Chapter 1: Arrival Day

Maya Collins had imagined her arrival in Barcelona at least a hundred times.

In every version, she stepped out of the airport looking refreshed, stylish, and almost impossibly calm. Her hair moved in the Mediterranean breeze. Her linen pants did not wrinkle. Her suitcase rolled obediently beside her. Somewhere nearby, sunlight hit the city in a way that made everything seem golden and cinematic, like the beginning of a life she had been waiting to start.

In reality, her hair was stuck to the back of her neck, one of her contact lenses felt like it had been replaced with sandpaper, and the left wheel of her suitcase had started making a noise so violent that people kept turning to look at her.

Not a soft noise. Not a mild inconvenience.

A clattering, scraping, dying animal kind of noise.

Every time she dragged the suitcase forward, it announced her presence to the entire Barcelona airport.

Clack. Scrape. Clack. Scrape.

Maya tightened her grip on the handle and tried to pretend she was not sweating through the back of her pale blue blouse.

“Great,” she whispered. “Perfect. Very elegant.”

Around her, people moved with purpose. Families reunited near the exit doors. Business travelers walked past with slim black bags and clean shoes. A girl about Maya’s age laughed into her phone in rapid Spanish, one hand pushing a sleek carry on that moved like it had been blessed by engineers.

Maya looked down at her own suitcase.

The wheel gave another tragic scrape.

She had packed for four months in Spain as if she were preparing for every possible version of herself. Casual Maya. Academic Maya. Beach Maya. Night out Maya. Museum Maya. Girl who says yes to things Maya. Girl who might somehow become cooler in Europe Maya.

Now all of those versions were crammed into a suitcase that sounded like it wanted to die in baggage claim.

She stopped near a pillar and pulled out her phone, trying to find the email from the study abroad office. Her screen was smudged. Her hands were slightly shaky. She had slept maybe two hours on the plane, wedged between a snoring man and a woman who kept opening yogurt containers with alarming confidence.

A new country, she reminded herself.

A new semester.

A new version of you.

That was the whole point.

At home, Maya was the girl who always had the answer. She submitted assignments early. She color coded her planner. She researched restaurants before going to them. She knew which train line to take, which backup train line to take if the first one failed, and which coffee shop nearby had the best reviews if she arrived too early.

Her friends back at school called her organized.

Her mother called her dependable.

Her younger brother called her “a human spreadsheet,” which was rude, but not entirely inaccurate.

Maya had not traveled across the ocean to continue being a human spreadsheet.

She had come to Barcelona to be the kind of person who could get lost and laugh about it. The kind of person who could make friends quickly. The kind of person who would return home with stories that made people lean forward and say, Wait, you did what?

She had come here to become brave.

Or at least braver.

At the moment, though, brave felt a little ambitious. She would settle for finding the student housing office without crying.

Her phone finally loaded the email.

Welcome to Barcelona, Global Semester students!

Please proceed to the shuttle pickup area outside Terminal 1. Student guides will be waiting with blue university signs. Shuttles will depart every thirty minutes between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.

Maya checked the time.

12:46 p.m.

Her stomach dropped.

“No,” she whispered.

She had spent too long waiting for her suitcase. Too long trying to figure out whether she needed to declare the granola bars in her backpack. Too long standing in the bathroom, splashing water on her face and attempting to look less like someone who had crossed six time zones and lost a battle with an airplane seat.

She grabbed the suitcase handle and started moving.

Clack. Scrape. Clack. Scrape.

People glanced over.

Maya smiled tightly at no one in particular, as if the suitcase were not hers, as if she were merely escorting it to its final shame.

Outside, the Barcelona air hit her all at once. Warm, bright, and busy. Not the heavy Florida heat she was used to, but something drier, softer, threaded with car exhaust, sea air, and the faint smell of coffee from somewhere nearby.

For half a second, despite everything, Maya stopped.

Barcelona.

She was actually here.

Not looking at photos. Not scrolling through travel blogs. Not telling people at home, “Yeah, I leave in May,” while secretly wondering if she was making a mistake.

Here.

Palm trees lined the airport road. Signs appeared in languages she could partly understand and partly guess at. A family walked by speaking Catalan, the words smooth and unfamiliar. A group of students in sunglasses hauled duffel bags toward the curb, laughing too loudly and already looking like they belonged in the story Maya was trying to enter.

Her chest tightened with something that was not quite fear.

Wonder, maybe.

Then her suitcase wheel caught on a crack in the pavement, jerked sideways, and nearly took her shoulder out of its socket.

Reality returned immediately.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Beautiful city. Evil suitcase.”

She scanned the curb for a blue university sign.

Nothing.

There were taxi lines, buses, drivers holding names on tablets, a cluster of tourists, a man smoking near a trash can, two women arguing cheerfully over a map, and absolutely no obvious study abroad shuttle.

Maya walked farther.

Clack. Scrape. Clack.

A bead of sweat slid down her spine.

She checked the email again. Shuttle pickup area outside Terminal 1. Student guides. Blue signs. Thirty minute intervals.

Maybe she was at the wrong exit.

Maybe there was another outside.

How many outsides could one terminal have?

She turned in a slow circle, trying to look thoughtful instead of lost. A blond guy in a university sweatshirt strode past her toward a van, laughing with three other students. Maya caught the word “program” and immediately perked up.

“Excuse me,” she called.

He did not hear her.

She dragged her suitcase after them as quickly as she could, which was not very quickly because the suitcase had now developed a second sound, a high pitched squeak that made her want to abandon it and begin a new life with one backpack.

“Excuse me,” she said again.

The blond guy turned. “Yeah?”

“Are you with the Global Semester program?”

He looked at her suitcase first, then at her face. “I think so? The American one?”

“Yes. Yes, exactly. Do you know where the shuttle is?”

He pointed vaguely toward the far end of the curb. “There was one over there, but I think it just left.”

Maya’s smile froze.

“Just left?”

“Like, maybe two minutes ago.” He gave her an apologetic shrug. “There’s probably another one.”

“The email said they stopped at one.”

He winced.

One of the girls beside him leaned in. She had glossy dark hair, round sunglasses, and the relaxed posture of someone who had not spent the last twenty minutes fighting luggage. “You can probably take a taxi. I think housing is only, like, twenty five minutes.”

“Right,” Maya said, though taking a taxi alone in a country she had entered less than an hour ago had not been part of her mental arrival montage.

The girl smiled kindly. “Good luck.”

They rolled away with their functioning bags.

Maya stood there in the heat, the handle of her broken suitcase warm beneath her palm.

This was fine.

People took taxis every day. Taxi drivers existed for exactly this reason. She had the address in her phone. She had international service. She had a credit card. She was an adult. Sort of.

She opened the ride app her study abroad packet had recommended and typed in the student housing address.

No cars available.

“Of course,” she said softly.

She tried again.

Still nothing.

A bus hissed at the curb nearby. The doors opened. People climbed on. Maya looked at the route number, then at her phone, then back at the bus.

There was probably a bus from the airport into the city. There had to be. Barcelona was a real city with systems and infrastructure and people who did not emotionally collapse because of one defective suitcase wheel.

She searched directions.

Three options appeared.

All of them included names of stops she could not pronounce, transfers she did not understand, and walking distances that seemed personally aggressive.

Maya inhaled slowly through her nose.

This was exactly the kind of moment she had wanted. Not the broken suitcase part, but the unscripted part. The part where she would have to figure something out instead of planning everything in advance.

The brave version of Maya would take the bus.

The current version of Maya wanted to sit on the curb and call her mother, which was not an option because her mother would answer with, “Are you safe?” and Maya would immediately start crying.

So she took the bus.

It took four minutes for her to regret it.

The driver said something she did not understand. Maya panicked, showed him the address on her phone, and he responded with a stream of Spanish that included what sounded like directions but could also have been a weather report. She smiled, nodded, paid, and dragged the suitcase onto the bus, apologizing to at least three strangers in English and one in what she hoped was Spanish.

“Lo siento,” she said as her suitcase bumped a man’s ankle.

He nodded without looking up.

“Sorry,” she whispered anyway.

She wedged herself near the middle, gripping a pole with one hand and trapping the suitcase between her legs with the other. The bus lurched forward. Maya nearly fell into a seated grandmother, recovered badly, and pretended to check her phone with great seriousness.

Outside the window, the city began to appear in pieces.

Highways. Signs. Apartment buildings with laundry hanging from balconies. Scooters weaving between cars. Palm trees. Graffiti. Sunlit walls. Far away, for a brief second, something blue that might have been the sea.

Maya’s breathing slowed.

It was not the perfect arrival she had imagined.

But it was hers.

She was in Barcelona, standing on a bus with her broken suitcase pressed against her knees, and no one here knew that she had spent most of her life being careful. No one here knew she had almost backed out of the program twice. No one here knew that the night before she left, she had sat on her bedroom floor surrounded by clothes and cried because she was terrified that even in a city as beautiful as this, she would still feel like the same girl.

Here, she could be anyone.

The bus jerked to a stop.

Maya looked down at her phone.

Her stop had passed eight minutes ago.

“No. No, no, no.”

She shoved the stop button too hard. A red light flashed. A woman glanced at her.

Maya smiled weakly.

When the bus finally stopped, she hauled the suitcase off and found herself on a wide street lined with trees, traffic, and buildings that all looked impressive and completely unhelpful.

The directions said she had a twenty two minute walk.

Maya looked at the suitcase.

The suitcase looked back in spirit and said, absolutely not.

By the time she reached the student residence, her blouse was damp, her arms ached, and the broken suitcase wheel had given up scraping and started dragging in silence, which felt somehow more tragic.

The residence building was taller than she expected, modern and pale against the bright afternoon sky. A banner by the entrance read Welcome Global Semester Students. Through the glass doors, Maya could see young people gathered in the lobby, talking, hugging, checking in, laughing.

Everyone looked like they had arrived hours ago.

Everyone looked clean.

Maya glanced at her reflection in the glass and almost turned around.

Her hair had escaped its clip in several places. Her cheeks were flushed. One side of her blouse had come untucked. She looked less like a college student beginning an exciting semester abroad and more like someone who had survived a minor natural disaster.

The automatic doors slid open.

Cool air washed over her.

A woman at the check in table looked up with a bright smile. “Hi! Global Semester?”

“Yes,” Maya said. “Maya Collins.”

“Welcome, Maya.” The woman scanned a list. “Long travel day?”

Maya gave a small laugh. “You could say that.”

The woman handed her a key card, a packet, and a lanyard. “You’re in room 412. Orientation starts in fifteen minutes in the conference room on the second floor. You have just enough time to drop your things.”

Fifteen minutes.

Maya looked at her suitcase.

Of course.

The elevator ride to the fourth floor felt too short. Her room was small but clean, with two narrow beds, two desks, a window overlooking a side street, and one roommate who had already claimed the bed by the window.

The roommate was not there, but her presence was. A floral tote sat on the desk. A row of skincare products lined the shelf. A pair of white sneakers sat neatly beneath the bed. On the pillow was a folded cardigan in a shade of pink that looked intentional.

Maya set her suitcase beside the empty bed and stared at it.

There was no time to unpack.

There was barely time to become a person.

She dug through the front pocket, found deodorant, dry shampoo, and a lip balm, and did what she could in the tiny mirror above the desk. Then she changed into a fresh white tank and a green skirt that she hoped said effortless instead of I panicked in a dorm room.

When she reached the second floor, the conference room was already buzzing.

Rows of chairs faced a projector screen. Students clustered in small groups, name tags stuck to shirts and dresses and tote bags. Maya paused in the doorway, hit by the sudden fear that everyone had already found their people.

This was always the worst part. The moment before entering. The moment when every group looked sealed from the outside.

She searched for an empty seat.

“Maya?”

She turned.

A girl with copper brown hair and dramatic gold earrings waved from the second row. “You’re Maya Collins, right? I think we’re roommates.”

Relief moved through Maya so quickly she almost sagged.

“Yes. Hi.”

“I’m Sophie Lane.” The girl patted the empty seat beside her. “I saw your suitcase and assumed either my roommate had arrived or someone had abandoned a body in our room.”