Catch by Michelle D. Argyle

 
1.

    Miranda’s parents had gone overboard in
planning this last family vacation before she went off to college.
The next five days were packed to the brim with activities
organized around her father’s business convention. She should have
been excited, but it all felt so inevitably predictable. Just like
her life. As much as she sometimes wished for something unplanned
and exciting to happen, she knew it was a reckless hunger. She had
once told her fifteen-year-old sister, Julia, “If you look for
excitement, you’ll probably find trouble.”
    But maybe a little trouble would be worth
it.
    “Okay, girls.” Miranda’s mother, Gabriela,
flung a suitcase onto one of the hotel beds and unzipped the top.
“I’ve brought something for you two to do while we’re here.”
    “Like there’s not enough entertainment in
Vegas already?” Julia asked as she sank into a chair by the window
and dropped her sunglasses on the table. She looked the most like
their mother, with darker skin and full, curly black hair inherited
from Gabriela’s Brazilian genes. Those genes had skipped Miranda
entirely. She looked most like her father, with fair skin and
straight, light brown hair. The most exotic things about her were
her long, black eyelashes, full lips, and bushy eyebrows she had to
pluck nearly every day.
    “Of course there’s enough entertainment,”
their mother replied with a small pout, “but this is … this is
different.” She pulled a small white box from her bag and slid off
the top. “You two got to know Grandpa pretty well before he died,
but he never talked much about your Grammy. I want you two to get
to know her better.”
    “Here we go,” Julia groaned as she slowly
fist-pumped the air. “Another march into the Brazilian roots!”
    Miranda smirked and looked out the window at
the city sprawling below. They were on the sixth floor of the Las
Vegas Hilton, and she was only now beginning to cool off from the
dry July heat outside as the air conditioner blasted cold air up
her sweat-damp shirt.
    “These are the pictures we saved?” Julia
asked as she jumped onto the bed and peered into the white box.
Miranda watched them over her shoulder, remembering how devastated
their mother had been when that stupid flood destroyed the few
boxes of memorabilia they had of Grandma and Grandpa Soares. They
had managed to save one box with a few pictures and some
knickknacks, but Miranda hadn’t paid much attention to them at the
time. She was too busy mourning the loss of her baby scrapbook,
which was now a water-warped mess.
    “Yes, these are from her first trip to Vegas.
It was 1967—when Elvis married Priscilla at The Aladdin, and Howard
Hughes started buying hotels, to give you some sense of the time
period.”
    “Who was Howard Hughes?” Julia asked,
snapping her watermelon gum.
    Miranda laughed. “Leonardo Dicaprio?” she
hinted. “That movie The Aviator ? Howard Hughes was one of
the richest men in the world, ever.”
    Julia shook her head. “No clue who you’re
talking about.”
    “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Gabriela sighed as
she lifted old photographs from the box. “What matters is that you
two get to know your Grammy through these pictures.”
    Walking to the bed, Miranda picked up one of
the pictures and studied it. Her Grandma Soares had the same dark
coloring as Julia. In the black and white photograph, she was
wearing an old-fashioned dress with big shiny buttons going all the
way up the front. She leaned against a light-colored Chevy, her
face half covered with a huge pair of white sunglasses. On her head
was a floppy sunhat.
    Miranda smiled. “Looks like she walked
straight out of Hollywood.”
    “Well, we don’t live far from there, now do
we?” Gabriela laughed. Miranda’s parents had lived in Santa Ana
forever, even before they’d met and married … and Miranda feared
she would live there forever too. That was why she had been so
desperate to go to college somewhere other than