Aloha!

Inspired by infuriatingly true events.

Charlotte pressed her forehead to the cold tile wall and tried not to feel anything: Don’t cry until it’s over.

She wanted to scream. Or disappear. Or rewind time to two days earlier, when she and Maria were barefoot in the grass outside their hostel in Auckland, splitting a mango, juice sticky on their fingers, music spilling from someone’s tinny speaker. The sun had been warm and easy. Their laughter had come quick.

Their plan was Hawaii next.

Five weeks.

Then, Costa Rica

Charlotte had dreamed of this world tour with her best friend for months. Music and dancing, food, and drinks, experiences and the discovery and joy that comes from free floating around the world with nothing but searching for the next great adventure in mind.

Hotels? Nah! They would figure it out on the fly. Wherever the party was, that’s where they would be. They would find places to crash along the way. They were only going to be young once! Right?

That was all over now.

The young girl who was greeted with a lei had been stripped out of her clothes, out of her smile, out of her skin, and out of her dignity for the crime of being a tourist— And then she was shoved into a concrete room alone where she willed herself not to scream. Willed herself not to cry. Sat, like a common criminal in a locked room in a U.S. customs facility under Honolulu International Airport.

She tried to forget but she couldn’t.