The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter One: Those Meddling Kids

Our plucky protagonists started out on this adventure not knowing that they were indeed on an adventure. They were just going to school, after all. At least this time around, that's just what they were doing. Just a normal, average day, full of loud meet-ups with friends in the hall before classes, a Spanish quiz that was almost certainly failed, lunches of pizza slices and energy drinks, and, before the day would be over, a stolen glance or two at the object of one of their affections. The four of them were begrudgingly related, although only two by blood, the twins. The other two, adopted, one a year older than the twins and one two years younger, still looked remarkably fitted for the family in which they'd been placed. Despite the twins having shared their sixteen years together, were and had never been the best of friends. One boy and one girl, they had no matching interests except for the care of their matching blonde locks. The oldest of the four, another boy, was easily the smartest among them and never spared the opportunity to acknowledge the fact. The youngest, completely outnumbering the girl by showing up one day in the arms of his adoptive mother, was quiet and would have rather been homeschooled, as he'd been in the early days of his childhood before the explosion.
If you collected a number based on the sum of their intelligence quotient, you wouldn't come up with a very high number, but you would find an incredible factor of creativity and perseverance. As all protagonists should have, the four, when put together, would have claimed to be unstoppable. Their parents, one a data-entry office worker who often worked from home on contract and the other a substandard dentist, had enough disposable income to treat their children and themselves to one vacation a year and a third vehicle for the oldest to share with his two younger siblings who were learning to drive. Coordinating all of this often fell to the girl, who planned and, to put it bluntly, connived for the best option that leaned in her favor.
"Italy or Greece this year, mama?" the girl leaned out of the window above the garden to call down to the woman sat in the muddy ruins of an over-watered flowerbed.
"When have we even gone over seas, dear?" the mother said dryly as her gloved hand retrieved a tangle of petunia roots from the slop. "It'll be Canada or Mexico again this year. As every year."
The dentist set about scooping water-logged mulch and broken branches from a long dead and unrecognizable semiannual and the girl sighed and pulled herself back into the house. On the settee in the upper gathering room, she'd piled together all of her travel books, each covered and filled with sticky-note reminders of the best destinations. No amount of pouting or whining would magically create the funds for six adults to fly internationally and stay in a seaside villa in Greece, so she pushed the Mediterranean out of her mind and off of the settee and onto the floor. Her brother, her idiot twin, had most likely failed the Spanish quiz they'd taken that day, but she'd passed with ease. He'd most likely prefer surfing and swimming over the possibility of learning anything about culture, thus his failing grades in Spanish. While the beaches in Puerto Vallarta were enticing, she couldn't overlook the food and culture of Oaxaca.
"I know where everyone else will want to go," she hummed to herself as she flipped the pages in a Rick Steves travel guide. "But if I were to mention something about a certain someone's grades..."
The evil crack of the giggle she added was a bit of a shock to her, but she shook off the feeling, knowing that it was what she'd have to do to get what she wanted. Her sound of her older brother's footsteps coming up the carpeted stairs made her jump as well, but she knew the Golden child wouldn't care about anything she was planning, if he came at all on the trip.
"Scheming again, I see, Ez," he said as he reached the top step and saw her among the pile of books. "Or wasn't that a cackle of laughter I just heard?"
"I don't cackle," Ez sneered. "And what do you care anyway? Are you even coming this time? Now that you're practically in college?"
"I am in college. I only have the one class at Baybridge and I'm at CSU the rest of the day. And why would I want to spend my Spring Break with all you kids?"
"Literally a year younger, Callum. One year. You're seventeen, not eighty."
Callum had already reached his room and pushed open the door. He slid his crossbody bag from the shoulder where it hung and tossed it gracefully onto the bed that was just past the doorway and still neatly made from the morning.
"Where have you deemed that the family is going, queen Esmeralda?"
She rolled her eyes away from him and folded the cover of the Rick Steves book smooth before lifting it up for him to see.
"Ah. México," Callum said, pronouncing the name with an exaggerated accent. "Declan will love that."
Ez offered a satisfied and spoiled smirk and found her place again where she'd been reading. "He'll just have to get over it. Like he's going to die if we go to Oaxaca instead of Cancún or Puerto Vallarta."
But come to find out, he may do just that.