Chapter Four:
Mirabel stared out the window as the forest flashed by, to be honest, she had never ridden a bus before. She had always just gotten by on her own two feet when it came to the city. Of course, now she couldn't use her own two feet for anything.
A vine poked her hard on the shoulder, causing her to glance over to where her oldest hermana was seated across from her a frown on her face as she raised an eyebrow at her, "You okay there sis?" she asked softly.
"Yeah, I'm fine, just thinking, I guess," Mirabel confessed.
"Thinking about what?" Isabela asked.
"How different everything is," Mirabel muttered, "It's been what a month, six weeks? Something like that since Antonio's gift ceremony, and now everything is different."
Isabela chuckled, "Yeah, I guess that's the truth," she admitted, "I mean, come on, me wearing pants out in public, Abuela arranging for us to go on a vacation. You having magic."
Mirabel nodded, "Sometimes I wonder if I'm still in that coma and that this isn't some sort of crazy dream that I'm having."
"I can pinch you if you want."
"No thanks Isa, I think I'm good."
…
The rest of the twenty-minute bus ride was spent in mostly silence until finally the trees and rocky mountains gave way to fields and farms and those to buildings. The bus stopped at several different places as it went through the city before it stopped in front of a large building with lots of windows.
Abuela stood up announcing that this was their stop. Mirabel watched as her family scrambled to grab the bags from overhead bins, feeling guilty as Luisa grabbed hers as well as her own as the bus driver helped her navigate to the wheelchair lift at the back of the bus.
Soon they were in the lobby of the hotel with keys to three separate rooms. They were now trying to figure out sleeping arrangements. The main problem was each room only slept four. Both Pepa and Julieta's families had five people.
"Maybe us girls can share a room," Isabela suggested, "You know, Dolores, Luisa, Mirabel, and I."
"I don't know," Julieta muttered, "What if Mirabel needs help… she's still healing… and she hasn't learned how to control..."
"If something happens, then we'll be there to help her," Luisa insisted, "We know as much about how to help her as you do."
"And if we need help your room will be just down the hall," Dolores added.
"I think it will be fun, having a girl's night every night," Mirabel added.
"Well," Abuela said softly, "That's one room figured out."
"Antonio's staying with us," Pepa announced suddenly, "This is a strange place and I'd rather have him near us if at all possible."
"I think we'll head up and put our bags in our room," Dolores suddenly spoke up,
"Yes, yes that's a good idea," Abuela agreed, "Let's take a look at the rooms, and we can figure out how to split up the rest of us from there."
…
The room was quaint, with two queen size beds, a chest of drawers with a strange square box thing sitting on top, and a little couch in front of a coffee table.
It didn't take long to figure out the rest of the sleeping arrangements, Antonio was small enough that he fits on the little couch so it was decided that he, Camilo, and Bruno would share with Pepa and Felix, while Abuela shared with Julieta and Agustin.
After that was decided, Abuela gave them a few minutes to unpack their bags before they met downstairs again.
"So Mirabel, what do you want to do first?" Abuela asked as the family gathered around the lobby once more.
"Well, we probably should stop at the medical supply store and get my custom wheelchair," Mirabel suggested, "That way you can stop having to pay rent for the one that I'm using."
"That's only going to take half an hour at the least," Abuela insisted, "And it's only..." she paused long enough to pull out her pocket watch and check it, "It's only ten-thirty. We'll be done by eleven, eleven-fifteen. We'll still have an hour before we need to start figuring out what to do for lunch."
"I know a place," Mirabel offered, before blushing slightly as everybody turned to look at her, "I mean if you guys want to… There's this place Senora Silva and I went to… when we came here to apply for school, it's a small place, but the food is almost, almost, as good as Mama's." Mirabel's face was bright red, "But if you don't want to go there, that's okay, it was just a suggestion," she added hurriedly.
Julieta gave her mother a dirty look as her daughter quickly backtracked her suggestion. How in the world had she not noticed all of the abuse her daughter was going through right underneath her own nose, and from her own mother to boot? She was absolutely terrified to even suggest a place to have lunch at.
"I think it is a wonderful idea," Julieta insisted, brightly and loudly, silently daring her madre to contradict her.
"I agree, that does sound lovely," Abuela insisted, well aware of the look she was getting from her oldest, "But we still have an hour to kill between now and then."
"Maybe we can go to the zoo?" Antonio suggested.
"The Zoo's pretty big," Mirabel pointed out, "You'll want more than just an hour to see it, but Luisa wants to check out the local college while we're here, and it will be, if I'm remembering correctly, on the way to lunch from the Medical Supply Store."
"Seriously, we're going to school, while on vacation?" Camilo demanded, earning a round of laughter from his family.
…
At a quarter to eleven, Mirabel was pushing herself around an open area in front of the medical center in her new wheelchair. Abuela had gone all out, the wheelchair was mostly blue, with green trimming, and spoke guards that contained so many different colors swirling around each other, mixing together, that it would be impossible to name all the colors.
"Do you think you can make me an outfit to match the thing covering your wheels?" Isabela asked, "I like the colors."
Mirabel glanced over at the side, "I can change the shirt that you are wearing to match it right now," she offered.
"No!" Abuela snapped, "No magic, remember?"
"But..." Mirabel insisted.
"I'm sorry Mirabel, but you have to understand, people outside of the Encanto aren't going to be… They aren't going to accept magic like we do in Encanto."
"Sorry," Mirabel muttered.
Alma shifted slightly, well aware of Julieta glaring at her, "Wait and do it tonight, in your room, okay?" she offered, turning to her eldest, "I'm just trying to protect her."
"You need to..."
"Hey, aren't we suppose to check out the local college next?" Isabela quickly intervened, sensing the fact that her mother and abuela were about to come to blows again about the treatment of Mirabel. While at times she agreed that Abuela could be harsh on Mirabel, she also felt like her mother was getting worked up about nothing. As much as she hated to admit it, Abuela was right, this wasn't the Encanto, "I mean we can't deny Luisa the chance to go all geeky on us, now can we?"
"Hey," Luisa exclaimed, glaring at Isabela, "I'm not Geeky!"
"Your idea of a wholesome family activity is to go look at a school that you want to attend. I mean come on, at least Mirabel isn't dragging us through escuela de moda."
"Who told you that?" Mirabel asked with an arched eyebrow, "Tomorrow happens to be Open Day. It's a good chance for me to meet my teachers before school starts."
"Seriously?" Isabela asked, "What is up with you and Luisa and school?"
Luisa and Mirabel exchanged a look, shaking their heads at their older sister.
…
It turned out that it was Open Day at the local college, which meant that they could wander around as much as they liked without having to check in at the front office. All of the different Clubs had set up booths and there were staff members spread out to answer any questions.
It wasn't long before Luisa was busy talking to the history professor as her parents talked to the Dean of Students about tuition and how to apply. Luckily they still had openings for the upcoming school year and they would be happy to have Luisa as a student.
Antonio had quickly gotten bored of all the "Grown-up stuff" so Mirabel was giving him a ride around on her lap, looking at all the flowers in the flowerbeds. They even had a few topiary bushes shaped like different animals.
Isabela wasn't interested in anything really, Camilo and Bruno were over by the Drama Club booth discussing, whatever people who were into drama talked about. Pepa and Felix were fascinated with the Dance Club, which apparently had a class for married couples. Dolores was at the little bookstore that they had set up, looking at a book of poems that she thought Mariano might like.
Isabela busied herself with peering at all of the booths, until she stopped at the Art Club booth, staring at a picture that she couldn't quite tell what it was supposed to be.
"It's a sunny day at the park," a deep voice said from behind her, "One of my best works."
Isabela turned around to see a short young man with shoulder-length black hair behind her, "It doesn't look anything like a park, though?"
"It's abstract, instead of focusing on the shapes and images, I focused on the colors, the yellow sun, the blue sky, green grass, the red picnic blanket," With each color he pointed out the different parts of the painting.
"Oh yeah," Isabela gasped, "purple flowers," she added, pointing to a patch of purple.
"See you got it."
"I didn't realize that there were so many different styles of art," Isabela exclaimed, glancing around.
"Well if you want to learn more, you should take art."
"Oh, I'm not interested in going to school, I hate being cooped up inside all day," Isabela confessed, "I'd much rather be out in the jungle exploring."
"I see…" the man said slowly, "Perhaps you'd enjoy the Field Photography course then, they're always going out to some random place to take pictures."
"Really?" Isabela asked, "Huh, I might have to look into that," she smiled and held out a hand, "I'm Isabela."
"Marco," the man said, excepting the hand, "It was nice meeting you."
"Same," Isabela said, "Well, I better go before my parents start panicking that they can't find me."
"Well, I hope that we meet again."