Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [18]
Blinking in the artificial morning light with her weary, late-night eyes, Carmen could read the same tired bewilderment on her friends’ faces. Their plane had carried a big bellyful of America, which had dissipated the moment they stepped into this bustling, overheated little airport.
“Are we late, do you think?” Lena asked.
Bee squinted at the board showing arrivals. “Are we early?”
“I’m not sure my phone has the right time,” Carmen said, studying it.
Carmen had geared herself up for seeing Tibby first thing off the plane. They had all calibrated their patience to that moment and no further. So after ten minutes of swinging heads and darting eyes and thudding under ribs, Carmen was fairly sure that Tibby had not yet arrived at the gate, and the excitement started to wear on them.
“Maybe she’s at the baggage claim.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“These things are always confusing.”
“Maybe that’s Tibby.” Bridget pointed to a corpulent middle-aged woman in a blue head scarf.
Carmen laughed. “Well, it has been a while.”
Carmen’s eyes were still darting. She studied every face through the glass wall of the arrivals area. She wished she had not been so vain as to pack away her distance glasses.
“Let’s go to baggage claim.”
“She’ll be there.”
They moved as a tired six-legged creature toward the sign that said Baggage Claim, all of them scanning the crowd for a freckled, wiry, much-missed American.
The smell of cigarette smoke was strong, and the amount of sunshine in the airport felt out of step with the notion of nighttime still lagging in their bodies. It had seemed a lot more important to talk through the flight than sleep. At the time it had. Carmen felt a slight sick feeling of exhaustion starting in the bottom of her stomach.
They stood in the baggage claim. They were so busy scanning for Tibby they kept forgetting about their bags. Bee’s army-surplus duffel went around the belt multiple times unclaimed.
They could barely pass a sentence between them, so eager were they to catch sight of her. She was just … there. Just behind that pillar. Just walking through those double doors. She was so close, Carmen could practically bring her to life with the effort of her mind. Any second. Every face was, for a flash, Tibby’s face.
Finally they retrieved the bags and sat on them in the middle of the room. To Carmen it felt like they were stalled out ten feet from the finish line of a marathon. Everything had gone smoothly until now. They’d accepted their medals. They’d bathed in the congratulations. They’d donned those silly tinfoil blankets. You weren’t allowed to stop here.
“Something got messed up,” Bridget said. “The time, the date, something.”
“She might have gotten lost on the way to the airport,” Carmen offered.
“It’s not easy getting around this island,” Lena said. “Just getting down from Oia is a challenge. She probably didn’t leave enough time. She’s probably getting taken to the cleaners by some crooked cabbie as we speak.”
“Did you check your phone?” Bridget asked. Carmen had never expected Bee to say those words.
“It doesn’t work here. I told you that.”
“She’s probably trying to call us,” Lena said.
Bridget nodded. “We’ll just wait here.”
“Until she comes,” Lena said.
The three of them might have stayed there sitting on their suitcases until darkness fell, had not a porter respectfully ushered them out of the airport and to the curb around midday. The baggage handlers and airport officials were eager to get a meal. People went home for lunch here. There wasn’t another flight coming in for two hours.
“If we go back to Lena’s, though, I’m worried we’ll pass her on the way,” Carmen said to the porter, who gave no sign that he understood English.
Lena tried to translate, but that just made Carmen feel stupid. It wasn’t a thing you said to be heard or understood. It was a