“My Claudia!” Abuela shouts, as if she can’t hear her.
“I can’t believe we caught you so late,” my dad says.
Claudia’s face is lit by the glow of the phone. She yawns without bothering to cover her mouth. “I was just finishing up here, resetting the stage before tomorrow’s matinee. Is that Callie?”
I wave. “The one and only.”
“Mom give you your phone back yet?” she asks.
“Finally.”
“And you didn’t call me?” she demands.
“I don’t see you rushing into my missed calls either.”
She nods. “Fair enough.”
“Give us a tour of the opera house,” Abuela says.
“I gotta make it quick. I’m one of the last people here, and this place is definitely haunted. I promised Rachel I’d call her before I went to bed.”
“When do we get to meet this Rachel?” my dad asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I gotta scope out my sister’s first real girlfriend.”
Claudia laughs. “Uh, not with that attitude you don’t.”
She gives us a brief tour of the Semperoper and tells us a little bit of the architectural history, which is a snooze fest, but Dad is eating it up. I’ll admit, though, with the ornate gold-gilded interior, elaborate paintings, and velvet seats, she’s probably not wrong about this place being haunted.
After we hang up with Claudia, my dad falls asleep almost as soon as he pulls the lever on the recliner. I spread out on the couch with my head in Abuela’s lap as we watch a rerun of one of her favorite telenovelas,Corazón Salvaje. I can pick up on enough of the dialogue to sort of follow along, but soon enough the three of us are all dozing, and it’s a few hours before any of us even bother heading to bed.
I spend the morning and afternoon helping my dad paint the barn he and Abuela use for storage. Abuela tested every shade of turquoise before settling on mint green. When I asked why she wanted to paint her barn mint green, she said because she’d never seen a barn that color before.
While I sit on the ground with her, mixing paint, she says, “It’s nice to see you have girlfriends over.”
I shrug. “They’re okay.”
She taps the wooden stick against the side of the canister and sets it down before pouring it into a paint tray. “What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t speak teenager.”
“I don’t know. I guess the more I think about it, the more I’ve realized that I’m not very good at having friends who are girls.”
She tsks. “Don’t fall into that trap.”
“They’re nice. I just... I’m not.”
“Girls don’t have to be nice,” she says simply. “But they should stick together.” She shakes her head. “The wider world wants you to think other women are drama... or catty. But that’s just because when we work together, we’re unstoppable.”
“But you have Aurelia. She’s, like, your ride or die. I don’t have a lifelong BFF like that.”
“You will. One day you’ll wake up and find that there’s a woman, or maybe a few, who have outlasted every changing season in your life.”
That evening, everyone arrives in Millie’s minivan. I’m almost expecting to see that Willowdean is missing, and Ellen by association, but they prove me wrong when all five of them spill out of the van like it’s a clown car. Well, there’s no turning back now.
Amanda pours a half-eaten bag of Corn Nuts down her throat, then, with her mouth full, says, “The best road trip food.Ever.”
“The drive is barely an hour,” I tell her.
She grins, showing off half-chewed bits of food. “Any excuse for Corn Nuts.”
