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references as an ego defense. My mom does it too.”I glanced back at the sleeping Mrs. Knox. I’d been dutifully working on my Guatemala story every night. Adding concrete details. Rearranging clauses. “I might turn out to be a writer,” I said.“I doubt it. You’re not selfish enough. Trust me. I’m being raised by one.” Veronica picked up her magazine. “In life, you’re given three choices: making something, making fun of something, or making out. I choose the last two.”I barely recognized Veronica as she spoke. She’d never been this insensitive and horny before. “Maybe I should have told you sooner, but the whole point of this trip is to meet guys. I’ve got a plan. Trust me, Dessy, Prague will never be the same.”I had no response to this. Outside our oval window I watched as the plane’s wing cut into a bank of puffy clouds. “How much longer to Prague?” I asked. We had a layover in London, and I couldn’t remember the time difference.“Don’t think about it,” Veronica said. “We won’t be in Prague for, like, a billion hours.”

Chapter Five
A trillion hours later, we landed. We’d had a long delay at Heathrow, which gummed up the works for our connecting flight, and now it was nighttime. I wasn’t sure of the date anymore. After our layover, and countless bags of mini pretzels washed down with Sprite, time felt muddy. The interior design of the Ruzyneˇ International Airport was sleek and European and bright. Every- thing was glass or metal and curved. In the duty-free area, most of the signs were written in English, but the “price attack” discounts were written in a currency with which I was unfamiliar. And who buys Giorgio Armani at an airport? In a near comatose state, Mrs. Knox and I staggered through Terminal One toward the luggage carousel. “It smells funny here, don’t you think? And I feel totally different. I think my aura has changed. Do I still look pink? Can you see any blue?” Veronica hopped back and forth, from one foot to the other, in front of the conveyer belt. International travel had a unique effect on her; she acted like somebody who’d just eaten her own weight in Skittles.Mrs. Knox sat down on the carousel’s metal ledge and rubbed her eyes. “It’s very important to force yourself to go to sleep as soon as we get to the dorms. Otherwise, jet lag will hit you like a Mack truck.” She clapped her hands together—hard. “Blammo!” she yelled.Mrs. Knox looked tired, but beautiful, even without makeup. She had exceptional bones. I’d felt terrible when Mr. Knox left Mrs. Knox and fled to Rome. I spotted my suitcase tumbling out of the chute. Veronica’s followed. They were easy to tell apart because she’d decorated hers with an Australian flag.“Americans are targets for pickpockets and scam artists,” she’d told me the night before our flight, as she’d secured a small, cloth replica of the flag to her bag. I’d felt like telling her that unless she schlepped her suitcase with her through the city at all times, people wouldn’t think she was Australian. But I let it pass. Veronica, Mrs. Knox, and I dragged our suitcases across the glossy airport floor. An announcement in another language blared through the loudspeaker. It sounded vaguely like a warning, but the place was practically empty and nobody seemed alarmed. Flickering fluorescent lights overhead made me sneeze and sneeze. “I know what this place smells like,” Veronica said. “Ham!”“Keep moving,” Mrs. Knox said. Veronica pressed her finger to her nose to imitate a snout and glanced back at me, snorting. Her nostrils looked dark and cavernous.“Cut the porcine references,” Mrs. Knox said. “This country has endured enough already.”Veronica rolled her eyes and ceased snorting.I watched Mrs. Knox hustle over to an ATM. All around me, people chattered in different languages. My knowledge of languages wasn’t at all refined, but I could pick out the cadence of Spanish