“Yes!” Anya pulls out her worn Moleskine notebook and opens it up, revealing page after page of meticulous notes. “Amalfi Coast first, quick hop to Rome, then to Cinque Terre, short stint in Barcelona and Valencia, then Paris…” Her outline is color-coded, each day mapped out with associated costs and highlights for each area. Every section is meticulously budgeted. Anya had been certain she wouldn’t be able to make this trip financially possible, but with some planning and some major grinding, she’d managed to find a way. Anya takes out a folded one-hundred euro note from the folder behind the notebook’s cover. “My mom gave me this—she said to save it and spend it on a memory for the three of us.”
“Lynn for the win!” I shout. “Your mom is always so clutch.” Anya’s mom has worked two jobs for as long as I can remember but has always done everything in her power to make sure Anya never felt the pinch. She’s also infamous for plying us with her addictive Oreo-stuffed brownies and for dishing out cutthroat relationship advice.
“Let me AirDrop the playlist I made for the flight,”Anya says. Her taste in music is immaculate—she played bass for Shoe Gum, the only band at school with any clout—so I’m already vibing out as I scroll through the song list, centered around flying and beaches and escape. It’s official, vacation starts now.
“That reminds me—I have something for you guys, too.” Marisol gingerly takes out two packages from her backpack. They are wrapped in brown paper and twine.
“Mari,” I say. “You didn’t have to.”
“It’s only something small.” She piles her hands in her lap and waits for us to open them.
I rip it open manically. Inside the paper lies one of Mari’s crocheted masterpieces: a soft kelly-green book. Anya’s matches mine, except in her favorite color, black. Marisol has crocheted custom passport covers for each of us, and I run a finger over her stitching. She’s even embroidered our initials on each, along with tiny patches of a lemon, the Eiffel Tower, and London Bridge.
“Mari, these are incredible. What a thoughtful gift,” Anya says, sincere.
“Mari—I can’t.” I clutch the gift to my chest before fitting it over my passport. “It’s your best work. I’ll use this my whole life!” I fling my arms around her.
“It means so much that I get to share this with the two of you.” Mari has always managed to say the things Anya and I never quite can. “And I promise to only be a mildly annoying paparazzo on this trip, but you’ll thank me later.” Marisol gets out her Polaroid camera and wepose for a selfie together, holding up our passports in their new crocheted covers.
Eventually “Zone six, welcome to board” crackles over the intercom.
The time has finally come.
“No turning back now!” But the shuffle could not be slower as we inch forward. My phone vibrates again. I open the text. It’s from Wes.Hurry up and get here already!My face erupts into a smile before I quickly shield my screen. Finally, it’s my turn to scan my boarding pass and walk down. My heart races, thatreally good, bordering-on-cardiac-arrest pace right before you launch yourself into something so scary but so life changing.
While we wait in the human traffic jam, I grab my best friends’ hands and squeeze. “This is going to be the best trip of our entire lives.”
CHAPTER 2
I never understood before todaythe people who clap when their plane touches the ground.
I get it now.
They are applauding themselves for surviving.
The scheduled ten-hour flight had morphed into almost fifteen after we spent four and a half hours on the tarmac in Atlanta due to mechanical issues. The pilot announced the delay was due to one of the bathroom door latches being broken, which elicited a ripple of groans. But that was nothing compared to what followed. After three hours of sitting, the plane banded together and passed a petition around for signatures, saying we would all rather use the bathroom with the door open, flashing one another, than sit on this unmoving plane for even one more minute.
It didn’t work. We were instead treated to a snarky flight attendant reading out a number of FAA regulations over the loudspeaker before very unnecessarily tearing our petition straight down the middle for dramatic effect. We waited another hour and a half before it was fixed. I may have bedsores from sitting in that tiny seat for an eternity,but at least I now have 318 new Instagram followers—including Sailor Foster. I even spoke to her for an entire eight seconds in business class before I was sternly told to return to where I belonged: way in the back, next to the bathroom, and directly behind the unmasked seatmate who appeared to have contracted tuberculosis shortly before they boarded.
With all that unplanned downtime, we blitzed through the entirety of our downloaded streaming content and drained our cell batteries, mostly thanks to the seat-back monitors being broken. And to make things even worse, the outlets in the partitions didn’t work either, so I had to stop Anya’s playlist right in the middle of the crescendo of Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird.” First-world problems. By the time we land in Italy at twelve p.m. instead of seven a.m. the next day, we are irritable, hangry, and tired. A truly lethal combination.Especiallygiven all three of our phones are now teetering in that dangerous, living-life-on-the-edge range of 1–3 percent charge.
But we are here! Time to get drenched in sun and plied with overflowing bowls of pasta tossed with blistered tomatoes. Morale is already improving despite the stifling hot and slow-moving customs line. We finally make our way to the baggage claim, immersed as we are in a soundtrack of vibrant Italian and surrounded by display cases overflowing with cannoli sprinkled with mini chocolate chips. I attempt to translate Italian while reading the instructions for how to connect to the Naples airportWi-Fi. Distracted, I almost collide with a large, bulky police officer carrying a machine gun.
“Um. What was that?” I ask.
“We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Sora,” Anya jokes.
“Clearly. I was so not prepared.” I sneak another look before successfully connecting to Wi-Fi and quickly whipping out my adapter and plugging my cell phone into the first outlet I find. I wait a few seconds for any messages Wes may have sent to come in, but the only ones are from my parents.
We miss you already, Sora Joon!The text comes paired with a photo of our German shepherd, Reza, wearing a pair of new sunglasses I must have left behind.
I message them back to let them know we got in safe and that I love them. Then I text Wes.We are here! What are you guys up to?
Wes is visiting the Amalfi Coast with his fraternity brothers, a fact of which Anya and Mari are blissfully unaware (1) because I haven’t told them, (2) because they’ve blocked him on all socials and haven’t seen all his shirtless posts, and (3) because if I sneak off to see him at night after hanging with Anya and Mari all day, it’s no harm, no foul and an only somewhat convenient perk of this vacation that I may have not-so-subconsciously orchestrated.
His iMessage bubbles pop up and then disappear. I disconnect from Wi-Fi and then reconnect, but still no response. Anya’s bags and mine come out after a fewminutes, but we wait at the carousel for Marisol’s for almost a half hour, watching bag after bag get pulled from the belt until only one lone, lumpy suitcase remains, circling. It was time to admit reality.
“My bag is lost?” Mari’s eyes are teary. “Everything I need is in there.”
