I folded my arms and braced myself. Then he surprised me.
“This past semester wasn’t so good,” Drew said. “I didn’t let anybody see my grades, but listen—Sis, they were bad. Really bad.”
“What?” I’d known Drew had some problems with his first semester of college—he’d gotten a D in his required math class, which was weird because he’d always been good in school when he was younger—but he’d done okay in his other subjects. “How bad?”
“Academic probation bad.” Drew swallowed. “I’m going to have to take pretty much everything over again.”
“Everything? Are they holding you back?”
Drew shook his head. A new load of suitcases came across the belt, but my bag—purple with red flowers—was nowhere in sight. “It isn’t the same as high school. You don’t get ‘held back.’ But it’s the same idea.”
“Wow.” I was still struggling to get my head around the thought of Drew failing. My brother had always won at everything he’d tried. “Dad is going to freak.”
“You can’t tell him, okay? Promise you won’t tell him.” I’d never seen that look on Drew’s face before. Drew was usually a cheerful guy, always making other people laugh. But there was no trace of a smile on his lips now.
“Yeah, yeah, of course. So what are you going to do, take all the same classes when you go back again this year?”
“Maybe.” He tugged on his ear. “If I go back.”
It took me a second to understand what he’d said. When I got it, I whirled around to face him, the hunt for my suitcase forgotten. “If?”
“Calm down, Sis.” Drew held up his hands. “You don’t need to turn into a banshee on me.”
“Are you talking about dropping out of school?” He might as well have said he was considering Satanism. All Mom and Dad had been telling us since birth—probably even longer; they probably told us while we were still in utero—was how important our educations were.
“I don’t know.” Drew ran a hand over the back of his head, the way he did when he was anxious. Dad did that, too. “All I’m doing is considering my options.”
I stared at him, my jaw on the floor. How long had he been thinking this? I’d thought I knew everything about my brother. I thought his life was golden.
“Listen, for real,” he said. “Promise you won’t tell Dad.”
“Of course I won’t.” I was offended he’d even ask. Drew and I had been keeping each other’s secrets forever. “But tell me when you decide, okay? And if you need help in math, I can tutor you.”
Drew laughed and elbowed me. “I’m not getting tutored by my kid sister.”
“Whatever, I’m better at math than you. Even college math.”
“Yeah, okay, genius.” Drew scanned the belt again. “Also, Sis, I hate to say this, but I don’t think your suitcase is here.”
“Oh...crap.”
We went to the airline counter to tell them about my suitcase. Drew had to do most of the talking, since his Spanish was better than mine. Then Dad came back to check on us and we didn’t have another chance to talk about what Drew had said.
But I kept thinking about it. My brother—dropping out of college? Mom and Dad would never let him. They’d kill him.
“We’re priming the wall,” I told Drew now, since I couldn’t say any of that.
“Yeah, looks like it’s getting there.” Drew eyed our white patch, which still looked really uneven. “You’re Christa, right? From Rockville? I’m Drew, Aki’s brother.”
“Hi.” Christa stifled her giggles. She set her paintbrush back in the pan and tried to wipe the paint off her elbow. “I hate to tell you this, but your sister is kind of a meanie.”
“Oh, I’m well aware.” Drew grinned at her. Christa was still rubbing at her elbow. God, she was cute. “By the way, Sis, your clothes don’t fit.”
“They’re Lori’s clothes, genius.”
“Right, your suitcase.” Drew scratched his head. “I’ve got some stuff you can borrow if you want.”
“Drew, you’re, like, a guy.”
“Oof. Harsh.” He clasped a hand to his heart. I rolled my eyes again. Drew turned back to Christa and pointed to the patch of wall she’d been painting when I came in. “Hey, Christa, did you paint this section?”
“I sure did.”
“I figured,” Drew said. “It’s the only part that looks halfway decent.”
“Hey!” I reached out to swipe Drew with my paintbrush, but he stepped away in time.
“Come on, Aki’s section looks great,” Christa said. I beamed, even though she was totally lying.
“Had you painted before you came here?” Drew asked her.
“Yep. Well, I’ve painted one room, anyway.”
“Your room at home?” Drew asked.
“No.” Christa bent down and wiped her paintbrush on the edge of the tray. “I helped my boyfriend paint his room at his dad’s house.”
“Your ex-boyfriend?” I asked, thinking I’d misheard.
Christa stood up, biting her lip. “Uh, no. Current.”
I dropped my brush. Paint splattered onto my pants. Drew jumped out of the way to avoid getting hit.
“Hey, you three!” one of the pastors from the West Virginia church called over. “No roughhousing!”
Christa stood up straight. When she called back to the pastor, her voice was totally different than it had been when she was talking to us. She sounded calm. Demure, almost. “We’re very sorry, sir.”
The pastor came over to us, looking with a frown at our uneven paint job. “I don’t think it’s really going to take all three of you to finish what’s left of that wall. You two are Benny’s kids, right?”
Drew and I nodded, keeping our sighs to ourselves. Preacher’s kids never got a break.
“Come out here and we can get you to work on the ditch.” The pastor nodded to Christa. “You can finish up that wall on your own.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, still in that strange voice.
Stop, I wanted to say to Christa. Wait. Tell me what this means.
“Come on, Sis,” Drew said. Preacher’s kids did as they were told.
I tried to catch Christa’s eye before we left, but she didn’t look my way. She’d already turned back to the wall.
She was out of sight long before I’d stopped shaking.
I poked the rice with my fork. It looked like rice, anyway. It was hard to tell. There was all sorts of...stuff in it. Beans, and other things I didn’t recognize.
Mexican food in actual Mexico, it turned out, wasn’t anything like the Mexican food at Taco Bell. Everyone around me was gobbling down whatever was on their plates, but I preferred to be sure I knew what, exactly, I was putting in my mouth.
Lunch had been torture. We’d split up into groups and gone to the local families’ houses to eat. A nice