Without Borders (7 page)

“
¿Dónde quieres ir a la escuela de medicina?
”

“What?” Annie squinted and turned toward her friend.

“Where do you want to go to medical school?” Marisol asked.

She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but her heart tore in half with the weight of how much it mattered. “Brown. But I’m keeping my options open.” There were other schools on her list, but Brown had been
the one
for so many years, she didn’t know how to seriously consider someplace else.

“I am also keeping my options open.” Marisol giggled and nodded toward Phillip as their boat left the tunnel. He sat alone at the tip of the boat, squinting like a mole. Every so often he would turn and smile at them, pointing at something along the shore. It was impossible to hear him over the din of the motor, but Annie and Marisol nodded and pretended to understand. Felipe stayed silent.

“What is he saying?” Annie whispered.

“Who cares? Look at him.”

Annie laughed. “Why do I feel like you’ve done this before?”

“Done what before?”

“Seduced one of the American guys who come through here.”

“Also one Spanish.” Marisol’s grin was contagious. “He is cute, no?”

“Sure.”

They fell silent. Marisol drifted off into her own world, which apparently involved undressing Phillip with her eyes. Annie stared out at the trees. The sun scorched her cheeks and the part in her hair as she searched for signs of wildlife.

“What are you looking for?” Felipe asked.

“Monkeys.” She smiled, keeping her eyes on the greenery. “Or sloths. Pretty much anything cute and furry that doesn’t want to eat me.”

“So you like the rainforest?” he asked.

“Yeah. I don’t really have anything to compare it to, though. Before this I’d never even been camping.”

“What do you mean?”

“Camping. Like sleeping outside and stuff. This is my first time.”

“
¿Verdad?
” He wrinkled his forehead.

“
Verdad
.” She paused. “Okay,
no verdad
. Once I went to Girl Scout Camp. I was eight. We slept in cabins though, not outside. So I don’t think that counts.”

“Girl Scouts? The ones with the cookies?”

“Yes! In fact,” she sat up tall, “I sold the most cookies in my troop every year.”

“How many years was that?”

“One.”

He grinned. “Why one? If you were the top seller.”

“My dad said I could only do one after-school activity at a time. The next year I wanted violin lessons.”

“You play the violin?”

She shook her head. “I was horrible. After the first round of lessons, the teacher sent me home with a note that he couldn’t keep taking my dad’s money.”

“
Pobrecita
.” His full bottom lip stuck out. Felipe’s face cracked into that full, spectacular smile. Her stomach leapt.

“Do you still play the guitar?” She remembered the times she and Marisol had sneaked into his basement lair, searching for the phone or food. A beautiful acoustic guitar rested along his wall, and even though Annie never saw him play it, his smooth voice came up through the vents of the house.

“
Sí
.” His smile grew even wider as they made their way through another darkened tunnel.

That dimple.

• • •

Those freckles.

The three pinpricks of brown dancing across the bridge of Annie’s nose begged for his attention. But the boat motored into another tunnel, and the freckles disappeared into the darkness.

“We need to work on your Spanish,” he said. Even in the cool dimness, he saw the smile slide off her face.

“I know.”

“You can speak it if you try.” The words didn’t sound as encouraging out in the world as they did inside his head. He grimaced. “That is not what I mean.”

“I do try. It’s not easy.”

“I know. It is hard, but you are smart.”

“When it comes to dissecting frogs, sure. When it comes to Spanish, no way.”

“What words do you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do not know what words you know?” He regretted the question as soon as it came out.

She sighed.

“We must fix this.” The darkness of the tunnel made him brave, and he laced her fingers through his. “I will say something in English and you say it to me in Spanish, yes?”

Annie glanced over her shoulder at Marisol, who had her face deep in a book. His sister smiled at the page, and Felipe knew she wasn’t reading. There wasn’t enough light. And no one smiled that wide while reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

“Okay,” Annie said.

“Hello.”

“
Hola
.” Her smile escaped at the tail end of the word.

“My name is Annie.”

“
Me llamo
Annie
.”

“You can also say
mi nombre es Annie
.”

She repeated the phrase, her lips turning deliberately around the strange words. He blinked hard and fast.

“Where is the bathroom?”

“
¿Dónde es el baño?
”

He shook his head. “
Está
. But in an emergency, that is okay.”

“
¿Dónde está el baño?
” Her accent made the words sharp, but they were understandable.

“Now you are prepared for anything. I am a master teacher.”

She pulled her hand away and tugged her hair into a rumpled ponytail as they emerged, blinking, into the sun. “Hardly.”

“I think you know more than you are letting on.”

“It’s the verb tenses.” She shook her head. “I can’t keep them straight. Sometimes I think I’m saying ‘I went to the store,’ but I end up saying ‘I wanted to have been at the store.’ And then everyone looks at me like this.” She cocked her head toward her shoulder, her lips puckered together.

“There are no stores here. I think you will be okay.”

“That’s not what—”

“
Broma
,
Annie
.
Broma
.”

She shook her head.

“Joke,” he told her. “You are learning. Use present tense for everything. People will understand.”

“But I’ll sound stupid. Like a tourist.”

“Everyone knows you are a tourist.” Red hair running wild in the wind. Pale skin pinking and sprouting freckles in the sun. “It is okay.”

She stared out at the shore then turned. “Okay. Teach me more words, and I will teach you to tell better jokes.”

“What is wrong with my jokes?”

“Nothing. They’re perfect.”

He pressed one finger to her forearm. The light pressure made her sun-seared skin go white. “Sunburn,” he said.

“No clue.”

“
Quemada
.”

“I guess I shouldn’t plan on going home with a great tan.”

“I do not think so.” She smiled, and he gave her a new word. “Freckles.”

The first time Annie went skinny dipping she was seventeen, full of teenage bravado and Natty Lite. The second time, she was with Mike one late night at the pool attached to her apartment complex. She didn’t know if today counted or not, but in the interest of making her life seem more exciting than it really was, she decided yes. Definitely yes.

She also decided that later, when she told the story of her not-so-sexy skinny dipping trip in a foreign country, she would leave out the part about scrubbing her clothes with pruney fingers in the brown river and scanning the water for the telltale ripples of a snake in their midst.

She laid her now cleanish shirt on a sunny boulder and squirted a handful of shampoo into her palm. Beside her, Marisol leaned against the chain of rocks separating their side of the river from the men. Annie tried to work the lather through the tangles and crusted mud in her hair, but she stumbled on a submerged rock and floundered forward, catching her balance a second before she belly-flopped into the river.

“Shhh. Come here.” Marisol’s voice was low. She jerked her head toward the rocks.

“What are you doing?” Annie trudged through the water and squatted next to her friend.

Marisol shushed her again as she peered around the edge of the rock wall and pointed. “I want to know what I am working with.”

Phillip stood on the other side of boulders. His back faced the girls, and he held a florescent blue bar of soap in one hand. He kept lifting his arms, sniffing his pits, then scrubbing them with the soap. He fit the pattern of all-American boy perfectly. Blond hair and tanned skin, perpetually bulging biceps. It was all there.
Except the sniffing his pits part
. If Marisol could look past that, he’d make the perfect summer fling.

Just like Mike.
For a beat, Annie’s heart threatened to crumple, thinking of her ex and whatever summer fling he might be having. But as quickly as the feeling came, it was gone, replaced by images of Mike and Phillip competing against each other
Barnyard Boyfriend
style. Obviously there would be an armpit sniffing competition. Perhaps a fake bedhead styling event.
Maybe I’m getting over this breakup after all. Or I’m totally losing it
.

Annie wagged a finger at her friend. “What if you see your brother instead? Or Juan?”

Marisol’s dark hair dripped down her back, and suds clung to the crook of her ear. “I have seen them all before. You cannot go on these trips without seeing someone naked. Besides,” she grinned, “don’t you want to see my brother naked?”

Annie tried to deny it, but the words caught in her throat. Heat inched up her neck and settled into the tips of her ears.

Marisol shook her head. “You think I do not see the way you turn to a ball of kitten fur when my brother looks at you?”

“Kitten fur?”

“Yes, all soft and a little bit strange.”

“Kitten fur isn’t strange. What are you talking about?”

Marisol ignored her. “And you think I do not see the way he stares at you all the time when you are not looking? If you are not looking at him, he is looking at you,
amiga
.”

“It’s just flirting, Mari,” Annie said, as a streak of shampoo slid down her forehead.

Marisol waggled her eyebrows. “Think of me like the Cupid of Nicaragua.”

“What? No.”

“Why no? You like him. He has been waiting for years for you to like him. I saw you in the boat yesterday.” Marisol crossed her arms against her chest.

Annie flushed at the memory of his warm fingers wound between hers. “What’s the point? I’ll be gone in a few weeks anyway.” As she said the words, the weight of their truth pressed harder against her chest. “Besides, it’s like my IQ drops ten points every time he looks at me.”

“I do not understand.”

Annie sighed and ducked to rinse the shampoo from her hair. “I keep saying stupid stuff. Doing stupid stuff. And our lives are so different. He’s out here in the middle of the jungle saving people while I’m going to sorority formals. It makes me feel so…” she swallowed hard, searching for the right word. “So insignificant, you know?”

“Leave it all to me. A girl has got the needs, no?”

Annie smiled despite herself. “Well, yes.”

Marisol tugged her arm, pulling her to the edge of the rocks. “Here comes Juan.
Un hombre
grande
, if you know what I mean.”

Annie stared for a moment, trying to string the Spanish together. But when Marisol ducked her chin and held her index fingers two feet apart, it all came together. She threw her hands over her mouth, droplets of river water hitting her lips. “He’s old.”

“Shhh!” Marisol shoved her forward. “Here.”

She braced herself for the train wreck, but Juan was nowhere in sight. Felipe stood underwater to his hips, and the perfection of his brown skin drove all thoughts of Juan and sorority formals straight from her mind. His shoulders rippled as he rubbed shampoo through his dark hair and lathered up his face to shave, and her eyes followed the trail of white suds down his sinewy back to the curve of his ass, barely submerged in the river.
I’m a total creeper
. But she didn’t look away, thinking about tracing that line of soap with her fingertips.

“Did you see Juan yet?”

Annie took a deep breath and turned, praying her expression didn’t give away the extent of her dirty thoughts. Marisol held her hands an unfathomable distance apart.

She shuddered. “God, no.”

• • •

Felipe lay on his hammock with a book in his hand. The coarse fabric scratched the backs of his legs, and his brain refused to comprehend the words in front of him. His gaze strayed across the cramped church, following the line of wet clothes dripping onto the dirt floor. At the end, Annie sat on a purple mat, scribbling in her journal.

“You did not bring a hammock,” he said. “Why?”

“Momentary insanity, I guess. I didn’t think I would be able to sleep in one.” She kept writing, her hand moving faster with every passing second.

“Do you want to sleep in my hammock?” he asked.

She jerked her head up, eyebrows raised to her hairline. “What?”

“Not with me, I mean.” He fumbled for words. “I can sleep on your purple thing.”

“Really?”

“
Sí
.”

“But the yoga mat is kind of horrible.” She scrunched her nose. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

“I will live.”

“How about we switch back and forth? Then I won’t feel as bad.”

Near the center of the room, Marisol stood and pulled a sandwich bag of cards from a backpack. “UNO!” She threw the cards at him, knocking the book from his hands.

“
No, gracias
.” Felipe tossed them back.

His sister rolled her eyes. “Annie? You still love UNO,
si
?”

Annie looked up from her journal. “Sure.”

“So you will play, yes?”

Her gaze flicked to Felipe, and her wide, round eyes locked on his. “Maybe another time.”

“Annie Sue, it will be like the olden times.”

Felipe corrected her. “Old days.”

“Maybe tomorrow, Mari.” Annie returned to writing.

Marisol put a hand on her hip. “You cannot even spare a few minutes for your oldest, dearest friends? Even though ’Lipe brought this UNO game along just for you?”

“Mari—” His face warmed.

“Look what I found.” Marisol lowered her voice in a horrid impression of her brother. “Remember how Annie was so good at UNO?”