Spain or Shine Page 17

  Eventually Jenna persuaded Chris, Marci, and Caitlin to get up and join the dance party.

  Elena stayed firmly planted, leaning back against Miguel, with his arms wrapped securely around her waist. Now that she was with him she didn’t want to let go. This wasn’t just another one of her daydreams. This was the real thing. This was an actual guy with insecurities and faults and dreams of his own. She turned her head and kissed him again.

  The plan had been to stay up talking and goofing around until dawn when they would all watch the sunrise together from their spot on the beach. During his time in San Sebastián, Alex had been up before dawn several times in order to get a couple of good hours of surfing in before school, and he promised them that dawn breaking over la Playa de la Concha was a magical sight. But around three in the morning, some members of the group were fading. Marci and Caitlin were the first to go, followed by Chris, who ended up falling asleep with his face mashed into the sand. Jenna and Elena had to gently shove a balled-up jacket under his head so he wouldn’t wake up with sand in his mouth. Then, Jenna fell asleep on Alex’s chest.

  Miguel and Elena lay together on Señora Cruz’s blanket and looked up at the stars.

  That night Elena had a week’s worth of dreams. She had strange dreams about getting on a ship with Miguel, Jenna, and Alex, and yet somehow watching them float away. She dreamed of her family and Claire waiting for her back home, and how it would feel to hug them all at the airport. She had dreams about getting stuck in a plane circling over Spain and the United States, unsure where to land. She dreamed of the beach and trains and finely dressed Spanish men sitting at outdoor cafés.

  Miguel woke her in time to see the light of dawn spreading pink across the sky. She sat up in the sand and looked at all her other friends still asleep on the sand. Although she wouldn’t remember any of the details of her dreams that night under the Spanish sky, she knew that the whole time she had been dreaming in Spanish.