Queens of All the Earth

by Hannah Sternberg

  It was Lenny who next swung open the door with self-satisfied gusto, meeting Miranda’s glare.

  “What, did someone die?” she asked, her hangover apparently having abated at last with the help of two stunning young men in reflective gear.

  “No, I’m just waiting for everyone to get back,” Miranda said.

  “Lonely are we?” Lenny said, dropping her bag onto a chair and rounding the corner to her dorm. Her voice emerged: “You’re trying to catch someone.”

  Soon, she followed her voice back into the common room.

  “Have you seen Hugo around?” Lenny asked. “I need to talk to him.”

  “No. I’m waiting for him, too.”

  “What’s up?” Lenny asked, plopping down beside Miranda. Miranda got up and began to clear away the debris of her picnic lunch.

  “Olivia saw someone’s notebook. Someone’s been writing about her,” said Miranda, picking up the notebook to show it to Lenny. “Her and Greg.”

  “Her and Greg?” Lenny asked.

  “On the beach. You know,” Miranda said, anger flaring higher at Lenny’s nonchalant non-reaction.

  “Weird,” Lenny said with raised eyebrows.

  “No, you don’t get it!” Miranda said, slapping the notebook back to the table. “I know you told someone. Who else here knows?”

  “Hey, hold up, calm down,” said Lenny. “I haven’t told anyone.”

  “That’s impossible. It’s right here!”

  “I don’t know who wrote that,” Lenny said, “but it wasn’t me, and I didn’t tell them.”

  Miranda felt a rush of relief. “I’m so glad it’s not my fault.” She sighed. “Or yours, either,” she added. “Olivia thought it was you. I knew I could trust you.”

  “Well, don’t get too attached,” Lenny said with a grin. “I’m going to Tarragona tonight. That’s why I’m looking for Hugo. I need to check out. I think I might just leave a note.”

  “I thought you were staying until the end of the week,” said Miranda. “You have an article to write.”

  “On Catalonia. Not just Barcelona,” said Lenny. “I thought I might as well start on day trips. One of the guys I met today has family up there and he said he’d show me around.”

  “He could be anyone!” Miranda said. “Are you going to stay with him?”

  “It’s my job,” Lenny replied, hopping up. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got to go pack up. The train leaves at 4:30, and I’m meeting Sam at the station.” She ran out, then quickly returned to the common room with a brimming backpack and a half-rolled sleeping bag. She threw her things onto the floor and began unpacking and re-sorting her underwear by Miranda’s feet.

  “Marc’s in there and he’s snoring,” Lenny said. “You guys must have climbed that mountain pretty fast!”

  “We did, I guess, but we skipped the castle.”

  Lenny just snorted and shrugged, and left her boxer-pajamas hanging out of her bag’s outer compartment while she ran into the kitchen and snatched a bottle of water from the fridge.

  “Hey, do you mind leaving a couple euro for Hugo for this?” she said. “I’m completely out of change.”

  “Have you ever been to Africa?” Miranda asked.

  “Lived in South Africa a little while. Why?”

  “How about Morocco?”

  “Too many Americans,” Lenny said. “You’d probably like it. It’s a nice... safe place to go if you really want to visit Africa.”

  “Do you know if there’s a good hostel there we could stay at?”

  “I think I know someone,” said Lenny. “I don’t think he runs a place, but he knows whoever does, or something like that, and I’ve heard about it. Sounds nice. Your kind of nice.”

  “Do you have his number?”

  Once she convinced herself this needed to be done and calmed down enough to do it, Miranda realized there were only really three things to worry about. First: Find a place to stay. Next: Find a way to get there. Last: Get away from here. It was almost too easy.

  Lenny stared at her. She had just said something.

  “What?” Miranda said.

  “I didn’t know you were into Africa,” Lenny repeated.

  “Oh, yeah. Olivia’s always wanted to go.”

  “Huh. I guess I thought she would have mentioned it sometime. Since it’s so close to here, you know.”

  “Yeah. We can’t wait.”

  Lenny laughed. “I can’t believe Olivia never asked me about Africa. You’d think she would, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, if you’d mentioned it earlier, I probably could have helped you out a lot more. But now I’ve got plans...”

  “It’s okay.”

  Lenny concentrated for a moment on untangling three socks from a bra.

  “I know she’ll love it,” Lenny said with a smirk. “If you don’t come back changed after that place...” She shrugged, as if that was all that had to be said.

  Lenny left that afternoon without saying goodbye, without leaving a note for Hugo, and, it was found out later, without paying half her bill. The only address she left was the editorial office of Lonely Planisphere. The magazine, it turned out, had been defunct for eighteen months.

  “Lenny left this for a bottle of water,” Miranda said when she finally found Hugo a bit later, leaning over Sophie at the computer as she worked out how much the hostel had lost from the backup funds they kept for walk-outs. Miranda put down two euro of her own money.

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed slightly, but Hugo still had his arm around her, and his thumb found its way up and then down again, fanning against her side. She bit her lip while he smiled away Miranda. So few people actually paid for the water they took that they’d stopped charging, Hugo explained. Miranda could take the euro back.

  Miranda stood, staring at the coins, wondering whether it would be worse to leave them or worse to take them, but eventually she slid them back off the desk and into her pocket. She turned and slunked away, but came back immediately when she remembered what she had actually wanted Hugo for.

  “What’s your policy on terminating a stay early?” Miranda asked.

  “What?” Sophie said.

  “If I want to leave. Can I have my money back?”

  Sophie shot daggers at her.

  “No, sorry,” she said. “No cancellation after the booking is confirmed.”

  Miranda sighed.

  “Can’t you just give our room to someone else?”

  “No cancellation.”

  “But you are just going to give our room to someone else!”

  Hugo shrugged and shot a glance up at Sophie. Rolling her eyes, Miranda stalked to the computers at the back of the common room, where she looked up Lenny’s friend’s friend’s friend’s hostel in Casablanca, Morocco, and then took notes on budget flight schedules.

  “I’ve booked us a room in Casablanca, and a flight on Econair for tomorrow morning,” Miranda said to the back of Olivia’s book as she strode into their room. The book bobbed, which Miranda saw as a positive response until she realized Olivia was just turning a page.

  “Great,” Olivia eventually said.

  “Come on, don’t you want to go out and buy a guidebook to celebrate?”

  “They’d all be in Spanish.”

  “What the hell, maybe my leftover college Spanish isn’t as useless as I thought. It’ll be an adventure.” But Miranda felt the same rising fear she’d experienced when she’d first seen her little sister unresponsive in bed. At each step of Olivia’s improvement, there had been a little backslide before the plateau.

  “I’m tired. I think I’ll read here,” said Olivia.

  “Well, we need something to tell us where to go,” Miranda said. “But if you don’t feel well, you rest here. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Miranda revolved out of the room. Her actions were mirrored by sleep-tousled Marc across the corridor. He grinned at her, noting the coincidence with a nod, which encouraged her to smile as well. May
be it was waking up and looking so disheveled, but he seemed more welcoming and less flippant than he ever had before, even before opening his mouth. His wrist was wrapped neatly in an ACE bandage, and the pinched look was gone from his eyes.

  “How are you doing?” Miranda said, a protective edge still lingering in her tone.

  “Oh, this? Much better,” Marc replied, brandishing his bandaged arm. “I’m not sure what worked best—the bandage, the ice, the nap, or the meds—but I feel much better—about the world at large, as a matter of fact,” he said, slightly dreamily.

  “You know, they sell much stronger stuff over-the-counter here than they do back in the States,” Miranda said suspiciously. “Well, I guess you know that, since it’s sort of the same in Peru, right?” She’d forgotten for a second that he wasn’t American like her.

  Marc blinked.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” he said after short consideration. “Where are you off to?”

  “I’m looking for a bookstore,” she said. “Olivia doesn’t want to go out again.”

  “A bookstore? I’ll come with you. I love bookstores. Just give me a minute.”

  “Really, don’t you want to sleep it off a little—”

  “I’ll only be a second,” said Marc. “Let me put on a clean shirt.”

  Miranda retreated to the common room and stood between the kitchen tables, shifting from foot to foot. She tried to avoid looking in either direction, because Hugo anchored one end of the front hall, shuffling calculations on the reception laptop, and at the back of the room, Sophie simmered at one of the guest computer stations.

  The lilies were gone. Either they had expired quickly or Sophie had taken them home. All that remained was a damp brown circle on the sill where they used to sit. If it were spring, Sophie could have opened the window and put out a box where she could grow fresh flowers and watch them bloom through the grainy-streaked glass, yawning above stories of green leaves. Miranda grew red geraniums in her balcony garden at home, and she liked looking into her neighbors’ window gardens.

  Five minutes later, Marc appeared in a black t-shirt and black jeans, looking slightly more combed. With the late-afternoon sunshine illuminating his gray-threaded black hair, he looked charming, and reminded her of what people seemed to see in Hugo. She remembered with a jolt that he had said he was becoming a priest. Every day, every hour, each new appearance he put in, he seemed more relaxed, more average, and less like a priest, as if his character were softening in the sun and sloughing off in waxy peels.

  Did travel do that to people? Was it doing it to Olivia?

  “We are ready to embark,” he said, beaming a manic grin at Miranda and swinging his arms, stopping himself with huge eyes just before clapping his hands together.

  Miranda smiled tightly and looked to the door. They left.

  In the cool noisiness of the shady street, Miranda felt the pressure in her chest lift. She looked around herself without a camera in hand and enjoyed what she saw. Now that she knew she’d be leaving shortly, she could finally enjoy being there. She let the late afternoon trickle of the crowd wash her gently down the street, and barely cared whether Marc kept up, except to see his grin and nod every so often when they passed something they both liked or found funny.

  Miranda turned into a travel bookshop hidden in a nook between two larger buildings, but Marc stopped her at the door.

  “Everything in here’s going to be in Spanish,” Marc said. “If you’re looking for something to read, I think there’s a bookstand with English paperbacks just around the corner.”

  “I have something specific in mind,” Miranda said, sweeping to the back corner of the shop.

  Marc followed with considerable curiosity. “The bookstand has some guides,” he said.

  “Just Barcelona and Spain stuff,” Miranda said, entering the Africa section.

  “Planning another trip already? Can’t you buy a guide when you get home?”

  “We’re not going home,” said Miranda. “Well, we’re going home, but we’re leaving first. To Casablanca.”

  “You got a few extra days off?”

  “No, we’re leaving here early. Our flight is tomorrow morning.”

  Marc’s face extended downward in a thoughtful frown, and he leaned against the bookshelf behind him. He stood and stared at her for several moments without making a comment.

  Confused, Miranda turned back to her shelf and read through each title meticulously, even when she didn’t know what they meant. She had the crawly, damp sensation down the back of her scalp of covering something up.

  “Is there something wrong?” said Marc. “I thought you were enjoying it here. Why the sudden urge to get away?”

  “We’re not getting away from anything,” Miranda said quickly. “Olivia and I have always wanted to go to Africa.”

  “Ah, it must have been Olivia’s plan. This doesn’t sound like you. Or maybe I read you wrong,” Marc said.

  “What does that mean?” Miranda avoided Marc’s eyes by staring intently at a book she had just pulled down. Realizing she held it upsidedown, she gave up and put it back on the shelf without ever determining what it was about.

  Marc pushed himself upright again and shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter. I was just curious,” he said. “It just sounds like something—something Lenny would do. Did she talk you into it?”

  “Lenny left a few hours ago,” Miranda said.

  “Well that explains the silence.” Marc laughed weakly. “You two looked like you got along pretty well. Aren’t you upset she’s gone early?”

  “We’re going, too, so it doesn’t really matter,” said Miranda. “Anyway, the week’s half over, and Olivia really wants to get out and see something different while she has the time. To tell the truth, so do I.” Miranda approached the counter with a pocket-sized map and guide to Casablanca written in fourth-grade-level Spanish.

  “That sounds like a lot of fun,” Marc said blandly. “I can’t blame her, on her first trip out of the country. Isn’t that what she told me?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Miranda counted her change and paid in part with the money she’d taken back for Lenny’s water. She sailed out of the store and into Marc’s puzzled smile.

  “How are you going to read that?” Marc asked, referring to the book she’d just bought.

  “I knew a little Spanish back in college,” Miranda said. “It’s easier to remember how to read it than how to speak it. It’s enough to get directions at least.”

  “Too bad. You could have practiced your speaking here,” Marc said, turning sharply to begin their march back to the hostel.

  They walked slowly, and Miranda felt the shadows drop over her and onto the pavement. She remembered the last time she had felt her surroundings to be so magical. It was when she was twelve, drawing with colored chalk on the sidewalk in front of her house—giant crabs and seascapes and smiling faces. The rumble of the thick chalk over pebbly concrete was like the earth quaking, and the flight of birds from the tree above was the flight of her hair in the summer breeze. Miranda brushed it aside with a wisp that escaped from behind her ear.

  She thought of her sister as she had found her yesterday morning, curled around her book in a chair, asleep.

  Olivia was changing. She felt it sometimes when she woke up and creaked her joints, and looked down the length of her body to the tips of her toes, and wondered, When did this happen to me? She thought it sometimes when she put down her book and looked around her and saw that everything was completely different.

  The solid black letters slid out from under her eyes and once more uncovered the room. Olivia’s head hurt now, and she wanted a glass of water. She sat up slowly, hyperaware of the bed’s squealing springs, the moan of the floorboards under her feet, and the crinkle of fabric across her skin. Her mouth tasted sour, and she remembered she had hardly eaten any lunch, but the sun had dried all the hunger out of her. Now she only wanted to lie somewhere very d
ark and pass out, only she needed water first.

  Hugo was waiting. Olivia blinked. She was suddenly aware of the possibility of pillow marks on her cheek. Her mouth opened and it closed, while Hugo waited, looking inquisitively into her puzzled eyes.

  “Drinking water?” she asked at last.

  He nodded and opened the fridge where the water bottles were, and then got a glass down for her and poured some out. He handed it to her and watched her drink, and she gave him the glass when she was done, her head spinning.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No problem. Have a nice trip tomorrow.”

  The words hit Olivia in the chest with a dull thud. She swallowed it. Her heart began to pound. It was unpleasantly hot and sticky, standing in the kitchen facing Hugo.

  “Thanks,” she said again. Hugo held her with his open, friendly gaze, impossible to escape.

  “You must really want to get out and see more,” he said. “I hope you have a good time.”

  Olivia felt her face working.

  “I just feel like we’re done here,” she said, shrugging. “We’ve seen everything.”

  “You can’t. Have you gone up to the castle?”

  “Yes. It was very nice, and we’re done now,” Olivia lied.

  Hugo frowned slightly and drew down his eyes.

  Olivia’s throat was tight and her dizziness increased.

  “I have to go pack,” she said breathlessly, whirling away.

  In her room, Olivia stopped to stare at her suitcase in the corner, clean and dirty clothes spilling out. Crumpled pamphlets were strewn across the floor, and her shoes were upside-down under the bed. She shut the door and was terrified.

  She hadn’t seen Barcelona, and now she was leaving it—the place that had made her so thoroughly homesick and confused, the place that had shocked her with new, beautiful, and hopeful things. It reminded her of the last day of fifth grade, and feeling the dull, thick sense of indefinable grief that another year was slipping by, moving steadily through childhood and toward something gaping, black, and unknown. Even then, Olivia had always been sadder at the end of the school year than at the end of summer.