by Linda Gerber
“What?” Logan asked.
In the safety of my room, I sat on the edge of my bed and let the tears fall. I got what I wanted—to get on camera and to stay in Valencia—but now I was trapped. I always thought it would be fun to be a celebrity. Now I wasn’t so sure.
I picked up my grampa’s picture and held it in my lap. When I was little, he always knew what to say to make me feel better. He was always so happy. So sure of himself. He probably would have laughed at all the reporters gathered like sheep outside. “I wish you were here,” I whispered.
I heard footsteps in the hall and set the picture back on the nightstand just as Logan tapped on my door. “Look, Cass,” he said. “I’m sorry. Come on out. I promise not to say anything stupid.”
I took one last glance at my grampa. He smiled back at me. “Then you’d have to be mute,” I told Logan.
“Ha, ha.” He turned back to the living room and called out, “She’s fine.”
After that it seemed silly for me to mope in my room, so I strolled back out to the living room. The doorman had just sent up a new batch of flowers and gifts, and Logan and Mateo were sifting through the notes, laughing out loud at some of them. Victoria was busily pulling out her books to start with our lesson. The front room smelled like a florist’s shop.
I poked at the flowers on the table. “What are we going to do with these things?”
“What? You don’t appreciate your adoring fans?” Logan teased.
“Fans, maybe,” I said, “but this is too much.”
“We could donate them,” Victoria suggested. “I’m sure there’s a hospital in the city that could put them to good use.”
She set Logan and me to work with some math problems while she and Mateo looked up numbers and called around. Within the hour, they found a hospital nearby that would be happy to take the flowers. Daniel and Bayani volunteered to deliver them when they took a break from filming. I thought that would be the end of it, but I was wrong.
Later that afternoon, after we had finished our lessons, Logan pointed to the muted TV. “Guys,” he said. “Check it out.”
There on the screen were Daniel and Bayani, each carrying armloads of flowers, headed through the sliding glass doors into the hospital.
“Turn it up,” Victoria said. “What are they saying, Mateo?”
He listened for a moment and then started to laugh. “You’re not going to believe this.”
It seems that some reporters had followed Daniel and Bayani from the apartment building to the hospital and assumed that I was the one who had sent them to deliver the flowers. The rest of the media pounced on the story. Now I was a philanthropist.
“But it was Victoria’s idea,” I protested. “We should tell them it wasn’t me.”
“But they were your flowers,” she said. “And besides, this is a better story.”
I thought about that for a moment. Is that what it was all about, then? Not the truth, but what makes the best story? Those people downstairs didn’t really know who I was. They probably didn’t care. What mattered was the image they had created for me. They needed either a heroine or a villain for their news stories, so I would do for the heroine slot.
I wondered what Grampa would have said about that. He probably would have told me it didn’t matter what the press said about me. They didn’t know me; they were only looking for what they wanted to see. In that way, just maybe, the joke was on them.
I could tell something was wrong the minute Mom and Dad came through the door that evening. Even though they tried to act like everything was fine, I knew better. Remember what I said about spending so much time together in small spaces? Yeah. Kind of hard to hide how you react to things.
I cornered Dad in the kitchen. He was standing in front of the open fridge, drinking juice directly from the carton—something he never did. Unless he was distracted. “What’s going on?”
“Hmm? Oh. It’s nothing, Cassidy.” He put the carton back and closed the fridge. “Everything’s fine.”
“You wouldn’t say everything was fine unless something was wrong,” I told him.
“It’s really nothing. The authorities….” He sighed. “Well, I don’t understand international law, but it’s like you’re a material witness.”
“What does that mean?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from me for a moment. Uh-oh. “It means,” he said, “that they want to keep you here until you can testify about this case in a court of law.”
“Yeah,” I said cautiously. “Isn’t that what they said in the police station?”
“Well, yes. But this is different. It could take a long time.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t decide if that was good news or bad. On the one hand, it would give me more time with Mateo, but if I had to spend the whole time in the apartment…. “How long?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said again.
Victoria had been gathering her books to leave, but she paused. “If this is not a good time, I can postpone my trip to Barcelona tomorrow.”
“What?” Dad said. “No. You go on. This may take a while to sort out.”
The way he said it, that didn’t sound good. My stomach twisted just a little. “How long’s a while?”
“It’s fine,” Dad said again, though his frown showed he didn’t believe it. “Everything will be all right.”
I woke late that night to the sound of voices. Not Mateo and Logan, but my mom and dad and, by the distinct accent, Cavin. I crept to the door and eased it open so I could hear better.
“This has gone on long enough,” Dad said. “We could contact the American consulate and ask them to intervene.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Cavin soothed. “The police assured me they have everything under control and—”
“Under control?” Mom shot back, her voice rising. “We can’t even leave the building without being mobbed, Cavin. That is hardly control.”
“Shhh….” Dad hushed. “You’ll wake her.”
“They’re waiting for a story,” Cavin said, softer this time. “And you won’t give them one.”
“We’ve been through this,” Mom said. “I will not allow the network to milk this situation at the expense of my daughter.”
“We’re thinking of Cassidy,” Dad added.
“We think she’ll be safer at my mother’s home in Ohio,” Mom agreed. “Surely as a father you understand that.”
“Aye, I do,” said Cavin. His voice sounded defeated. Regretful.
I burst from my room. “Well, I don’t!”
Dad sighed. “I told you she’d wake up.”
“How long have you been listening, Cassidy?”
“Not long enough.” I folded my arms. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Mom looked to Dad and he looked right back at her. Silent.
“The newsies are looking for something to report,” Cavin said, the only one brave enough to speak up. “And without a statement from us…. from you…. they, uh, well, they create their own news.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Cavin pulled at his collar. “Well….”
“Cavin,” Mom warned.
“Tell me!” I demanded.
Dad cleared his throat. “Cassie, come here.” He motioned me over to him and patted his knee. But if he thought I was going to sit on it like when I was a little kid, he was crazy. It was time for him—for all of them—to realize that I was growing up.
“What’s going on?” I asked again.
He sighed and folded his hands on the table. “It seems Mr. García-Ramírez has a certain amount of…. control over several of the media outlets. He is using them to discredit your story about how the video came to be.”
“They say you’re a liar,” Cavin put in. “An out-of-control American teenager.”
Mom shot him a look, but the words were out. To tell you the truth, I kind of liked the “American teenager” part. The rest of it was just mean and unfair
. Still, it was hardly anything my mom and dad hadn’t been dealing with for years. That’s just how the media is. Sometimes they loved you; sometimes they hated you. It was all part of the game. I shook my head. “That’s it? You didn’t think you could tell me that?”
“There is also the concern,” Mom said, choosing her words carefully, “about the danger of having exposed criminal activity.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“Meaning,” Dad said, “that we think it would be safer for you to go and stay with Gramma for a while.”
I already knew that’s what he was going to say; he had said it to Cavin not three minutes ago. But hearing it a second time was like another slap in the face. I mean, I did want more than anything to get out of the apartment, to get away—but not to leave. I especially didn’t want to go to the farm.
Plus the timing really sucked. Mateo was the first boy ever to show interest in me. Logan had barely returned. My life was just getting interesting, even if I was under house arrest.
“But they said I shouldn’t leave,” I reminded him.
“Circumstances have changed,” Mom said.
“But….”
“Cassidy,” Mom warned, “you do not want to make this more difficult than it already is.” Her voice had taken on a hard edge, so I knew I was getting pretty close to the tipping point, but I couldn’t just give up.
“What if I don’t want to run away? I don’t want to go.” I looked to Cavin. “The network still wants to reach kids my age, right? Couldn’t we use this media attention to….”
Mom and Dad exchanged another one of their patented looks, and I realized that my argument hadn’t helped me at all. I had just reinforced their fears.
“Cassidy, you don’t know the power that the press can have,” Mom said. “The last thing we want is to encourage publicity.”
“But—”
“We’ve already brought Hector into the fray,” Dad added. “And Mateo.”
My stomach sank at the mention of Mateo’s name. And Logan, I thought. I looked to Cavin and saw the defeat on his face. That’s when I knew their minds were made up. My fate was sealed. I could almost smell the farm.
“Please,” I begged. I was not above groveling. “Don’t make me go. I want to stay with the show. I want to stay with you.”
I don’t know if it was the hour, the shift in argument, or the desperation in my voice, but something changed on Mom’s face. She rubbed a hand over her eyes.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” she said. “It’s past midnight.” The fight had gone out of her; she just sounded tired.
“Nothing more to be done tonight, anyway,” Cavin said, glancing down at the cell phone he still held in his hand. “The network office closed an hour ago.”
Mom and Dad exchanged a look I’d seen before. Like they were waiting for the other one to speak up. It meant neither one of them wanted to be the bad guy. It meant there was still some hope for me.
Travel tip: It is acceptable and common
to be late for social engagements in Spain.
I sat on the kitchen counter the next morning and picked at an orange, watching my mom and dad get ready to leave.
“We’re going to the consulate,” Mom said as she wrestled behind her back for her zipper. “Daniel’s going to come up and sit with you until Victoria is back from Barcelona.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
She kept tugging on the zipper. “Don’t start, Cassidy.”
I jumped down from the counter. “Come here. Let me help you with that.”
She turned her back to me, and I zipped up the dress.
“You’re talking to them just in case, right?” I asked.
“Hmmm?”
“The people at the consulate. You’re talking to them just to clear things up. Not to make plans to send me away or anything, right?”
She turned and looked at me evenly. “Cassie, if we have to send you to Ohio to keep you safe, we will.”
“But you said—”
“I said we would talk.” She hooked an earring through her ear and fastened the back. “And we will.”
Dad came into the kitchen, still buttoning his cuffs. “You about ready?”
She put in her other earring. “As soon as Daniel gets here.”
I turned to him to appeal my case. “Dad, I don’t want to leave.”
He avoided a direct answer by kissing me on the forehead. “We’ll be back soon.”
Someone knocked at the door and he turned toward the sound. “Later, Cassie-bug.”
“Don’t call me that,” I mumbled as he walked away.
It wasn’t Daniel at the door but Cavin and Señor Ruiz-Moreno, with Logan and Mateo behind them. Mateo had a soccer ball tucked under his arm, which meant he and Logan were probably planning on ditching me at some point to go play futbol. Still, I’d never been so relieved to see someone in my life. An entire day of nothing but Daniel would have made me insane.
Señor Ruiz-Moreno pulled Mateo aside. “You boys check in with Daniel if you want to leave, understood?”
“Sí, comprendo,” Mateo said. “I understand.”
“Are you ready?” Cavin asked. “We’ll want to get there by the time the consulate opens at ten, or we’ll get stuck in the long lines.”
“We’re waiting for Daniel to get here,” Dad said. “I just called his cell. He’s not picking up.”
“We should be going.” Cavin checked his watch. “Could we call Victoria to stand in?”
“She’s not back from Barcelona yet,” Mom said.
“Bayani, then. We need to go.”
Dad pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial.
Can I just say how humiliating it is to be standing there with your crush and your best guy friend while your parents scramble to find you a babysitter? I studied the tiles on the floor as Dad made the arrangements.
Five minutes later, Bayani showed up at the door, scrubbing a hand over the stubble on his face. “Sorry for the wait,” he said, “Daniel and I were up all night going through the footage and then he got sick. Puking all over the place. So I had to finish up on my own. If we’re going to pack it in early, we needed to make sure we had enough to—”
“It’s fine,” Dad said, cutting him off. “No problem. We can talk about it when we get back.”
Bayani looked at him strangely. “Okay….”
The consulate entourage hurried out the door. Bayani took off his Yankees cap and scratched his scalp. “So,” he said, “what are we doing for fun this morning?” He yawned and flopped onto the couch.
“What did you mean, pack it in?” I asked.
He looked at me blankly for a moment and then coughed. “Well, I probably misspoke.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I need more sleep before I open my big mouth.”
“Yans….” Logan said.
Bayani leaned back against the couch cushions. He settled his cap back onto his head and pulled the bill down low. “Don’t you guys have a nice card game or something you can play?”
“I have some in my room,” I said. “Come on, guys.”
Mateo looked confused, so Logan took him by the arm and pushed him toward my room. We filed inside, and I shut the door.
Just like before, Logan bounced onto the bed and sprawled out on his back, and Mateo sat backward on my desk chair.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I sank down on the end of the bed and knocked Logan’s feet out of the way. “It’s too depressing.”
“What is?”
“My mom and dad. They said we could talk about it, but I can tell that their minds are made up.”
Mateo gave Logan a confused look. “Just go with it,” Logan said. “Eventually, she’ll start making sense.”
I swatted at him, but he rolled out of the way. “You heard what Bayani said. We’re taking off early.”
“So that’s what’s up,” Logan said. “I wondered. Da
was up talking to the network this morning.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Mateo asked.
I shook my head tragically. “You should see my mom when she’s made up her mind.”
“She’s right,” Logan said.
I pushed off the bed and paced to the small bedroom window. Everything I did—all that trying to be useful—hadn’t been worth a thing. They’d meant for me to go to Gramma’s all along. This media thing was just another excuse. And now we were leaving early! “This is so not fair,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what they say. What they promise. They’ll do what they want anyway.”
“When will you go?” Mateo asked.
“I didn’t hear what Da was saying on the phone,” Logan said, “but it’s got to be soon if Yans is trying to edit an episode with the footage he has already.”
“I never even got to see the beach,” I lamented. “Not once.”
We fell quiet for a moment, lost in our own somber thoughts. Then Mateo turned to me.
“We should go.”
“Where?” I said.
“To the beach. You can’t leave Valencia without visiting the ocean.”
“But my mom and dad said—”
“No. It’s perfect.” Logan sat up, suddenly animated. “They’ll be at the consulate for hours. We could get to the beach and back before they even knew you were gone.”
Warning bells went off in my head. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I also knew it could be my last chance to hang out with Mateo and Logan.
“Bayani’s here,” I argued weakly.
Mateo peeked out the door. “Bayani is sleeping.”
“He might wake up,” I countered.
“We could leave a note.”
Logan agreed. “We already told him we were going out to play some footie, so we’ll just tell him you came along.”
“Which would be the truth!” I was beginning to like their reasoning. “We don’t need to say we’re going to play at the beach.”
“Exactly.”
I really wanted to see the beach. But still, I hesitated. Mom and Dad were convinced I wasn’t safe. I personally thought they were being paranoid, but that wouldn’t make them go easy on me if we got caught. “How would we get there?”