Queens of All the Earth (16 page)

Getting up, she saw on the bricks of a pathway a trail of question marks, jauntily tilted, in all different sizes, leading down around a curve. She froze, but then the hammering of her heart sent her tiptoeing down the path, holding her breath.

Around the corner, behind a bush, a hunched figure worked with a piece of chalk, embellishing his question marks as they grew in size. The light shone in Olivia’s eyes and for a moment she was stunned. What did it mean? She thought of the question mark she had found in her room at the hostel and felt a sudden irrational fear that the figure was Greg. Was it possible he hadn’t gone back to the hostel? Why would he do this?

Suddenly, the boy stood and turned toward her. It was not Greg—it was some local boy, or a lone tourist, suddenly looking guilty. Behind him, Olivia saw that the question marks emanated from a phrase he had written, in Spanish, at the top of the walk. Olivia didn’t know the words.

“What are you doing?” Olivia snapped at him, surprised at her own anger. “Why are you doing that?”

The kid bolted, dropping his chalk. Olivia stared after him, and then at the chalk. She touched it with her shoe, but didn’t pick it up, and eventually she backed away. The rush of adrenaline fading, she wobbled back down the path from where she had come.

She thought of Mr. Brown’s voice, full of enthusiasm in the morning, and how much he had looked forward to a nice day with people he’d thought had wanted him. She remembered the Cathedral, which felt like a month ago, and how eager Mr. Brown had been to keep her company and make her feel comfortable.

It was more than gratitude that generated her regret, though. Mr. Brown deserved to be treated kindly and gently because he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do otherwise, but it was only Greg who cared for him that thoroughly, consistently, and honestly.

Miranda thought the garden plants looked so desert-loving that they barely required enough care to be called “gardened.” The dryness of their roots scrabbling into the dusty ground, the thick toughness of their husks, the spines and prickles, and the small, sterile-looking flowers made her homesick for the gardens she was familiar with—postage-stamp patches of irises, backyards lined with dogwoods and crape myrtles, azaleas and tulips, and the shady wooded bike trails by rivers lined with ferns. Miranda had hoped this would be a pretty garden, but it was just a nature garden.

As she prepared her complaints for Marc, she heard a sharp cry from the other side of the plot where she paced. Looking toward it, she saw Marc himself on his hands and knees, struggling up from the dirt—but he used only one hand, the other awkwardly crooked toward his chest. She hurried toward him.

“What happened?” she called when she was within a few yards.

Marc answered in strangled grunts as he flexed his arm and wrist, stopping the motion with a suppressed expletive.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Miranda asked again.

“Tripped on something,” Marc growled, blinking away the water that had welled in his eyes. “Caught myself funny on my hand. Think I busted up my wrist. Hurts like a... Hurts something awful.”

Miranda looked down and around, discovering a big, round piece of sidewalk chalk, like the kind children play with, rolling down the gently graded path over a faded design on the bricks, indiscernible now.

“Is anything broken?” Miranda asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Think I just jammed it. Might be a sprain.”

Miranda fidgeted close to him, itching to do something.

“Let me see it,” she said. “Maybe you can—maybe it’s a—”

“I really think I should just get back to the hostel and wrap it up,” Marc said. “An icepack and an ACE bandage should do it.”

Marc started walking toward the garden’s exit gate.

“Olivia!” Miranda said, first at Marc and then at the garden at large. “Olivia! We can’t leave her behind!”

“You don’t have to leave with me,” Marc said, curtly through his pain. “I’m not an invalid. Stay here. I can go back alone.”

Miranda ignored him, calling for Olivia until she finally emerged from a nearby trail, concern written across her face.

“What’s going on?” Olivia asked.

“Marc hurt his wrist and we’re going back to the hostel,” Miranda said.

“You two should really stay and see the castle,” Marc said through his teeth. “You came all the way up here and I’d hate for you to leave just because of me. It’s not like you can do anything for me anyway.”

Miranda blew off his objections with a shake of the head and continued following him. Olivia trailed behind.

A gardening truck rattled by, leaving behind its burned-rubber stink and an immovable grimy cloud. They moved out of its haze and through the exit.

The walk back down along the sides of the waterless Magic Fountain was a less vibrant rerun of the morning, and the pervasive noon sun made the stone-paved slope excruciating even for those travelers not suffering a sprain. There were two Metro lines to ride, both glinting and sharp-smelling.

It took an hour to get back. Olivia flung herself up the stairs, mumbling to her sister that she had a headache, and left her behind with Marc on the sidewalk, where they were scrutinizing various maps for hints about finding the nearest pharmacy. She had barely seen the Plaça Catalunya. She had barely seen the restaurant where her sister had treated her to dinner the night before. She had barely allowed herself to look at anything.

The squat, square door of Casa Joven was ajar, and she toppled into the lily-fragrant softness within. With the door, she nearly hit Sophie, who busied down the corridor with an armful of towels. Their eyes met.

Olivia felt as if she’d committed a crime.

Then she noticed the Browns sitting in the common room. Mr. Brown looked directly at her, a puzzled smile on his face.

“Is something wrong? You’re back early,” he said with genuine concern.

Greg merely started, stood briefly, looked as though he would escape, then sat back down again.

“Uh, no. Oh, well, Marc’s hurt his wrist, but he’s fine,” Olivia whispered, fleeing to her room.

There, she was surrounded by the Browns again—the room they had given her and Miranda. The orange curtains diluted the harsh sunlight, and a rotating fan in the corner blew a breeze through the room, by turns fluttering her bed sheets and those of her sister. It reminded her of her room in childhood, in the long-ago days when summer was interminable and the humming bees and drifting pollen vibrated the sunlight until it was just right to sleep outside in the afternoon, though only under certain trees.

She slammed her fist on the bedpost when a sob escaped her. The day had gone terribly wrong, but so many of them had since the summers under the perfect trees.

Above all things, she missed her mom.

Miranda had seen her sister dart up the stairs to the hostel and, considering her safe, felt free to trail Marc to the closest pharmacy and back, dispensing small pieces of advice on sprains, medical attention
abroad, and the various liability aspects of the garden’s responsibility toward visitor safety.

At the door of the hostel, Marc told Miranda he was going to lie down until the pain meds he’d just bought kicked in, then left her there without waiting for a response.
That’s what I get for trying to help
, Miranda thought.

Miranda hoped Olivia would be asleep by the time she got to the bedroom. Now, as she stood in the common room, she watched Mr. Brown reach out and pat Greg’s knee, then return to his book. Greg had a book as well, but he was more captivated by some invisible point in the middle-distance outside the window. Something in the dark, empty look in Greg’s brown eyes reminded her of her sister.

Miranda dropped her picnic-laden backpack on a kitchen table and raced for the bathroom.

She cleaned herself methodically. She picked the sand and dirt out from beneath her fingernails and toenails and scrubbed her face and the soles of her feet. She combed her hair into stick-like perfection and braided it tightly against the back of her head. She brushed her teeth, though she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and she cleaned her ears. She scrubbed herself back into feeling like herself, and it calmed her enough that she could approach Olivia.

It was barely half over, but the day was already as battered and bruised as the previous one had been.

Olivia wasn’t sleeping. She was doing battle with her book. When Miranda slipped in, Olivia sat up immediately.

“How’s Marc?” Olivia asked.

“Better. He’ll be fine,” Miranda said.

“Hey, do you think we can go up to the castle this afternoon? Just the two of us, so we don’t have to deal with anyone else,” Olivia said.

“I don’t know. It would take all afternoon to climb up there again. Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“There’s a gondola. I just found it on my transportation map. We must get there together. Come on, it’ll be an adventure.”

“I thought you had a headache.”

“I’m better now,” said Olivia. “I just remembered a part in one of my favorite books from middle school about a Spanish hill fort, and I thought maybe the castle is like that. It would be like visiting something from my book!”

“I think you should rest up, if you’re not feeling well.”

“I am feeling well!”

“We have all week,” said Miranda. “We have plenty of time. We can take a break.”

Olivia flopped backwards onto her bed again.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “You were so worked up about me seeing Greg again, and now you want me to stay in the hostel with him all day. It’s like you want me to—”

“You haven’t eaten anything today, have you? No wonder you have a headache. Come on, I’ll fix you lunch.”

Olivia scowled.

“It’s important to show them you don’t care they’re here,” Miranda said in her ear. “Otherwise, he’ll think you’re interested.”

“I’ve tried that already, and he—”

“You can’t spend the rest of our vacation hiding in our room, Olivia. You’ve got to eat, and I’m not bringing your lunch back here.”

Olivia had little choice but to shuffle behind her sister into the common room, where Greg still lurked in the window corner under the sagging lilies. Mr. Brown was in the kitchen, attempting to have a conversation in broken Spanish with Hugo, who looked gently amused. Miranda sat her sister down at the table and began to unload the picnic things from her backpack.

“See, we have the place to ourselves,” she said, not softly enough.

There were rolls and sliced ham and a block of cheese, battered water bottles and plastic forks. There was a bag of chips and a carton of juice, and Olivia let Miranda set everything out just as she had watched their mom set everything out for lunch on weekends in grade school. Everything they needed magically appeared from the cabinets, but it wasn’t just a phenomenon of grade school. It was exactly what her mother had done for her just a few months ago.

Olivia picked at a squashed sandwich, the taste of warm plastic still clinging to it though the wrapper had been removed. She saw a steno pad on the corner of the table and idly flipped it open.

“Is that yours?” Miranda asked. “It doesn’t look familiar.”

“It’s Lenny’s,” Olivia said. “I’ve seen her with it before. I wonder what she wrote about our trip.”

Miranda wanted to know, too, but she was too mature to snoop for herself, so she let Olivia do it for her. Olivia craned her neck to see without touching the pages, but didn’t read long. She scanned a few lines, and then her eyes flickered to Greg, who sensed the gaze and looked back with incomprehension.

Olivia pushed the notebook away and stormed to her room. Greg’s eyes followed her, then looked questioningly at Miranda.

Miranda looked down at the page her sister had been reading and soon followed her out of the room. The remains of their forgotten lunch littered the table, wrappers and crumbs crowding around the notebook.

Mr. Brown and Hugo continued to murmur in the kitchen. Cars and tourists continued to wash down the streets outside. Laundry continued to float from backwards-facing balconies.

Greg sidled up to the table and looked at the open page.