Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe Page 5

  “I’ve been to South Africa,” she said.

  “Or Korea,” I said.

  “I’ve been to Korea,” she said.

  I was going to ask her about Malaysia next, but instead—feeling very unworldly—I decided to shut up.

  Lahn, then, started saying something in French. I didn’t know why he thought either of us would know what he was saying, until Tatyana said something back to him, also in French.

  Feeling unworldly AND uncultured now, I listened to them talk for a while. I didn’t understand any of it except these three words: “Drew,” “Barrymore,” and “Hollywood.”

  “Lahn has seen Drew Barrymore in person!” Tatyana told me, excitedly. “In Hollywood!”

  “Huh,” I said.

  Lahn and Tatyana had another little conversation then. This time I could understand only THESE words: “geeky” and “jock.”

  (AGAIN, thank you SO much, Delia.)

  Pushing my left hand under my leg, I pointed to Noori and AJ who were (thankfully) arriving. “Look! Our drinks!”

  “Lahn was wondering why it says ‘geeky jock’ on your hand,” Tatyana said to me, apparently not falling for my attempt at diversion.

  “Oh, really?” I responded. “And you told him . . .”

  “I told him it means you’re smart and strong,” she said.

  Feeling a little better (and hoping she HAD said that, but how would I know?), I got up and jumped into the pool. I almost drowned when my T-shirt covered my nose and mouth, but after that it was fun.

  Noori got in the pool, too, and we pretended we were mermaids by swimming with our feet together. At some point—just when we were getting bored, luckily—Gilligan got on the DJ’s microphone, and told everyone it was time for the “BIG SURPRISE!” We were going to “MIX IT UP!” He told us to go around and find “SOMEONE SPECIAL!” with a matching wristband, and “HEAD TO THE DANCE FLOOR!”

  “This should be entertaining,” I said, floating on my back and watching the crowd. Predictably, the “it-girls” (there are at least ten Britney Spears look-alikes on this boat, I SWEAR) immediately began shrieking and running after all the guys, checking out their wristbands. The “cool” kids (in their sunglasses, even though it’s night) acted as if they hadn’t heard anything Gilligan said (which is a real possibility, actually). Then the gamers got all activated when one boy yelled, “TOURNAMENT!” and flung his wristband at the sea god statue, just catching one of the teeth of the trident and starting a tidal wave of wristband-flinging.

  “Blue,” Noori, who was standing in the water next to me, said. “AJ’s got blue—just my luck. I’ve got orange.”

  I noticed, then, that AJ was at the edge of the pool holding his arm up and pointing at his wristband. “What color do you have, Brady?” he was calling out.

  “Yeah, just MY luck, too—I’ve got blue,” I said, thinking it might be time to FIRE my favorite color for betraying me in this way.

  But THEN, thinking quickly (as, of course, I’m known to do), I grabbed Noori’s hand underwater, did a little switcheroo, and—TA DA!—I pulled my arm out of the water and pointed at MY wrist, which now sported an ORANGE wristband.

  “NOORI HAS BLUE!” I called out to AJ.

  And before he could react, Noori was out of the water and pulling him off to the dance floor through the spray of flying wristbands.

  (I’m sorry for doubting you, Color Blue. You remain my fave.)

  Uh-oh. I guess I lost track of time. Mi madre is standing at the door of the cabin, CLAPPING at me to get up.

  Maybe encouraging her to be our tour guide was a bad idea. The power seems to have gone to her head.

  Adios—

  Just after sunset, Tuesday night

  * * *

  Dear Delia,

  Now I will tell you about my day in Barcelona. And I’m going to do it at the same speed my Nazi tour guide—er, mother—set for the day. I think reading it will be sort of like that day in class when we read those Faulkner stories, which had these whole long paragraphs that were just one sentence, and we read them real fast and tried to only take a breath after each period. Well, it’s like that, only worse. So, take a very deep breath to start and GO!

  The first thing we saw was a statue of Columbus, which had a sign in front of it that said (and I’m not making this up, although I could be leaving out an accent mark, but what-ev) “COLON,” causing me to wonder if the Spaniards know that word means “intestine,” which doesn’t seem like a very flattering thing to call a person, seeing how it’s a bodily organ that’s filled with, uh . . . well, you know what it’s filled with; but I couldn’t ponder that for long, because my arm was in sudden danger of being separated from the rest of my body since my mother was “guiding” me to the Gothic Quarter, which is a super old and stony place, where we stood in the very spot Queen Isabel stood when she greeted Columbus upon his return to Spain after his famous discovery of our continent (although some years later it was proved that he was actually full of crap, and never made it to America at all, which—now that I think about it—might have something to do with that sign in front of the statue . . .).

  (You can breathe in now.)

  Then we went into a shop where someone who looked like a Native American (perhaps they are called Native Spaniards in Spain) was selling silver and turquoise jewelry, hippie clothing, incense, and pot pipes, so my mother pulled me out of that shop quickly due to an infiltration of inappropriateness into her carefully planned itinerary, and we went back to the busy street where we looked for a place my mother’s guidebook recommended for authentic Barcelonese snack foods, but since we couldn’t find it after marching around in the blazing sun for at least two or three minutes, I pulled my mother into the door of McDonald’s, where we ate McPitas.

  (Breathe now!)

  Then, we (that means my mother) studied the subway map, and we (that means my mother) decided to take the subway to Parc Guelle, a place that has artsy statues and stuff done by a local artist named Gaudi, who designed bunches of buildings in Barcelona and lived at some other time that my mother told me all about as we rode the subway, which might have interested me if I weren’t sleep-deprived, having been at the Roman Ruins party and walking around the boat until midnight.

  (Breathe . . .)

  After we arrived at the subway station, which my mother swore (take note of this) was the nearest to Parc Guelle, we stood on a street corner and saw no park anywhere, so we went into a shop where my mother reached back into the ancient recesses of her brain for some Spanish phrases she learned in the seventh grade, and (miraculously) began emitting Spanish words in the direction of this man, who looked at her quizzically (since, as it turns out, many Spanish people don’t speak Spanish, but something called Catalon), until she finally shrugged and said, “Parc Guelle?” to which the man smiled and pointed to his right, then up to the sky.

  (YES! Breathe!)

  Following his detailed instructions, we set out to the right and immediately came to understand his “up” direction, because there was an extremely steep and long sidewalk/stairway with an escalator running up the middle of it, going so high into the sky that the top was obscured by a mist, and we began going up, not knowing if it were the stairway to Parc Guelle or the stairway to heaven, my mother on the stairs and I on the escalator for the first half-hour, after which we stopped for a break at one of the cafés that lined this stairway, then continued our journey (my mother taking the escalator, too, at this point), until we reached a sign at the edge of a little wooded path, which read: Parc Guelle.

  (If you have not already hyperventilated, breathe . . .)

  After mustering our strength for a few lame cheers, we trotted past the sign—which turned out to be a LIE—and hiked along this path covered with roots (which at first I cursed because I kept tripping on them, but later worshipped because they served as a means of holding onto the earth as the hill increased to something close to a 90° angle), until we rounded a bend in the path and could hear
the sounds of music in the distance, which I hoped would not turn out to be harps played by angels.

  (Breathe . . .)

  Parc Guelle was really cool, with these awesome, long walls (purposely wavy, and not—as I first thought—a sign that I was delirious) made from tiny, colorful tiles, going around this whole huge plaza (placa, I believe, in Barcelonese) from which you could see the entire city below—easily a million miles away—so we slumped onto a bench and looked at the view, listened to the sounds of Spanish guitars from a stage below us, and then (after we recovered—perhaps a week later) we went to the other side of the park where there was a big lizard made from the same tiles and a gate leading out to a street, where we saw a sign pointing to a subway station, which turned out to be (hear this) just FOUR blocks away, over FLAT terrain.

  (Okay, breathe.)

  Once back on the subway, I closed my eyes and listened to my mother have this little discussion with herself (since I was no longer speaking to her), which seemed to be all about adjusting our itinerary to take into account that we had only made it to stop three out of fifteen, or something, and we were almost out of time, so when we arrived at our destination station she pulled on my arm (to wake me up) and asked me which one of these I wanted to do: see some Gaudi architecture, visit a reptile museum, or buy some clothes.

  (Breathe . . .)

  I really wanted to go to the reptile museum (HA HA HA), but instead figured I would be practical and pick out something new to wear tonight on the boat, since it is a “dress up” night, so my mother suggested we look for some local Spanish fashions, but all of the shops seemed to carry only clothes from Paris, so I ended up with a GREAT denim skirt with little blue seed-beads sewn in designs all over it, and then I thanked my mother (since I was speaking to her again—the clothing purchase having worked well to re-open mother-daughter communication lines), and we ran all the way back to the statue of Christopher Colon and up the gangplank of our boat just as the whistle blew, informing us we were leaving port.

  (Okay, you MADE it! Unless, of course, you are on the floor, dead.)

  As you can see, being a tourist in Barcelona is exhausting. It also builds an appetite, so, luckily, we went right to the dining room when we got on the boat. I had two lobster tails at dinner. It was all-you-can-eat, and I was actually going to have three, but Cristo the waiter moves so slowly that he didn’t quite make it to the table with the third plate before Mom made me run up to deck ten to see the sunset. Which was really awesome. Think big red, uh, marshmallow melting into deep blue, uh, cocoa. As you can tell, I am still hungry. Which is okay, since there is a death-by-chocolate party in the teen lounge in about an hour. Delia, I truly think we should consider becoming stowaways on a cruise ship. Life is very good here. That is, if you never leave the boat.

  Now . . . where WAS I in the “Poseidon’s Mixer” story before I was (so RUDELY) interrupted by Barcelona? Think . . . think . . . think . . . oh, yeah! I was in the pool, and Noori had just dragged AJ to the dance floor . . .

  “Brady! Hurry, let’s go!” Tatyana called to me.

  “Without Noori?” I asked.

  “We’ll improve her chances of snagging him if we leave,” she said. “Trust me.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, pulling myself out of the pool.

  “The Internet Café?” she suggested. “I told my grandfather I’d e-mail him. He’s 85 years old—and a MAJOR Web freak.”

  “He should meet my sister,” I said, drying my legs with a towel. “Can I go like this? I’m totally soaked.”

  “Just take off the shirt,” she said. “You’ll dry a lot faster that way.”

  “Uh, that’s okay, I’m all right,” I said, looking around at all the people, and then at Lahn—who MIGHT have been looking at me, because he quickly averted his eyes.

  “You’re modest, aren’t you?” Tatyana said. “THAT’S why your friend wrote that thing on your hand about wearing a bikini, isn’t it? Well, Brady, you should JUST DO IT. Isn’t that what jocks say? And—trust me—you’ll have WAY more thrilling adventures and attract WAY more Euro-hotties if you WEAR the bikini. In PUBLIC.”

  I thought about you, then, Delia, and how AMAZING it is that I SOMEHOW attracted a new friend SO much like YOU. And I asked myself this question: WHEN will my life stop being so HUMILIATING?

  “Hey!” some girls said to me as they walked by. “You’re the one we were looking for all over the boat last night—the one who choked!”

  The answer to my question: Apparently not SOON. Trying to ignore all that had occurred in my life up to that moment, I threw a towel over my shoulders and followed Tatyana.

  On our way out, we passed Gilligan, who was trying to stop the wristband tournament that was well underway at one end of the pool. There were several wristbands on each of the trident’s teeth and dozens floating on the surface of the water.

  “Now, now,” he was saying to a girl who was getting into the pool to retrieve a wristband that had apparently missed its mark. “Let’s not throw things at King Poseidon, please.”

  “Okay, sorry about that,” the girl said to him. “But isn’t that statue supposed to be Neptune?”

  That, of course, was very amusing to us, so we laughed our way down the elevator and all the way into the Internet Café. People looked at us like we were weirdos, which was also amusing.

  Doing some quick calculations, I realized that it was afternoon in the US, so I checked to see if anyone was online. I only found one person I knew, though. Guess who? You’re RIGHT—Clare! Two points! My IM conversation with her was yet another source of amusement for Tatyana and me, so I printed it out so YOU, TOO, can be entertained . . .

  allgutsallgirl: Clare! Is that you?

  ferretlover: diku?

  allgutsallgirl: What does that mean?

  ferretlover: do I know u?

  allgutsallgirl: I think. I’m your sister. Brady.

  ferretlover: o. uv nevr imd me b4. r u @ delias?

  allgutsallgirl: Uh, no, I’m in Europe.

  ferretlover: lol.

  allgutsallgirl: I’m serious, Clare. I’ve been gone for days.

  ferretlover: duz mom no?

  allgutsallgirl: She’s with me.

  ferretlover: tht xplns it.

  allgutsallgirl: That explains what?

  ferretlover: y i havnt cn her l8ly.

  allgutsallgirl: Riiiight. So, how are you?

  ferretlover: ssdd.

  allgutsallgirl: Which means . . .

  ferretlover: same stuff, different day.

  allgutsallgirl: That’s descriptive. How’s Irene?

  ferretlover: she’s bin goin 2 a day camp.

  allgutsallgirl: Irene NEVER goes to camp.

  ferretlover: o.

  allgutsallgirl: What kind of camp is it?

  ferretlover: idk.

  allgutsallgirl: Huh?

  ferretlover: i don’t know. bbiam.

  allgutsallgirl: Clare, I HATE chatspeak.

  ferretlover: be bak in a minit. askin dad.

  allgutsallgirl: ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda ladeda la

  ferretlover: field hockey.

  allgutsallgirl: WHAT??!!?

  ferretlover: i speld thoz wrds out.

  allgutsallgirl: I read it, but I don’t GET it. Irene has never done a sport in her entire LIFE. She was out of PE for a whole year, once, for a ping-pong injury.

  ferretlover: wow.

  allgutsallgirl: Does that mean something other than “wow”?

  ferretlover: no, jst wow. she’s a goalie.

  allgutsallgirl: A GOALIE! Have you ever seen all the gear field hockey goalies wear? They look like enormous marshmallows.

  ferretlover: i no! lol. she keeps it on wen she gets home, n she slept in it last nite. stik n all.

  allgutsallgirl: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I get it now.

  ferretlover:
get wut?

  allgutsallgirl: The snake’s still loose.

  ferretlover: wut snake?

  allgutsallgirl: I’ve got to go, Clare. I think the ship is sinking or something.

  ferretlover: wut ship?

  allgutsallgirl: Bye, Clare! Kiss-kiss!

  ferretlover: kiss means keep it simple stupid.

  allgutsallgirl: Ooops—sorry. But I bet Freud would have something to say about that.

  ferretlover: who?

  allgutsallgirl: Love you! Give Dad and Irene hugs for me!

  So, after that intellectually stimulating conversation, and after Tatyana wrote a long e-mail to her granddad in Lebanon, we wandered out on the deck. There was a noisy crowd at one end, and it turned out to be a bunch of people from the party. Apparently, the evening tournament had shifted from ring-the-sea-god to shuffleboard. I wanted to play, but Tatyana dragged me to the other end of the boat to stargaze. Which turned out to be very illuminating (hehe), because THERE, standing at the rail—aglow in starshine, like Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio—were Noori and AJ. And they were in the middle of a MAJOR KISS. (And I don’t mean “keep it simple, stupid.”)

  When I saw them, I thought: Noori must be a GREAT dancer. And then I felt an odd “pang.” I wondered if it might be a raging hormone trying to confuse me about whether or not it was a good idea to let the nice Texas boy go. But, NO, it turned out to be Tatyana poking me in the ribs.

  “Let’s leave them alone,” she mouthed, pulling me off to stargaze somewhere else.

  Okay. You’re all caught up on my adventures, and I’ve got to get ready to go. I have to figure out what top will go with my new skirt. (And, no, I WON’T pick a shirt with any numbers on it—I KNOW how to dress up, Delia. I think.)

  I need to take a shower, too, which is something I’m not looking forward to. Delia, you would NOT BELIEVE how small the shower stall is. I swear it’s no more than ten inches square. I’m TOTALLY afraid of getting stuck in it.

  (Oh, BE quiet.)

  Wednesday morning