Even when I was in third grade, I can remember telling Miss Nolan at the beginning of the year, “If I ever had a little sister, my mom would name her Avery.” That was before Miss Nolan knew anything about my family, when Miss Nolan was so new to Crawfordsville she sometimes got lost driving to school. And then even Miss Nolan found out about my family; even she started giving me those overly sympathetic looks all the other adults in Crawfordsville always gave me. Even she knew I would never have a little sister or brother.
But I guess I used to think of Avery as the closest thing to a little sister I’d ever have. I kind of thought, there for a while, I was like the closest thing to a big sister Avery would ever have.
I guess I wasn’t ever anything to Avery.
Most of the time now she just looks right through me.
There was one moment back at the Holocaust Museum when she really looked at me, when she acted like she wanted to know what I thought, and it didn’t have anything to do with arguing with her dad. It was when she asked me about the woman in the wheelchair who posed for a picture beside the one Holocaust Museum display.
That woman in the wheelchair was beautiful. No, not just beautiful—strong. Dignified. Amazing. Confident.
Defiant.
Like if Hitler was standing right in front of her, she would punch him in the nose. Even if it was Hitler and thousands of his Nazi soldiers. She wouldn’t care.
I wish I had a picture of that woman to put up in my locker at school. It would help me get through any day.
I wish I had a picture of that woman to help me get through the next eight weeks.
I guess I do have one in my head.
Avery kind of looked like she was listening to me when we talked about the woman in the wheelchair. But then later, we got to this display where they had pictures of everyone who had been killed from one little village in . . . I don’t know . . . Lithuania? Latvia? Poland? I’d never heard of any of those countries before, except Poland. Still, the people in the pictures seemed like people I might know. Those pictures circled the walls all the way up this column over our heads, like a smokestack. (I guess it looked like a smokestack on purpose. They had smokestacks at the concentration camps.) But the pictures were of people doing happy things: getting married, smelling flowers . . . They looked so alive. But the Nazis killed them all.
“It’s like if all of Crawfordsville just vanished,” I whispered to Avery, because it felt like my heart would burst if I didn’t say something.
She didn’t even bother answering me.
“You two can take turns sitting by the window,” Mr. Armisted says behind me, and I kind of jump, because I’m thinking so much about Avery and the Holocaust Museum I’ve almost forgotten he’s there. “Who wants the last view of the United States for the next eight weeks, and who wants the first view of Spain?”
“I don’t care,” Avery says in a stiff, unnatural voice.
We’re awkward when we reach our row of seats. I take a step backward. Avery steps too far ahead. Mr. Armisted makes an annoyed noise deep in his throat.
“Kayla, you’re closer,” Mr. Armisted says. “Why don’t you go in first?”
We sit down. Avery and I arrange our backpacks under the seats in front of us, and Mr. Armisted does the same with his briefcase.
“When do the movies start?” Avery asks, staring at the little screen in the seat in front of her.
“After takeoff,” Mr. Armisted says. “But don’t just watch movies the whole night. Try to sleep as much as you can. That will help you avoid having such bad jet lag.”
“I know, Dad,” Avery grumbles, rolling her eyes. “But I can’t sleep when I’m not sleepy.”
I look out the window. Workers toss suitcases onto a conveyer belt, to load onto the plane. I don’t remember any airport before yesterday’s, but already this scene looks familiar to me. We’re still in America. It’s an American sky overhead. All the signs I see are in English.
I shiver, thinking of the chilling words I saw at the Holocaust Museum this morning: ARBEIT MACHT FREI, scrolled onto the gates of concentration camps.
That was German and Germany, not Spanish and Spain, I tell myself. You’re going to Spain. Same continent, but totally different places. And anyhow, World War II was a long time ago.
Not so long ago that people from then aren’t still alive.
I remember the maps from back at the Holocaust Museum, showing how Germany took over most of Europe before and during World War II. Was Spain colored in along with France and Austria and Hungary and Poland and all the other countries Germany attacked? Why hadn’t I paid attention to that?
If I meet any old people in Spain, what if they’re people who did terrible things to other people back when they were young, during their war?
Avery, in Her Last Moments of American Cell Service
“Avery, as hard as it is, you have to shut off your phone,” Dad says as the flight attendants shut the overhead luggage compartments, getting ready for takeoff. “Stop texting Shannon and Lauren. Say good-bye and put your phone away.”
“Just a minute, just a minute . . . ,” I mutter.
I’m not texting Shannon and Lauren. I’m looking up what happened in Spain during World War II.
I’ve never been to Europe before. I whined about coming with Dad—because, duh, with a total stranger like Kayla? To spend eight weeks away from my real friends? But I always thought I would go to Europe someday: maybe studying in England or France or Italy when I’m in college; maybe backpacking around the whole continent after I graduate. Dad took Mom to Paris when I was ten, but they left me home with a babysitter, and I was so mad not to get to see the Eiffel Tower and Disneyland Paris.
But the Holocaust Museum made Europe seem like a totally different place. A horrifying place with an awful history lurking just beneath the surface. How can anyone want to go there?
By the last parts of the Holocaust Museum, I couldn’t even speak. Stepping out into the sunshine afterward only helped a little. The rest of the day, I made myself chatter, chatter, chatter, happy memory, happy memory, happy memory—don’t think about the Holocaust!
But now I’m on a plane to Europe.
Please make it so Spain wasn’t even a part of World War II. They’re off on a whole other peninsula; please make it so they were too far away from Germany, and it was too much trouble to invade them. Please make it so they were more like their own little island. . . .
It’s almost like I’m praying.
“Avery,” Dad says again, warningly.
I’ve mistyped “Spain” as “Sapin,” so I erase and start again. The little circle spins and spins. Blindly, I click on the first site that comes up.
Dad reaches for my phone, and I have to jerk it to the side, closer to Kayla, to keep it out of his hands.
“I said, just a minute! I’m doing it!” I protest. I get a quick glimpse of the screen. I press in the power button, and show Dad the screen blacking out. “See?”
“All right,” Dad huffs, as if he has to get the last word. “I just didn’t think you’d like having the flight attendant confiscate it.”
I ignore him. I saw what I wanted to find out: Germany didn’t invade Spain during World War II. Spain had some war of its own right before World War II started, but I’d never heard of the Spanish Civil War before, so how bad could it have been?
Dad’s mad at me now, and I’m a little mad at him, and anyhow, he didn’t even care enough to go to the Holocaust Museum with us today. So it’s not like I’m going to tell him what I read, or even why I wanted to know. But it’s weird: I kind of want to tap Kayla on the shoulder and whisper, Spain wasn’t part of World War II. We’ve got nothing to worry about there. ¿Comprende? She’s not my friend, but we were at the Holocaust Museum together. We survived it together. She knows what I saw.
But Kayla’s looking out the window, turned completely to the side so she’s got her back to me. What can be so interesting about watching baggage handlers
and fuel trucks?
It’s almost like she’s pretending I don’t exist.
Kayla in España! (Or Ka-ee-la)
We’re landing. Or, as the captain puts it in his announcement, “starting our final descent.” He makes the announcement in Spanish, too, but I can’t make out a single word.
Never mind. It’s just because you’re not awake. . . .
I came out of a deep, deep sleep when they suddenly flicked all the lights on. I’m still blinking. Mr. Armisted whispers that Avery and I missed the breakfast service—he actually calls it “breakfast service”—but he got food for both of us. He hands over a banana and a little juice container and something wrapped in red foil. I can barely get my fingers to bend, to hold on. Avery doesn’t even try: She moans and kind of bats the food away and squeezes her eyes even more tightly shut.
Mr. Armisted laughs.
“She always was hard to wake up in the mornings,” he says. “And this probably feels like one a.m. to you both. Oh, well. She can have the food later. I’ll warn you—she gets really grumpy when she hasn’t had enough sleep. So we’ll let her sleep as long as possible.”
I don’t trust myself to put words together to answer. Is this jet lag? It’s like my brain is broken.
“You should keep the window seat, since it’d be wasted on Avery right now,” Mr. Armisted says. He points past me. “Look. That’s Madrid, off in the distance.”
I’m grateful to turn to the window—it’s easier to look than to talk.
The landscape below us seems dry and dusty, like a desert. It reminds me of the scenery in the John Wayne westerns Grandpa likes to watch. Then swirls of green show up—maybe they’re groves of orange or olive trees. Even though I’m barely awake, I can hear Grandpa’s voice in my head: Why didn’t they plant in straight lines, not curves? What kind of farmer does that? Grandpa’s never been to Spain, of course, but I know him so well, it’s like I’m always carrying him around in my head. He hasn’t been a farmer in more than thirty years, but he would have noticed the perfect squares and rectangles of farmland I saw from the plane, leaving Ohio, and he would notice the curlicues of farmland here.
We go lower, and now I see why the trees are planted that way: The farmers were working around hills and mountains. The land isn’t flat here like it is back home; that’s why there aren’t straight lines.
The plane turns, and now I see a small patch of skyscrapers: Madrid. The big city. Except maybe not so big. I’ve seen pictures of New York and Chicago, and Madrid isn’t like that. It has only four supertall buildings, which look a little silly sticking up all by themselves. The rest of the city spreads out far beyond the four skyscrapers, a diorama of red-tiled roofs and narrow, windy streets, glowing in the early rays of sunrise.
Spain! I’m landing in Spain! My first foreign country ever!
I wish I had texting on my phone, like Avery does. I’d snap a picture and send it to show-offy Stephanie Purley: You didn’t believe me, but look where I am now!
I’d send it to my sort-of-former best friend Harley Seitz too, with the line, See? And you said you’d die of boredom if you had to be me and didn’t even have a boyfriend. THIS isn’t boring!
But mostly, it’s Mom and Grandma and Grandpa and all my friends in the nursing home I want to show. I blink, because I am still so tired, and my family and friends suddenly feel so, so far away, because I can’t show them what I’m seeing.
I remember I do have a camera with me, a little one Mom bought for my birthday.
“So you can take pictures of everything on your trip,” she said. “So you can remember it forever . . .”
I reach down into my backpack and struggle to unzip the compartment where I stowed the camera. But by the time I untangle it from my earbud cord, the plane has turned, and my window faces straight out into the rising sun, nothing but glare on glass. The scene I wanted to capture is already gone.
That doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I’ll never forget, anyway.
And I can tell Mom and Grandma and Grandpa and my nursing home friends, even if I can’t show them.
We’re on the ground before I know it, and Mr. Armisted starts trying to shake Avery awake, even as she groans and pushes him away.
“You’re going to be embarrassed if I have to carry you through the airport like a little baby,” he jokes, and that finally makes her open her eyes. A little.
“I hate you,” she mutters, her eyes still barely slits.
“Good morning to you, too, sunshine.” Mr. Armisted laughs.
I hold back a gasp. If my father hadn’t been injured, if I could talk to him and he could answer back, I would never, ever ever tell him I hated him. I wouldn’t be able to speak that word.
And it’s the very first thing Avery says to her dad when we’re in a new place and it’s a new day and everything is golden and exciting before us?
It seems to take forever for everyone to file off the plane. I’m wobbly setting off down the aisle, trailing Avery and Mr. Armisted. We get into the jetway, and then into the first section of the airport, and Spanish is everywhere: It’s all salida and recogida de equipajes and control de pasaportes . . . I squint—I guess some of the signs have English, too, but it’s always smaller and harder to see.
“Baño,” Avery mutters. “¿Donde baño?”
Oh, no—what if they decide that they won’t speak anything but Spanish either? I’m going to be totally lost. Maybe I won’t be able to communicate with anyone for the next eight weeks.
“It’s ‘¿Donde está el baño?’ ” Mr. Armisted corrects. “That’s how you say, ‘Where is the bathroom?’ What you said was like caveman-speak: ‘Where bathroom?’ ”
“You understood me,” Avery grumbles. “No grammar lessons today. I’ve got jet lag.”
We keep walking—it’s like we’re gerbils in a Habitrail. Eventually, we come to a bathroom and stop to use it. Eventually we reach control de pasaportes—where the officials check passports. Mr. Armisted takes his and mine and Avery’s from his briefcase as we get in line. Mine looks too shiny and new, proving I’ve never been anywhere. His is battered and worn. Avery pulls her own passport out of his grasp and starts leafing through it.
“I hope they don’t stamp over any of my old stamps, like the customs people in Barbados did on that one cruise,” she says. “Can I tell them which page to use?”
“No,” Mr. Armisted says. “In fact, it’s better not to say anything unless you’re directly asked. Here, why don’t you just give the passport back, before you lose it?”
“Dad! I am not going to lose my passport just standing here in line looking through it!” Avery protests. “Quit treating me like a three-year-old!”
Mr. Armisted gently tugs it out of her hand anyway.
Avery elbows me.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if Kayla told the passport officials you were kidnapping her?” she asks, her voice rising.
“Avery, stop,” Mr. Armisted says. “That’s not something to joke about.”
“She could do that, you know,” Avery says. “And then what could you do, Dad? What would happen? Would they put you in prison? How do they know you’re not kidnapping her, anyway?”
Mr. Armisted gives a quick, darting glance around, like he’s worried someone in the crowd around us might hear. I just hope no one understands English.
It’s weird that that’s what I’m hoping for.
“You know I’ve got a letter from Kayla’s mother that says I have her permission to take Kayla on this trip,” Mr. Armisted tells Avery in a low, hissing voice.
“It could be forged,” Avery teases.
“Avery!” Mr. Armisted thunders. “I said stop it!”
He’s yelling at her, not me, but tears spring to my eyes. I’m not much of a crier, but not having enough sleep always brings the tears more easily. I tell myself that’s the only reason my eyes flood so suddenly.
I don’t want to believe the whole summer is going to be like this, Avery and Mr.
Armisted constantly fighting, me caught in the middle.
“I’m not going to say I’m being kidnapped,” I say quickly, because if I wait any longer to speak, the tears might choke out my words.
“Thank you, Kayla,” Mr. Armisted says. “I’m glad someone’s capable of being mature here.”
Avery shoots me a look of such pure hatred it makes my knees tremble.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Armisted says. “We’re all tired. Jet lag does this. We’ll all feel better after a nap. So let’s just . . . try to be as nice as we can for now, okay?”
Neither Avery nor I say anything. But when Mr. Armisted puts his arm around Avery’s shoulders, she doesn’t shake it away.
I concentrate on making the tears go away. Or, at least, keeping them from multiplying.
Spain. Fun. Excitement.
I decide that’s too much to think about right now, and I focus on a smaller goal.
A nap. Soon. All I have to do is get through this airport and get to the apartment we’re staying in this summer. Just follow Mr. Armisted. Then it’s naptime. Mmm. Sleep . . .
I think maybe I’m already half-asleep, standing in line. But finally we reach the front. We step up to a little booth where a man in a crisp blue uniform reaches for our passports.
“Buenos dias,” he says, and Mr. Armisted answers, “Buenos dias,” as he hands everything over. And—I understood. Okay, it was just Buenos dias, which kids sometimes say jokingly back at Crawfordsville High School, especially on the way to or from Spanish class. But this is Spain, and I just understood Spanish. It’s like I’m . . . international.
Mr. Armisted and the man keep speaking back and forth, whole sentences in Spanish, and I don’t understand any of that, but it’s okay. I already understood some Spanish, spoken by a real Spaniard.