He still didn’t speak. Could he even understand English? He flexed his jaw, almost as if his uncertainty had graduated to anger. His eyes flickered from her eyes to her lips, sending a shudder right through all the molecules that made her a girl. Then he peered over her shoulder to the painting.
“I know it’s—” But before she could utter another breath, he turned his back and stormed down the hill through the trees, fists coiled at his sides.
“Hey! I said I’m sorry. Do you speak English?” she called behind him, but he didn’t seem to notice. She shook her head, watching him leave. He could’ve said something. Google told her almost all Icelanders spoke a bit of English.
“Rude,” she muttered before making a beeline to grab her things and scram.
CHAPTER SIX
Oskar’s Journal
Things never go
the way I imagine they might.
My brain overrules the southern command
the minute she opens her mouth.
It’s not even the painting
that turns me off most.
Which says a lot
considering how long
she must have been sneaking around.
Never mind that it’s a very good painting,
accurate to every minuscule flaw.
It’s the American mentality
that triggers my upchuck reflex:
Take what you want—
when there’s a problem,
throw money at it.
How convenient it must be
to have that option.
I wouldn’t know.
The orchard’s paid off now,
thanks to money tossed to us by the guilty American
who caused the accident.
But we have very little else besides cherries.
And she was taking those, too.
Did the fence not tip her off
that the area’s private property?
My boots stomp through the sludge.
The burn of the morning’s scratches
make me wince as I clench my fists.
I zigzag through the trees,
avoiding her gaze
like a spray of shrapnel.
Stupid, selfish Americans.
Of course I can speak English,
But I’ll never speak it to her.
As much as I’d like to tell her
how wrong she is,
how self-centered and presumptuous,
she would only hear broken strings,
the stammering of missed notes.
And then she would feel sorry for me.
Because there are some things
even money cannot fix.
She is just as bad
as the assholes responsible
for making me
an
orphan.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Evie
“What’d you do today?” Papá asked Evie over dinner without looking at her.
He strolled into the Fryst Paradis café to meet her at eight. She was trying not to complain. It was better than midnight, at least.
She shrugged as she pushed a clump of unidentified meat around in her soup—something chunky and brown that looked like it’d already been digested once. Aromas of onion and thyme floated in the steam, eliciting a skeptical growl from her empty—save for the cherries—stomach.
Happy chatter hummed over the honeycomb windows of the lively little café. The tourists around them were from all over the globe, based on the lilt of their accents. They crowded the mismatched tables and chairs, conversing happily. Though the languages were different, the tones of voices hit a similar note: they were the victorious travelers on the trip of a lifetime.
Evie envied them. She envied their choices.
“Mmm, sabroso,” Papá mumbled around a mouthful of the poop soup.
She’d spent the day re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and refreshing her messenger app with the kind of desperation that made it hard to look in a mirror. Maybe she was just as destined to repeat history as the Macandos were. After all, Abuela had been torn from her home and dropped in a foreign land when she was a teenager, too.
When three video chat calls from her mother had come through, half an hour apart each time, she ignored them. She had no desire to repeat that history. But Evie had no plans to tell her papá any of that.
“I went and saw the orchard.”
His eyes widened and he looked at her for the first time since he’d sat down.
“Well?” He dropped his spoon in the bowl and suspended his oil black eyebrows in perma-surprise. “Did you paint?”
Evie’s nostrils flared. Could mystery boy have tattled to the store owner, which resulted in a phone call to Papá? Saying yes would invite him to ask to see the painting, though, and she’d already met her quota for embarrassment today. She shook her head, risking the lie, and made a note to start keeping a written tally of things to bring up in her next confessional. Not that she was always 100% honest with the priest, but her sins were beginning to pile up.
“It’d be a beautiful scene, I think.” He wiped dripping soup from his mouth. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“The food’s weird here, Papá.” Evie rolled her eyes. “Everything is weird here.”
The way his face fell, wrinkles in the corners of his eyes pointing down instead of up, mouth settling in a drooping arch, sent a jolt of guilt all the way to the tip of her empty soup spoon. Sometimes she forgot he was still grieving her mother’s absence, blaming himself for not making her happy. Not that anyone could ever make her mother happy.
“I liked the cherry pie, though.” Evie did her best to say it in a hopeful tone.
He nodded. “They serve lunch over there too, and they have homemade salsas and jams. I think I’ll stop tomorrow on my way back and get some.”
“I’ll get it,” she blurted, then lowered her voice and peered around to see if anyone noticed her alarm. They hadn’t. “I mean, it was nice to get out of the house today. I don’t mind going.” No way could she let him find out she’d already made an enemy on her very first excursion. “Anyway, where do you have to go tomorrow? Aren’t we going to Mass?”
A sigh deflated him. “I’m sorry, mija. Research is weather dependent, and the forecast changed. Chance of rain is slim to none.” He offered an apologetic shrug.
Abuela had raised Papá to attend Mass religiously, pun intended. It was one of those obligatory things Evie just accepted with a resigned sense of dread. So it made very little sense how much it bummed her out that she’d miss it for the second week in a row.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Oskar’s Journal
Within these pages lives my solace.
It’s the only place I can share my thoughts
without having to avoid sounds
that seize in my throat
or get caught on repeat.
From the time I learned to talk
my brain has moved faster than my mouth.
Words get clogged up
as they press against the back of my teeth.
I’m an alien
flying under the radar
on a fluent planet,
but everyone knows it when I speak.
Music is my only refuge,
because when I sing,