing an absurd grin and wide-eyed stare, “I am much more than just ‘okay!’ I am suffused with the love and joy for life. Look at this bike rack, look!”
Coco glanced at it. It was a normal bike rack. There were maybe, like, ten or twenty bikes there. Coco couldn’t see the big deal. What grand thing could Mymy be getting at now?
“What a beautiful country we live in, where the children are free to bike to school, to enjoy the breeze on our faces and the world at the wheel! Who but the Dutch—our people, Coco—could make such ingenious infrastructure to permit such a thing? A country, the only country in the world, where children are free from the scourge of the automobile and its child-crushing capacities, enabled to use the beautiful, beautiful bike instead?”
Ah, so that’s what Mymy meant. Coco smiled and laughed. Her sister always had something so interesting to say.
Maya wanted to kill herself.
Mymy, having spoke her piece, finally seemed freed from the trance, and begin to traipse along happily next to Coco, blabbering as the pair trekked down the walkway towards the school and quickly overtook their beleaguered sister, leaving her to walk on her own.
Maya caught snippets of the conversation ahead. “You know Coco, you have the Dutch to thank for your athleticism. Only the bike—“
So annoying.
“Could enable you to get such exercise in everyday!”
So. Damn. Annoying.
“Just imagine if you had to take a dirty, dirty car, spewing fumes everywhere! You would be so fat!”
If only something could drown her out.
“Like a filthy American. Or a Belgian.”
If only….
“Truly, I am grateful to live in a car-free—“
Mymy’s next words were cut off by the screeching of burning rubber as a Mitsubishi muscle car lurched across the school lawn in a drift, leaving smoking tire tracks behind it and coming to a stop just in front of Maya, cutting her off from her sisters. J-Rock blared from the inside so loudly that it seemed to shake the ground, and Maya stood aghast, still, and with her mouth hanging open. The driver’s side door faced her
The driver rolled down the window and blew all of Maya’s expectations out of the water. A Japanese goddess with a red flower in her hair was glaring out the car and her gaze was punching straight through Maya. The Dutch girl’s shoulders trembled as the weight of a thousand expectations settled on top of her. The Japanese girl, who was still angrily clutching the steering wheel with her right hand, had a fire in her that seemed to suggest she knew exactly what she wanted, and wasn’t afraid to take it.
“Um… he-hello—“
Maya was cut off as the stranger leaned out the side of the car, her arm exposed against the black metal, tantalizingly cool, and asked, “What’s your name?”
Maya could scream. “Umm. Hmmm. I— Um. Well. Uh. I— I— I DON’T KNOW!”
“How’d you get that black eye?”
“I FORGOT!”
“A good girl like you shouldn’t have a black eye.”
“Well— um— I’m— uh— hi!”
Opposite and unseen by Maya, Mymy too stood completely still, but only for a moment. Angrily, she began to stomp towards the front of the car. Coco followed unfazed, but always eager to support her sisters.
Maya thought she was almost ready to die from the embarrassment, but could still possibly regain her composure, until she saw Mymy rounding the bend and then believed she really did die.
Mymy rapped the hood of the car angrily with her knuckles and coughed loudly, ahem-ing for the mysterious driver’s attention. The driver didn’t react until Mymy finally shouted, “What do you think you’re doing?”
The stranger’s eyes flicked towards Mymy in a slicing motion, finally turning off Maya who could now relax and crumple into a pile on the floor.
“Who do you think you are?” began Mymy, stretching the “who” with a theatrical flourish, “Bursting in here like a Tokyo drifter, blaring your decadent, degenerate, oriental tunes? This is not how we do things in the Netherlands, the greatest country on Earth! You should learn how to—“
“So annoying,” groaned the stranger out loud, turning up the volume of a screeching Japanese guitar solo and turning back to Maya, who had luckily just managed to find her feet. The driver shouted at Maya, “I can’t focus with this mouthy, orange, nationalist screeching in my face like some sort of drug snorting parrot—“
“YOU PUT RESPECT ON CAPTAIN KOEK’S NAME!”
“And I need to ask you some questions.”
Maya shivered and thought she might cry. “Um. Okay! Do you need me to—“
The driver revved the engine and spun her wheels, throwing mud over Mymy’s uniform, before executing a screeching turn, whipping the car around so that the passenger side door faced Maya. It swung open, barely missing her nose by an inch.
“Get in.”
Maya didn’t need to be asked twice as she eagerly hopped into the new girl’s car. The blaring music was even almost enough to block out Coco’s well-meaning chirp of “Be careful getting into strangers’ cars!” and Mymy’s not so well-meaning series of Dutch expletives.
As the pair sped away in the black Mitsubishi, the stranger glanced in her rearview mirror, catching Mymy raising her arms over her head, pointing, and making a fool of herself in all manners, bright orange hair bouncing up and down all over the place. The stranger shook her head and regarded Maya.
The car, slipping away, disappeared from Mymy’s view and she turned towards Coco.
Annoyed, irate, and bewildered, the long separated sisters turned each asked their companions the same question.
“Who was that?”
“You didn’t give me your name,” said the stranger, keenly staring down the road with one hand on the wheel.
Maya choked her words out like she was throwing them up. “I’M SO SORRY PLEASE FORGIVE ME!”
The stranger chose not to acknowledge her outburst. “What is it?”
“I’m…” she chewed her lip, wondered if she should make up something cool, and then gave up, “Maya.”
“Maya,” the driver repeated.
“Maya?” asked Maya, who was beginning to think she’d given the wrong answer.
The stranger chewed on her cheeks for a second. “I like Maya. That’s a good name.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You’re supposed to say thank you.”
“Okay.”
“In my country we say ’thank you.’”
“A-arigato!”
“What?”
“That’s what you say in your country isn’t it?”
The stranger didn’t reply. Maya considered opening the car door and jumping out. She very strongly considered it. It might be her last best option. Yep, she should definitely do it. Right as she made to reach for the handle, the stranger interrupted.
“Hana.”
“What?”
“Call me Hana,” said the stranger flatly.
“Okay I will.”
“Good.”
Maya breathed heavy and hugged her shoulders.
“I need you to do something for me,” Hana continued.
“Anything! I mean— uh, okay. Sure.”
“I want to enroll in your school. I’m seventeen. I’ll be in the junior class. You’re going to help me”
“Oh… why?”
“I have something I need to do.”
“Okay. Are you really sure you want me to be the one? I don’t really know anything about that… sort of… stuff. Maybe you should talk to someone who isn’t—“
“I talk to whoever I want.”
“Okay. Yep. I’ll do it.”
“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow. This is where you’re supposed to be, right?”
Maya looked up to see that she was in front of the high school again, right by the door. The last stragglers were making their way inside, everyone staring at the black Mitsubishi with the spoiler.
“Um, yes. It is. Thank you, Hana.”
Maya reached for the car door, but Hana grabbed her by the shoulder with her right hand to stop her. "Do you have a paper?"
"Oh," Maya blanched, "Um. Of course!" She clumsily began to reach for her backpack, which she had stuffed under her seat, and in doing so fumbled awkwardly and ineffectually with its various zippers and compartments. Hana watched patiently for a moment, and then grabbed her by the arm again.
Maya was completely still as Hana gently took her fingers in hers, splayed them, and then scrawled something on the younger girl's palm.
"My number. Text me when you're done," Hana said flatly.
"I-- I WILL!" Maya could hardly breath as she opened the car door and awkwardly stepped out, lingering for a moment, unsure of what to do.
Hana considered the girl’s words and then chuckled. “Arigato, Maya.”
With that she sped off and Maya felt like she could scream all over again.