For the first time, Marco saw the confidence on his mom’s face falter. “Mom, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
His mom stood up and smoothed down her dress. “It’s okay. That is going to be the tough part of this.” She smiled. “Remember, you two have each other. Sarah is alone in this. We all have to remember that. So just … try to be understanding, okay?” She kissed Nacho’s head, and then headed over for Marco. She put both hands on his cheeks. “Please? Try to get along?”
He nodded and she kissed his forehead.
After she left, Marco looked at Nacho. “You all packed?”
Nacho nodded.
Marco had a feeling and went over to Nacho’s suitcase. He pushed it over and unzipped. “Seriously?” Three large bottles of hand sanitizer took up one half of the suitcase; the other half was full of Eco-Scout paraphernalia: manuals and rope and compasses. “What about clothes?”
Nacho shrugged. “I need that stuff more.”
Marco shook his head. “No, no, no.” He sighed. “Let’s go pack things you’ll actually need.”
“I do need them! I need to keep earning badges.” Nacho narrowed his eyes at his older brother.
Marco picked up the sash, which bore exactly three badges: reading, computers, and math. “Looks like you’ve got most of the indoor ones already.”
Nacho grabbed the sash. “I’ve been studying all the outdoor ones. I’ll take the tests when I’m ready.”
“Okay, well, you do realize that you actually have to go outdoors to get the outdoor badges?” Marco glanced at the bottles of hand sanitizer. As long as there was dirt in the outdoors, there was no way his little brother was going to be earning any of those badges.
“I know!” Nacho reached in the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper. He opened it. “On this trip, I should be able to knock out several badges.” He held up a finger. “Sailing.” He held up another finger. “Water safety.” He held up a third finger. “Astronomy.” And a fourth. “Oceanography.”
Marco held up a hand to stop him. “Is there a badge for packing? Because if there is, you’re not getting it.” He stood the suitcase up and wheeled it out the door.
“Hold on!” Nacho refolded the paper, stuck it back in his pocket, and ran after his brother.
3
A Tuesday morning, the start of summer, and the airport was packed. Sarah wondered how many other kids were being dragged on trips they didn’t want to go on. Looking around, she could pick out a few with scowls on their faces, obviously in the same horrid mood as she was.
“Sarah!” called her dad from the ticket counter. “Put your suitcase up on the scale so they can weigh it.”
Sarah glared at Marco, who stood directly in her way. “Move.”
He hardly budged, so she offered no apology of any kind as she rolled her heavy suitcase over his foot, causing him to utter a loud “Hey, that hurt!”
Their parents were too busy conferring with the gate agent to notice, and Sarah grinned to herself as she wheeled her bag to the front of the line. Her father lugged it onto the scale, where it registered exactly 50.7 pounds. The gate agent, a man with a large head and tiny eyes, wearing the blue suit and tie of the airline, glanced at the amount and declared, “Over. That’s an extra fee.”
“What?” Her dad leaned over and read the numbers. “You’re going to charge me for that?”
The gate agent’s tiny eyes nearly disappeared as he stared down Sarah’s father and nodded crisply.
“Dad, hold on.” Sarah opened the outside pocket on the suitcase, extracted an extremely well-worn hardback edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, then zipped it back up.
Her dad frowned. “Where’s your e-reader?”
“In here.” Sarah patted her backpack. “But you never know.” As she let go of the suitcase, the numbers recalibrated, reading slightly less than forty-nine pounds. “There.”
Her dad raised his eyebrows at her and then told the agent. “I booked seats together. Why does this have us in separate seats?”
Sarah quickly piped up, “I’m fine sitting by myself.”
Her father ignored her and waited as the gate agent typed on his computer. “Sir, you’re trading in two first-class for five in coach at the last minute. There’s only so much I can do.” The agent typed on his computer for a few moments, punctuated with a few frowns, and finally said, “We can seat two together and three together.” He looked up. “To even get you all on the same flight, I had to put you on an entirely different route. We have you going through Shanghai, then to Sydney, and your flight to Fiji. And this is a very full flight. Sorry about the inconvenience.”
The gate agent didn’t seem to be sorry about it at all, thought Sarah. Not in the least.
Her father said, “That’ll have to do.”
Sarah smiled. She and her dad would be together, allowing her to pretend they were simply on a trip together, alone, just like always. Her dad waved his arm. “Boys, bring your bags over.”
Sarah stepped aside as her stepbrothers rolled their bags forward, not wanting to risk retaliation for rolling over Marco’s foot. She shoved her book inside her bag, already wondering what movie she would watch on the plane while her dad slept beside her and she pretended the whole marriage/stepfamily debacle had been nothing but a bad dream.
When everyone had checked their bags, they went through security with little trouble, then found their gate and sat down. Sarah told her dad, “I’m gonna go buy a magazine and some snacks.”
Yvonna jumped up. “I’ll come with you.”
Sarah didn’t say anything as she twirled around and headed for the closest shop. She sensed Yvonna behind her, but wasn’t exactly in the mood to chitchat. She browsed through the section of entertainment magazines and chose two before walking over to the snack section. She grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerated case and let it slam before opening it again to snag a string cheese. She picked out a bag of trail mix, some yogurt pretzels, and two granola bars dipped in chocolate. There was a line at the cash register, where a pretty, dark-haired woman in a sari was checking people out. When Sarah finally reached the counter, she dumped out her goods and threw a green package of gum on top.
“I’ve got this,” said Yvonna. She handed a bank card to the woman.
Sarah glanced at the card, which had green swirls and the logo of the California bank her dad used.
The woman asked, “Debit or credit?”
Yvonna smiled. “Debit.”
Sarah said, “You bank at the same bank as my dad.”
Her stepmother stiffened and didn’t say anything as she punched in her code. The woman handed her the card and receipt.
Sarah grabbed the bag of her things and could barely keep up with Yvonna on the way back to their gate. “Why do you bank at the same bank? You just moved here. How did you—” Sarah felt her face get hot as her steps slowed down. Her stepmother didn’t have an account at the same bank as her dad … Sarah stopped in her tracks. Her stepmother had the same account as her dad.
About fifteen yards ahead of her, Yvonna had reached the gate and taken a seat. John smiled at her, then stood up and walked toward Sarah, who was still frozen in place. As he reached her, he started to ask something, but she blurted out, “You gave her your debit card?”
The smile on her dad’s face fell, and he said, “I didn’t give her my debit card.”
Sarah held up her plastic shopping bag. “But she just paid for my stuff with it! She must have taken it from you and—”
“Sarah!” her dad interrupted. “Yvonna didn’t take my card. She has her own.”
“At your bank?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, at my bank. From my account.”
Sarah stomped her foot. “How could you do that? Give her our money like that!”
“Listen to me, young lady.” Her dad stuck his finger at her. “Yvonna is my wife. We’ve been married nearly a month already. Of course I?
??m going to share our money—my money—with her. What’s mine is hers. And Marco’s and Nacho’s. That is how marriages work.”
Tears welled up in Sarah’s eyes, and her throat felt thick. She whirled around, striding away from their gate. How could he do that? How could he trust a virtual stranger like that? She’d read about these kinds of things happening, people meeting people online, marrying them, then stealing all their money.
She wiped a tear off her cheek as she found an empty gate and took a chair that faced the windows. How could everything have changed so much? How could her dad have let it change?
She dropped her things on the floor and unzipped the small front pocket on her backpack. She pulled out the ziplock of her carry-on liquids and took out the perfume flacon that had been her mom’s. She unscrewed the top and held it to her nose, breathing in her mother. She whispered, “I miss you. I miss you so much.”
Her dad sat down beside her, and she quickly shoved the perfume back in the ziplock and stuffed it in her backpack. He put a hand on her leg. “Sweetie, I know this is hard. It’s hard to move on.”
She wiped her nose and said, “You don’t seem to be having any trouble.”
Her dad sighed.
Sarah kicked her backpack. “It’s like you don’t even miss Mom.”
Her dad leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, then stared out the window. “I have missed her for six years.”
“Then how could you marry someone else?” Sarah sniffled.
“You don’t think it was hard for me? To see her get sick and…” He trailed off, staring out the window for a moment. “We had so many plans for the three of us. She wanted to take you back to Japan, to show you where she lived when she was little.” He shook his head. “For a long time, I could barely function. It was all I could do to go to work, pay the bills.” He stared down at his feet for a moment. Then he raised his head and smiled at her. “But I had you to think about. And we got through it, right?”
Sarah nodded. “I thought we were doing fine. I don’t get why you have to bring them into our life.”
“You probably won’t understand until you’re older. For now, I guess … you have to trust me. Trust that I know what is best for our family.” He put an arm around her and she leaned into his shoulder.
She had gotten used to their small family. Being with him, just the two of them, felt right. Why wasn’t it enough for him? Sarah let herself pretend it was still just the two of them, that there was not an evil stepmother and her two children waiting for them at Gate 86. Trouble was, pretending wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Eventually, she would have to get up and follow her dad, back to their most unwelcome new family. She asked, “But what if this isn’t the best thing for our family?”
He patted her arm. “That’s what this trip is for. So we can all get to know each other, figure out how this thing is going to work.”
And suddenly, just like that, Sarah saw a light at the end of that deep, dark tunnel she’d been heading for. The trip. What if it didn’t work out? What if all the trip did was prove that the Murillos were not the best thing for their family? Maybe she should stop looking at the trip as a drag and look at it as an opportunity: an opportunity to get her life back to the way it was. She sat up and smiled at her dad. “You’re right. This will be a great chance to get to know my new brothers. And stepmother.”
Her dad looked surprised for a moment, but then he leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “That’s my girl. Ready to head back to our gate? Start this journey?”
“Oh yeah.” Sarah nodded. “I’m more than ready.” She got a good grip on her backpack as her dad grabbed the bag from the shop. She followed him, already making plans for how to prove to her dad that the Murillos were the worst thing that could ever happen to her family.
4
Seven hours into the fourteen-hour flight to Shanghai, Marco woke up and glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes? He’d been trying to sleep for seven hours and had only been asleep fifteen minutes?
He groaned, not caring who heard him.
The flight was never going to end. And when it did, there would be the ten-hour flight to Australia, and then, finally, the four-hour flight to Fiji.
Marco knew that long before he ever arrived in Fiji, he would be long gone, having succumbed to complications from sheer boredom and discomfort.
On his right, Sarah had fallen asleep wearing her lime-green inflatable neck pillow, but sagged over and landed on Marco’s shoulder. He pushed on her head, but it didn’t budge.
She responded by snoring.
“Seriously?” When his mother had told him they were sitting separately on the plane, he’d assumed he and his mom and Nacho would be the three and Sarah and her dad the two.
But then Nacho had put up a fuss—which Marco could tell was totally fake—about wanting to be next to their mom, and then John had put up a slightly more mature fuss—which Marco could only suspect was fake—about it being his honeymoon and wanting to sit by his bride.
Thus, Marco and Sarah had ended up together, seated near the back, in a pair of seats on the side. Marco stared out the window, where he saw nothing but darkness.
Nacho’s meltdown had to be bogus, because they’d both been on tons of trips with their mom. Usually they had to fly standby, and sometimes they got to sit up in first class. Marco looked again at Sarah, whose mouth had dropped open, a thin line of drool threatening to escape at any time.
“Oh, no way.” Marco shoved Sarah’s shoulder, forcing her upright.
Her head jerked, and she blinked. “What?” She sounded groggy. Sarah looked first to her right and then at Marco. She blinked again and wiped her mouth, obviously not entirely awake. Then she frowned, realizing where she was. And who she was with. “Why did you wake me up? I finally got to sleep.”
“What?” Marco’s forehead wrinkled. “You’ve been sleeping almost the whole flight. And most of the time on me!”
Sarah quickly leaned away from him, stretching her top half out into the aisle. “I was not.”
“Oh, okay. Whatever.” Giving up on sleep, Marco put his headphones on and tapped the screen of the built-in entertainment monitor on the back of the seat in front of him, hoping for some kind of decent movie.
But the screen stayed dark. “Seriously?”
Sarah noticed him having trouble and tapped her own screen. Nothing. She shrugged and pulled an e-reader out of her bag, then switched on her overhead light.
Marco just sat there, still tapping the screen that obviously was not going to work for him.
Sarah looked at him for a moment, as if trying to decide something, then let out a little sigh. She pulled the Harry Potter from her backpack, and held it out. “Need a book?”
Marco glanced at the illustration on the front and got a strange look on his face, like he smelled bad cheese. “I think I’m a little old for wizards.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She started to put it back, then stopped. “But, just to check, you liked it when you were a kid, right?” When Marco didn’t reply, Sarah asked, “You did read the books, didn’t you?”
Marco shook his head slightly.
Sarah’s mouth dropped open. She said, a bit too loudly for a dark plane where everyone was sleeping, “You’ve never read Harry Potter? Who doesn’t read Harry Potter?” Then she asked, in a more curious tone, like she really wanted to know, “How have you never read Harry Potter?”
Marco scowled. “I don’t like to read.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, but you saw the movies right? Of course you did.” She shook her head. “Didn’t read the books, but saw the movies.” She clicked her tongue a couple times. “What a cliché.”
Marco adjusted himself in order to face her more squarely. “For your information, no, I have not seen the movies either.”
Sarah’s mouth, again, dropped open a bit. And again, she said, much too loudly for a dark plane where everyone was sleeping, “You’ve never seen the
movies? How have you never seen the movies?”
“Shh!” Marco held a finger to his lips. “You are so loud.” He sighed. “I’m not a big reader, so I didn’t read the books. And…” He didn’t say anything else.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I need to know this.” Sarah prodded him. “And what?”
He faced forward again. He didn’t really want to admit what he was going to admit, but he knew it was the only way to get his snoopy stepsister/seatmate off his back. He said, “My mom wouldn’t let me see the movies without reading the books first. And so I thought, what’s the big deal anyway? But then all my friends were into the movies, and I didn’t think I could sit and read all seven books so I could watch the movies and … I just pretended like I didn’t care.”
Sarah’s eyes were wide, listening like she’d never heard something so unbelievable in her life. “Why didn’t you give in and read them?”
Marco shrugged. “It just became more important to stand my ground, not read the books. And not see the movies.”
Sarah held the book up, waving it a little bit. “But you want to, right? Don’t you feel left out? Don’t you want to know what everyone else in the civilized world knows?”
She didn’t sound mean, she just sounded like she was on a mission to get him to do something he didn’t really want to do. Marco looked out the window at the dark nothingness.
Sarah nudged him with her elbow. “You have to read it.”
Marco looked at her. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Because … they are the best and you are totally missing out?” Sarah waggled the volume in her hand. “I’ve read this eleven times. And I dragged it along to read again.”
Marco looked at the book. “It’s pretty thick.”
Sarah shoved it at him, not all that unkindly. “Trust me, it’ll fly by and you’ll be reading ‘The End’ before you know it. And then you’ll be hooked and want to read the next one. Guarantee it.” Pompously, she tapped her e-reader. “Got them all on here. And then when you’re done, you can watch all the movies, which, by the way, I own on DVD.”