Taylor Five

one Mum and Dad couldn't come to the airport to meet Donny, but that was okay: he would understand. Lucia Fernandez the graduate student came with Tay instead. They were in luck on Airport Road and got through the police checkpoints with no delay, which meant they had ages to wait before the plane from Singapore arrived. Lucia found someone to talk to. Tay walked around, looking at the familiar souvenir shops, sniffing the spicy-food scents from the cafeteria bar--a thin girl with golden-brown hair, wearing a blue cotton dress, a Yankees baseball cap and desert boots. She felt nervous. This was the first time she'd been in a public place since the story broke. No one was supposed to know who she was, but she almost expected a horde of journalists to leap out, waving cameras and microphones. Thankfully, no one paid any attention. Here in the sleepy quiet of a tiny tropical airport, no one knew or cared that Taylor Walker was one of the five teenagers whose existence had just been announced, who were the most astonishing people on the planet. Donny and Tay had lived in Kandah State, a small independent country on the north coast of the giant island of Borneo, since Donny was five and Tay was seven. Their parents were the wardens of an orangutan refuge, out in the wilds of one of the last great rain forests. Ben and Mary Walker both worked for an international company called Lifeforce, which financed the refuge. To some people it would have seemed a hard and lonely life for the two English children, but they loved it. The forest was such a fantastic place to live. It had been a cruel blow when their parents had decided Donny had to go to school in Singapore, but it was fine now. They just looked forward through each term to having a brilliant time together in the holidays. Would things be different this summer? Tay visited the cheap stalls, with the stacks of ugly imitation Dyak carvings that never seemed to get sold; and the instant tailoring shop, where the Chinese tailor women whizzed the cloth through their sewing machines at incredible speed. Donny won't be different, she kept telling herself. He won't care. But she had butterflies in her stomach. There was a sarong that she would really have liked to buy for Mum, in Mrs. Su's Genuine Dyak Crafts Centre. It was heavy and handwoven, with swirls and thorny curves in gold thread, on shades of dark red silk. Tay's mum hardly ever got a chance to wear anything but jungle kit, but she loved beautiful clothes. Mrs. Su, the Chinese lady who owned the shop, came over as Tay stroked the shimmering folds, with a smile that showed all the gold in her teeth. She took the sarong and deftly unfolded it. "Ve'y nice? Eh?" "It's lovely," sighed Tay. "You old customer, young lady. I make you a special price. Not New York price, not airport price. Nah real price." Tay knew that even the "real price" of the best handwoven gold-thread work was way beyond her means. "I can't afford it, Mrs. Su. I've only got six hundred dollars left in my bank account, and I owe most of it to my dad." Six hundred Kandah dollars meant about fifty English pounds. "Ha," said Mrs. Su, and shook her head. "Okay, you tell your daddy, huh? Mrs. Su got the best silk work, special price. You here to meet your brother, home from school, eh?" Tay grinned. "Yes." Most of the foreigners who lived in Kandah were oilies, oil rig people, or chippies, which meant they worked for the logging companies; and they didn't stay long. The Walkers had been at the refuge for seven years. Mrs. Su knew Donny and Tay well. Whenever they came to the airport they came into her shop, to talk to her: and she gave them strange, hard Chinese candies. The old lady folded up the sarong. "Why you never go to school, Tay, you so grown up now? Don't want an educationHalam, Ann is the author of 'Taylor Five', published 2004 under ISBN 9780385730945 and ISBN 0385730942.