IN THE MORNING, there were clothes folded at the end of Penny’s bed: a too-big white T-shirt and a pair of red shorts. And a second set of matching clothes for Sebastian, who was still asleep. Penny leaned close to his face to see if he smelled sugary, a thing she had seen her mother do. He smelled like river water and cheese, and his breathing was deep and regular.
In the clean, white-tiled bathroom, she peeled off her swimsuit. There were grooves around her legs and over her shoulders, from the elastic seams. She peed and put the T-shirt on. It was as long as a dress, and she pulled the red shorts on under it. It felt weird not to have on underwear, but she didn’t want to put the swimsuit back on, and the shorts fit. She went out into the entryway.
The door to the outside was locked with a deadbolt, with the key taken out. Penny pulled on the knob a few times, but the door just thumped against the solid lock.
Then she went upstairs, and found a new man eating cereal at the breakfast table. He wore a white polo shirt, long khaki shorts, and a baseball cap that said Cal. He gave her a friendly smile.
“Trying to get out?” he asked.
Penny felt her face get hot. She sat down at the table. “My dad went to Berkeley,” she said.
“No way!” he said. “When?”
“I don’t know. He’s forty-one.”
“He was ahead of me, then,” the man said. “I’m George.”
“Do you live here?”
“Sometimes. Until my brother drives me batshit. Then I leave.”
“Is your brother the one with the white horse?”
George pointed his finger at her like a gun. “Smart kid.”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“We all have accents,” George said. “You, too, sweetheart.”
“I mean like your brother’s,” Penny said. “You sound American.”
“Raúl doesn’t want to talk like a gabacho. I find it useful. You want cereal? Or Maria can make you eggs.”
“Cereal,” Penny said.
George pushed an unfamiliar box toward her, and a bottle of milk. “So you got a little bit lost, I hear.”
“The river took us away from our parents.”
“Bad luck. Why’d you go to that beach?”
“The guide said it was nice. We were supposed to go zip-lining.”
“Huh,” he said. “Some guide.”
“I miss my parents,” she said. She picked up the cereal and studied the picture of the golden flakes. George’s hand dropped down on the top of the box. He had clean fingernails.
“Wait,” he said. “Are you allergic to nuts?”
“No.”
“I thought all American kids were.”
“You’re stereotyping,” she said. He let go of the box and she poured the flakes, watching them slide into the bowl just like they did at home.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eleven.”
“What about the others?”
“My brother, Sebastian, is eight. Marcus is eleven, too. June is six. Isabel is fourteen.”
“Oh, man.” George rubbed his eyes with his fingers and thumb.
“We didn’t see anything,” Penny said. “We just saw the Jeep.”
He nodded, his eyes red where he had rubbed them. “So much trouble could’ve been avoided.”
The glass bottle was heavy when she picked it up. “It’s real milk?”
“Straight from the cow.”
She sniffed it. It seemed fine. And it was cold, so it couldn’t be straight from the cow. “Why was there a grave?”
“Stop being curious,” he said. “That’s how you ended up here.”
“It’s good to be curious.”
“Tell that to the cat.”
“What cat?”
“Never mind.”
“Oh!” she said. “I get it now.”
He drank his coffee, watching her. He had dark brown eyes and they looked amused.
“What’s a gabacho?” she asked.
George put his feet up on one of the kitchen chairs. “It’s an old word from Spain, for the people who lived in southern France. It means something like ‘diseased people of the north.’ It’s like gringo, but fancier.”
“So I’m a gabacho?”
“You’re a gabacha,” he said. “My mother was one, too.”
“I’m not diseased.”
“Of course not.”
“But my brother has diabetes,” she said. “He needs insulin.”
“Yeah, I’m working on that.”
“Like, he needs it so he can have breakfast. I don’t think that doctor understood that.”
“She does understand.”
“Why is she so nervous?”
“Because she’s a drug addict.”
“Oh.” Penny tried to make sense of this news, tried to square it with her understanding of doctors and her experience of the thin woman who had grabbed her wrist when she reached for her phone. “And the white-haired man is your father.”
“He is.”
“He doesn’t think we should be here.”
“He didn’t,” George admitted. “But he doesn’t know what to do, so he left me to deal with it. As usual.”
“Are you going to take us back to our parents?”
“I’m working on it.”
“We won’t say anything about the grave.”
“Hm,” George said.
Penny ate her cereal, then went downstairs. Sebastian wasn’t in their room so she went to the other. He was sitting on Marcus and June’s twin bed, at their feet. They were still under the white duvet. Isabel was in the other bed, her long hair messy. They all looked disoriented and sleepy. Isabel looked Penny up and down in the new clothes, as if she’d let them all down by putting them on. There were folded clothes at the end of their beds, too.
“I want to go see Mom and Dad,” Junie said.
“There’s a new man upstairs,” Penny said. “He says he’s working on it.”
“Who is he?” Marcus asked.
“The brother of the man with the horse. His name is George and he talks like an American. He went to Berkeley.”
Sebastian brightened. “He knows Dad?”
“No,” Penny said. “He’s younger. I told him we wouldn’t say anything about the grave, so we can’t. Okay?”
Isabel flopped sideways on her pillow. “But everyone already knows about the grave!” she said. “So it doesn’t matter what we promise!”
“They could still take us back to the ship,” Penny said, uncertainly.
“Don’t be stupid,” Isabel said, into the pillow.
Penny was stung. “Do you guys want breakfast?”
June and Marcus put on their new clothes in the bathroom. The clothes were all exactly the same, as if someone had gone to a store and picked up a stack of the first thing they saw, in different sizes. June ran upstairs first.
“Wait!” Isabel said. “Don’t leave me alone!” She wrapped the white duvet around her bikini and dragged it after her.
Penny would have expected Isabel to be braver, with her green nail polish and her two languages. This was just like a sleepover in a new house, where you had to figure out all the rules.
Her heart sank a little when she saw June sitting on George’s knees at the breakfast table. June had been upstairs for like two minutes! And George was really Penny’s discovery. But no one was ever going to take Penny on their lap on first meeting her. She wasn’t adorable like June. She knew that feminism was freedom—she had the T-shirt—but still the sight of June and George being such pals made her unhappy.
“Nice toes,” George was saying. “They have medicine for that, you know.”
“It’s nail polish!” June said, laughing.
“Junie, get down,” Marcus said.
“Why?”
“Just do.”
June didn’t.
“There’s cereal,” George said. “Or you can wait for Maria to make eggs.”
No one moved forward.
“I had cereal,” Penny said, in the awkward silence. “Sebastian, you should have eggs.”
George lifted June to one shoulder, and she sat sidesaddle, clutching his head and laughing. George went to a cupboard, took out more bowls, and slid them onto the table with his free hand. Then he lowered June back down to his lap.
Penny’s father carried Sebastian sometimes, but no one ever carried Penny anymore. She had once pretended to fall asleep in the car so her father would have to take her in, but he had known she was faking and left her in the garage, to come in when she was ready.
“I won’t pour you cereal until you get down,” Marcus said to his sister.
“Fine,” June said, and she slid off George’s knee.