It'll all be over in a little more than a month. They have been here for several months. The boy in the backseat is pouty because he thought they didn't really like him enough. The boy in the passenger seat (that's me) and the boy in the other backseat are trying to reassure him. "Everything was different when we said all that stuff" backseat 2 says. "We were just kids then." "I still am," quietly interjects passenger. "Come on," urges backseat 2. "What about long walks. Millions of stars. Dirt. The river. The Matador." (Everybody chuckles, remembering.) "What about Madrid?" Passenger feels for backseat boy and shares backseat 2's desire to bring him around, but his attention and all his butterflies are all about the insanely beautiful elegant worldly tall scary girl in the drivers seat. Finally, finally, finally her persistence has paid off and she's outlasted his fear and she has picked him up early from school. He's missing his after lunch classes. He will be in trouble. But he has been slowly slowly inexorably intoxicatingly falling in love with her ever since she first picked him out and pulled him aside from the tour group, and laughed at how he tried to pronounce her language.