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Firm, gentle hands steered Team into the room where he met Intouch and Korn for the first time. He doesn’t remember the significant moments his parents like to tell people, but he remembers the hands. It must have been one of the workers at the agency, someone whose job entailed bringing him to meet the people who wanted to give him a new home.
Team also remembers the last words Intouch said to him at the end of that first meeting.
“Next time, we’ll bring you something to snack on.”
Team remembers asking, “Really?” and the adults in the room laughing. He’s not sure why it was funny to them. Maybe his enthusiasm surprised them.
He’s always loved snacks.
“I don’t remember saying that,” Intouch says once. “I wasn’t trying to bribe you for your love, if that’s what you think! Maybe a little. Only a little, though!”
Team has never told anyone that the reason he remembers doesn’t even have to do with the promise of snacks.
He remembers it because that was the first time he believed someone when they told him “next time”.
•
Team doesn’t remember the first homemade meal he ate with Intouch and Korn. He knows it was omelet rice because he’s seen the Instagram photo, as well as four hundred and six rejected photos Intouch took of the process and result.
Once, when Intouch asked if Team remembered, Team got the impression that he should say yes, and he’s stuck with that lie ever since.
(He thinks Korn knows he was lying, but no one champions the happiness of Intouch Chatpokin more than Korn, so any lie that makes Intouch happy is probably a protected lie.)
•
More than meeting Aunt Antika for the first time, Team remembers meeting her house.
She didn’t live far from the park next to Intouch and Korn’s condominium, but they still needed to drive there. Soon into the drive, Team became preoccupied with a grass stain on his palm from playing in the park, and didn’t pay attention to the gradual shifts in architecture going on outside the car window.
When he did look up, it was because the car had stopped and Intouch and Korn were getting out.
They’d explained to him at the park that they were here to eat a delicious lunch made by Intouch’s older sister, and he’d get to meet Intouch’s niece, too. At no point did they use the words “aunt” or “cousin”.
They were so, so careful in those first months.
When Korn opened Team’s door, he let Team unbuckle his own seatbelt and climb out by himself.
As Korn shut the door behind him, Team’s wide eyes tried and failed to measure the size of the house before them.
He’d never seen a house with three storeys before. The first two seemed to have been designed to curve inward like a crescent moon with not an angle in sight. White stone, rounded edges, and narrow strips of blond wood framing the wide, wide windows presented a strong impression of affluence. The third storey made the house look like it wore an asymmetrical hat made from glass and dark wood supports with a slanted roof. From where Team stood on the front pathway, he had a decent sightline of the ceiling fans on the very top floor.
The vast property itself was protected by a tall, tall wall, and the front yard chittered and hummed with life. Team found nature everywhere he looked: from the old trees thick with green and branches slung low; to the grass allowed to grow in a strangely manicured kind of abandon; to the fenced garden peppered with white and pink blossoms. What Team liked best, though, were the fairy lights hung from silver lamp posts scattered around the yard. He wanted to ask if they could stay until night time so he could see them all lit up at night, but instead he asked Intouch, “Your sister lives here?”
Intouch crouched next to Team and tucked some of his hair behind his ear. “She does,” he said. “Is it okay if we go meet her?”
Team said, “Okay,” and wondered why they kept asking his permission to do things.
He remembers taking Korn’s hand as they walked up the curving stone path because Korn was quiet and solid and his kind smile made Team feel safe.
•
The inside of the house was just as glamorous. Polished, gleaming hardwood floors, pristine white walls, exorbitantly expensive furniture elegantly placed and draped with throw blankets, standing air conditioners discreetly tucked into the corners of the room—
Team doesn’t remember much about the house he lived in with his birth parents, but he suspects based on his memories of Aunt Antika’s house that it must have been significantly down the ladder.
As Intouch continued deeper into the house calling his sister’s name, Team let go of Korn’s hand. They walked into the living room to wait on a white sofa with a seat the same width as a bed.
He doesn’t remember the moment he met Aunt Antika, but he remembers eating lunch on the veranda for the first time. More accurately, he remembers the veranda, and the view from it.
The backyard was even larger than the front, with a vast shallow display pool and tall trees with full, wide leaves sprouting from the tops. A waterfall framed each side of the veranda, and Team imagined climbing over the railing, grabbing a palm leaf, and sailing over the edge like a kid with a sled on a mountain slope.
Aunt Antika gave him two servings, dessert, and even held the back of his shirt while he leaned through the rail to touch the waterfall.
•
He doesn’t remember where Alin was that first time he went to the house, but he didn’t meet her until more than a week later.
Aunt Antika, still only Intouch’s sister to him, brought out a shark puzzle and the four of them tried to piece it together. Korn diligently filled out the sides with Team’s help, and Intouch and Aunt Antika raced to gather the most clusters of the picture they could identify.
“That’s one of the tail pieces! I’m collecting those!”
“It is not, P’An! Look, it’s a different shade of gray!”
“There’s a shadow on it! Just give it to me! If it doesn’t fit, I’ll give it back.”
“I’ll give if back if it doesn’t fit my part!”
“This is why we never did puzzles as kids!”
They’d gathered around the low table in the living room, Korn and Team on one side, Intouch and his sister on the other. So Korn only had to tilt his head a little to meet Team’s eyes when he asked, “Do you want a sibling?”
Team wrinkled his nose and said, “No.”
He wasn’t entirely sure Korn was joking.
The sound of the front door interrupted the adult siblings’ arguing, and Aunt Antika called, “We’re in here!”
Team wasn’t looking when Alin entered the room. He had two pieces that sort of fit, and he was trying to jam them together by force.
“Team,” Intouch said, his tone light. “You remember we told you about my niece?”
Team nodded, then craned his head to peer over his shoulder where he could hear footsteps approaching. The teenage girl standing in the living room doorframe was tall, at least to him, with long black hair and bangs swept off to the side. She was fourteen, but she might as well have been thirty.
“Hi,” she said, beaming. “You’re Team, right?”
He looked at Korn, who nodded.
Team also nodded.
She sat down on Team’s other side and asked, “What are you guys doing? Can I help?”
Outside the chaos of Intouch and his sister competing for pieces in some way that only made sense to them, Korn and Alin worked quietly to find pieces that connected to the edges, and Team grew bored of the jigsaw altogether.
Instead, he flopped onto his back and fell asleep right there on the floor.
When he woke up, he and Alin were alone, and Aunt Antika, Korn, and Intouch were in the kitchen talking and laughing.
Alin, lying on her stomach next to him, gave him a grin and said, “I took a bunch of photos while you were sleeping. Look.” She displayed her phone screen to him where she’d indeed pulled up a photo of sleeping Team, but she’d used some art app to draw his eyes open like a surprised cartoon character.
He giggled and reached for her phone. “Can I do it?” he asked.
Without hesitation, she handed him her phone, and in retrospect, Team knows that was the moment he considered her his friend.
•
(She doesn’t remember doing that, but it’s okay. Team does.)
•
Visiting Aunt Antika’s house became part of his routine for those first six months. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Intouch or Korn or both of them would take Team to spend the afternoon with Aunt Antika and Alin.
Team asked Alin about her dad once, but she told him she didn’t want to talk about her dad, so Team didn’t ask again.
When he started at his new school, the visits increased to three and sometimes four times a week.
The dauntingly ornate house became familiar. By the second week, the size of it annoyed him. It was too easy to lose people.
One afternoon, Intouch and his sister were in the kitchen baking while Team played games on Alin’s phone and Alin watched a show on her computer.
According to Alin, he put her phone down on the sofa, crawled across the sofa, and squirmed between her and the cushion. Then he fell asleep with his head on her stomach like a tired puppy.
So says Alin.
(She does have photos, but he’s still unsure about the “crawling” and “squirming” bits.)
When he woke up next, he was alone, but there were voices at the front door, so he went in that direction. Maybe Korn had arrived to have dinner with them.
But it wasn’t Korn.
The boy on the stoop stood much shorter than Korn and seemed to be a teenager like Alin. He wore a school uniform like hers, too, and he projected an aura of feeling sleepy and disoriented.
Alin turned, saw Team hanging close to the wall of the hallway, and grinned. “Team, c’mere!”
He took exactly three baby steps and stopped with a significant gap still yawning between them.
She pretended Team had done as she asked anyway and told the boy, “This is the cousin I told you about.” To Team, she said, ”This is Waan. He’s a year younger than me and he lives in the neighborhood.” Her face brightened and she turned back to her friend. “We should go swimming at your pool!”
Team’s foggy mind cleared significantly. Pool?
Waan made a neutral noise. “Okay. Maybe. The last time you were over my parents kept teasing me about having a crush on you, though.”
Alin said, “Ha!”
Team didn’t understand why that was funny, but the pool thing sounded interesting, so he asked, “You have a pool at your house?”
Alin marched over to him and walked him back to the door. She looped her arms around his neck and held him against her, and though he put up a token fight, she was stronger and he didn’t actually hate someone holding him this way. To retaliate, he put his small hands on her wrists and made her hug him tighter.
Ha.
Alin and Waan kept talking for a long time after that, and just as Team was beginning to organize a jailbreak from her arms, his life took an unexpected left turn.
“Hia Waan! Hia Waan! Mom’s really mad! You’ve gotta come home now!”
The voice carried from the gate, but Waan seemed not to hear it, continuing his story about a boy in his class who tried to cheat on a test with mirrors.
“HIA WAAN!”
Team, owl-eyed, leaned as far as Alin’s arms would allow, trying to spot the source of that very, very loud shout.
Alin laughed. “You better go,” she said. “Win’s going to lose his voice.”
Waan considered that, then hummed. “One sec.” He leaned out the front door and made a “come here” gesture with his hand. Then another. And another.
Alin leaned down and whispered to Team, “Win’s Waan’s little brother. He’s a little older than you, but he’s nice, too.”
Team nodded and resisted the urge to hold her arms tighter around him.
A second later, Waan put his arm out and a boy crashed headfirst into his side.
Team backed up against Alin, owl-eyed again.
“I said Mom wants you to come home!” the boy named Win said. He wriggled with visible amusement in the hook of Waan’s arm. When Waan poked his neck, Win laughed and tried to drop to his knees to escape.
Then Team’s eyes met Win’s.
“Who’s he?” Win asked Alin.
And without hesitation, Team said, “I’m Team. Don’t be so loud.”
The three older kids absorbed this for a long moment, then dissolved into peals of laughter.
•
It should be noted that Team remembers none of this.
Intouch just plays the secret video he recorded from the stairs every year on Team’s birthday.