Chapter Five

Day 1

“Señoras y señores, bienvenidos a Barcelona.…”

Beside me, Laurel rubs her eyes, then fusses with her hair, even though it looks fine. “Oh my actual gosh. This flight took forever.”

Nine hours, forty minutes. It’s technically Sunday afternoon, but it feels like the crack of dawn, like I should still be asleep.

I didn’t know what to say when Laurel returned to her seat. Even the music on our new playlist didn’t help. Soon, she fell asleep. Eventually, Abba drifted off again, too.

Not me.

I say a silent goodbye to the lottery-winning CEO as we file off the plane. Señor L makes us wait until the other passengers get their suitcases from baggage claim before we can grab our own. It feels like it takes twice as long as it should, but I’m probably just tired. My body feels stiff after sitting upright for so long.

“We’ll be taking a bus from here to our hotel,” Señor L explains as we head outside.

I relax a little. We’re back to following last year’s schedule. Maybe Laurel was right. Maybe the scavenger hunt is just last year’s trip in a slightly different form.

“Hoo-wee.” Mrs. West fans herself. “It’s hot as Hades.”

Beside her, Madison rolls her eyes.

“It feels like we’re walking through soup,” Abba joins in.

I shift my bag up on my shoulders and my shirt sticks to my back, hot and damp. The bus driver takes our suitcases, then I follow Laurel into the passenger area. Cold, crisp air blows from ceiling vents. I breathe in deeply, grateful to be out of the heat.

“Window or aisle?” Laurel asks. Happiness tingles in my chest as I pick the window seat. Sophie-Anne and Madison take the row in front of us, and the feeling dims a little.

Then, we’re off. We leave the airport behind and merge onto a freeway.

Sophie-Anne presses her face to the window. I blink the light out of my eyes, eager to see the city, too.

But everything’s bright and blurry as we speed past signs, then buildings. I reach for my phone and click record. This way, I can play it back later and won’t miss anything.

“Do you know if our hotel is the same one they used last year?” Laurel asks.

I nod. “It’s called Hotel El Búho.”

“You really do have everything memorized.” Laurel laughs. “Doesn’t búho mean ‘bird’?”

“Owl.”

A few minutes later, we enter a roundabout. “Passeig de Sant Joan,” the driver announces. “Hotel El Búho.”

Out on the sidewalk, we’re reunited with our suitcases—and the humidity.

My classmates look around, chins tilting up to take everything in. I steal a quick glance up, too, before looking back at my feet. Horns honk and I catch bits of Spanish as people pass by us.

Sounds. Light. The heat. It’s a lot for me to process all at once.

“This way,” Señor L calls.

Eyes still down, I turn and almost collide with Laurel. One hand shades her eyes as she points toward a building. An enormous owl stares down at us with round yellow eyes.

“It’s like a vintage cutout,” Laurel says. “Except, what’s it supposed to advertise?”

“Maybe it’s like the Big Chicken,” I say, imagining the fifty-foot landmark that rises above a restaurant back home. “People here might use it the same way.”

“Like, ‘to get to the airport, take a left past El Búho and keep driving for five miles’?”

I nod, then reach for my phone to take another video.

“Elle-bell! Laurel!” We both look over at Abba, who’s waving at us with one hand, holding open a door with the other.

“Well, now we know how our hotel got its name!” Laurel takes my hand.

I keep my eyes on the owl until it’s out of view. Then Abba, Laurel, and I enter a foyer, where the rest of our group waits. Laurel weaves us around some of our classmates, stopping beside Sophie-Anne and Madison.

Señor L lifts a clipboard over his head. “Okay, folks. Room assignments. The boys’ll be on the third floor with Mr. Katz and me, girls on the second with Mrs. West and Mrs. Delfina. There’s no elevator, so let a chaperone know if you need help with your luggage.” He passes a sheet of paper to Mrs. West, then heads for the stairs.

“See you soon,” Abba calls as he rolls his bag toward Señor L. The boys file up the stairs first. Noah-James doesn’t bother lifting his suitcase. It bangs against each step.

“That means we’re actually on the third floor,” Madison tells us, “because people in Europe count the ground level as floor zero.”

“At least we don’t have to go all the way up to the fourth floor like the boys,” says Sophie-Anne as she lugs her suitcase up the steps.

Laurel and I go last. On the landing halfway up to our floor, I turn back to Laurel. “This would be easier if we were owls.”

“So much easier.”

“All right,” Mrs. West calls when we all make it up to the second-floor-that’s-really-the-third. “Everyone should already know who you’ll be rooming with from earlier school correspondence.” Smiling, Laurel catches my eye. “When I read off your room assignments, come get a set of keys. There’ll be two room keys and one to get in and out of the hotel.

“First up: Clara Bryant and Emmaline Delfina are in 2A.”

Clara and Emmaline step forward to get their keys. While Mrs. West hands over the 2B keys to Sully and Tess, my gaze snags on Isa hovering near the stairs, apart from the rest of us. I do some quick math. Eight girls and eight boys originally signed up for this trip, a neat, even number of two kids per room.

But now there’s Isa.

“Ellen Katz and Laurel McKinley in 2C,” Mrs. West continues. “And last but not least, Sophie-Anne Taylor and my little Maddie in 2D.”

“For real, Mom?” Madison says under her breath.

Abba once told me I notice things on my own schedule, sometimes fast and sometimes gradual. Right now, my gaze moves beyond Laurel. Past Sophie-Anne and Madison.

“Now, settle in,” Mrs. West calls as she heads down the hall. “I’ll come get everyone for dinner in about ten min—”

“What about Isa?” I interrupt.

Mrs. West turns back to us. “I beg your pardon?”

Everyone’s looking.

My words take off in the opposite direction, like they always do when I’m the center of attention. I’m about to shake my head when Laurel speaks up.

“You forgot a name, ma’am. Señor L said Isa Martinez is a new student.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” Mrs. West looks back at the list, then over at Isa. “I’ll sort this out with your teacher now, Miss Martinez.”

A look passes across Isa’s face that reminds me of the expression Mom makes when she hits the wrong song note. It’s gone in a blink.

“I’ll wait,” Isa says. “No big.”

“Come on, Sophie.” Madison jangles the keys.

As Laurel slides a key into our door, I glance back again, but Isa’s eyes are on the floor.

We enter our room, leaving Isa in the hallway. Our room has white walls with flowery lavender decals over twin beds, plus a clock, side tables, and matching floor-to-ceiling closets.

“Do you care which bed I take?” Laurel asks.

I shake my head. Laurel rolls her suitcase over to one, and I take the other, beneath the wall clock. A Post-it on my bedside table shows the hotel’s Wi-Fi code. I enter it into my phone.

Laurel hands me my room key. I unzip my suitcase to start organizing my clothes into one of the closets while she heads toward a narrow door just past the pillow on my bed.

“This must be the bathroom.” Laurel twists the knob and peeks in. “Yep.”

I make my way toward Laurel, who steps aside so I can see. There’s a sink beneath a mirror, the toilet, and a small shower that looks like a test tube from last year’s science class. Directly across from our door, another opens, revealing Madison.

She shrieks, and I slap my hands over both ears before I can stop myself.

“What? What is it?” Sophie-Anne’s voice drifts in from their room.

“Just us,” Laurel says. As she swings their door open wider, I lower my hands. “I guess we’ll be sharing a bathroom.”

“You scared the heck out of Madison.” Sophie-Anne giggles.

“Sorry!” Laurel waves me over. “Your room looks just like ours, except you have pink flowers on your walls and we’ve got purple.”

Madison steps past us, into the bathroom. “There’s almost no counter space.” She sounds as distressed as I felt when Señor L announced the changes to this trip.

While the three of them arrange their makeup, hair products, and brushes on the bathroom counter, I return to our room and grab my backpack. I haven’t felt like taking out my dot diary since the airport, but now I do. Relief floods through me as I flip the pages. Everything we’ve done so far has followed last year’s schedule. I update my task boxes with little checkmarks.

A series of sharp knocks make me look up.

“Dinnertime, girls,” Mrs. West calls.

I close my diary and follow Laurel into the hall. She immediately heads toward Sophie-Anne and Madison.

Isa steps closer to me before I can join Laurel. “Thanks for earlier. No one told me if I was supposed to be on this floor or with the boys upstairs, but I’m good now.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, even though it doesn’t really feel like I did anything big. “Where did they put you?”

“2E.” Isa points to a door on the opposite side of the hallway. “So I guess this is the girls-plus-Isa floor.”

The rest of our group arrives before I can ask what Isa means. Together, we head down one flight of stairs to the first-floor-that’s-really-the-second. At the end of the hallway, Mrs. West stops in front of two large doors.

“That over there’s the community room.” She points to the left door as she glances at the hotel’s glossy brochure on her clipboard. “And this is the dining area.”

She opens the other door, and we all file in. Two long tables divide the room. Against the far wall, platters of food are set up in neat rows on a smaller table. I quickly spot Abba. Andy, Noah-James, and other kids sit around him at the first table, chatting.

“Oh my actual gosh.” Sophie-Anne nudges Laurel. She points at two teenagers sitting at the far end of the second table. A boy and a girl. Not part of our group.

“He’s cute,” Laurel says, but I’m still stuck on what Sophie-Anne just said. It’s exactly the same phrase Laurel used on the airplane. Is Sophie-Anne who she got it from?

Madison takes the lead and we follow her to the second table, each taking a seat in front of an empty place setting, directly across from the teenagers.

The girl smiles at us.

“I know we’re all hungry, so I’ll keep this short,” Señor L calls. “This is where we’ll be having our meals, buffet-style, except on days when we’re out and about.”

All of this information is in my dot diary.

“This dining room is for all hotel guests, not just us. I expect y’all to be on your best behavior,” Señor L continues. “Tomorrow is the official start of our program. You’ll receive your team assignments in the morning, along with a school-issued tablet and a packet that has all the information you’ll need to participate in the scavenger hunt, plus our afternoon lectures and field trips.”

Assigned teams? My chest tightens.

“That’s enough for now, though.” Señor L stands. “Food’s ready. Comamos.”

The girl turns to us as we stand. “You are Americans?”

Her words flow one into the other, like a spoken song.

“Yeah,” Madison says. “From Georgia.”

“The state, not the country,” Sophie-Anne adds. “We’re here with our Spanish class.”

“Ah, vale,” the girl says in Spanish. “I’m Meritxell. My brother is Xavi.” Beside her, the boy gives us a small nod. He wears a striped shirt with a patch that says FCB on one side of his chest. It reminds me of the Lynnwood crest, minus our feathered mascot. “We are from Lleida, out west. We stay here every summer to visit family.”

We introduce ourselves, then grab plates, moving to the back of the buffet table line.

I study Meritxell’s shirt and the loose pants that cover lightly tanned skin, then her brown hair. Long and sleek, the ends gently curled. Xavi’s hair is the same shade of brown, just shorter.

“I adore your name,” Laurel tells Meritxell.

Sophie-Anne bobs her head in agreement. “How do you spell it?”

“How do you spell your name?” Meritxell asks.

Sophie-Anne flushes. The rest of us go quiet as Sophie-Anne answers Meritxell’s question. Her voice wobbles a little as she speaks. She’s probably not used to having to spell her name for anyone.

“You have a beautiful name,” Meritxell says, with a smile that breaks the tension and sparks warmth in my chest.

Then Meritxell spells out her own name. She says each letter slowly, but there are no wobbles in her voice.

“It’s Catalan,” she explains.

Mare-eets-ell, I repeat to myself.

I don’t believe in destiny—not really—but I’ve always liked patterns and I see one here immediately. We’re in Señor L’s Spanish class in Barcelona, staying at the same hotel as a girl named Meritxell.

I look over at Laurel, waiting for her to connect the dots, but she doesn’t turn to me. She seems to be studying Xavi. So are Madison and Sophie-Anne.

We take a few steps as the line moves up.

“Are you here on your own?” Madison asks, eyes still on Xavi.

“With our parents,” Meritxell says. “Right now, they are resting.”

“¿Habláis todas español?”

It’s the first thing Xavi’s said to us. We all look at him.

“Un poco.” Madison twists a strand of hair around her finger. “We’re still learning.”

When it’s our turn at the buffet, Meritxell and Xavi turn to fill their plates. “Xavi’s English is not so great,” Meritxell says as she chooses her food. “He doesn’t study as much as me.”

This feels like the kind of thing Dr. Talia would tell me to keep to myself, even if it’s the truth. Xavi just laughs. He says something back, but I don’t catch a single word. It doesn’t even sound like Spanish.

“We can speak Spanish with you, if you’d like to practice,” Meritxell offers.

“That’d be great.” Laurel smiles at her, then surveys the platters of food.

“Try the jamón serrano.” Meritxell points to the thin slices of meat on one tray. “It’s a specialty.”

Plates full, she and Xavi head back to our table.

“Okay, Xavi is so cute,” Sophie-Anne loud-whispers. “How old do you think he is?”

“Fifteen,” Laurel guesses. “Maybe sixteen?”

Madison reaches for a big silver fork on the tray Meritxell recommended. “We should definitely practice our Spanish with him sometime.”

Laurel and Sophie-Anne both giggle, but my thoughts circle back to Meritxell. She was so honest and friendly. If I had a choice about who to practice Spanish with, it wouldn’t be Xavi.

“Meritxell’s cute, too,” I chime in. “Maybe we can practice with both of them.”

They all go quiet.

“O-kay?” Madison finally says, but she doesn’t look at me as she chooses some food off the tray, then continues down the table. Sophie-Anne keeps her head down as she spears thin slices of meat, then passes the serving fork to Laurel.

Did I say something wrong?

My insides twist more when it’s my turn. I don’t know what serrano means, but jamón is a word I know from class. Definitely not kosher.

I shake my head when Laurel tries to hand me the fork.

“Oh, duh.” She drops the fork back on the tray. The clang echoes in my ears.

As I fill my plate with bread, cheese, anything except meat, my gaze drifts to Abba. I wonder if he knows what jamón means.

Back at our table, we eat in silence. Eventually, Sophie-Anne sets her fork down. “So, how do y’all think Señor L will pick scavenger hunt teams?”

“It’ll be the four of us.”

We all look at Madison.

“You think?” Laurel asks.

“Positive. It makes sense to put people together who already share a room.” Madison looks at Laurel and me. “Or a bathroom.”

“It’d definitely be easier to meet up and work together,” says Sophie-Anne.

“Yeah,” Laurel agrees.

It makes sense. I take another bite, gaze moving around the room, from Abba and Andy at one end of the second table to Emmaline at the other—anywhere but across at Meritxell.

I stop on Isa, who sits near Señor L and the other adult chaperones. There’s been an odd number of students since Isa joined us, so maybe Madison’s wrong.

But this seems like a problem that is out of scope.

Tomorrow, we’ll get our official team assignments, I tell myself, and then I can update my schedule. Laurel and I will get to explore Barcelona together, just like we planned. Maybe it will actually be fun to be in small groups, visiting the sites I listed in my dot diary. I take another bite of dinner, finally letting myself feel excited.