Spain or Shine (13 page)

 

The next afternoon, Alita and Elena were sitting at the kitchen table working on their homework when she got a phone call from her family.

“Hi, honey,” her mom said. “We miss you.”

She never thought she'd be so happy to hear her mom's voice. “I miss you guys, too,” Elena sighed, settling back into a chair at the table. “What's going on there?”

“Well, the back-to-school dance was last Friday. Gwen went with a big group of friends. Let's see, what else? Caleb has a new band—they play punk music, I think. He gets mad because I always call it the wrong thing.”

Elena laughed.

“Have you contacted your great-aunt yet?”

“Not yet, Mom. I've just been so busy.”

“Elena, please don't wait too long to make plans.”

“I know. I won't, Mom.” Elena breathed out sharply.

“Well, Jeremy's here. He wants to talk to you. Hold on.”

There was a scratching sound as Elena's mom passed the phone to Jeremy.

“Hey, Lanie,” Jeremy's voice boomed through the receiver.

“Hi, Jeremy. What's up?”

“Not much. I'm just starting to pack. I'm heading back to L.A. next weekend,” he said. “What about you? Is Mom still bugging you about visiting Aunt Elena?”

“Yeah, but she doesn't really have to pressure me. I want to go. It's just that I'm still getting used to San Sebastián—I don't feel like I'm ready to head off to Barcelona yet, you know?” There was a barely discernible pause as Elena's voice rippled over an ocean and a continent to Jeremy's ears.

“Totally. I've heard Barcelona is awesome, though.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

‘And I think Great-Aunt Elena is pretty cool. I mean, I sort of remember her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She visited Mom when I was in kindergarten.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. You were
really
little, obviously. I don't remember much about her, but I know I thought she was really fun. She would get down on the ground and play with me. And I remember spending hours drawing with her. I think she's some kind of artist or something.”

“What, like a painter?” Elena had always thought she was the only one in her family with any artistic impulses.

“Uh-huh. Actually, I think she might be sort of famous. Well, famous in Barcelona anyway.”

“Hmm. Sounds interesting.” She wondered why her mom hadn't mentioned her aunt's painting. Elena was definitely more intrigued by her now.

“Yeah. Hey, Gwen's bugging me to hand the phone over,” Jeremy said. “I'll talk to you later.”

Jeremy handed the phone to Gwen, and she immediately began filling Elena in on the back-to-school dance. Then Elena gave Gwen the rundown on Jenna, Alex, and all her new friends in Spain. She even managed to slip Miguel's name into the conversation, but she tried to keep her voice even and casual, to play it off as if he was just some guy she'd met. Gwen wasn't buying it.

“Oh my God, you love him,” Gwen blurted.

“I do not,” Elena insisted. “I just like him a tiny bit, hardly at all actually.”

“Since when do you like someone a tiny bit? What about Robbie Bowers back in seventh grade? The first day of school you came home and told us all that you had met the love of your life. The first day you met him!”

“This is different,” Elena insisted.

“And what about Mark Dorian in ninth grade?” Gwen plowed forward. “Not to mention Joe Cipriani last year.”

“I've turned over a new leaf here. And I know what you're going to say—don't fall in love before you even know the guy.”

“That's exactly what I was going to say.”

“It doesn't matter anyway because he's not interested.”

“How do you know that?” Gwen sounded skeptical.

Elena filled Gwen in on her first encounter with Miguel at the tapas bar.

“He walked up and started to talk to me, but as soon as Jenna introduced herself I practically disappeared. It was so obvious he was after her all along.”

“It just sounds like Jenna's a flirt.”

“Also,” Elena continued, “when we went to visit him at the hotel where he works, he kept finding reasons to touch Jenna's arm or her waist, like when he held his hand out to help her on the stairs.”

Gwen laughed. “Maybe she needed help. Elena, I think you should just try to get to know this guy better before you rush to judgment either way,” Gwen said, slipping into big sister mode. It was easy for Gwen to say; she was cool and rational by nature. Elena's world was colored by her emotions.

“I should get going,” Gwen said finally. “You know how Dad is about the phone bill.”

“Okay,” Elena croaked. “Call again soon.”

It was good to hear the voices of her family, but after every other time she had hung up, she'd spent the rest of the day with a dull sadness pressing into her chest.

Gwen seemed to sense her emotion. “Elena, you're in Spain. Stop thinking about us, and go enjoy it.”

Elena was having trouble concentrating as Señor Gonzalez scratched illegible verbs on the board and called on students at random to conjugate them. It was the deadline for choosing partners in Ms. B's class, and Elena still didn't have one. Sometime since her meeting with Ms. B, Elena had become convinced that Dylan was the only partner who could help produce a winning play. Dylan would provide the edgy darkness, and Elena would bring the light and romance. Elena thought they were playwriting soul mates—a creative yin and yang. But she still hadn't gathered up the courage to ask Dylan to be her partner. She squirmed in her seat, antsy for the bell to ring so she could race to class and wait for Dylan. Elena had only a fifteen-minute break between classes to track her down. She couldn't believe she'd procrastinated so long.

“El-e-na Hol-lo-way.” Señor Gonzalez's voice brought her back to the present. The stretched, irritated way he said her name let her know it was probably the second or third time he'd called it out.

“Um, yes?” she stammered.

All the eyes in the classroom were turned, waiting for her to fall flat on her face.

“Please conjugate the word
soñar
in the present tense.”

She'd lucked out. She knew this one.
“Sueño, sueñas, sueña, soñamos, soñáis
,
sueñan,”she
recited confidently.

“And it means?”

“To dream.”

For the rest of the class, Elena tried her best to pay attention. She'd narrowly escaped embarrassment, but she knew if she continued to drift in class she wouldn't be so lucky.

By the time the bell finally rang to signal the end of class, Señor Gonzalez had his students waiting silently at their desks with their hands folded and their bags packed. Elena decided he must have served in the Spanish army. He had every class planned out like a boot camp schedule. It was always such a stark contrast moving from his regimented classroom to the freely flowing creativity in Ms. B's class.

The bell rang, and Elena darted out of the classroom and began to charge across the quad toward the campus theater, where Ms. B would be holding class for the day. She kept an eye on the theater entrance so she could catch Dylan on her way inside.

“Elena,” she heard her name ring out behind her. When she turned she found Alex sitting on the grass in the quad. “Whoa, slow down, man. Are you in a race or something?” he called, hoisting himself up and slumping toward her at his usual pace, as if the world would wait for him. “I was hoping to catch you on your way to the theater.”

“You were?” She tipped her head to the side to steal a look at the theater door. No sign of Dylan yet. “What's up?”

“Wanna walk together?”

“Uh, okay. But I'm kind of in a hurry.”

Alex shrugged and ambled along beside her. Apparently “hurry” was not in his vocabulary, along with “stress,” she imagined.

“How was Spanish?” Alex asked.

“Just the usual, conjugating verbs and stuff.”

“Uh, you know how we're supposed to pair up for the final play thing in Ms. B's class today?” Alex asked.

“Uh-huh,” she nodded. She kept her eyes trained on the theater door as they approached.

“Well, um, what do you think about you and me?” he asked, kicking at an overgrown tuft of grass that was springing from a crack in the walkway.

“What do I think about you and me?” She repeated, slowing down and searching his face, which she could actually see for once because he had yanked off his hat and was raking his hands through his sun-bleached hair. It was particularly scruffy today, as though he'd been surfing instead of going to his morning classes and hadn't had time to shower before finally showing up for school. He definitely took advantage of the loose attendance rules at the International School. She had once heard Ms. B give him a lecture about how I.S. was like college in that each student was responsible for his own success.

“Yeah, you know. What do you think about the two of us being partners for the final project?”

Elena's throat tightened. Why hadn't she seen this coming? “Um, wow,” she stammered. “I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest.”

“Really? But, we have to choose our partners by today.” He put his hat back on his head and slid the bill down to shade his eyes. It did seem ridiculous that she wouldn't have given it any thought until that moment. For some reason she couldn't tell him that she was planning to ask Dylan to be her partner.

“Come on, Elena.” He laughed. “It's not like I'm asking you to the prom or anything. It's just a play.”

Just a play? This was exactly why she hadn't thought of Alex as a viable partner. He didn't take anything seriously, and this was very serious to her. In the distance she saw Dylan approaching the theater along with a purple-haired boy wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt. This was Elena's chance.

“Listen, Elena,” Alex said grasping her shoulder and stopping them in the middle of the walkway. “If you don't want to be partners—that's cool. I just think we'd make an awesome team. I think we'd, like, balance each other out.” He let go of her arm and stepped back. His face was a question mark.

She glanced back at the door in time to see Dylan laughing at something the purple-haired boy had said. She suddenly realized why she couldn't tell Alex about Dylan. Elena hadn't even said more than two words to her since she'd hatched this plan to pair up with her for the project. Who was she kidding? Alex was her friend; he was literally the first friend she'd made in Spain. He was the obvious choice, the only choice really, since she didn't know anyone else in class very well. Including Dylan.

“You're right, Alex.” She nodded, matter-of-factly. “We would balance each other out.”

“So, it's a deal?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “We can be partners for the project.”

“Cool.”

Elena began to pass through the door to the theater, but she could feel that Alex wasn't following her. She turned around to face him.

“Uh, so you'll just tell Ms. B that we're gonna be partners, right?” He was retreating from the classroom slowly like a wild animal edging away from a cage.

“You aren't coming in?”

He looked over his shoulder at the opposite row of classrooms, but she knew he saw through the classrooms and the buildings beyond them to the ocean breaking on the beach. “Um, it's just that the waves are really awesome today,” he answered. She halfheartedly understood—the ocean was calling him.

“Yeah, sure. I'll tell her,” she sighed.

“Thanks, Elena. We'll get together over the weekend to start working, okay?”

She waved him off, stepped inside the theater, and slunk into a seat. Resting her head in her palm, she watched Alex retreating back through the open door and wondered what she had gotten herself into.