Spain or Shine (2 page)

“What are you doing?” Claire asked, motioning toward one of the rolled shirts.

“You can pack more this way,” Gwen explained.

Elena and Claire took over rolling clothes after Gwen had demonstrated with a few T-shirts.

“So, how do you feel about all this, Lanie?” Gwen parked on the edge of her bed and began loosening the laces of her running shoes.

“Nervous,” Elena said.

“Nervous and excited, though?”

“Yeah. But mostly nervous.”

Gwen slipped her shoes off, kicking them toward her closet. “Well, I think it's really cool that you're following through with this.”

“Yeah, it is sort of unlike me, isn't it?” Elena said.

“I'm being serious,” Gwen said. “It's just that you have all these great ideas and...like, remember the time you were going to run for class secretary and you made half the posters and then just dropped the whole thing because you were sure you couldn't beat Claudia Kauffman?”

“I know. I'm not great at follow-through.”

“I'm just saying I think this trip is going to be amazing.” Elena hadn't realized how much she valued Gwen's approval until she'd actually heard the words.

“Melanie met these two girls last year in Spain who were also in the S.A.S.S. program,” Gwen continued, “and they're, like, two of her best friends now. You're going to meet so many cool people.” Gwen's friend, Melanie, was the one who had introduced Elena and Claire to the whole idea of the S.A.S.S. program in San Sebastián.

“I hope so,” Elena said as she rolled a shirt. The roll wasn't nearly as small and perfect as Gwen's had been.

They were interrupted by the sharp smack of the front door slamming shut, followed by a clatter in the hallway. Elena recognized the sounds of her fourteen-year-old-brother, Caleb, dumping his football equipment next to the door. Caleb's heavy footsteps thumped across the foyer.

Elena's mom's voice boomed from the kitchen. “Caleb, you are not allowed into the living room until you take off your dirty cleats. And don't leave them in the hall—someone will trip over them and break their neck!” According to Elena's mom, they were all perpetually in danger of breaking their necks or poking their eyes out.

“Relax, Mom, I'm going to take a shower,” Caleb called.

“Oh no, he isn't.” Gwen leaped off the bed and flew toward the bathroom across the hall. Elena could hear Gwen and Caleb scrambling toward the bathroom door.

“I should go first. You never leave any hot water,” Gwen hollered as she slipped inside the bathroom and swung the door shut before Caleb could pry his way in. Caleb pounded on the bathroom door.

“What a madhouse.” Elena shut her door in an attempt to seal out some of the racket. “So, what am I forgetting? Do you think I need a raincoat?”

“Forget the raincoat. This is all you really need,” Claire said, holding up a turquoise bikini splashed with tiny pink hearts. Elena laughed, snatching the dangling bikini from Claire's hand and dropping it into her suitcase. The bikini was Elena's secret weapon. Elena had seen it in a magazine in May and hunted it down through phone calls and Internet searches. She'd never wanted a single piece of clothing so much in her life. Even with limbs as skinny and pale as birch branches, Elena thought she looked pretty good in the bikini. She felt like the best version of herself.

Outside the bedroom window darkness painted the sky. That was Elena's cue to usher Claire toward the door. She walked Claire out to the front porch, and they stood for a moment in the warm, late August air, listening to the silence.

“It's only three and a half months,” Claire said finally, waving her hand as if that amount of time was so small she could shoo it away like a fly.

“That's nothin.'” Elena hugged her friend. She couldn't remember a time when they hadn't started the school year together.

“See ya,” Claire said over her shoulder as she stepped out toward the street.

“See ya,” Elena echoed.

Over the years they'd perfected the art of saying good-bye without making it sound sad or significant. Elena watched Claire's silhouette melt into the shadows. Her heart sank into her chest, and self-doubt began to seep in. It felt impossible to do this thing on her own, but this was her opportunity to do something brave and cool that none of the overachievers in her family had already done. In Spain she would have the chance to be something other than another one of the Holloway kids or Claire's best friend. She could just be Elena, whoever that was.

 

As soon as Elena stepped through the front door she heard her mom calling everyone to dinner. Elena ambled through the door to the kitchen and found her mom, Carla, looking all businesslike in a skirt, a silk blouse, and ostrich-skin heels. Her hands, however, were incongruously sheathed in oven mitts. She flew across the kitchen turning off buzzers, lifting plates, and filling glasses.

Gwen stood at the counter, making a salad. Elena grabbed a carrot slice and Gwen smacked her hand playfully.

“Mom, Elena stole a carrot,” Gwen whined, but then stuck a carrot slice into her own mouth and winked at Elena.

“Better carrots than cupcakes,” her mom answered in her weary half-listening voice.

Elena and Gwen giggled. “Whatever that means,” Gwen muttered to Elena.

On her way toward the table Elena stepped over Caleb, who was sprawled out on the kitchen floor in his sweaty football clothes reading a comic book. This was apparently the compromise he and their mom had come to regarding her demand that he not go into the living room in his dirty practice jersey.

“All right, everyone take a seat,” her mom said, carrying a piping dish of lasagna over to the counter.

Caleb clicked over to the table, leaving a trail of grass-threaded dirt clumps from his cleats. Elena joined him, followed by Gwen and their mom.

“So, I did an Internet search today on the top schools in the nation,” Gwen said as soon as they began eating.

Caleb groaned. “God, can we for once not talk about colleges? That's all I ever hear about in this house.” He speared a hunk of lasagna with his fork.

Elena silently agreed with Caleb. The pressure of college looming caused Elena's family to spend a lot of time lately talking about how to be exceptional. Elena was just trying to get through her classes with good grades, let alone exceptional ones. But silently, she acknowledged that this trip to Spain was her chance to be exceptional in a different way. She was going to pursue this thing, playwriting and production, that she might possibly excel at in a way her other siblings never could. Or she could fall flat on her face.

Caleb and Gwen continued to argue while their mom tried several times to interrupt with a cheerful story about a recent home sale. She gave up when the phone rang. Moments later the front door slammed, and Elena's oldest sibling, Jeremy, who was home from college for the summer, sauntered into the kitchen.

“Hey, what's for dinner? I'm starving,” he said.

Elena took another bite of lasagna. She was usually the quiet one at the table. In the Holloway house, whoever spoke loudest won, and unfortunately Elena had been born with a quiet set of pipes.

Gwen had finished her salad and was now eating tiny little nibbles of lasagna. She was constantly watching her weight, although Elena honestly had trouble finding any weight on her that needed watching.

“Want mine?” Elena whispered, offering her untouched salad to Gwen while her mom was talking on the phone. Gwen nodded and quickly swapped bowls with Elena.

Elena's mom hung up the phone and sighed. “I have to take some clients out to look at houses. This is the only time they can go.” She walked over and kissed the top of Elena's head. “I'm sorry your dad and I can't be with you more on your last night, kiddo.”

“It's okay, Mom.”

“Well, he'll be home soon. Do you need any help packing before I go?”

“Don't worry about it. Gwen's helping me.”

Elena's mom scurried out the door, and Gwen and Caleb helped Elena carry the dishes to the sink. The dinner dishes were her designated daily chore.

Jeremy spooned lukewarm lasagna onto a plate as Caleb and Gwen left the kitchen.

“What's up, Lanie?” Jeremy asked, sitting at the breakfast bar to eat.

“Not much, just need to finish packing,” she answered.

“Does it feel weird to be going without Claire?” he asked. Since Jeremy had left for college last year he had become much more interested in her life. Elena found it a bit disconcerting. She figured it was a combination of his growing up a little and actually missing his family.

“Yeah, I'm sort of nervous about going without her. But, to be honest, I also think it'll be good for me to branch out.”

“Yeah, you guys are together a lot. It just seems funny that you're the one going since she's the drama nerd.”

“She's not a nerd,” Elena defended.

“I just meant she's the one interested in acting,” he explained. She could tell by the lack of sarcasm in his voice that he was being sincere. “I hadn't pegged you for the actress is all. You seem more like the backstage type.”

“I'm definitely not an actress,” she confirmed, scraping off the dinner plates. “The course is play production. It's a little bit of everything: acting, playwriting, directing.”

“Piaywriting.” He eyed her. “The next best thing to screen-writing, huh?” Jeremy shared Elena's love of movies and was one of the few people, along with Claire, who knew about her secret dream of becoming a famous screenwriter/director.

Elena nodded.

“That's cool,” Jeremy said. “I bet you'll be good at it.”

“I don't know. We'll see,” she said. But then she added, “I really hope so.”

Elena heard the front door open. Moments later her dad came strolling into the kitchen.

“Hey, guys, what's for dinner?”

“Lasagna,” Elena told him, pointing with a soapy finger.

“Elena, you shouldn't be doing dishes on your last night. Leave those. I'll get to them later. Or maybe Jeremy can offer his services.” Her dad raised an eyebrow at Jeremy.

Jeremy set his empty plate next to the sink. “All right, I'll do them tomorrow morning,” he sighed.

“Thanks, Dad.” Elena smiled at him and turned the water off. She was already beginning to feel a little bit special.

As she was drying her hands she realized that tomorrow, while Jeremy was washing dishes, she would be thirty thousand feet up, soaring toward a foreign country.

Elena woke before dawn and tiptoed into the bathroom. She'd showered the night before so she could sleep as late as possible, which wasn't very late at all. After washing her face and drying it with a towel, she slid a comb through her hair. Elena's wavy hair was a warm shade of brown. She pulled it into a low ponytail, smeared her lips with strawberry gloss, and gave her colorless cheeks a pinch. That was about as good as it was going to get at four thirty in the morning.

Both of her parents had gotten up to take her to the airport. When they finished checking her in, Elena spotted a woman in her forties holding up a laminated sign for the International School, or I.S. She was sure this was the chaperone she'd been told would be accompanying the students from Northern California to San Sebastián. The chaperone wore too-high-waisted khaki shorts in a material that stretched tight and shiny across a pooch of belly. Elena watched as she greeted several of the students who had already managed to shake their parents. When the students approached her, she beamed, welcoming them in a voice that rose and fell like a song. She was entirely too perky for six A.M. Elena guessed she was the type of woman who went to Disneyland every year for her vacation—even though she was at least forty-five—and had a compilation of collector's plates ordered from TV infomercials.

Although Elena had pointed out the chaperone to her parents and explained that she could take it from here, her mom kept finding one last thing to say. She wondered if her mom was ever going to let her go.

“Be sure to call us as soon as you land,” she said.

“Mom, it's going to be, like, three in the morning here when I get to San Sebastián.”

“I don't care. You just use the calling card I gave you.” She roped Elena in for the third hug in five minutes. “And remember to stick with the group. Don't dawdle in the airport, or you might get lost. Pay attention to the chaperone.” Elena was so used to these pleas from her mother to stay focused that she just tuned them out.

When her mom pulled back, pools were forming in her eyes. That was Elena's cue. If her mom started to cry, she'd never get out of there.