“We board in fifteen minutes,” Mrs. Knox said. “If you miss the flight, prepare to live at your grandparents’ for a month. I won’t rebook you.”
“Fine,” Veronica said.
We hurried toward an overlit magazine store. Glossy covers, T-shirts, and bags of corn chips draped two of the walls.
“When I went to Rome I didn’t bring enough snacks. It sucked.”
“Are you going to fight with your mom like that the whole time?”
“Not you too. Everybody needs to get off my back. Hey, did you bring aspirin? Altitude changes can cause severe headaches.”
There was no way I could tame Veronica. I just had to hope that she mellowed. “Didn’t you pack a ton of ibuprofen? Can I borrow some of that?” I asked.
“Sure.” Veronica reached to the back of the cooler so she could get the three coldest water bottles. She handed them all to me.
I watched her buy a shot glass and an Ohio-shaped oven mitt along with our snacks. “We need to hurry,” I said.
Veronica handed me the bag of stuff and then took off in the wrong direction.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I want to buy one more thing.”
“Why didn’t you buy it here?”
“Because the stud at the pretzel counter is way hotter than the dude at the magazine store.”
“Well, I’m going back. I’m not going to miss the flight!” I turned to leave.
“Thrill deflator.”
I turned around. “Okay, I’ll wait. But be fast.” I backed up to a wall and watched passengers flood by. There were so many. Businesswomen with briefcases, men in cowboy hats, six-year-olds with security blankets, girls in tank tops, dogs in portable kennels. And some of the dogs were wearing jackets.
“Got it,” Veronica said.
“That was fast.”
“He didn’t do much for me. He had a weird tongue.”
“He showed you his tongue?”
“If you look hard enough into people’s mouths, you always see their tongues. Anyway, his looked spotted. He probably had a disease.”
When we arrived at the gate, Mrs. Knox had already packed her things and was waiting in line to board.
“This is your first flight, isn’t it?” she asked me.
“God, Mom. Don’t make Dessy feel like a cave woman!”
“I’m trying to honor her moment,” Mrs. Knox said.
I appreciated that.
“Do you want the window?” Veronica asked as we filed down the carpet-walled chute toward the plane. “Technically, it’s my seat, but if you want to watch the engine and see if it sucks up any geese, you’re totally welcome to do that.”
“That’s all right,” I said.
“Whatever floats your rope.”
“Boat,” I corrected.
Takeoff wasn’t bad at all. I felt incredibly alive as the plane left the runway. I was amazed by how tidy and orderly the world looked from several thousand feet in the air. For the first half hour, Veronica let me crane over her and stare down at the miniature scenery. But then she got bored and our flight became tense.
“How many days of workshop are we allowed to miss?” she asked, leaning over me to look at her mother.
Mrs. Knox didn’t answer.
“If I suddenly become feverish, I’m allowed to take a week off, right? And if that happens, Dessy, my roommate and presumed caregiver, is allowed to take a week off too, right?”
Mrs. Knox clenched her jaw and kept reading the workshop story.
“And if my condition worsens, and I become freakishly feverish and phlegm-ridden, and I need to take a few more days off, that would be acceptable too, right?” Veronica asked.
“Veronica, you know where I stand on this. You attend everything. You got into the program without special consideration and you will participate in the program without special consideration. Unless you’d like to reimburse me for your airfare, that is the end of this discussion.”
I looked at Veronica. She had taken out an enormous set of earphones. “Fine,” she said.
“What are those?” I asked.
“They cancel out noise. My dad got them for me for my return trip from Rome.”
She slid them on and continued to talk to me really loudly.
“I think I’m ready for our corn nuts!” she said.
Mrs. Knox reached over and snatched the headphones off her daughter. “Veronica, please do not embarrass me on this plane.” She put the earphones on her own head.
Veronica didn’t object. She pulled out her backpack from underneath the seat and tore open a bag of corn nuts. She popped them into her mouth one at a time.
“You can’t eat these in front of guys,” she told me.
“Why?” I asked.
“They’re too crunchy.” Veronica tossed another one into her mouth. “Guys like watching women’s mouths when they eat. So mealtimes and snacks are crucial times to flirt.”
I had never thought of that.
“You want to eat slowly. And avoid noisy vittles. You also want to put the food in your mouth one piece at a time. It’s seductive and prolongs the meal.”
“If you say so.”
“Furthermore, ice cream is a top-choice, guy-getting food,” Veronica said.
“Because it involves the tongue?” I asked.
“Exactly. Eat it slow. And don’t let your tongue go wild. No need to behave like a dairy-addicted strumpet. Also, if it feels natural, make a couple of mmm-mmm sounds. Guys dig hearing mmm-mmm sounds. It’s very affirming.”
This felt like ridiculous advice. And I had never heard her use the word “strumpet” before. “Shouldn’t we be eating healthy foods? Like, what if I’m eating celery?”
“You shouldn’t eat that in front of a dude. If you really want to capture a guy’s interest, eat a banana.”
“You’re insane,” I said.
I reached under the seat in front of me and grabbed the first two workshop stories. They’d been e-mailed to us earlier in the week, but I hadn’t finished reading them. I also pulled out my own story, which was still in progress.
“What are you doing?” Veronica asked.
“Working on my story,” I said. “Veronica, have you still not started working on yours?”
Mrs. Knox had already e-mailed the class our workshop schedule. Our stories were due one session prior to our class critique. Veronica and I were two of the last to go, which gave us an extra week to compose and polish. But I didn’t want her to procrastinate too much, then turn in something embarrassing.
Veronica didn’t answer me.
“Do you want to hear about mine?” I volunteered. “It’s about a girl and a guy who want to go to Guatemala together, but the girl is afraid of airplanes, and the guy is afraid of cars. So they’re paralyzed. It’s sort of like a metaphor for their love.”
Veronica groaned.
“Don’t make unflattering noises when I talk about my story,” I said. “It makes me feel vulnerable.”
“I make you feel vulnerable? Imagine how you’re going to feel in the workshop. Everybody in there will be in college. They won’t respect anything you write. They’ll trash you.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Yes, we would be the only high school students in the class, but our acceptance letters had stated that we’d been selected based on our “strongly crafted image-based prose” and that our writing showed “exceptional promise” and the director was “honored to be accepting such fresh talent into the program.” He’d even closed the letter by stating that discovering and encouraging students like us is what kept their program “vibrant, successful, and diverse.” I wanted to focus on those claims rather than on what Veronica was saying.
“You’re way too hung up on this. I mean, have you read the first two stories yet? They’re trying way too hard to impress my mom. They’re suck-ups. Seriously. I already know what I’m going to say. First story: I liked the goat, but I had serious reservations about t
he other farm animals. Second story: Your protagonist didn’t feel like she was living in Maine. Can you add more landmarks and additional lobsters? We’ll dish out a few comments and the rest of the time is ours. It’s no big deal.”
“Whatever,” I said. I didn’t like Veronica’s attitude. I knew she was disappointed that we hadn’t gotten into the nonfiction section. But she needed to get over it. We were still going to Prague. For a college-level program. And I, for one, was determined to make the most of it.
“Okay, okay,” Veronica said, sensing my annoyance. “I plan on writing about a fox who gets his leg caught in a trap and a second fox comes along and they end up doing it. You know, a nature piece. As far as I’m concerned, they can take it or leave it.”
“That actually sounds good,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll say it’s slight and expository and derivative, and compare it to Kafka just to show off how much they love Kafka. Then Hemingway. Then Salinger. Then Steinbeck. Then Camus. Writers love to demonstrate that they’ve read more books than you have. They shoot off literary references as an ego defense. My mom does it too.”
I glanced back at the sleeping Mrs. Knox. I’d been dutifully working on my Guatemala story every night. Adding concrete details. Rearranging clauses.
“I might turn out to be a writer,” I said.
“I doubt it. You’re not selfish enough. Trust me. I’m being raised by one.” Veronica picked up her magazine. “In life, you’re given three choices: making something, making fun of something, or making out. I choose the last two.”
I barely recognized Veronica as she spoke. She’d never been this insensitive and horny before.
“Maybe I should have told you sooner, but the whole point of this trip is to meet guys. I’ve got a plan. Trust me, Dessy, Prague will never be the same.”
I had no response to this. Outside our oval window I watched as the plane’s wing cut into a bank of puffy clouds. “How much longer to Prague?” I asked. We had a layover in London, and I couldn’t remember the time difference.
“Don’t think about it,” Veronica said. “We won’t be in Prague for, like, a billion hours.”
Chapter Five
A trillion hours later, we landed. We’d had a long delay at Heathrow, which gummed up the works for our connecting flight, and now it was nighttime. I wasn’t sure of the date anymore. After our layover, and countless bags of mini pretzels washed down with Sprite, time felt muddy. The interior design of the Ruzyneˇ International Airport was sleek and European and bright. Every- thing was glass or metal and curved. In the duty-free area, most of the signs were written in English, but the “price attack” discounts were written in a currency with which I was unfamiliar. And who buys Giorgio Armani at an airport? In a near comatose state, Mrs. Knox and I staggered through Terminal One toward the luggage carousel.
“It smells funny here, don’t you think? And I feel totally different. I think my aura has changed. Do I still look pink? Can you see any blue?” Veronica hopped back and forth, from one foot to the other, in front of the conveyer belt. International travel had a unique effect on her; she acted like somebody who’d just eaten her own weight in Skittles.
Mrs. Knox sat down on the carousel’s metal ledge and rubbed her eyes. “It’s very important to force yourself to go to sleep as soon as we get to the dorms. Otherwise, jet lag will hit you like a Mack truck.” She clapped her hands together—hard. “Blammo!” she yelled.
Mrs. Knox looked tired, but beautiful, even without makeup. She had exceptional bones. I’d felt terrible when Mr. Knox left Mrs. Knox and fled to Rome.
I spotted my suitcase tumbling out of the chute. Veronica’s followed. They were easy to tell apart because she’d decorated hers with an Australian flag.
“Americans are targets for pickpockets and scam artists,” she’d told me the night before our flight, as she’d secured a small, cloth replica of the flag to her bag. I’d felt like telling her that unless she schlepped her suitcase with her through the city at all times, people wouldn’t think she was Australian. But I let it pass.
Veronica, Mrs. Knox, and I dragged our suitcases across the glossy airport floor. An announcement in another language blared through the loudspeaker. It sounded vaguely like a warning, but the place was practically empty and nobody seemed alarmed. Flickering fluorescent lights overhead made me sneeze and sneeze.
“I know what this place smells like,” Veronica said. “Ham!”
“Keep moving,” Mrs. Knox said.
Veronica pressed her finger to her nose to imitate a snout and glanced back at me, snorting. Her nostrils looked dark and cavernous.
“Cut the porcine references,” Mrs. Knox said. “This country has endured enough already.”
Veronica rolled her eyes and ceased snorting.
I watched Mrs. Knox hustle over to an ATM. All around me, people chattered in different languages. My knowledge of languages wasn’t at all refined, but I could pick out the cadence of Spanish somewhere behind me. And thanks to my two years of high school French, I was able to translate a four-year-old boy’s remark that his endives had been acrid. I peeled my ears for Czech. I’d only memorized a few words for the trip. Dobr´y den, which means Hello. Pomoc! which means Help. And Kde je vécé? which translates to Where is the toilet? At the moment, nobody seemed to be uttering those phrases.
Mrs. Knox returned and led us toward the giant automatic doors. They parted, and we stepped into the damp Prague evening.
The terminal was bright but quiet. A handful of people were boarding a bus dozens of yards away, but we appeared to be the only travelers in line for a cab.
“This place is dead,” Veronica said. “Where are the taxis?”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Mrs. Knox said. “Give it a minute.”
Beyond our bubble of light, the Prague landscape was cloaked in darkness. A soft mist floated through the air at my knees. Without thinking, I reached down and trailed my hand through it.
“Did you drop something in the land-fog?” Veronica asked.
“No,” I said. I watched the mist part like a curtain around me. A Czech candy bar wrapper fluttered by. Before I could try to read it, a white cab pulled up and crushed it beneath its front tire. An unsmiling blond man got out of the cab and brusquely hefted Veronica’s suitcase into the trunk. Then Mrs. Knox’s, then mine.
“Thakurova Forty-one Praha Six. Masarykova Kolej,” Mrs. Knox told the driver.
We climbed inside and sped through puddles down a dark, broad street. We passed under streetlamps every few seconds, and I caught glimpses of houses, apartments, and trees. The scenery grew increasingly urban. We passed under what appeared to be a metro platform. My stomach flipped. I was dying to take the metro. I wanted to speed through this foreign city upright, like people did in movies, holding on to a pole.
We didn’t pass a single McDonald’s. Or Taco Bell. Or billboard. The urban scenery gave way to a stretch of grassy fields. The air rushing through my window felt heavy, like you could wear it. Ohio was chemical and fishy. But this place was sweet and metallic. It made me thirsty.
The driver pulled onto a major roadway, and suddenly, through the fog, I could see a dense cluster of lights dotting the horizon. In the mix of black-and-gray darkness I searched for Prague’s famous skyline, its countless dramatic spires and steeples rising up in the distance.
“Look!” I said, nudging Veronica. We were in Prague!
“I will never remember any of these street signs,” Veronica complained. “Italian is way easier.”
I pulled my Czech dictionary out of my bag. “We’re good. This has all the phrases we’ll need.”
“But look at that street sign!” Veronica said. “U dejvichého rybnicˇku. Do you see all those letters and accent marks?” She leaned into me and whispered, “We’ll never be able to get far on our own. We’re screwed.”
It was 2:07 a.m. when we got to the dorm. The building loomed in front of us like an enormous
and boring block of cement with windows.
“This place is so square,” Veronica said.
“It’s supposed to be,” Mrs. Knox said. “It was built by communists.”
“Ugh,” Veronica said. “The whole thing is pigeon-turd gray.”
I wished the whole thing had been pigeon-turd gray. Inside, we encountered the dorm’s two dominant colors. Dull white. And bright yellow.
“Whoever designed this place must worship the egg,” Veronica said.
“Let’s try to say as little as we can until we get a good night’s rest,” Mrs. Knox said.
A tired young woman with dark hair eyed us from the front desk. When Mrs. Knox introduced herself, the girl silently slid a fat envelope over the counter. Mrs. Knox tore it open and dumped out the contents.
“We’re staying in separate wings,” she said.
Veronica poked me and smiled.
“Let’s get you to your rooms first,” Mrs. Knox said.
But before she could guide us anywhere, a group of people burst through the front door. They were guys. Two brown-haired and one blond. I suspected they were drunk. They stumbled more than walked.
The first brown-haired guy doubled over in laughter. “Peat bog!” he said.
“Peat bog, man!” said the second brown-haired guy. His hair was considerably longer and better maintained than the first brown-haired guy’s. It appeared extremely touchable.
They stood near the doorway and didn’t make any movement toward the inside of the building. I thought maybe they were too inebriated to take more than five steps in a row.
“I’m wasted,” groaned the third guy, the blond.
Mrs. Knox glowered at the threesome until they noticed her and lowered their voices.
“Sorry,” said the second guy. “Hey, are you checking in? Do you need help with your bags?”
Veronica’s smile was wide and freakish. “They’re hot,” she whispered. “It’s time to launch the plan.”
I shot her a nervous look. Because I didn’t know the plan yet.
A Field Guide for Heartbreakers Page 4