Blake laughed it off. He thinks she’s a sugar plum and a candy cane and doesn’t take anything she says or does seriously. I tried to counsel him. She wasn’t joking, I said. She was utterly unmoved by my beautiful Franconia.
Getting from Boston to Riga is another good example of what I mean. We did have to wait a long time. So what? The seats weren’t the most comfortable. So what? The food wasn’t as good as Burger King. But so what, and what is? We are on a three-week joyride together. To Europe! That’s amazing. During the Franconia snow-in, we were with our mom and Chloe’s mom. You know, to keep an eye on things. Make sure we didn’t get out of hand, and um, out of some things, and into other things. This time we’re motherless, and the girls still aren’t happy. Chloe keeps calling Riga her penance. I hope she is joking. And Hannah doesn’t care about anything but Barcelona. She also thinks we’re going to swing over to Paris for a few days. If I didn’t know that Hannah doesn’t have a humorous bone in her body, I’d swear she was joking. To explain why we couldn’t “swing over to Paris,” Blake tried to show her the map, to talk through the twenty-one days of our trip with her, every one accounted for, but she ignored him. To pay her back, Blake and I now ignore every mention of Paris. It’s like we can’t hear her. Every time she says Paris, we say, what? She says PARIS, and we say, what? She says Paris!!! We say, what?
I can’t tell you how much that annoys her and amuses us.
It’s warm in Riga, and the fields are pretty. Maine has more pine. Here, everywhere I look, the grass is uncut. The roads have no shoulders and no sidewalks. I’m sure when we get closer to the city, there will be sidewalks. Right? There have to be some sidewalks somewhere, no?
Hannah is an ice queen. I’d never say anything to my smitten brother. I know she’s beautiful and all. But my God. She’s sitting in a Latvian taxi, looking at her feet. She’s not even looking out the window. I say, Hannah, look, Riga.
And she says, so? It’s a city. I’ve seen cities before.
But you’ve never seen Riga, right?
The worst part is, she got Blake to sit in the middle because she said she wanted to sit next to a window, and now she’s not even looking out of it! If I was Blake, I’d be pissed. Heck, I’m pissed already, and I’m not even Blake.
At least Chloe loves stuff. Once she stops being anxious and, granted that’s easier for me to write than for her to do, but once she stops, she loves stuff. She loves going to the movies and to water parks, loves talking and fishing, and though I don’t like fishing, I like that she likes it. She loves skating and plays a mean four-player hockey game. And she’s a fast skater, too. Not as fast as Blake, but fast for a girl. I can buy her an ice cream or a burger, and she eats it with gusto. She likes driving, and she sings when she drives. She sings when she gardens, too. She never yells at other drivers. And she is so pretty. She doesn’t like people to think that, sometimes not even me. Says she doesn’t want me to objectify her, or some shit like that. I still like looking at her, and when she lets me, I like touching her. She’s got the silkiest hair of anybody I’ve ever met. And other soft nice things too. I wish she’d let me touch her more often. Sometimes it’s hard to get her alone. Ever since Dad’s truck broke, it’s been a bitch to get together just the two of us. Blake and Hannah somehow manage, because on top of everything else, I’m always at varsity. Poor Blake. He’s the most in-deep-trouble dude in Maine, because not only does he not know how unlucky he is, but he thinks he’s lucky.
Things I’m most stoked about: 1. Seeing the Alps on the way to Spain. 2. Barcelona. 3. Being alone with Chloe. Miles of beaches, cheap hotels, food, drink, night. Maybe a room to ourselves. I can’t wait. A last hurrah.
Hannah
I miss him. I’m a million miles away and yet all I can think about is him. Last time we saw each other he kept begging me to let him come visit me for a few days in Spain. I said, how could you possibly, I’m going with Blake. He didn’t care. He said maybe I could get away for a few hours. Where would I tell Blake I’m going, I asked him. To a Barcelona bed with me, he said.
I want to be a good girlfriend for Blake here in Europe, give him these few weeks as happy memories. He’s been good to me. And I’ve been good to him, of course.
Mason has never seen anything or been anywhere, so he’s acting like Riga is da bomb. It’s annoying. I didn’t even know Riga was a capital city until Moody told me. I had barely heard of Latvia. This isn’t where my future lies. I’m going to study to be a trilingual interpreter. I will wear beautiful clothes and go to state dinners in the capitals of the world. Not Riga. Other capitals. I will meet important diplomats, shake their hands and flirt with them. I will get fluent in Spanish and French. Where is my French book? I want to study my subjunctive conjugations while we pass Riga by.
Tomorrow Chloe is going to the orphanage and the boys to the Old City. I’m tempted to send them all off without me, so that I can get over the jetlag, write, practice my Spanish and French, and my English elocution. I’ll say I’m not feeling well. I’ll allude to some womanly problems. That always works. I’ve actually been feeling off lately, that’s not a lie.
Blake
Everything is amazing. Traveling was great. I want to travel all the time. I love planes, I’d never been on one, but how amazing! Packing was fun, carrying stuff, helping the girls, the ride to Boston; I wish we had time to spend a few days in Boston, looking around, walking around. When I grow up and have my own business and can take off work whenever I want, I’ll go to Boston once a month for a long weekend, just to walk around and see the sights. Maybe Chloe can go to Harvard Law School and Mason and I can go visit her. The airport was awesome. I had four burgers because I knew I might not eat for a few hours. The check-in lady weighed my bags to see if they were over, but she should’ve weighed me, because I was over. Ha! Four burgers, two large fries, a large shake, and a Hershey chocolate pie. And a Coke. I was full up, man. She forgot to weigh me. Poor Chloe hardly ate at all, on account of being such a nervous flyer. Her bag was too heavy. She said it was because of my journal, but I told her it was because of her three pairs of shoes.
Hannah is the most seasoned traveler out of all of us, which isn’t saying much, because we’ve never been anywhere, but she’s been to Quebec once, and to Niagara Falls. Before her ’rents imploded, they took her and Jason to Chicago, and once to see Elvis’s house in Memphis, because her crazy cheating dad is an Elvis freak. She took five years of Spanish and three years of French, as she keeps reminding us. So she’s an expert, she says, and doesn’t need to be awake. I love how calm she is.
Poor Chloe! Mason wasn’t sitting next to her and he was snoring to boot, and Hannah was meditating or whatever, but Chloe really needed to talk to somebody to calm down, and she had no one. She would’ve been less steamed if she’d talked to somebody. She just needed a few jokes and some banter about bullshit.
I’m so psyched about Riga. Who else but me is going to write about Riga in the competition? I’m going to season my story with the spice of Europe, baby, and I’m going to choose my words extra carefully, and they’ll be dazzled. I’ll have Chloe read it before I send it, so she’ll be dazzled too, and she’ll say, I didn’t know you could write, Blake, and be all impressed. Look at how awesome your story is, she’ll say.
Chloe
She loved the city in the distance. She loved the traffic on the roads (though she loved it less on the bridge they were failing to cross), and the vivid colors of