Something Else Entirely

3 - Drool Tax.

"Mum, what's the time? I'm getting confused with the time difference. Am I supposed to be feeling so awake, or am I way off?" asked Madden, the only one of us without a phone and therefore the ability to check the time, which automatically adjusted timezones when we connected to the Wi-Fi at the Starbucks 2 doors down from our hotel in Waikiki.

I say the Starbucks not our hotel Wi-Fi deliberately, as Sadie refused to check-in before she had downed a full venti latte—the result of a well-established, borderline-unhealthy caffeine addiction which, when left unattended for too long, results in a feistier than usual woman who I respectfully avoid at all costs, for fear of being caught in her withdrawal-weaved web of irritability.

Lucky for me, I don't think anyone is really aware that I am almost as bad as she is because she leads the coffee charge before I can even wake up enough to catch up with her. So, by the time I am ready to unleash on the world when I haven't had my morning hit, she's already sourced one for me, either by her own hand, or those of her faithful and well-trained coffee making slaves: Dad and Madden.

Neither of us have any other vices anymore, so we figure this one deficiency isn't too bad.

"It's 7:30 in the evening, buddy," said Dad, pulling out his phone and checking the time for him. The 'evening' part was necessary, as the impending amber sunset could have easily been mistaken for a sunrise when you're in a new country and haven't been able to place your east from west yet. "You'll want to be winding down soonish and catching up on some sleep so we can start fresh tomorrow morning . . . not that we really have anything specific planned."

Dad, Madden and I had organised our whole trip as a surprise wedding present for Sadie, right down to the perfectly executed subterfuge orchestrated by my baby brother in order to gain a signature on his passport application from his biological mother, Bree.

After a less than ideal first attempt by Sadie to reconnect with her absent step-sister in order to get her pen to paper for the purposes of Madden's passport, Madden and I decided to convince Dad to go behind Sadie's back to coerce Bree into signing the form which would allow our family to go overseas. We were obviously successful, considering we are currently in Hawaii, but Sadie only discovered that we were headed here when we arrived at the airport.

There were tears all around, even from Tanner who had driven us to the airport, which was made excessively worse by the fact that Dad had doubled-down on the deviousness and also somehow convinced Bree to sign over her parental rights to Madden to him and Sadie so they can both formally adopt him. Any anger Sadie may have felt at us for not telling her that we took Madden to see Bree was lost to her the second she saw the adoption papers and heard Dad say Bree was ready to sign them and attend court when we were. Dad hadn't told Madden or I that little addition in the months since we finally organised Madden's passport.

Another additional surprise feature in all this—aside from Madden's prospective surname change from Carter to Foster like Sadie's was going to be and like Dad's obviously already was—was the fact that he had completed the 'sibling' section of the application, formally putting me down even though our brotherhood wasn't official in any way, and also stating my name as being Jet Hudson Foster, not Jet Hudson Wesley, as my birth certificate and passport clearly state.

Seeing as we basically jumped from the car where this teary interchange took place and straight onto a plane, except for the hour we occupied in the very public airport where I didn't really feel like crying in front of a bunch of strangers, I hadn't spoken to Dad about what that all really meant. But my overthinking and now-curiously optimistic brain took a stab in the dark and assumed that he means to adopt me after I turn 18, and have me take his name, too.