Page 11 of My Stepbrother's Wedding
I survived the hour-long trip to Pelagonia without agreeing to marry anyone. Dad slept the entire flight, his legs sprawling into the aisle while he drooled onto Elizabeth’s shirt. She looked too tired to care. We landed, and they stumbled ahead of me off the plane.
As in Petrovistan, the airport staff corralled us onto a scorching, overcrowded bus. The only difference was that the early afternoon sun beat down hotter than before. I stood smashed into a corner beside my father and stepmother, stiffand exhausted. The reek made me cringe. A discreet sniff of my armpit revealed the source of the odor. I’d have felt more self-conscious, but I figured the smell might reduce my chance of an arranged marriage.
After a short trip, the bus pulled up at the main terminal, and we stepped onto the blacktop. A dark-haired woman in a pantsuit uniform stopped each passenger to inspect tickets. Some passengers entered the terminal, while others grumbled and marched onto a second bus parked at the curbside. When Elizabeth handed the woman our itinerary, she pointed toward the new bus.
“Will this take us to the plane?” Elizabeth asked.
“No plane. Bus,” the pantsuit lady replied.
Elizabeth frowned. “It’s a bus to the plane, right?”
“No plane. Bus.”
Elizabeth waved our documents in the air. “We have tickets.”
“Bus, bus.” The woman picked up my stepmother’s carry-on and dragged it to the cargo compartment of the waiting transport.
I grabbed the woman’s arm and explained we were traveling to Lake Achris.
“Yes, bus inAchris,” she said.
I doubted she knew more than twenty words of English.
Dad groaned and tried to pull up information on his cell phone. He couldn’t get any service in the new country, and no Wi-Fi was available. “I guess they’ll explain it when we get there,” he said, a grumpy weariness in his voice.
With a shrug, he shuffled onto the bus. Elizabeth and I followed, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something terrible was happening. I gazed at the other passengers nervously. They all looked tired and annoyed. Some wore traditional Middle Eastern clothing, with thick beards or head coverings. Others looked like they were coming from an eighties heavy-metal concert, with long black hair, faded jeans, and oversized cross necklaces. It was a strange clash that reminded me of the L train in Chicago. I suddenly felt homesick, and we hadn’t even made it to Malegonia.
Dad and Elizabeth collapsed into a row of seats behind me, adding their grumbles to the din of irritated people. As the last passengers settled in, an excited man emerged through the bus’s front door, shouting in a strange language. He looked around forty, heavyset, with dark hair and blue jeans. He exchanged a flurry of heated words with the bus driver. I wondered what the disturbance was about, when the man turned and pointed at me.
“Robespierre!” he shouted.
My heart jumped out of my chest. The man grabbed me and tried to yank me from my seat, pointing toward the door with his other hand. I screamed like a child on a roller coaster and curled up against the wall of the bus, sure it would be my death if he pulled me away. My hands trembled, and my breathing quickened. Liam Neeson films flashed through my mind. He was trying to take me!
Dad leaped from his seat and confronted the man. “Leave my daughter alone!”
The intruder let go of my arm and put his hands up defensively. “Okay, taxi.”
The bus driver and other passengers exploded in a cacophony of foreign words. I couldn’t understand anything. Elizabeth wrapped her hands around me, a tremble in her grip. The stranger kept pointing at the door and shouting. Dad stood like a mountain, until the strange man shrugged and walked off the bus.
“Ralph,” Elizabeth said in a shaky voice. “What in heavens was that about?”
“I don’t know, but we’re staying on this bus together.”
I nodded in fearful agreement. The mechanical door hissed shut, and the driver shifted gears. We rode down a gravel roadand left the airport. Wherever the bus was going, we were along for the ride.
***
After thirty minutes, I calmed enough to take in Pelagonia as it flashed by my window. Rigid mountains jutted upward like pointed knives. Quaint villages dotted the rocky green landscape, each with a mosque or old Orthodox church. Trash covered the narrow roadside, as well as graffiti and billboards that looked older than me. The bus had to slow to avoid countless potholes as tiny German cars raced by us at breakneck speeds. The driver turned on the radio, which blared Middle Eastern-style music blended with techno beats and hip-hop—the sound of hell.
None of the passengers paid me any attention, as if a lost American tourist nearly being kidnapped was a common occurrence. No one sat by me either, which I appreciated, even if that was probably due to my ever-growing body odor. The one time anyone spoke to me was when I tried to open a window, and the man ahead of me promptly waved a finger in my face with an authoritative “no, no.” It seemed they didn’t like fresh airin this part of the world.
Tears welled in my itchy, tired eyes. How had I ended up in this nightmare? I should’ve refused to go to Malegonia for Will’s stupid wedding. He wasn’t my brother, after all. He was just a troll I was forced to live with after our parents got married. How had he survived in this forsaken corner of the universe for the last two years anyway? We’d not even reached our destination yet, and I already hated every second of the trip.
The road twisted up into the mountains. The already narrow street became narrower, especially for our oversized bus. On one side, an unrelenting mountain hugged the road. On the other, a rusty metal rail stood between me and a deadly fall into a wooded valley. The locals had a cavalier attitude toward traffic lanes, and my breath stopped every time an oncoming vehicle appeared. I’d never felt carsick before, but the constant turning and stuffy cabin made my belly churn like a drunk college freshman.
After two hours we stopped in front of a long, wooden cabin perched on a mountain summit. My stomach rejoiced, even if I had no idea what was going on. Someone yelled a word that sounded like “pause,” and the other passengers filed off the bus. I shared a confused look with Dad andElizabeth, something we’d done a lot lately, and followed the group.
As we approached the cabin, I realized it was a restaurant or café of some kind. We stepped inside, unsure of what to expect. The interior reminded me of Starbucks, or at least a decent imitation. American blues music played over the radio, and the inviting aromas of coffee and baked goods hung in the air. Customers lined up at the counter at the far end of the busy dining area. I looked at the menu but couldn’t decipher a single word of the Cyrillic writing.
