Just One Day(46)

I watch her for at least twenty minutes. In between the monotonous techno songs, she talks to other people, laughs. After a half hour, I’m getting a headache. I try to catch her eye, but I eventually give up and slip away.
The party stretches all the way down the curve of the water—and into it—where a bunch of people are skinny-dipping in the moonlit sea. A little way’s farther down, it gets more mellow, with a bonfire and people around it playing guitar. I plant myself a few feet away from the bonfire, close enough to feel its heat and hear the crackle of wood. I dig my feet into the sand; the top layer is cool, but underneath it’s still warm from the day’s sunshine.
Down the beach, the techno stops, and the reggae band takes the stage. The more mellow bump-bump-thump is nice. In the water, a girl starts dancing on a guy’s shoulder, pulls off her bikini top, and stands there, half naked like a moonshine mermaid, before diving in with a quiet splash. Behind me, the guys on guitars start up with “Stairway to Heaven.” It mingles strangely well with the reggae.
I lie down in the sand and look up at the sky. From this vantage point, it’s like I have the beach all to myself. The band finishes a song, and the singer announces that it’s a half hour until the New Year. “New Year. A?o nuevo. It’s a tabula rasa. Time to hacer borrón y cuenta nueva,” he chants. “One chance to wipe the board clean.”
Can you really do that? Wipe the board clean? Would I even want to? Would I wipe all of last year away if I could?
“Tabula rasa,” the singer repeats. “A new chance to start over. Start fresh, baby. Make amends. Make ch-ch-changes. To be who you want to be. Come the stroke of midnight, before you kiss your amor, save un beso para tí. Close your eyes, think of the year ahead. This is your chance. This can be the day it all changes.”
Really? It’s a nice idea, but why January first? You might as well say April nineteenth is the day that everything changes. A day is a day is a day. It means nothing.
“At the stroke of midnight, make your wish. Qué es tu deseo? For yourself. For the world.”
It’s New Year’s. Not a birthday cake. And I’m not eight anymore. I don’t believe in wishes coming true. But if I did, what would I wish for? To undo that day? To see him again?
Normally I have such willpower. Like a dieter resisting a cookie, I don’t even let myself go there. But for the briefest second, I do. I picture him right here, walking down the beach, hair reflecting in the flames, eyes dark and light and full of teasing, and of so many other things. And for a second, I almost see him.
As I open myself to the fantasy, I wait for the accompanying clench of pain. But it doesn’t come. Instead my breath slows and something warms inside me. I abandon caution and all good sense and wrap myself in thoughts of him. My own hands circle around my chest, as if he were holding me. For one brief moment, everything feels right.
“I thought I’d never find you!”
I look up. Melanie is striding toward me. “I’ve been right here.”
“I’ve been looking for you for the last half hour! Up and down the beach. I had no idea where you were.”
“I was right here.”
“I looked everywhere for you. The party’s getting totally out of control, like roofies-in-the-punch wild. Some girl just puked six inches from my feet, and guys are hitting on me with the worst pickup lines in the world. I’ve had my ass pinched more times than I can count, and one charming guy just asked me if I wanted a bite of his sandwich—and he wasn’t talking about food!” She shakes her head as if trying to dislodge the memory. “We’re supposed to have each other’s backs!”
“I’m sorry. You were having fun, and I guess I just lost track of time.”
“You lost track of time?”
“I guess so. I’m really sorry you were worried. But I’m fine. Do you want to go back to the party?”
“No! I’m over it. Let’s leave.”
“We don’t have to.” I look toward the bonfire. The flames are dancing, making it hard to pull my gaze away. “I don’t mind staying.” For the first time in a long while, I am having an okay time, I’m okay being where I am.
“Well, I do. I’ve spent the last half hour panicking, and now I’m sober, and I’m beyond over this place. It’s like a Telemundo frat party.”
“Oh, okay. Let’s go then.”
I follow her back to the shoe piles, where it takes ages for her to find her flip-flops, and then we get into our waiting taxi. By the time I think to look at the dashboard clock, it’s twenty past twelve. I don’t really believe what the singer said about midnight wishes, but now that I’ve missed mine, I feel like I should’ve tried before the window of opportunity closed.
We ride home in silence, save for the cab driver softly singing to his radio. When we pull into the gates of the resort, Melanie hands him some bills, and for a minute, I get an idea.
“Melanie. What if we hire this guy in a day or two and go off somewhere, away from the tourists?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“I don’t know. To see what would happen if we tried something different. Excuse me, se?or, how much would it be for us to hire you for a whole day?”
“Lo siento. No hablo inglés.”
Melanie rolls her eyes at me. “I guess you have to be satisfied with your one big adventure.”
At first I think she means this party, but then I realize she means the ruins. Because I did actually manage to get our families to visit a different ruin. We went to Coba instead of Tulum. And just as I’d hoped, we stopped at a small village along the way, and for a moment there, I’d gotten excited, thinking this was it, I had actually escaped into the real Mexico. Okay, my whole family was in tow, but it was a Mayan village. Except then Susan and my mom went crazy buying beaded jewelry, and the villagers came out and played drums for us, and we all were invited to dance in a circle and then there was even a traditional spiritual cleansing. But everyone was videoing everything, and after his cleansing, my dad “donated” ten dollars to a hat that was conspicuously put in front of us, and I realized that this was no different from being on the tour.