“Well, Andrea. It seems that we’re stuck with each other, so I guess it would be better if we try to make it work.” I nodded. “I don’t know why Dad never mentioned you or your family before,” she continued, “ and I couldn’t care less. I do think it was really rude of him not to tell me you were in the house when we arrived last Friday. But since I guess it was not your idea, I’m willing to give you a chance.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. Now about the baby-sitting part. I have plans for today, and I’m not going to change them for you. You can come with me or be a good girl and visit the campus on your own.”
It was not a difficult decision. After Tío Ramiro came back with the key to my own room and we were sure he was gone, we left the dorms and walked across campus to the building with the word “gymnasium” written over the door. I followed Kelsey inside, keeping my questions to myself so I wouldn’t show my ignorance.
Soon after we had taken our seats high on the stairs that surrounded the central area, the game started. I watched as ten boys threw a ball to each other and, from time to time, into a hanging basket. I was starting to recognize the pattern of the game, when one of the players was replaced. I looked at the new player, and my heart started beating one hundred times faster. The boy was tall and lean with short brown hair, and his eyes were brown. I knew they were light brown, although I was too far to see them now. I knew that because he was the boy who had smiled at me the previous evening at the beach. The boy they had called John.
I remembered the blow of the ball to my back and the boy’s warm hand on mine, and the court became a blur. From then on, the game was not about following a ball anymore, but about following John. Although I clapped and screamed from time to time so Kelsey would not realize I had no clue of what was going on, I saw only John.
When the game was over, we waited outside the gym, talking with other girls until the players came through the back door of the building. I couldn’t tear my eyes from John. He was tall with the sinewy build of a warrior. I had already learned by then that most men in his world did not grow beards, but I still found his short hair and shaved face utterly fascinating.
With long strides, John came toward us, talking with another boy. His eyes were pale brown, as I remembered them, the color of the honey I used to steal from honeycombs back in my world to please my mother.
“Andrea! Hello!” Kelsey was shaking my arm. “Meet Richard and John.”
Instinctively I started a curtsy, but just as I bent, the other boy, Richard, took my hand and shook it firmly. “Hi,” he said. Without waiting for my answer, he moved toward Kelsey and kissed her. I was still staring at them, shocked by their public display of affection, when a deep voice spoke by my side.
“Hi, Andrea. Nice to meet you.”
I looked back at him and my mind froze. John was smiling at me with the same friendly smile I remembered from the first time I had seen him at the beach.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I mumbled, trying to keep my knees from shaking.
“Come on, you two. We are going to Al’s,” Kelsey called. Holding Richard’s hand, she walked away.
“So what’s your story?” John asked as we followed them.
“My story?”
“I mean, where are you from?”
“I . . . I’m from Spain.”
“Oh really?” John seemed pleased. “My grandparents came from Spain, too.”
“What do you study?” I asked hastily. I did not want him to start asking me questions about my supposed country. Questions, I was certain, I would not know how to answer.
“Archaeology,” he said. “And you?”
“English,” I told him, dutifully following Tio’s instructions. “I want to be an English teacher when I go back to Spain.”
John nodded, praised my English, and gave me a funny overview of what to expect in the following weeks and how to survive college life. Soon we reached the open patio where Kelsey and Richard were already waiting.
Soon the rest of the team joined us, and we all sat around a big table. Interrupting each other’s sentences, they discussed the game they had just won and the strategy for the next one while we shared some food called “nachos” and cold bubbly drinks.
By the time I said goodbye to Kelsey at the door of my room, we were already friends, and I was absolutely crazy about John. Of course, I knew only too well that John was not from my world and that my days in his world were numbered, but that could not stop me from dreaming.
Through the open window, the pale white moon of the new world was staring at me. Resting my elbows on the windowsill, I leaned forward, and as I watched it glowing majestically in the evening sky, a peaceful feeling overcame me. A feeling of belonging, as if I had finally found my place, the place I had been hunting for since before I was born.
The full moon was already waning, following the inexorable cycle of death and rebirth that would mark the end of my stay. Still, painfully beautiful, it smiled at me with its halfhidden face. Lost in its magic, I smiled back.
8
The Spanish Missions
Enrolling at the university was pretty easy. My mother, Tío Ramiro told me, had asked him to register my sisters and me as citizens of this world when we were born. In spite of my hard feelings toward Mother, I was deeply impressed by her foresight.
More difficult to explain to my uncle was why I had been late to meet him. The fact that I didn’t have an alarm clock—one of the devices people use in Tio’s world to measure time instead of our marked candles—was no excuse, as he had specifically told Kelsey to lend me one the previous day. She had forgotten. Things got worse when he asked me how I had liked the library, and I stammered something like, “It was very nice,” but I could not tell him where it was or which books I had taken home.
My uncle sighed. “Andrea, I’m not going to ask you what you did yesterday. You are not a child anymore, and I cannot supervise your every move. But I do hope you didn’t do or say anything that would jeopardize the secrecy of your world.”
“Of course not, Tío,” I said, trying to look appropriately outraged at the suggestion.
Tío shrugged. He didn’t seem convinced, but at least he didn’t pry further.
“As we discussed yesterday,” Tío told me as we left the registration office, “the best thing to do now is to pretend you have come from Spain to stay for a month and improve your English. So I have signed you up for several classes in the English department.”
“Classes have already started,” he continued as I nodded. “But you’ve only missed a week, so I don’t think you’ll have any problem catching up.”
“I’ll work hard,Tío, I promise.”
Tío grabbed my arm to steer me away from a bicycle coming straight at me, and after warning me again to watch for the bicycles darting around us like arrows in the practice field, he handed me a book.
“Here is your schedule,” he said, and after opening the book, he pointed at the top of the page. “We’re at the beginning of the fall term—”
I had noticed the leaves on the trees were turning, but as Tío mentioned it, this struck me as odd: it had been early spring in my world, only two days ago.
“How come it is fall?”
Tío frowned. “Why not?”
“But in my world . . .”
“Oh, I see. That is because your world takes fourteen of our months to circle your sun. So the seasons in both worlds usually don’t match.”
“I’m glad I came now and not in a couple of months. Imagine, I could have ended up in the middle of a snow storm.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. There is no snow in California.”
“No snow! This world is indeed magic. I think I will like it here.”
Tío Ramiro laughed. “I’m sure you will, Andrea. But remember, you must go back to your world in a month.”