Rusty/Monica: Was the Inn our last family vacation?

It probably would have been anyway, considering the way that a couple kids not much younger than I really am were staring at their phones and rolling their eyes when their parents were trying to point things out while I was waiting for Katey on Tuesday, their southern accents making them as tourists.  I don't think Katey/Kutter and I were like that much, but maybe Dad sees it differently. 

We were shopping because Katey and Omar are heading to Cabo San Lucas for a week and Katey wanted a few sexier swimsuits and outfits.  She's been upgrading her wardrobe ever since her promotion, but a lot of it has been stuff for work or more casual, and she said she wants to look like a sexy woman instead of a sexy girl.  It felt kind of funny to be shopping for that after work, in our blouses, pencil skirts, and heels, but I get it; I kind of feel like I'm cosplaying a real estate agent sometimes, and a lot of her co-workers aren't quite so worried about the impression they give, because we kind of overshoot the mark. 

For a while, she didn't really seem to know exactly what she was looking for, which was why it was kind of funny to see her come out of a changing room in a red dress, grinning.  "I like this one!  It makes me look like I have tits!"

"What are you talking about?  You've got really nice, perky breasts!"

"C'mon, Rusty, you know 'perky' means 'small'!"  She took a look at her profile in the mirror.  "Don't get me wrong, I don't mind being able to go without a bra some days, but it seems like all of Omar's buddies have girlfriends with bodies like Emilia's, and you know everyone's going to be flashing cleavage all the time in Cabo!"  She gathered her hair up in her hand, trying to see how the dress would look with it up without actually making a bun.  "You don't get it, you can just be the fun and naive girl when hanging out with friends, but every time I go quiet because I just don't have college or some other experience to talk about, it makes me look, I don't know, insubstantial.  I know the way I dress doesn't change anything, but at least I don't double down on it."

"I suppose, although, don't you feel a bit weird going off to another country with someone?"

She shrugged.  "Not really.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I love you girls, but it feels really nice to be Omar's girlfriend first and foremost sometimes, you know?  Just having someone accept you at face value and love you for it."  She pulled me into the changing room, where she unceremoniously dropped the dress and started putting on a swimsuit.  "You know what's weird?  Emilia and Jonah.  Like, they'll be out on a date with us and I know they're having a good time, because Em really can't fake anything after a couple drinks, but then by the time we're on the subway their demeanor totally changes, and then we get home and Emilia's popping a Bud Light and falling asleep on the couch watching some basketball game.  Jonah's like that too, he's actually got a locked cabinet with romance novels, and, I mean, maybe I spend a lot of time with writers and editors, but the symbolism is kind of on the nose, right?"

"Hey, it works for them, right?"

She shrugged, and started trying on another swimsuit.  "Does it?  I mean, I kind of figure that you've got to figure out who you are now and commit to it.  Be the chick who likes sports, or the guy who reads Nora Roberts, or whatever.  Like, would they even be together under normal circumstances?"

After that, we were checking out and going to another store, so the subject kind of got dropped.  She's been posting a lot of beach pics since Thursday, though, and really seems to be having a great time with just herself and Omar.  Dad's making a good show of being cool with it, and she and Jonah are talking about maybe doing something like that once the academic year is over, although I can't tell whether they really want me along as a third wheel or not, even though they say so.  And if they do, does that mean that maybe Katey has a point about them not really being into each other as opposed to being the best people they can fake it with, or maybe even the best people they can convince themselves that they're faking it with? 

It might not matter; I'm not exactly established enough at the office to take two vacations this summer, and Monica's parents are talking about something in Europe in late June.  I gather it's something the whole extended family does every summer, even when Monica was in college, with me begging off last summer because things were kind of tight understandable but unusual. 

It's kind of tempting - I actually really like hanging out with Monica's cousins at holidays, and her family is actually really cool.  I like going back and forth with them on social media, and they've actually been a supportive of all the crazy ways I've upended this life and come out as ace and stuff over the past couple years.  It might actually be kind of fun to take a big vacation with them every year!  It's just the idea of doing it with them instead of Dad and Katey that's kind of weird. 

Well, not something I really have to worry about today, I guess.  

-Rusty Monica

Toby: Dunia Looks Fishy (I Guess)

Hey, does anyone know a lawyer with experience handling Inn-related situations (Marc)?  The guy that Dunia's father called seems capable enough and has me out of jail, but there are obviously some things we can't discuss with him.  He'd probably have a fit knowing that I'm posting on a public blog, but I don't really know what else to do, and I've got to guess we're not the first people to deal with this. 

It figures that this would happen a soon as we're kind of getting used to living our lives as Dunia and Alicia, though.  We just started working the Miami-DC route at the start of March, which looked like it would be pretty nice - it's the longest one we've had yet, so there aren't quite so many flights needed for a 40-hour week, and even though the schedule often sticks us with a two or three-hour layover, the other attendant's have pointed out that the airport is on a regular Metro line rather than so far away from the city center that you're fighting traffic on a bus (it'll be hilarious if I go back to South Dakota as someone who hates to drive, considering everything) and the food is supposedly fantastic, and all the museums at the Smithsonian are free, so you can kill time there pretty well.  I've gotten pretty used to the job and all the girl stuff, and my Spanish has gotten to the point of almost being understandable (it was actually one of my best classes in high school, but when you consider that I learned it from textbooks that assumed you'd be going to Spain, and practiced with the mostly-Mexican migrants who worked on farms, Dunia's Cuban-American family sounds almost completely different!) although kind of quietly, while Lambert has started flirting with the pilots now that he's mostly over his fear of flying, saying that Alicia is on the wrong side of 30 and he's trying to give the next Alicia a head start. 

Anyway, we were just getting off a pretty late flight when we were met at the gate by a couple guys in suits and sunglasses, who flashed badges to identify themselves as the FBI, saying they had a few questions. 

We actually didn't think it was Inn-related at first.  Part of the training materials was actually about working with the Feds, especially air marshals, and how to spot potential hijackers or possible human traffickers, and another part said to immediately call a union lawyer in a situation like this.  I guess flight attendants get talked into helping smugglers a lot, because we can get past security with just a quick baggage check, and the salary is low enough for it to be tempting.  But by the same token, cops often see young people who can be intimidated into saying we did something we didn't or held long enough to miss out next flight and disrupt a travel for a while bunch of people. 

And on top of that, while I admit that Ma raised me to cooperate with police whenever asked, Dunia and her fellow dark-skinned Latina friends disagree. 

So I clammed up until the union lawyer showed up, but he was only there long enough to tell me that since this wasn't work-related, he couldn't represent me, and advised me to find someone else.  They let me call Dunia's father, who I figured must have a lawyer to handle the business aspects of his garage, and an hour later he showed up, and that's when they finally asked me if I knew Toby Watson and Lambert Allen.

We kind of had a plan for this - back in September, I texted Ma about this exciting opportunity to join the crew of this research boat in the South Seas, where phone and internet service would be kind of spotty.  Since then, we've been following their progress on social media and occasionally reposting images with our own captions to keep the illusion up, answering our email, that sort of thing.  It was kind of thin, but we kind of figured our parents wouldn't look too closely, because Lambert occasionally does things like this on a whim and Ma talks about me getting out of our dying hometown, and this looked pretty good to her.

Apparently, we weren't tracking it too closely, because there was some sort of emergency a few days ago where the ship had to get towed to port, and when my mother got an alert about it, she immediately contacted them to find out if I was okay, only they'd never heard of me.  She got in touch with Lambert's dad, who was connected enough to get the FBI involved, and I guess my phone's GPS readings said it was near the Cortes house, and they had pictures from traffic cams showing "Alicia & Dunia" in Lambert's car, driving from Maine to Florida.  Once they discovered we had stayed in the Inn, and so had Alicia and Dunia, they smelled a rat.

My instinct was to try and come up with an explanation on the spot, which I guess would have been pretty dumb, as I figured Lambert must be in the same situation and there was no way our explanations would match, but the lawyer pointed out that if there was anything there, they would have come to the house with a search warrant, and asked how I should know where Alicia got the car.  Basically, he gave me every instruction he could to shut up, and I did, even as the agents said that they actually liked Alicia more for this, and if I would just tell them what she'd been up to, that would let them find Toby and Lambert faster and give everybody closure, and they'd remember who tried to help.

I guess that sort of stunned me into silence - does everybody, including Ma, think I'm dead?  I wanted to protest, say I wasn't, but I knew I couldn't explain how I knew that and being so sure would just look suspicious.  Of course, I must have looked suspicious anyway, because lying to the FBI and the lawyer Dunia's father sent down is not easy and I must have had every tell possible, but I guess that I was lucky that I froze in a "say nothing" way, instead of accidentally revealing too much.

They eventually let us go, and I kind of started getting paranoid about whether Lambert had clammed up the same way or if maybe he'd tried to throw suspicion away from himself/Alicia and onto me/Dunia.  Dunia's father was really scared when I got home, but also hopping mad that when some gringos went missing in Maine, they immediately looked for the nearest brown folks to blame.  I didn't mention the phone.  I should probably find a way to get rid of it, I guess, but now I'm kind of worried that if I step out the door with it, somebody will grab me to prove I have it.

So there it is:  I'm apparently a suspect in my own disappearance.  It feels like this must happen every winter, but I've got no idea what to do.  Anyone else been in this situation?

-Toby/Dunia