Queens of All the Earth

by Hannah Sternberg

  Olivia was surprised by how exhausted she was when she finally laid herself down on her bed. She dropped off quickly into a flat, blank sleep so heavy that when she awoke again, she wasn’t sure she’d slept at all. At first, she was overwhelmed with the sensation that she was in her bed at home, that it was spring, and that the dogwoods were tapping her window with brightness, and everything was turned around. But the feeling just came from the smell of the old sweatshirt she had rested her head upon.

  As she read one of her guidebooks, Miranda sat tensely in the common room, telling herself she wasn’t waiting for Greg to return. Miranda wondered again what the private room had really cost. She kept expecting the Browns to exact some kind of tribute for their supposed good deed. But underneath that, she was afraid they really were as nice as they seemed.

  Olivia dozed serenely in that private room, behind the closed door, the translucent curtains pulled, and Miranda waited, thinking she was waiting for her sister to wake up. She waited so intently that Marc gave up on trying to gain her attention and wandered off to speak Spanglish with Hugo in the kitchen, the tall, lean adult and the short, compact young man mumbling awkwardly out of Miranda’s earshot, but just close enough to irritate her as she pretended to focus on the open page.

  At last, in the November crispness that follows a warm day, Greg gusted in, coat pulled lazily over his damp shirt, his hair matted with sun and water. His stride was loose and relaxed, and though he didn’t quite smile, he tunelessly hummed some song he must have heard in his head. These things made Miranda furious, especially because they were new on Greg, and she knew immediately they were because he had kissed her sister.

  As Greg left the room, she instead glared at Hugo and Marc in the kitchen, but they were talking and didn’t notice her, so she got up and followed Greg into the dormitory room. It was empty except for the two of them, and there he was, toweling his hair vigorously at the end of the room near the window where Miranda and her sister were supposed to be, a new shirt hanging off his shoulders. He turned, and his grin faded in the face of Miranda’s taut frown.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said.

  Greg came toward her into the darkness of the room and stood dimly, leaning against the bunk nearest where she stood, her hand still on the knob of the door. She took a step backwards.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to do with my sister,” she said, “but it has to stop.”

  Greg opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

  “She’s in a very fragile place right now, and I won’t have you making it worse,” Miranda said.

  “I don’t understand,” Greg murmured.

  “Just—don’t—just leave her alone, okay?” Miranda said, losing her train of thought. Anyway, she owed him no explanations about Olivia.

  Greg continued to look clueless.

  “Did I do something wrong?” he asked, earnestly.

  Miranda couldn’t squeeze a word out of her throat for a dumbfounded second.

  “Yes!” she exploded at last. “Of course! You—you took advantage of her!”

  Greg’s face faded into the dusky twilight of the room. He stepped backwards into the darkness, silhouetted against the blue glow of the curtains, and Miranda couldn’t see his mouth as he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  His tone was terrifying in its softness. It wasn’t as Miranda had imagined. She’d done what she believed was best to protect her little sister, and instead she had hurt this stupid boy who somehow insisted on seeming nice. Miranda felt propelled from the room.

  On her way back down the hall, she crashed into Marc.

  “What’s going on?” he said, laughing. “Were you and Greg having some private time?”

  Miranda was incapable of responding.

  “Hold it,” he said, whirling around just as they passed each other and catching up to her again. “I wanted to talk to you. Hugo gave me an idea for something we could do tomorrow.”

  Her arm clasped, Miranda was steered onto a couch.

  “I wanted to do something with Olivia tomorrow,” she said. “You know. Family time.”

  “I meant her, too, of course,” Marc said.

  “No, I meant—”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll give you space. You’ll have plenty of time together out there.”

  “You really don’t have to—”

  “Miranda, we’ll be out in nature, with all kinds of peace and quiet,” said Marc.

  “Nature?” said Miranda.

  “Well, technically. It’s just a walk up the mountain,” Marc said, slowing once he had her attention. He began to describe it to her: It was the big hill west of the city, with the old castle up on the edge over the sea. The district was called Montjuic. They’d have plenty to do—museums, a botanical garden and, at the top, the castle with antique artillery. They could bring a picnic and make it a day.

  “It would be nice to get out of the hostel for a whole day,” Miranda said.

  “Yes, and above the city. I find all the walls can become constricting, packed together in this Gothic Quarter. Especially the pollution,” Marc said. “We’ll bring a few blankets, too, so we can sit down and look at the view.”

  “We can even get dinner somewhere up there,” Miranda said with growing enthusiasm. “We don’t have to come back until late.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Marc said. “Though I was afraid Olivia wouldn’t be able to stay out a whole day without her afternoon nap and period of reflection.”

  Miranda was taken aback for a moment.

  “It’s a vacation,” she finally said. “We should stay busy and see everything we can. I think maybe Olivia should spend less time in the—the pollution. She isn’t used to it. There’s very clean air where we’re from.”

  “Is she not feeling well?” Marc asked.

  “Oh, she’s fine. She’s just taking a nap now,” said Miranda. “She got kind of damp by the sea. Tomorrow I’ll make sure she bundles up.”

  “You take good care of her,” Marc said.

  “I like to think so.”

  They sat for a minute with nothing to say.

  “Great. I’ll see if I can get someone else to come,” Marc said, getting up. Smiling quietly, he left Miranda in the common room and puttered again down the hall to the dorm to collect his notebook.

  In the dorm room, he was not aware that Greg was awake, but he saw his shape on the top bunk, soaked in the gloom from the window. For a brief, crystal-clear moment, Marc was unsettled by an impression—that the rise and fall of Greg’s chest was mimicked by all the objects in the room. The curtains were breathing, the lamps nodding, and the coverlet under Greg’s body was drooping.

  He took his book and returned to the bright solidity of the common room, which Miranda had vacated by then, and made himself a cup of coffee with Hugo’s help.

  Olivia, meanwhile, was climbing the dogwood tree, its flowers becoming part of her flower, the scent drifting around her, until she was pulled down by her sister’s hands on her shoulders.

  Miranda stood above her, blocking the weak light of street lamps and neighbors’ balconies oozing from the window.

  “Come on, sleepyhead. Let’s get some dinner.”

  Olivia sat up slowly.

  “Let me brush your hair first,” Miranda said. “It got all thatchy while you slept on it.”

  Olivia scooted to the edge of the bed and leaned her head forward so her sister could tidy her hair, as if it weren’t a part of her but a nuisance to be objectively eliminated. Miranda slipped behind her on the bed and took the thick tangles in her hands, folded them into a neat roll, and secured it on the back of Olivia’s head with a vast multitude of bobby pins.

  “You look very sophisticated with your hair up like that,” Miranda said. “You look almost twenty.”

  “I am almost twenty,” Olivia said.

  Miranda just hugged her awkwardly from behind and climbed down again to sort out her purse.

  “Come on,
I’ll treat you,” Miranda said.

  They walked to a restaurant on La Rambla located between several noisy sports bars. They read their menus and ordered. Silence spoke from Olivia’s hooded eyes and sealed mouth.

  The glass-shaded lamps of the restaurant glowed green, and the square white plates contrasted with the smallness of the pieces of bread rubbed with tomato. The hum of other diners only emphasized their own silence. Miranda could barely swallow, but Olivia discovered an appetite, and as she ate, her mouth working over the textures and flavors of a wide variety of small items, her voice dislodged itself from its hiding place.

  “What are we going to do tomorrow?” Olivia asked with plastic curiosity. “I want to do some real exploring.”

  Miranda chewed and swallowed and stared.

  “Marc wants to hike up Montjuic,” she said. “Well, it’s not an actual hike. It’s really just a sidewalk with some trees. But there’s a garden museum. Or a castle. Or something.”

  “Sounds like fun. I’ll read about it tonight,” Olivia said. “Do you think there’s a place still open tonight where we can get a few more books? I want to make sure I really enjoy it this time. Not that I haven’t been having fun.”

  Miranda was happy that Olivia sounded a bit more alive, but there was an edge to her sudden interest that scared her a little bit. So she didn’t respond. Forks clicked. Plates were set. Glasses filled. The scent of roasted peppers, toasted bread, olive oil, and shellfish rose.

  “Where do you think Lenny is?” Olivia asked.

  “I don’t know,” Miranda said. “Sometimes, I don’t want to know.”

  “You know, I don’t think I’d really like her if I met her back home,” Olivia said as she cracked open a crayfish. “But she is kind of entertaining.”

  “Yeah. She can tell a good story,” Miranda said, searching her mind for a single example as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

  “You think so?” Olivia said. “I mean, travel stories are weird. All the feeling gets lost in the details. I wonder if she’s any good.”

  “At what?”

  “As a writer,” said Olivia. “I mean, she’s got to be, if she works for Lonely Planisphere. But I’ve never actually read it.”

  “Don’t be a gossip,” Miranda said.

  A group seated nearby erupted in laughter at some private joke.

  Olivia leaned forward with a new light in her eyes.

  “You’ll make sure everything’s okay tomorrow, right?” she said.

  “Of course,” Miranda said, unsure what she meant. She reached for her sister’s hand to squeeze it, but Olivia had hid it under the table, tangling it in the napkin on her lap.

  “I’m bothering you,” Olivia said.

  “No! Not at all! What gave you that idea?” Miranda said.

  “You went to all this trouble to convince Mom to let us go on this trip, and now I’m ruining it,” Olivia said.

  “Quit it,” Miranda said. “I’m only here to make you feel better.”

  Olivia digested the idea slowly. They finished their dinner, paid the check, and slumped back to the hostel, where Lenny was nowhere to be seen. Hugo said he knew nothing of her whereabouts.

  “I’m starting to get worried,” Miranda said.

  “I thought you said she’s been here before,” Olivia said. “She can take care of herself.”

  “Maybe Hugo didn’t understand the question,” Miranda said, choosing to forget that Hugo was only ignorant of English when Miranda spoke it.

  Miranda was relieved no one had been around to see them slink back in so miserably, but the relief was short-lived. She heard the outer door open and close while she and Olivia were in the bathroom, brushing their teeth too thoroughly.

  Peeking out with her toothbrush handle still sticking out from her cheek, Miranda saw down the hall that Mr. Brown and the Polish couple were finally back from another dinner together. Greg had emerged from the dorm room as well, and they were all in the common room, speaking with Hugo with irritating cheerfulness.

  Olivia noticed her sister acting strangely and asked what was wrong. Miranda gestured to the sight down the hall, then drew Olivia back quickly and shut the door again. There was a little thrill in acting secretively that Miranda couldn’t resist.

  “If we go quickly, they might not even notice us,” Miranda whispered.

  “They aren’t even looking in our direction,” Olivia said, though she couldn’t help whispering in return.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Miranda said, and they ran out. It was only a few steps from the bathroom to their bedroom, but Olivia couldn’t stop herself from staring down the hall at the crowd they were trying to avoid. That instant, Greg looked in their direction and their eyes met briefly before she was pulled into the bedroom and Miranda shut the door.

  “That was close!” Miranda exclaimed, then laughed shrilly. Olivia didn’t see what was funny.

  “Are you going to read, or can I turn out the light?” Olivia asked, climbing under her blanket.

  Miranda’s nervous excitement was doused by Olivia’s tone. Her face fell, and she couldn’t respond.

  “I’m going to turn out the light, then,” Olivia said, irritation in her voice, and she pulled the string, leaving Miranda to shuffle to her bed in darkness. Once Miranda was secure in her bed, the blankets pulled up around her neck, she realized she absolutely could not sleep, but had a vague suspicion she’d rather cry instead. It was the first night since arriving that she had gone to bed not worrying about Olivia’s mental state. Olivia explained part of her anxiety, but Miranda realized a larger part of it had to do with herself.

  Miranda never remembered her dreams. When she woke up at four in the morning with a dry mouth, she had the dim impression of dogwood trees in blurs of color and sound, which vanished quickly in the pressing darkness, shaken out by a crash she hadn’t heard consciously but was loud enough to wake her. She tried to sleep again but couldn’t, and instead lay in bed with her eyes closed, waiting for her travel alarm clock to wake Olivia.

  7

  SO TIMID AIR IS FIRM

  Lenny had slipped in around four that morning. During an otherwise graceful dance to her bed, she had crashed into the doorframe of her room. Lenny herself was the reason she always told travelers to bring earplugs and eyeshades to a hostel.

  Later that morning, too early according to her pounding skull (but not soon enough according to her churning stomach), Lenny sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands.

  “Oh God, kill me now,” she said with a moan. She groped for a partially filled water bottle she’d brought in with her and took a grimacing sip of its chartreuse contents.

  “Everything okay?” Miranda croaked as she wandered into the common room.

  “Mugh,” Lenny said.

  “Do you need anything?” Miranda asked, putting on a pot of coffee.

  “A multivitamin,” Lenny said.

  Miranda stopped, holding the water-filled carafe in the air.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Best hangover remedy I know,” Lenny said. “To replenish the body and wash out the bad stuff.”

  Miranda wanted to say something like, “Why do you have to show off how smart you are even when you do something stupid?” but it came out as, “Sorry, I don’t have any.”

  Miranda did make a point to travel with a broad selection of headache and stomach medicines, but she wasn’t sure how many of anything Lenny had already taken, and she also wasn’t sure whether she wanted to know. She did the best she figured she could, returning to Lenny’s table with a tall glass of water and a piece of toast.

  Lenny seemed compelled by Miranda’s slightly disapproving lack of questions to explain what she had been doing the night before.

  “Research,” Lenny moaned, bypassing the water Miranda had set down for her sickly water bottle. “This is all in the name of research,” she said, waving her free arm as if the empty common room were a part of her hangover.

&nb
sp; “What is that?” Miranda asked, looking at the bottle.

  “The second-best remedy for hangovers,” Lenny said. “Leftovers.”

  Miranda huffed.

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” she said. “What exactly were you drinking?”

  “I was checking out an absinthe bar,” Lenny said, reviving a little and nibbling on the corner of the toast. “It’s a big trend. Legally, they can’t serve the old-fashioned kind with wormwood in it, so it isn’t hallucinatory. But the kids love to pretend.” She chuckled a little, then turned slightly green and stopped.

  “That bottle is full of... absinthe?” Miranda asked slowly.

  Lenny nodded.

  “Wouldn’t it, um, melt the plastic?” Miranda said. “You could get plastic poisoning. Or something.”

  That’s when Marc breezed in, humming, already dressed for the day’s expedition.

  “Olivia looks very pretty in the window,” he said. “Like a painting.”

  Olivia had quietly slipped by while Miranda had been busy in the kitchen. As Marc had said, she sat in the window at the back of the room, next to fading lilies set against a piercing morning sunlight, reading A Wrinkle in Time. Her concentration was intense.

  A gray cloud fell over Miranda. Without anything being overtly wrong that morning, nothing felt quite right, either. Everyone at breakfast seemed absorbed in themselves. Lenny was nauseated; Marc, whistling to himself, wandered in and out of the room gathering his things for the day; and Olivia had slipped in without even saying “good morning.”

  Miranda sighed and left the room to sit by herself on her bed and reorganize her purse yet again.

  The sunlight in the morning had a different quality than during any other part of the day. It was bright but cool and penetrating, and best suited to reveal imperfections. But its direct glare strongly illuminated only one side of Olivia’s face. The other side was sheltered in darkness.

  Marc hadn’t overheard the argument in the bathroom yesterday, but because of their perfect coolness, he could tell there was something amiss between the sisters. He was troubled by it. If they were absorbed in their own little spat, Marc would become an awkward third wheel in their sibling drama.