Point Me to Tomorrow (5 page)

ON SATURDAY NIGHT
, Alicia put on her favorite new dress, a one-shoulder number that she'd bought with her earnings from Amigas Inc.

Alicia's mother acted as the girls' accountant. Every three months, she divided the company's earnings into thirds. One third went toward the girls' 529 College Savings Plan funds—money they could use in the not-too-distant future for everything from room and board to textbooks. Another third of the earnings went back into the company, to cover future expenses. And the final third was divided among Jamie, Alicia, and Carmen, to do with as they wished.

Alicia was shocked at how quickly her checks from Amigas Inc. began to double and triple what her allowance had been. Now her parents saved that money for college, and she used her Amigas Inc. earnings to buy everything from dresses to iTunes downloads and books.

She hesitated before choosing the shoes to complete her outfit. All week long she'd been pressing Gaz for clues about their date and all he would say was “fancy and grown-up.” Her mind kept flashing back to the ice-cold air-conditioned restaurants in Coconut Grove where her father sometimes met clients. She hoped that Gaz wouldn't waste his hard-earned money on one of those dreadfully expensive, fancy-silver-and-heavy-crystal-goblet eateries.

Gaz rang the doorbell promptly at seven. He was dressed in a khaki sports coat, a crisp white shirt, and a tie. He'd gotten a haircut, and while the lock that hung over his left eye was impossible to tame, he looked sharp and clean-shaven. It was quite a change from his usual ruggedly handsome, casual rocker look.

Alicia whistled. “Wow, you clean up good.”

Her mother came to the front door and gave him a warm hug. “Gaz, I'm very impressed. Did the mystery
quince
inspire your mystery date?”

Gaz smiled. “No, Señora Cruz, this was all my own idea.”

Her mother crossed her arms in front of her and pretended to look at the couple sternly. “You two aren't going to elope, are you?”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Mom, so not funny.”

As usual, her mother thought being embarrassing was part of her charm. “And no using fake IDs to get on a booze cruise?”

Gaz looked horrified at the suggestion and protested emphatically, “I would
never
.”

Alicia's mother looked satisfied. “Well, how about an ETA for when you'll bring Alicia home, or is that also a mystery?” She winked at Gaz.

“Oh, no,” Gaz answered. “We're going somewhere special. So, would twelve thirty work?”

Midnight was Alicia's curfew on the weekend. Her mother had a theory that there was nothing happening after midnight that a nice girl like Alicia or any of her friends needed to partake in.

Gaz asked Alicia to excuse him while he spoke to her mom. Even though she thought he was taking the cloak-and-dagger routine a bit too far, she loved the fact that he still wanted to be imaginative about their dates. She stepped aside and watched, amused, as Gaz whispered something to her mom.

Her mother's smile got wider and wider. Finally, she said, “Nice. Twelve thirty it is. Have fun, kids.” She closed the front door, and Gaz and Alicia walked to the car. He held the car door open for her. The moment she clicked shut her seat belt, she turned and kissed him passionately.

“Hey, I like that,” Gaz murmured when she was done. “But you haven't even gotten your surprise yet.”

“I know,” Alicia said. “But that's just to say thank you for being so romantic as to plan the surprise. I know how busy you are with school, your music, and now, college apps. It's sweet, and I appreciate it.”

As they drove on to I-95, Gaz played Alicia a new song. “My agent wants to send this song to Sophie Lundquist.”

Alicia tried not to let her jaw drop. “
The
Sophie Lundquist?”

Gaz smiled. “Yeah, she's looking to do an album of duets, and he thinks this would be perfect.”

Alicia was always impressed by Gaz's music, but ever since the previous spring, when Amigas Inc. had traveled to Austin, and Gaz, who was then one of the company's partners, had attended the South by Southwest conference, she'd seen his commitment to his career move to the next level. The professional musicians that he'd met, the contacts that he'd made, the seminars he'd attended on songwriting and musicianship—had all molded what had been pure talent into something polished and sophisticated. Gaz's late father had been a professional singer in Puerto Rico, not rich or famous, but beloved by many. Alicia found herself wishing, as she often did, that Gaz's father were still alive to see the amazing person his son had become.

The car pulled up in front of the Adrienne Arsht Center on Biscayne Boulevard. The modern white building reminded Alicia of pictures she'd seen of the Sydney Opera House. It was a beautiful arts center, but Alicia felt slightly worried. The last time she'd been there had been with her parents, for a performance of Tchaikovsky's “The Fateful Fourth,” which had proven so terminally boring that she'd fallen asleep before the intermission. Her parents hadn't found her sleepiness or her snoring amusing.

“Gaz,” she said, putting an arm on his shoulder, “I'll do my best, but classical music is not my thing.”

Gaz looked disappointed. “You know how important it is for me to expand my musical repertoire. I thought this evening's tribute to Vienna would be a great adventure for us both. They'll be performing polkas, Strauss waltzes, and operettas—minioperas. And during the intermission, they're serving Wiener schnitzel.”

Alicia looked down. She'd broken out her brand-new one-shoulder dress for Wiener schnitzel? Heaven help her. She just couldn't get a break!

She took a deep breath. She always said that living in Miami was all about the cultural mix, even if some of the culture was old and snoozeworthy. And who knows? she thought: she loved dance, so maybe the Strauss waltzes would inspire some sort of
quince
theme for their mystery client. It certainly sounded elegant enough.

Inside the arts center, the room bustled with a mostly Latino crowd. When Gaz handed the usher the two tickets, she directed them to the front of the orchestra. Alicia tried to keep from groaning. Row G. Center. These were amazing seats; the tickets must have cost a fortune! She should have been grateful. Gaz truly was the greatest boyfriend in the world. But as she and her sweet, thoughtful, classical-music-loving boyfriend seated themselves in the middle of the row, all she could think was,
Great, now I'm trapped. I can't even sneak out for a bathroom break! And if I snore, I'm pretty sure the acoustics of this fancy place will ensure that the entire auditorium will hear me. Ugh!

“You psyched?” Gaz whispered as the lights dimmed.

“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Alicia fibbed, forcing a grin.

As the room grew dark, she heard the sweet music of a conga drum—the kind of shake-your-hips rhythm that she was fairly confident was not part of any waltz or polka. The curtain went up to reveal an all-star assembly of Latin musicians playing a riveting Cuban
son
. The audience rose like a wave, and everyone began dancing in front of their seats.

Alicia threw her head back and laughed. “You tricked me!” she guffawed as she slid her arm around her boyfriend's waist. “And I am not an easy person to trick.”

“Tell me about it,” laughed Gaz. “Lucky for you I have a weakness for women who are both smart and unbelievably nosy.”

Alicia tilted her head and planted a kiss on his soft lips. “
Gracias, mi amor
,” she whispered.

“You're welcome, Lici,” Gaz answered, beaming with pride. “But less talking and more dancing.” As he held her hand, Alicia danced and danced. And for a few extraordinary, rhythm-driven hours, she did not think about the SATs or college applications or any of the senior-year responsibilities that had been weighing so heavily on her.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON
, the three partners in Amigas Inc. met at Carmen's house to discuss their mystery
quince
. Carmen lived on the Canals in Miami, on one of a series of small streets that lined the water. No cars were allowed, and the houses, while packed closely together, were beautiful, and looked as though they had been transplanted from Venice. When the girls were younger, their favorite thing in the world had been to take boat rides in the family's little turquoise boat. Now they sat on the patio, watching as Carmen's younger stepsisters rowed around, laughing hysterically, with
their
friends.

The contracts for the mystery
quince
were all signed, and the first payment was in the Amigas account. The girls sat with their Lucite clipboards, which Alicia's mom had customized with the hot pink Amigas Inc. logo. Breaking out the clipboards was always exciting, but as they sat thumbing through their ten-page events checklists, they were both excited and slightly daunted. Their contact, Julia Centavo, would neither confirm nor deny that their client was, indeed, Carmela Ortega, but the girls were confident nevertheless that they'd cracked their client's secret identity.

“I'm megaexcited about planning Carmela's
quinceañera
,” Alicia said. “But I've got to tell you
chicas
, I'm pretty stressed about juggling all that work with everything else on my plate—SAT prep, getting letters of recommendation, requesting transcripts, writing college essays. It's a lot!”

“Who are you telling?” Jamie demanded.

“Ugh, I love Ms. Ingber, but she's making me nuts, the way she has me running and gunning,” Carmen said. “What kind of
loca
takes AP Spanish literature when she's applying to art programs?”

All of the Amigas Inc. crew spoke some degree of Spanish, but the truth was that none of them were actually fluent except for Gaz, who'd grown up in Puerto Rico and come to Miami in the fifth grade. Of the three girls, Carmen spoke Spanish the most fluently—partly because of her dad. She had spent so much time on his
telenovela
sets that even when her vocabulary failed her, she could throw in an “
¡Ay, no digas!
” or an energetic “
Sinvergüenza
” that was so convincing that anyone would have taken her for a native speaker.

But that was only part of the story. While Alicia and Jamie had decided to place out of their language requirement in junior year, Carmen had continued, studying literature in the work of writers as diverse as Isabel Allende and Federico García Lorca. It gave her a little thrill to read in Spanish, even if it meant she pored over each page with a pen in one hand and a dictionary in the other. And she loved to see the way the over-the-top romances depicted in her father's films had real cultural roots. To be Latina, she felt every time she opened her current favorite,
Eva Luna
, was to be in love with love.

“So, we're all swamped,” Jamie agreed. “What are we going to do? Binky's was the biggest-budget
quince
we ever did. But to do a
quince
that will be attended by luminaries from our nation's government, that's
historical
. We can't mess this up.”

Alicia flinched. Even the thought of a misstep with a
quince
gave her the chills. It was because she cared so much about each and every girl's Sweet Fifteen that she sometimes got a little controlling. She hated to admit it, but even though she'd never had a
quince
herself, she'd gone all
quince-
zilla on more than one occasion.

She thought about it for a few moments. “We need help,” she said. “But we have a bigger problem. It's the first of October. We're graduating in less than a year, and by the sound of it, none of us are going to school in Miami. Who's going to run Amigas Inc. when we go off to college?”

The girls looked at one another, and the reality that they were going to split up—not right away, but really soon—hit them like a ton of textbooks.

“Maybe I won't get into any schools,” Carmen offered wistfully.

“Maybe my financial aid won't come through and I'll have to go to community college,” Jamie said.

“And maybe I'll get a two hundred on my SATs,” Alicia put in. “But since they give you two hundred points for just signing your name, that doesn't seem likely. No doom and gloom,
chicas
. We don't need to derail our futures so Amigas Inc. can live. What we need is a plan.”

Carmen looked appreciatively at her friend. “What we need is successors.”

Jamie jumped to her feet. “Let's have a contest! It should be like
The Apprentice
. I'm so ready to get all Donald Trump on a bunch of younger
chicas
. Please, let me be the one who says, ‘You're fired!'”

Alicia looked out at Carmen's little sisters playing around in the rowboat. “That's not a bad idea.”

Never one to be shy, Jamie said, “Are you kidding? It's a
genius
idea.”

Alicia gave her friend a playful shove. “Okay, it's a
genius
idea. So what do we call this brainstorm?”

“Amiga Apprentice?” Carmen said.

Alicia shook her head. “Nah, too derivative.”

“Countdown to the
Quince
All-Stars?” Jamie suggested.

Alicia considered it. “That's pretty good.”

Carmen smiled. “No, no, I've got it.” She drew a few graffiti-style words on a piece of paper and held the sign up so her friends could see:

Alicia smiled. “I love it.”

Jamie did, too. And with the name agreed upon, the search for the next leaders of Amigas Inc. began.

The next day, the girls put Are You That Chica? signs up all over the school.