Page 82 of Big Island Sunrise
“It’s what she asked for.”
He shook his head. “Kids are weird.”
Rory was already on to the next present, pulling blue gauze from a big gift bag.
“IT’S THE PRINCESS DRESS!” she screamed, holding a mass of blue tule up over her head. “Paige, it’s your princess dress!”
“That was very sweet of you,” Tara told her daughter.
“She puts it on every time she comes over.” The girl’s cheeks were pink. “It’s too small for me anyway. I haven’t worn it in forever.”
Rory already had the costume on over her other dress. Mahina hurried to save thelei, lifting it out from between the dresses and draping it over the blue plastic.
The dress was so big on her that she had to gather most of the skirt into her arms to take a step, but she had the biggest smile on her face.
“You might need to put the princess dress away to be able to hit the piñata,” Lani told her.
Rory dropped the dress and pressed her hands to her cheeks in a great show of astonishment. “There’s a piñata?!”
“There sure is. Should we hang it up?”
“You’re the best mom in the whole world!” Rory ran towards her and tripped on the princess dress. Lani caught her just before she did a faceplant, and Rory launched herself into a hug, crushing the beautiful orchidleibetween them. “Thank you thank you thank you!”
“You’re welcome.” Lani pressed her face to the crown of Rory’s head, in the center of her wilted whitehaka lei. Her hair was hot from the sunshine, and Lani breathed in the warm smell that had been her home for the past five years. “Ask one of your aunties to help you out of that princess dress, and I’ll go get your piñata.”
She went to Emma’s room and fetched the unicorn that she had stuffed full of lollipops and bits of plastic. Rory cried out with joy when she saw it, and after a five minute deliberation on whether or not she was willing to let the crowd massacre the pink-and-white unicorn, she decided that the bounty inside was worth it.
Lani attached the unicorn to a sturdy nylon rope and tried to throw the other end over the branch of a tree. Her height proved to be an impediment, as usual.
She looked around for Kekoa, but it was Tenn who stepped up and took the coil of rope from her hands. He tossed it easily over the target branch, hoisted the unicorn well above the kids hands, and offered the rope to Lani.
“Would you?” she asked, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Of course.”
“Me first!” Rory ran up and stood beneath the unicorn. “Where’s my blinefone?”
“You want me to blindfold you?” Lani asked.
Her lower lip came out, and the sides of her mouth pulled down. “At the park they had blinefones. We don’t have blinefones?”
“I’ll find something,” Emma said. She ran into the house and was back a minute later with a bandanna that they folded and tied across Rory’s eyes.
Rory spun herself dizzy and staggered to one side, giggling.
Lani handed her a stout stick, and Tenn lowered the piñata so that it was directly behind her. She swung the stick through the air, and the kids nearest to her took several steps back.
The other kids yelled encouragement and instructions and then jumped backwards as she turned to the right and swung again, missing one little boy by scant inches.
His mother yanked him back, and enough people yelled for Rory to turn around that she finally found the unicorn and made contact.
She gave it a great whack before Tenn yanked it up out of reach. She stumbled forward, and he brought it down again behind her. This all kept up until she had given it a few good hits and broken one of its legs, and then the bandanna and stick were transferred to the youngest kid present, a three-year-old girl.
They worked their way up through the ranks, with Tenn keeping the unicorn agile enough that every kid got a chance at hitting it before finally Piper, the girl from next door with short orange hair sticking out from her head in all directions, broke the unicorn open with one good hit.
The children screamed in frenzied joy, and Piper whipped the blindfold off and began cramming her loot into a hasty pouch created by lifting the bottom of her oversized T-shirt.
Emma was right that Kai and some of the other kids ended up in tears when they failed to grab their bubble necklaces or tattoos or whatever it was that they had scrambled towards only to have it snatched up by someone else. And just as she had predicted, Lani was able to restore the peace and staunch their tears by handing out the goody bags.
