S1 Week 11 Bonus Story: An American Dream Pt. 2

The Worst Day of Sebastian's Life

Welcome to Trainwrecks, a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.

Friday posts are for paid subscribers. For $5 a month or a discounted rate of $50 a year, readers get four bonus stories which dive into character backgrounds or expand on the present day narrative. This bonus content is not necessary to understand the main story. Money raised by paid subscriptions gets reinvested into the series in the form of art and advertising, so do consider upgrading if you’d like a more robust Trainwrecks experience!

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Content Warning: Death of a parent

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Every week, Sebastian received a letter from his mother, and every week, he wrote back to her. He told her about his foster family and the antics that he, Luna, and Dimitri would get up to. He told her about school and how he wasn’t very good at it, about trips to Mount Vernon to see the tulip fields, about which video games he liked, about the church he went to and how he’d accepted Jesus as his Lord and savior, and about how Mr. Cruz was teaching him to play the guitar. She in turn told him about life in Argentina, about relatives he’d never met and places he’d never been. Her letters often came with photographs, and they filled his dreams with European-style cities and beautiful landscapes.

He kept them all in a letter box that Mrs. Cruz bought for him at a home goods store, tucked in the safety of his closet where he could pull them out and pore over them at night.

~*~

Mrs. Cruz owned a dance studio, and Sebastian, along with Luna and sometimes Dimitri, spent a lot of time there during the week. It was a small studio space, located in a Bellevue strip mall between an Indian restaurant and a travel agency.

Both Mrs. Cruz and her husband were professional dancers. She told Sebastian that she used to go to a summer dance camp for girls, and at the end of the season they would collaborate with another dance camp across town. One such summer, she met Julian Cruz, and from the moment they first danced together she knew she didn’t want to dance with anyone else.

“She makes it sound romantic,” Mr. Cruz said as he took his wife by the hand and twirled her into his embrace, “but my hands were sweating so bad I had to keep wiping them on my pants.” It was closing time for the dance studio, and he’d come by to pick them all up, but had gotten distracted by the slow song playing through the speakers.

Mrs. Cruz laughed as she swayed with her husband. “It’s true. He was a nervous wreck! But he was so handsome, I stole the phonebook from the director’s office and kept calling the other camp to talk to him.”

“And I gave her my home phone number when the summer ended.” Mr. Cruz smiled at her adoringly.

“We racked up quite an impressive phone bill.”

“My father was livid.”

“So was mine! He said, Nena, marrying him will be cheaper than this!”

“But he didn’t like me.”

“No, he did not.”

“I had to beg him for her hand.”

“We were nineteen when we got married,” Mrs. Cruz whispered to Sebastian like it was a big secret.

Mr. Cruz gave her a peck on the lips. “It wasn’t easy, but we made it.” He dipped her, pulled her back up with ease, and continued their swaying. “And now look where we are! A house, a successful business, and two amazing kids.”

Sebastian blushed at the inclusion. But he couldn’t stop watching his foster parents. The grace of their movements. Their peaceful smiles. They looked so happy that his heart filled with yearning, and he was on his feet before he realized it. “Can you teach me how to dance, too?” he asked.

Mrs. Cruz’s smile widened. “You want to learn?” He nodded eagerly, and she turned back to her husband. “What do you think? Do we have time to show him a few steps?”

“Sure we do!”

Luna groaned at the top of her lungs. “No, I wanna go home!”

Her parents burst out laughing. “Just fifteen more minutes, mija!” And they motioned for Sebastian to come join them on the dance floor.