Sunday, June 14
3 A.M.
Boo-woop. Boo-woop. Boo-woop.
Even Spanish alarm clocks had accents.
Alicia slapped her palm against the OFF button and cracked open the thin can of Red Bull she had chilled in a silver champagne cooler by her bed. After a long swig and dainty burp, she padded over to Nina’s half of the room to nudge her awake.
“Drink.” Alicia offered her the frosty can.
“Grassy,” grumbled her cousin before sitting up and guzzling the cherry medicine–flavored energy drink.
Alicia sat on the edge of Nina’s lumpy cot. The rusty coils cried out loudly in pain, and she quickly jumped up.
“Don’t worry, the twins sleep with a sound machine in their room. They can’t hear a thing.” Nina tossed the empty silver can on her floor and bounded out of bed like a superhero ready for battle. “Let’s do this!”
“What do you want? Roof or room?” Alicia pulled out a gold fifty-cent euro.
“Room,” Nina blurted, stating the obvious choice. “Heads.”
Alicia thumb-tossed the coin, caught it, and slapped it on the back of her hand with muy Spalpha attitude. She lifted her hand and sighed with relief. “Tails. Roof.”
“ADM.” Nina sighed, then crossed her chest in prayer.
Quickly, while Alicia hummed the theme song to Mission: Impossible, the girls changed into black-on-black sweats. They smudged Kimora Lee Simmons’s Noir eye shadow on their faces and stuffed Nina’s Day-Glo hair in the shower cap Alicia had colored with a black Sharpie. She looked like a giant blush brush.
“Be safe.” Alicia grabbed the CD she’d burned after work and crept toward the hall.
“Ten cuidado,” Nina whispered back, then hurried outside to the garden shed.
Alicia stood outside the red sliding barn door to the twins’ suite, her ear pressed against the wood. The only things that seized her senses were the smell of lavender bathwater and the muffled crash of waves beating against the virtual shore of their soothing sleep machine. Other than that, all was still.
Slowly and cautiously, Alicia slid open the door. She tiptoed inside. A long corridor dimly lit by a cast-iron candelabrum guided her to the twins’ sleeping chamber.
The semicircular room was shaped like a giant lemon wedge and carpeted with clothes. Leather boots, metallic sandals, platform flip-flops, and candy-colored jellies lay like rubble after an earthquake. Swimsuits, sarongs, gowns, tanks, shorts, hats, and a wrinkled heap of “borrowed” Ralphs had been tossed Ikea area rug–style.
“Ow!” Alicia whisper-shouted when one of her black-stockinged feet landed on something hard and cold . . . and gold! It was the RL charm on the scrunched-up GR bathing suit top. Once again it seemed to be mocking her, reminding her of what she had come to Spain for and what she had failed to get. It took all of Alicia’s strength not to lift up the twins’ red satin sleep masks and gouge their eyes out with the silver conchas on her RL Blue Label Mexican belt.
Suddenly, the muted shuffling sound of Nina dragging the garden hose across the roof made Isobel turn over in her carved wood canopy bed. And when Isobel turned, Celia turned. It must have been a psychic twin thing, because their matching kings were at least ten feet apart. Regardless, Alicia crouched down behind the burnt orange velvet chaise and held her breath, as if that might somehow reduce Nina’s lumbering impact on the tiles above.
Figuring she was only seconds away from reaching her target, Alicia had no choice but to make her move. She hurried over to the bookless bookshelf and pressed EJECT on the twins’ Sony stereo. The black machine, which was covered in makeup dust and gum wrappers, slide-offered its CD tray. Gently, Alicia placed the disc inside, grabbed the remote, and hurried to the door to wait for her cue.
All of a sudden, a rush of water trickled down the windowpane. Even though Alicia knew it was coming, the sight made her giggle. It looked so real! With renewed Spalpha confidence, she hit PLAY on the remote and speed-walked down the corridor, victory-punching the sky to the booming sound of thunder. She’d taken it off the beginning of ¡i!’s track and looped it over and over again—it seemed only fitting that the twins miss their Rain in Spain audition because of . . . the rain.
Mission accomplished!