Teaching Camila

Camila waited on Príncipe de Vergara for the 29 bus, impatient in spite of herself. She pulled her phone from her bag and looked at it for the fifth time in the thirty minutes since she'd woken up. 8:45am. That damn bus took forever, she thought. She went ahead and checked the phone for messages again. Nothing. Why should anything new be there? Resigned, she scrolled through her Twitter feed. She skimmed stories in The New York Times, on CNN, and at Business Insider, then got bored and shoved the phone back into her bag. She lifted her gaze and saw a few familiar faces around her. Two teenagers whispered to each other in private school uniforms. A Latina nanny watched over little twin girls in round pink glasses. Lucia, she'd heard one of them called, same as her sister. God, she missed her. Her morning routine already felt strangely familiar, even though only a few months had passed since Camila chose to leave New York City for Madrid to work toward a Master's in International Management. She had enrolled at Velasco School of Management, or VSM, as most people called it. Everybody had called it careless and rash, the way she dropped everything so fast, but at the time she had simply needed to leave her past behind and start over. Why was chasing more education supposed to be so reckless anyway? Going back to school had, of course, been the way she justified the move, but lately she was starting to think she wasn't sure anymore.