“Well, I hate to disappoint you, Jack,” Stephanie said in a gentle voice, “but I’m not a mirror.”
“I know. I realized that just now. Even though this is the first time I’ve met you in my life, I feel like, in a way, I’ve always known you. It’s something I feel...”
“In your heart,” she said, finishing his thought.
Elena had added the last two lines of that scene on the train ride home from Barcelona. As she watched from behind the curtain offstage, she silently thanked her great-aunt Elena and her distant cousin Enrique for showing her that everything she needed to feel connected to her family, her heritage, was already inside her.
Elena took a deep breath and went back onstage for the final scene. They ended the play with Alex and Elena’s characters getting together and kissing as the curtain dropped. Afterward, as she and Alex stood to take a bow in the hot center of the spotlight, she realized she had actually had fun. She liked pretending to be this person other than herself. She felt parts of herself she never knew were there opening up. Plus, the applause was dizzying.
The houselights came up a bit, and Elena could see familiar faces smiling, hands clapping wildly, and hear hoots and whistles rising up into the theater like a dust cloud.
Elena leaned in close to Alex and whispered, “We did it.” Alex smiled, grasped her hand, raised their interlocked arms, and led them into a swinging, dramatic bow.
“Your play was wonderful,” Señora Cruz gushed.
Elena was glad the Cruzes were there to congratulate her on her performance. This was one of the times she really wished her family had been able to be with her. She knew her parents would have been so proud to see her up there. And Gwen would have been so happy to see Elena in the spotlight for once. On her way to Spain, Elena had hoped that in coming here she would surprise all of them with her bravery. On this night she would have blown them away.
“And you did a wonderful job with your part,” Elena said to a beaming Alita. Señor Cruz patted Alita’s head.
“We brought you these,” Señora Cruz hollered over the din of the crowd buzzing past them. She handed Elena a bundle of white lilies wrapped in paper. As Elena was reaching out to hug the Cruzes, a pair of students interrupted.
“Great play,” Gabe, Dylan’s playwriting partner, said, pumping her hand formally as if she were in the receiving line at a wedding. Standing beside him was Dylan.
“We just wanted to tell you how awesome you were,” Dylan said in a voice that managed to be cool and friendly at the same time.
“Thanks. You guys were great last night.”
“Well, congratulations again,” Dylan said as they turned to walk away. Their bodies were swallowed in the mass of people squashed into the cramped backstage area. Elena realized she hadn’t even thought about Dylan since the day they’d chosen partners. She didn’t have to be just like Dylan, or have her as a partner to be great. The whole idea seemed laughable now. She could be great just being Elena.
“Congratulations.” Ms. B walked over and wrapped her arms around Elena. She gave her a squeeze. “Elena, I’m so proud of you for stepping in and saving the play. You must promise me you’ll keep writing, acting, and directing.”
Elena promised and accepted another hug from Ms. B.
“Where is Alex? I wanted to congratulate him, too.”
“I don’t know,” Elena answered, scanning the crowd. They walked with the Cruzes through the backstage bustle. The entire playwriting class and all their friends were packed into the narrow corridor behind the stage that served as a mass dressing room. Elena and Ms. B waded through the crowd and found Alex standing along the wall hung with mirrors edged in round yellow bulbs. There were still-open makeup tubes and scattered powder brushes left idle in front of the mirrors. Alex was with Jenna, as well as Marci, Caitlin, and Chris. The only one missing from the group was Miguel. Elena felt her heart crack a little.
“Congratulations, Alex,” Ms. B gushed, smothering him in a hug. Alex smiled and squirmed. He looked as uncomfortable as Elena in the face of all this sudden praise.
Jenna was standing in the center of the group-an impromptu theater-in-the-round-recounting her harrowing bout of stage fright. She was gesticulating wildly and had everyone laughing.
“Looks like you’ve gotten over your stage fright,” Elena commented as she joined the circle. Jenna laughed and went in to hug Elena.
“You were awesome, Elena. I knew you could do a better job than me.” Then she pulled Elena to the side and lowered her voice. “I’m so, so, so sorry I couldn’t do it.”
“You know what? It was fine. I’m happy about the way it worked out.” Elena smiled, and she saw Jenna’s shoulders relax.
“Really?”
“This was the way it was supposed to happen.”
“Oh, like fate?” Jenna teased.
“Yeah, why not?”
Jenna gave her another big hug.
“So, you haven’t seen Miguel around, have you?” Elena slipped the question in, hoping it sounded offhand.
Jenna shook her head. “I haven’t seen him all night.”
“Oh,” she tried to keep the hurt out of her voice. She hadn’t told Jenna about her special invitation for Miguel. In fact, she hadn’t told anyone about it. It was just something she had wanted to keep to herself, and now she was glad she had because she didn’t feel like sharing her disappointment with anyone. It was too raw.
Elena slumped forward, but she continued to scan the moving pack of people, looking for his face among them, in case Jenna was wrong. She even strained to search the corners bathed in shadow and thought she saw a figure standing in the darkness near the door. Alex approached her and broke her gaze.
“I’m taking off; I just wanted to say how awesome you were.” Alex leaned in to give Elena a hug. He didn’t give her a second to set down the flowers she was holding, and the paper made a crackling noise between them as Alex gave her a friendly squeeze.
Señor Cruz walked up and tapped Elena on the shoulder.
“Elena, we are going to leave soon. Would you like us to take you home?”
“Um, just a second.” She peered over Señor Cruz’s hair, combed slick with pomade, in another sweep for Miguel. She didn’t want to think about what it would mean if he didn’t show up.
Finally, she packed the little pieces of her heart, said her good-byes, and left without seeing Miguel. She went to bed that night wondering if it had all been a trick of her imagination, if Miguel’s flirtations in Madrid and the encouragement from her friends had fooled her into thinking Miguel had feelings that didn’t really exist.
Chapter fourteen
Elena rolled up an old blanket she had borrowed from Señora Cruz. As she was stuffing it in her backpack she thought of her first day of Spanish class. It bothered her that she still hadn’t become fluent in Spanish. She had yet to dream in Spanish the way Señor Gonzalez had told them they would once the language and the culture had become a part of them. She hated the idea that she might leave Spain tomorrow without taking a piece of it with her.
Tonight she and her friends were meeting at the beach at sunset. They were going to sleep under the stars listening to the waves and laughing together on their last night in Spain. It had been Jenna’s idea—a chance to bid farewell to San Sebastián and one another during one night.
Elena made her way toward the front door and spotted Alita on the couch, pondering a book for school. She’d been slumping around all evening and had barely uttered a word to Elena all day.
“Hola, Alita,” she said, balancing on the arm of the couch and leaning over Alita’s shoulder. Alita scooted away irritably. “What are you reading?”
“Nothing,” Alita grumbled, her shoulders raised up toward her ears and her forehead pulled into a frown.
“Okay, well I’m going down to the shops to get some snacks for tonight. Do you want to come?”
Alita shook her head slowly. Now Elena was sure something was wrong. Alita,
the girl who was always trying to tag along with whoever would tolerate her, was turning down an invitation. It wasn’t like her at all.
“What’s going on, Alita? You seem like you’ve been really down all day. Are you maybe upset because I’m leaving tomorrow?” Elena ventured. “You know, I’m going to keep in touch with you. We can e-mail and write each other postcards. And then maybe one day you can come and visit me in America.” Elena said the last sentence in as perky a voice as she could muster. Alita nodded, the faintest wisp of a smile passed briefly on her lips.
Elena started to get off the couch when she heard Alita whisper something else. “What did you say?”
“I said I liked having a sister. I know you are not my real sister, but it was fun pretending. Now it will just be me.”
“It’s a little lonely, huh?”
“Yes,” Alita nodded and finally set her book down. Elena sat down next to her on the couch cushion.
“Having brothers and sisters around can be a big pain, too. You compete over everything: the bathroom, the car, your parents’ attention. Brothers tease. It’s impossible to do anything really great because the chances are someone else has already done it, or can do it better than you....” As she was listing off all the downsides of having siblings, she realized how unconvinced Alita looked. She couldn’t sell this to Alita because she didn’t believe it herself. When she first arrived in Spain, she’d envied Alita. She knew Alita would always have her own room. She’d never have to follow in the footsteps of an impossibly beautiful sister. She’d never have to fight for her parents’ attention. She’d never have to wear someone else’s old, stretched-out clothes. Elena realized how little that mattered now. Elena didn’t need to be away from her family anymore in order to do something really meaningful and big. In fact, now that she felt capable of doing those things, she wanted her siblings around to share them with her more than anything. They weren’t her competition; they were her support system.
“I think I understand why you’re sad. But you have some great friends, don’t you?” Elena inquired.
“Yes.” Alita slumped forward.
“Well, you don’t have a big family, but your friends can be like extra family members you pick for yourself.”
Alita nodded. She seemed to understand what Elena meant. Elena told Alita about her great-aunt Elena, who didn’t have a husband and kids of her own but wasn’t lonely because she surrounded herself with friends. Elena realized that she’d unwittingly done the same thing. She’d come to Spain to establish her independence, to set herself apart. But in the process she had surrounded herself with great friends whom she depended on, and she suspected they depended on her, too. It was a wonderful feeling.
“Well, you do have a sister for about sixteen more hours,” Elena said, giving Alita’s shoulders a squeeze. “Why don’t you come with me to the store?”
Finally a smile broke out across Alita’s stony face.
Hours after Elena had dropped Alita back off at home she was strolling along the Paseo toward the beach, and she spotted Miguel ambling toward her. The sun was at his back so that his face was hidden in shadow, but she was sure it was him. After months of scanning crowds for him she knew the real thing when she saw it. She had all of him memorized-his walk, his posture, the way he tipped his head to the side when he concentrated on something-all of him.
She’d been successful in avoiding him since the play. She didn’t understand why he hadn’t shown, and she was afraid she just didn’t understand him, period. The fact that he hadn’t shown up to the performance that meant so much to her was a sign that he was truly not interested. So she had avoided him to prove that she wasn’t interested either.
Elena ducked her head and tried to dart over to the stairs before he could see her, but he was too quick.
“Elena,” he called. He picked up his pace and met her in front of the steps.
Elena spotted her friends—a line of shadowy figures filing across the sand. “I’m supposed to be meeting them,” she said, pointing to the moving silhouettes.
Miguel looked in the direction she pointed, then they both looked at each other.
“I know. Jenna told me. That’s how I knew you would be here.” So, he had been looking for her. Neither of them moved. She looked back toward her friends in the distance.
“I was hoping I could talk to you,” he said.
“Okay.” Elena couldn’t stop her mind from racing. What could he possibly have to say to her on her last night there?
“Come with me,” Miguel said, reaching gently for her hand and leading her toward an empty bench overlooking the ocean. His face was turned away from the sun, but his eyes still seemed to reflect strands of gold.
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the setting sun dance across the water. The fact that she was actually leaving tomorrow hadn’t seemed real until that moment as she realized this would be her last sunset in San Sebastián.
Elena closed her eyes and tried to save the view just as she saw it now with the sun dropping quietly into the ocean.
“Sometimes, when I come to watch the sun go down, I can see the moment when the horizon flashes green just before darkness,” Miguel said. Was this his way of trying to patch things up before she left forever, she wondered.
“I’ve never seen the green flash.” Elena nodded, intrigued. “It sounds beautiful.”
“It is.” He was quiet again and looked straight ahead, but she sensed he had more to say. She waited a long time as the wind picked up off the ocean and the air grew cooler.
“I went to your play,” he said finally. “It was wonderful.”
“You came? But I never saw you. No one did.”
“I was there,” he assured her.
“But nobody saw you. Why didn’t you—”
“I was there,” he barreled through, interrupting her thought. “I was called in at the last minute for work, and I got off only ten minutes before your play started, so I had to sneak in and sit in the back, but I was there. I was also backstage after the show. I brought flowers for you. They were the same kind you were already holding—the ones that Alex had given you.”
“Alex?” she turned abruptly to face him. “Those flowers weren’t from Alex; they were from the Cruzes.”
“But you were hugging him and smiling.”
“We had just finished a really difficult project together. He’s just my friend.”
Miguel looked down at his hands. “I did not know that. I thought you might be with him. You had been spending so much time with him. And then you kissed each other onstage. I was sitting in the audience wondering why you had asked me to come and watch you kiss another boy.”
Elena couldn’t help but laugh. She forced him to look her in the eyes. “First of all, Alex has always been just a friend. Second, we were acting. It’s all pretend. And I wasn’t even the one who was supposed to be kissing Alex at the end of the play, Jenna was.” Elena felt herself relaxing. She was so happy and relieved that Miguel had hunted her down to tell her he had been at the play after all. “Jenna was our lead. She was supposed to play the main character, Lisa, but she got really nervous that night. Right before we went onstage, she panicked, and I had to step in for her.”
“That was brave.”
Elena looked out at the ocean and mumbled a thank-you. She didn’t tell him how much more courage it took her just to ask him to the play. Starring in a play had seemed like nothing compared to the nerves she felt standing at the hotel, practically handing her heart to Miguel. “Believe me, if I had known I was going to be the one up there kissing Alex at the end, I would have at least warned you.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Elena, because ... I like you,” he said to his hands. “I wanted you to know that.”
Elena couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Miguel—the person she thought was too beautiful and confident ever to care for her-was sitting here saying he felt the same way about her that she had felt about him all this ti
me. Elena looked at his profile, haloed by the light of the sunset. It was the way she had first seen him, in a profile that was practically glowing. Then she glanced back at the ocean.
The sun was just a point of yellow light on the waves; she could see it slipping slowly, slowly into the water.
She wanted to thank him for finding her on her last night and to tell him that this would be a moment she’d remember for years. But the words never left her mouth. Miguel leaned in, took her face in his hands, and kissed her just as the sun slipped into the ocean in a fleeting, brilliant flash of green.
Miguel and Elena found their group on the beach up near the Paseo. As they approached, they found Alex fumbling with big hunks of wood and frighteningly long matches, attempting to start a bonfire in the dark. He claimed it was a necessary skill for any respectable beach bum.
Jenna waved them over excitedly. “Hi, you guys,” she said, leaping up to give them both tight hugs.
Elena plunked down in the sand with Jenna and unloaded the proliferation of junk food she’d been lugging around in her backpack with the blankets. She knew she’d gone overboard, and she knew all the girls would complain about their caloric intake and then stuff their faces anyway.
“Elena, why did you get so much junk?” Marci whined as she reached for a package of cookies and tore it open.
“You know you love it, Marci,” Jenna teased, reaching for a bag of chips.
Alex finally got the bonfire started. Miguel moved in next to Elena, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her onto his lap. Chris turned on a little battery-powered radio he’d brought along and tinny flamenco music came pumping through the rusted speakers. The music was scratchy and weak, but Alex and Jenna got up and did a little impromptu flamenco routine. Elena was happy to see that Jenna had eventually given in to her obvious feelings for Alex. Although she knew they were both so noncommittal it probably wouldn’t go anywhere beyond that night, she was happy to see her two best friends together for now.
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