Time Between Us (26 page)

“Are you okay, señorita?”

I think that will change everything.

I feel far away as I nod, and when I speak, my voice doesn’t sound like my own. “This is a good chance, isn’t it? To leave?”

“Exactamente!”
he yells as he throws his arms up in the air, and I startle. “Go! Go! There’s nothing stopping you! Go see the world, señorita!”

He smiles at me, and I feel myself smiling back. Because this is it.
This
is the moment.

I don’t know how it happened before. Maybe Argotta never mentioned it again. Maybe all the spots were full from the beginning. Maybe everything was exactly the same, but she decided to stay here all summer, sulking and waiting for Bennett to return. But right now, there’s no question in my mind that
Anna
stood here in front of Argotta, politely thanked him, and turned down his offer. And that’s not what I’m going to do.

“Do you still have the application?” he asks, and I nod. I’m not exactly certain where it is, but I know I’ll find it; and now I can’t wait to get home to dig through my desk.

“I’ll give you until Monday. Let me know what you want to do.”

My parents may need until Monday, but I don’t. I rush around to Señor Argotta and hug him. “Thank you so much, señor!” When I pull back, he looks a little shocked, but it hits him that the hug was my yes, and there’s nothing but delight in his expression. “You’re making a good choice, señorita.”

I hope it’s a good choice. I don’t know for certain that it is, but I do know that it’s a different one.

And suddenly it hits me. I’m smack in the middle of her do-over.

Depending on the season, Schiller Woods can be beautiful or eerie; the perfect place for either a wedding or a horror-film shoot. As Dad rounds the corner through the gate, I see that what was once a blanket of gray slush is now a bright green meadow. I step out of the car and take a deep breath; the whole park smells new.

“I’ve missed this,” I say as I close the car door, feeling truly content for the first time in weeks. Dad looks surprised to see me so happy, but I can’t help it; I love this event. The cross-country coaches in our division created the noncompetitive but mandatory race, just in case six months of running on a spongy track instead of sticky mud, and leaping metal hurdles rather than downed trees, had caused us to question our true passion. I’ve run this course enough to know how the path will dip and turn for the next three miles, where the tight spots will be, and where the obstacles are likely to be placed.

My teammates and I gather around a picnic table a few feet away from the starting line, stretching and looking across the open field for our biggest competitors while Dad goes in search of coffee. A few minutes later, he returns with a paper cup and a folded map.

“How are you feeling?” he asks me as he lays the paper flat on the table and huddles over it.

“Good.” He looks up, waiting for me to elaborate, but I don’t. Still, I do feel good. I’ve been feeling increasingly like myself since I made the decision to go to La Paz two days ago. Now I just need to find a way to tell my parents.

“Where is she?” Dad asks under his breath.

I lift up my arm and stretch in his direction while I point with my chin. “Over there. Number thirty-two. Blue shirt.” I stretch deeper and give him time to find her. Size her up.

“Hmmm.” He’s watching her, but for what exactly I can’t be sure. “Okay, remember to pace yourself. Don’t hold back just to blast her at the end. Keep the pressure on all the way. Keep passing, keep in front. Then get that blue shirt in your sights and turn it up even more at the last marker.” He’s searching the crowd again. He shouldn’t be so nervous, since I don’t have a scholarship on the line this time.

“Got it.”

“Where’s your marker?” Dad asks, pointing back to the map.

I rest my finger on the drawing. “This water pump looks like it’s about an eighth of a mile before the finish.”

He studies the other options and finally nods. “Yeah. That’s good. I think that’s your best bet. Okay. I’m going to take my place with the other worried parents.” He pats me on the back. “Don’t break anything.”

“I won’t.” I take a deep breath and drop forward. As I stretch, I stare at the upside-down paper number 54 pinned to my chest and listen as my teammates and competitors collect around me. I shake out my limbs and take my place.

We stand side by side at the starting line. It’s only seven a.m., but we’re already dripping with sweat from the heat and the humidity as we stretch and visualize the course. When the shot signals our start, we run at a controlled speed across the grass and into the woods. I already miss the mud and the slush. We push ourselves up a steep hill littered with fallen tree branches and debris, and then we drop down into the deeper woods where the footing is even more uneven.

We run as a pack for the first mile, sliding past one another when we reach narrowly spaced trees. At the end of the first mile, we cross a shallow creek and jump over a series of logs. I’m pushing and climbing and hurdling, and I know there are people around me, but as I cross the miles they seem to disappear as I move past them and fight my way to the front of the pack.

This is better. I’m not as light on my feet as I usually am, but at least while I’m running, surrounded by forest and sky, my head starts to feel clear again. I’m in control here, moving with the pack, but I can tell that I’m not pushing and fighting like I should be if I want to win this thing.

I run, feeling both the pounding of my shoes on the trail and my heart beating fast in my chest, and I look ahead at the girls in front of me. And just as we come around a bend and start to descend a narrow trail, I see the water pump far ahead in front of the leader. My marker. At first, I slowly increase my pace so I won’t seem like a threat to the five girls in front of me. I slip quickly past one. Then another. I’m in third place when we hit the quarter-mile mark, and that’s when I lock my eyes on that blue shirt and chase after it with everything I have left. For a moment, I feel something familiar returning. My feet move faster.
Where’s your fight?
I hear Emma ask.

“Right here.” I breathe out, without even caring if anyone’s overheard me, and I kick it up a notch. Something has changed. Something feels different today. I picture the words in her letter—
I think I can fix it
—and they echo in my ears as I keep my eyes glued on the runners ahead.

The two girls in front of me hurdle the last obstacle, and then it’s my turn. I run up on the fallen tree, leap forward, and my feet leave the ground. But I feel the tip of my shoe catch on a knot, and I fall forward in a stumble, taking wide steps to keep from falling. The girls I just passed shoot ahead of me again.

I rebalance myself, take a deep breath, and force myself forward again. I climb the hill at top speed, legs burning, until the two girls fall behind me again. Then I overtake the next. But the girl in the blue shirt is too far in front. I can see the finish line from here—see that she’s closer to it than I am—and that makes me switch into a completely different gear. I steady my gaze on the blond ponytail swinging in front of me. I give myself one last push and speed up to catch her.

But she’s faster. She’s the one to break through the tape first, though I am right on her heels. I come to a stop and fall forward, pulling in breaths, wiping the sweat from my face, and smiling at the ground.

“Good race,” I hear her say, and I twist to my side to see the girl I barely beat at state finals doubled over next to me and breathing just as heavily. She holds out her hand to shake mine.

I don’t even care that I came in second, and my smile is geniune. “Thanks,” I reply between breaths as I take her hand. “You made me fight for it.” Her eyebrows pinch together in confusion but I don’t feel the need to clarify. I may have lost that first-place trophy, but somewhere on the course I found what I was missing.

At home, I fly up the stairs, flop down on the floor, and start rifling through my backpack until I find the yellow folder I unearthed from the bottom of my desk last Thursday. I open it and read the letter from the host family again, for the hundredth time, and stare at the eight-by-ten picture of them. They’re standing in front of their house with their arms locked around one another. Four kids. A girl my age. A boy that looks a little older. Two small girls in dresses, standing in front, who look like twins.

And now when I look up at the map, suddenly all I want to do is make it real again. I pull the pin out of Prague and listen to the
plink
it makes when the metal connects with the plastic container. I pull the pin out of Paris. Cairo. Amsterdam. Berlin. Quebec. A few minutes later, I’ve removed every false pin that pierced its surface, every destination I’ve never seen but marked as if I had, and placed them back in the home where they belong.

Only the eight pins remain:

Springfield, Illinois.

Ely, Minnesota.

Grand Rapids, Michigan.

South Bend, Indiana.

Ko Tao, Thailand.

Devil’s Lake State Park, Wisconsin.

Vernazza, Italy.

San Francisco, California.

Eight pins aren’t nearly enough, but at least they’re real. The ninth one will be too.

Everyone’s in a good mood at dinner, perhaps because I am finally smiling and not casting a depressing pall over the dining room table. But the mood, I sense, is about to change.

“I want to talk with you about this summer,” I say.

Mom glances up at me as she chews, and Dad keeps his eyes on his plate while he takes a knife through his chicken. “Sure. What’s up?” he asks.

I take a deep breath and go. “I’ve been talking with my Spanish teacher about an exchange program in Mexico. He organizes the trips and personally selects students to participate and he just told me that there’s a great family that can host me this summer. In La Paz.” I didn’t expect to blurt it all out quite so fast. And now all those words are hovering above the table while my parents look at each other, confused.

“I know, it’s sudden,” I continue, “but I’ve thought a lot about this. I’ve always wanted to travel, and you know, I really need time away…from here.” No one moves or says anything, so I just keep talking. “It won’t cost you anything. I won the plane ticket in Señor Argotta’s class, and I’d have a place to stay with this amazing family. It’s basically free.” I hear myself repeating Argotta’s words and feel like he’s here with me, cheering me on.

“La Paz?” Mom can’t hide her concern.

“Yeah. It’s on the Baja peninsula. On the Sea of Cortez. In Mexico,” I clarify, just in case she missed that part.

“That’s far away.”

I smile at her and shrug. “That’s sort of the point, Mom.”

“No way.” She sighs and shifts in her chair. “What do you even know about this family?”

I walk over to the counter where I laid the packet of information earlier and bring it back to the table. I lay the photos and the letter out for them to see, and describe what I’ve learned about them. He’s a businessman. She’s a nature photographer. They have a daughter my age. I take the completed form out of the folder and place it next to the photos.

“It just needs your signature.”

Mom picks up the form, considers it, and sets in down on the table. “When would you leave?”

“In two weeks.”

“Two weeks!”

“It’s a bit last-minute.”

Dad’s too quiet. I can’t tell on which side of the fence he is, so I look at him, pleading with him to stand firmly on mine.

“How long would you be gone?” he asks.

This part isn’t going to go over well. “Ten weeks.”

“Ten weeks? That’s the entire summer!” Mom pushes her chair away from the table and walks to the kitchen. Dad looks at me and I look back with pleading eyes.

“Please, Dad,” I whisper. I hear the water running in the kitchen.

“That’s a long time,” Dad says, loud enough for Mom to hear, and I picture her bent over the sink and nodding vehemently. “But even so,” he continues, “it sounds like a really good opportunity.” Mom returns to the table wearing a panicked look that morphs into an angry one, like she can’t believe he’s voiced this opinion without consulting her first. But Dad holds his ground. “She’s been wanting to travel since she was little,” he says to her. “This is a good way to see the world, to experience a different culture.”

I mouth the words
Thank you
when she’s not looking.

Mom sets her glass down with a little too much force. She sits down and looks across at Dad. “You’re seriously considering letting our sixteen-year-old daughter live in a foreign country, for two months, with people we don’t even
know
?”

“Argotta says it will really help my diction. It will help me develop an ear for the language. I probably won’t be fluent in only two months, but I’ll be closer.”

“I don’t know.” Mom’s looking from me to Dad, and Dad is looking from me to her, and we’re at a stalemate.

“It’s a huge honor to be selected,” I offer. She doesn’t need to know that no one else wanted this spot. It’s funny to hear myself argue with such passion, given how dismissive I was when Argotta first made his offer, but that was when Bennett was here and permission slips weren’t required for international travel. “Mom. This is something for
me
. I need to do this.”

She won’t look at either one of us, so we all sit in silence, pushing food around on our plates, and trying to ignore the photos of the happy family on the table in front of us.

“Drop me off here, would you?” I ask, even though we’re still two blocks from the bookstore.

“Why here?” Emma pulls over to the side of the road and when she’s stopped, follows my finger up to the bright blue awning of the Going Going Gone Travel Agency.

“Oh.” She sounds so sad. “Wait. I’ll park and come in with you.”

I start to argue with her, but then I decide it might be therapeutic for her to witness me purchase the ticket, to see that this trip is actually happening, because she can’t seem to fully process the fact that we’ll be spending a summer apart for the first time in three years.

When we open the glass door, we’re greeted by the same jingling bells we have at the bookstore. Emma and I sit down in the only chairs in the office just as a youngish woman with thick glasses and a mop of split-ended, outdated hair comes around the corner and takes a seat in the chair across from us. I can hardly see her behind the giant monitor.

“Hi. I need to purchase a round-trip ticket to La Paz, Mexico, please.” I reach into my backpack and grab the now-tattered copy of
Let’s Go Mexico
, flip to the dog-eared page on La Paz, and pull out the voucher I wedged into the binding.

“I’d like to use this.” I slide it across the desk and picture the satisfied look I saw on Argotta’s face this morning when I gave him my completed, parent-signed form.

She picks up the voucher, turns it over, and sets it on the desk in front of her.

“Sure! When do you want to leave?” She’s a little too perky, and when she turns her attention to the computer screen, Emma rolls her eyes.

“June twentieth, please. It’s a Tuesday.” The travel agent’s fingers begin flying across the keyboard. Every few minutes she stops typing to consult the screen, and then the fingers start flying again.

“Here, let me see this.” Emma grabs
Let’s Go Mexico
and starts thumbing through the pages, stopping every once in a while to show me some photo of a beach at sunset or to tell me about the great scuba diving or the delicious food.

“Look at this!” Emma twists in her seat and pushes the book at me. “Look at these markets—all this pottery and food. This isn’t fair; you don’t even like shopping.”

The travel agent clears her throat and reads me my choices of departure times.

“I’m driving you to the airport,” Emma chimes in. “Take that one at noon.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes. Absolutely,” she replies, without looking up from the book.

“I’ll take the twelve fifteen flight,” I tell the agent, and she goes back to pounding on the keyboard.

Emma flips back to the photo of the open-air market. “Look at these hats. It’s says they’re woven so tightly they can hold water. Why would you want to hold water in your hat?” She looks up at me and shrugs. “I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been thinking I need more hats. What do you think? Do I look good in hats?” she asks, and I suck in my breath. Even though she’s sitting next to me, without even a single scar, for a moment all I can see is her lying on a stark white sheet, her frail body covered with cuts and punctured by tubes while I tell her about my Mexico travel plan. I jump when the printer comes to life and starts whirring and plinking just behind the desk.

“Hats?” I ask.

“Yeah. Hats. Those contraptions people put on their head to block out the sun and hide bad hair. Hats.” She looks at me wide-eyed. “What do you think? Do I look good in hats? Some people can’t pull them off, you know, but I think I might be able to.”

I just stare at her, and finally I find my voice. “Yeah, you look good in hats.” I feel pale.
You look really good in hats,
I remember saying that day I sat on her bed and held her hand and told her about the Yucatán Peninsula. Then I broke down. Then I told her to hold on and I’d fix it.

“Here you are.” The agent smiles brightly and gives me a thin envelope decorated with colorful fish. “Have a fantastic time on your trip! And come back and see us again, Miss Greene!”

Emma locks arms with me and leads me out of the office. “Now that we did your thing, it’s my turn. Let’s go see Justin,” she says, pulling me down the block to the record store.