Read Online Without Borders by Amanda Heger - Free Book Online

smart.”
    “When it comes to dissecting frogs, sure. When it comes to Spanish, no way.”
    “What words do you know?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You do not know what words you know?” He regretted the question as soon as it came out.
    She sighed.
    “We must fix this.” The darkness of the tunnel made him brave, and he laced her fingers through his. “I will say something in English and you say it to me in Spanish, yes?”
    Annie glanced over her shoulder at Marisol, who had her face deep in a book. His sister smiled at the page, and Felipe knew she wasn’t reading. There wasn’t enough light. And no one smiled that wide while reading To Kill a Mockingbird .
    “Okay,” Annie said.
    “Hello.”
    “ Hola .” Her smile escaped at the tail end of the word.
    “My name is Annie.”
    “ Me llamo Annie .”
    “You can also say mi nombre es Annie .”
    She repeated the phrase, her lips turning deliberately around the strange words. He blinked hard and fast.
    “Where is the bathroom?”
    “ ¿Dónde es el baño? ”
    He shook his head. “ Está . But in an emergency, that is okay.”
    “ ¿Dónde está el baño? ” Her accent made the words sharp, but they were understandable.
    “Now you are prepared for anything. I am a master teacher.”
    She pulled her hand away and tugged her hair into a rumpled ponytail as they emerged, blinking, into the sun. “Hardly.”
    “I think you know more than you are letting on.”
    “It’s the verb tenses.” She shook her head. “I can’t keep them straight. Sometimes I think I’m saying ‘I went to the store,’ but I end up saying ‘I wanted to have been at the store.’ And then everyone looks at me like this.” She cocked her head toward her shoulder, her lips puckered together.
    “There are no stores here. I think you will be okay.”
    “That’s not what—”
    “ Broma , Annie . Broma .”
    She shook her head.
    “Joke,” he told her. “You are learning. Use present tense for everything. People will understand.”
    “But I’ll sound stupid. Like a tourist.”
    “Everyone knows you are a tourist.” Red hair running wild in the wind. Pale skin pinking and sprouting freckles in the sun. “It is okay.”
    She stared out at the shore then turned. “Okay. Teach me more words, and I will teach you to tell better jokes.”
    “What is wrong with my jokes?”
    “Nothing. They’re perfect.”
    He pressed one finger to her forearm. The light pressure made her sun-seared skin go white. “Sunburn,” he said.
    “No clue.”
    “ Quemada .”
    “I guess I shouldn’t plan on going home with a great tan.”
    “I do not think so.” She smiled, and he gave her a new word. “Freckles.”

Day Six
    The first time Annie went skinny dipping she was seventeen, full of teenage bravado and Natty Lite. The second time, she was with Mike one late night at the pool attached to her apartment complex. She didn’t know if today counted or not, but in the interest of making her life seem more exciting than it really was, she decided yes. Definitely yes.
    She also decided that later, when she told the story of her not-so-sexy skinny dipping trip in a foreign country, she would leave out the part about scrubbing her clothes with pruney fingers in the brown river and scanning the water for the telltale ripples of a snake in their midst.
    She laid her now cleanish shirt on a sunny boulder and squirted a handful of shampoo into her palm. Beside her, Marisol leaned against the chain of rocks separating their side of the river from the men. Annie tried to work the lather through the tangles and crusted mud in her hair, but she stumbled on a submerged rock and floundered forward, catching her balance a second before she belly-flopped into the river.
    “Shhh. Come here.” Marisol’s voice was low. She jerked her head toward the rocks.
    “What are you doing?” Annie trudged through the water and squatted next to her friend.
    Marisol shushed her again as she peered around the