Spain or Shine

by Michelle Jellen

  “This is great,” Jenna called over the waves and wind. “I’ve always loved to sail. My family went on vacation once in Florida,” she told the boys. “My dad took us out on the ocean a few times. This is a prettier view, though.”

  “What about you, Elena?” Miguel asked. “What do you think of sailing so far?”

  Elena pondered the question and let herself bob with the boat as the waves rolled beneath them. “I never knew such a bumpy ride could be so relaxing,” she said finally.

  “Exactly,” Miguel laughed. “You do not say much, Elena, but when you do, it is just the right thing.”

  Elena had never received such a strange compliment, but she felt herself glowing.

  “My father always says it is a waste to use too many words when just a few will do,” Miguel said, flashing Elena a broad smile. It was not a flirtatious smile, but it was open and friendly.

  “You’re a great sailor, Miguel,” Jenna said. She looked genuinely impressed. “How long have you been sailing?”

  “As long as I can remember. My father started taking me out at a young age. I was so young I could barely see over this.” He gestured toward the side of the boat.

  Miguel brought them around the small island situated in the center of the bay, which he told them was called la isla de Santa Clara. Up close Elena could see clusters of houses clinging to the land. She was surprised that people lived out there. There was something very romantic about the idea of living on an island that was so close to town, yet still separated by a rolling body of water.

  “I sail, too,” Borja volunteered in English that was mangled by a thick accent. He stole a glance at Jenna to see if she was impressed. “I used to have boat. I am a great sailor.”

  “Well, you’ll have to take us out next time.” Jenna smiled.

  “It’s true. Borja is a better sailor than me,” Miguel admitted. “But my English is better.”

  Borja laughed at this. “Yes. Better English.”

  “Do you know Spanish very well?” Miguel asked them.

  “We’re taking classes. I’m not really a language person-math’s my thing,” Jenna said. Miguel nodded and then looked at Elena expectantly.

  “Well,” she hedged. “I really love Spanish. It’s one of my favorite classes....”

  “You must be good then.” He smiled.

  “Actually,” she looked out at the rolling ocean just beyond the bay and wondered how far out they would be going. “Actually, I’m a little bit shy about speaking Spanish. I’ve had a few, mostly one-sided conversations with my host family. But when I speak with strangers, I just clam up.”

  “That can be a problem.” Miguel nodded. “Down!” he shouted in Spanish.

  They all ducked as the boom swung around again.

  “I was saying that can be a problem,” Miguel continued, “because many of the people here don’t speak English. They speak Basque and Spanish, but not a lot of English.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” Elena returned.

  “We will have to work on your Spanish.”

  Elena waited for him to continue, but he was quiet as he looked up and noticed a flock of heavy clouds spreading rapidly across the sky. “We should watch those. They could mean a storm is coming.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s beautiful out. Don’t turn back yet,” Jenna protested.

  They were drifting out toward the choppy dark water of the open sea. Elena clung to the bench and held tight as they bounced over several larger waves. Salt water stung her eyes, and her arms began to cramp from gripping so tightly.

  “So, who is Mariana?” Jenna asked.

  “My father named this boat for my mother.”

  “She must be really flattered,” Elena offered.

  There was a long silence as Miguel fidgeted with one of the ropes. Borja looked out to sea.

  “I’m sure she was,” Miguel finally answered. “She died when I was three.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jenna said. Elena didn’t know what to say. She felt so sad for him.

  “I don’t know much about her,” Miguel continued in an even tone. “My father, how do I explain? Spanish men don’t show those kinds of emotions, so he never talked about her very much. I do know that she was beautiful and she loved the ocean.”

  “Is that why you like to come out here so much?” Elena asked, without realizing what a nosy question it was until after she asked it.

  “Yes, I think so.” He nodded thoughtfully. When his head bobbed up, she stole a glance at his solemn expression. She realized that he wasn’t just a perfect guy born from her imagination, but a real person with sadness and flaws.

  Miguel took the boat headlong into the ocean. They were shuttling up, over, and down in the steady waves when the sky suddenly darkened, and the clouds opened up. Rain came jetting down over them in ripping streams. This wasn’t just a light rain. This was a storm, and they were far from shore. The city was just a shimmering line on the horizon.

  Miguel took control of the sails and began shouting instructions in Spanish to Borja. Elena bowed her head in her lap. The Spanish word for down had washed away in her mind, and she didn’t want to be caught with her head up when the boom swung around. She just wrapped her arms around her knees and tried to hold on as walls of water crashed into the side of LA MARIANA, knocking it sideways.

  After a sheet of water covered their boat for the third time in as many minutes, Elena lifted her head a bit to ask Miguel if he thought he could really get them back safely. She could feel the fear rising up in her chest. But when she looked up and searched Miguel’s face, she could have sworn he wore the trace of a smile. He looked completely absorbed and in his element. He looked as if he felt the way she had when she’d written her first play assignment, as if the whole world could drop away and nothing would matter as long as he was still doing what he was doing right now. She couldn’t decide if this frightened or impressed her.

  Finally, Miguel steered them into the bay. The rain let up for a few minutes, allowing them to sneak back into the boat’s slip in the harbor. By the time they had tied the boat to the moorings and squeezed the rainwater from their clothes, the clouds were parting to reveal a bright sky. It almost looked as if the storm had never happened at all.

  “Thank you so much for taking us out,” Elena said as Borja and Miguel walked the girls out toward the road.

  “De nada, ” Miguel said. “It was my pleasure.” He seemed to consider each word before he spoke it, the way Elena did when she was trying to speak Spanish. “I hope to see you on campus.” Miguel waved as the girls turned right and the boys headed in the opposite direction.

  “You will,” Jenna called. Then she nudged Elena in the arm and whispered, “I promise we’ll see them again.”

  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.