Alba

Kathryn Cauley

Today I’m in the memory where I sit with a stranger on the steps of a cathedral across from Madrid’s Royal Palace. His name is Mérida, a Chilean boy I met that afternoon while wandering the city alone in an attempt to avoid my family. It’s mid-July, or late-July. The peak of a Madrid heatwave. A sandy-tiled plaza stretches ahead, where people wander idly, some drifting toward the guided tour entrance. To the left, a white stone railing frames the skyline, where tourists lean out over orange-tiled roofs and dark green masses below. 

I watch myself from the outside. I watch myself stare at the line where the cityscape meets blue sky. The colors begin to bleed together, I look away. I have a Coke can in my hand. For now, it’s the tether that grounds me to the earth. The frozen cable that pulls me into the present. Or, the past? The present, at the very least, where I pop the tab and drink, then offer Mérida some.

“No thanks,” he says. 

I see him next to me, tall and thin, wearing a black Soundgarden T-shirt, with dark sunglasses pushed into his hair. I press the cold can against my scraped knee. I’d fallen on it in the driveway back home, four thousand miles away. Four thousand miles away where my house in South Carolina sits empty. Dust moves through the orange window light to rest on my bookshelf, my Zeppelin CDs. All of it is encased within something else, a story of my life there. I have some sort of decision to make and this vacation is an escape, I think. An escape or a strange in-between liminality. When I get back home, something will be different, maybe everything will. But now. Now I have no idea. I am not afraid of a past or future. I am right here. It’s late-July. A heatwave in Madrid. 

“I go home to Chile tomorrow,” Mérida says.

“Me too. To America.”

He watches me through long, curly bangs. “I want to go to California,” he says.

“I’ve never been,” I reply. 

I roll the Coke can over my knee and look out at the city again. I can see the heatwaves; hear the constant hum of cicadas. I lift the red can. The side of it says Alba.

“What’s Alba?” I ask.

Mérida squints, as if waking from a nap. “Spanish girl name,” he says. “It means…” He pauses, searching for the English word. Then he raises his hand toward the horizon, palm flat, lifting his arm slowly upward. “As the sun goes up.”

“Sunrise,” I provide.

His face lights up. He turns to me, grinning.

Kat Cauley is a junior creative writer at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. She enjoys writing short stories and creative nonfiction essays that explore everyday experiences.