They sang through to the end, their voices widening, entwining, and Jessa watched a few lights click on around the hotel, people leaning out, blinking from their windows below, looking up. Somewhere, Jessa was sure Sean was listening.
Several rooms over, Devon shouted out. “What do you think this is—West Side Story? Go to sleep, you idiots!”
#11: café dumbass
No one from Williams Peak was being sent home, but Mr. Campbell and Ms. Jackson let them know at breakfast that they were on very short leashes—collars, really. And they were leaving Venice early, losing the opportunity to take the cool boat ride that had been planned for the morning.
They left Venice with the dawn just a peeking glowing band on the horizon, the night above still spattered with stars. Francesca sat in the first seat, rubbing her temples, the man-boy whose name Jessa still didn’t know asleep next to her, the side of his face pressed against the window.
Rachel slid into the seat next to her. “His name’s Giacomo,” she whispered, offering Jessa a wafer cookie from a bag.
“Who?” Jessa took a cookie, popped it in her mouth where it melted almost instantly. Yum. She grabbed another.
Rachel motioned to the front of the bus. “Adonis up there.”
“Who is he?” Jessa helped herself to yet another cookie.
Rachel shook her head. “We’re working on that. But he’s definitely with Francesca. Lizzie heard them fighting last night.”
“What about?” Jessa studied the back of Giacomo’s head.
“Who knows? It was all Italian. But she said it was heated. Can I sit here?” Rachel tucked her knees up against the back of the bus seat in front of her and flipped open a Tennis magazine.
Jessa’s eyes searched the bus. Tyler sat up close to the front with his sweatshirt pulled over his eyes. She nodded at Rachel. “Sure. You playing first singles this year?”
“Hope so. Kelly Stahl is hitting really well. She’ll give me a run for my money.”
“Not a chance. You’re more consistent than Kelly.”
Rachel seemed surprised. “Thanks. Do you still play?”
Jessa sighed. “Not really. Volleyball kind of took over. Can’t do it all.” She cleared her throat, averted her eyes out the window. She and Rachel had gone to the same summer camp for tennis all through middle school, and she’d played a bunch when they lived in the city. But volleyball and tennis were the same seasons at Williams Peak. Jessa couldn’t remember the last time she picked up her racquet. Maybe she’d dig it out of her closet when she got home.
She could feel Rachel studying her. “Well, if anyone can do it all, it’s you. We should hit sometime. For fun,” Rachel added.
Jessa fiddled with her iPod. “I’d like that. You’ll obliterate me, but I’d like that.”
Popping her mint gum, Rachel went back to her magazine, winding a piece of honey-colored hair around her finger.
Jessa clicked to Evita on her iPod and let the music wash over her. She pressed her palm against the cool glass of the bus window and bid farewell to Venice, its green canals still snaking through her veins. Maybe once you drifted through the water world of Venice, it never really left—your body was somehow forever tied to the floating island city.
Jessa shut off her music, fidgeting in the seat. She couldn’t get comfortable. Something was wrong. She knew it, felt it in the pit of her belly. In some sort of mid-trip fractured way, she knew that something had broken for her. Not just her fight with Tyler or Carissa’s stupid manual or the chaos of last night. Not even Sean, who sat three seats away, reading his National Geographic—was he fifty? He loved that magazine. No, it was something bigger than that.
But Sean and Natalie, who now snuggled up front with Jamal, were definitely over. Somewhere between Florence and Venice, she had switched boys the way Jessa might change her shirt at the last minute before running out the door. Red shirt, blue shirt. Sean shirt, Jamal shirt. Sean must have felt her watching him. He turned, the magazine slipping slightly against where he had it propped on his knee. He gave a quick, practice wave, like he was auditioning to wave to her. Jessa pretended to be searching her iPod. No, this feeling wasn’t about Sean. What had shifted? Something had split off, was left bobbing there in the Venice canals.
“Jessa?”
Mr. Campbell stood in the bus aisle. He slid into the now-empty seat beside her. At some point, Rachel had moved up a few seats and was snuggling with Kevin, their voices low purrs. Jessa pulled her earbuds out and tucked them into her sweatshirt pocket.
Mr. Campbell seemed like he’d aged four years, his eyes all dark circles and his skin red splotched.
“Rough night?” she asked.
“You could say that.” He held a book out to her. An old paperback with a black-and-white cover. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, well read and dog eared.
She took the book, smoothed her hand over the cover, looked at him expectantly.
“You gave me a book for the trip. I figured I could return the favor.” He folded his hands in his lap, leaned into the seat.
“James Joyce?” She had seen Hillary reading it for AP English during rehearsals last month. She said it was confusing—beautiful, but confusing.
“Kind of changed my life.” Mr. Campbell smiled a sad, half smile at her. “In the way that some books can change what you know about yourself. For better or worse, when you look at the world through an artist’s eyes, it’s nice to know you aren’t alone.”
She thanked him, flipped it open. He had marked some of the pages with a black ink pen, little flecks in the margins.
“Ignore the marks. I wrote a paper on it in college. You’ll find your own marks.”
“What’s it about?” She read the small description on the back. A boy “choosing between a religious vocation and an artistic one.” Her stomach fluttered. A boy finding his way.
“Just read it. We’ll talk.” He moved back to his place near the back of the bus with Ms. Jackson who quickly, but long enough for Jessa to see, squeezed Mr. Campbell’s hand as he slid into the seat beside her.
***
Time travel. That was really the only explanation for it. Umbria. Castles and fortresses standing out against the sky, the hills all layered like waves, dotted with terra-cotta towns and row upon row of olive trees.
They waited for the frog to point them in the right direction.
Here, though, sitting on a smooth stone bench in the center of the Piazza del Comune, Jessa wasn’t sure there was a right direction at all.
Assisi—even the word took time to say. Time didn’t seem at all in a hurry here, not the busy buzz of Florence and Rome, or even the drifting, dreamy haze of time in Venice. Here, time took a long lunch, planting itself firmly on a blanket in a fat beam of sun. Was it the twenty-first century or the nineteenth? Did it matter? Not really.
Well, that’s not totally true. It seemed to matter to her friends. And to the other group. Everyone, it seemed, was in full-force fidget mode. Squirmy, like ants on a banana peel—ants with iPods, and phones, and PlayStations, and Nintendos.
The frog wanted their attention. Francesca waved it in three, quick flaps over her head. “Who has heard of St. Francis?” She waited. A man buzzed by on a Vespa. St. Francis—Jessa had heard of him, but she wasn’t sure where or why.
“The nature monk?” Dylan Thomas called from a bench where he and Tyler had been lounging in the sun. He blinked and looked around the group. “Oh, come on, people. He was like Dr. Doolittle or something.” He shook his head, apparently disgusted either with their lack of knowledge on St. Francis or perhaps with Dr. Doolittle, Jessa wasn’t sure. He collapsed back on the bench and closed his eyes.
“Um, the Eddie Murphy movie?” Cheyla volunteered without missing a moment on her phone, texting someone furiously, her fingers flurried bees. Could someone get carpal tunnel in their thumbs?
Francesca looked skyward. Perhaps the frog would have a reason for their tragically incomplete educations?
>
Mr. Campbell cleared his throat. “You guys will like this one. Rich kid who denounces his dad to live in poverty, to seek out the quiet life, the virtuous life tied to nature.”
Devon frowned. “No offense, Mr. C, but what about that story did you think we would like?”
Tim nodded. “Yeah, no offense, but he sounds like kind of a tool.”
Francesca leveled her gaze at them. “He was buried on Hell Hill with convicts and outcasts.”
Erika and Blake stopped whispering, their heads swiveling to attention. A hush blanketed the group. Cruella clucked her tongue disapprovingly.
Francesca had them at “Hell Hill.”
***
“Are you talking to me yet?” Tyler offered her a gummy bear, staring down at where she sat on the steps outside the Basilica di San Francesco.
Jessa shook her head, returned her gaze to the book in her lap.
“What if I do a dance?”
She squinted up at him, the sun against his back making him glow with the warmth of Umbrian sun. “No dancing.”
“What if I promise not to dance?” He put on his sweet, please-forgive-me-puppy-dog-who-ate-your-shoe face.
She took the bag of gummy bears, folded them up, and put them in her bag. “I’m officially cutting you off.”
He sat down next to her, pulled out another bag of gummy bears from his bag, and ate a handful. “OK, I have an idea.”
“What idea?”
“I know Carissa can be a real pain. She can be a spoiled, selfish drama queen.”
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
“Let me finish.” Tyler held up his hand. “You know what she loves more than anything?” Jessa held his gaze. “You,” he finished. “She put a lot of time into these envelopes, and believe it or not, they’re helping. I mean, you don’t have that beat-puppy face twenty-four seven like you did when we first started.” He twisted his face into a replica of the aforementioned puppy.
“I don’t make that face.” Jessa returned her eyes to her book, but she wasn’t really reading.
“You know what I think?”
“Enlighten me.”
“I think we finish. We’ve come this far. You finish the instructions. I finish the manual. If for no other reason than I’m getting really tired of looking at churches.”
Jessa pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and rubbed her eyes. Something in the air here seemed to slow the world around her, disperse time like dandelion fluff left suspended in the cool, sun-spilt air. Her eyelids drooped. She thought of her sister, Maisy, when she was barely two—how her eyes would give up before she would for a nap. Her mom would drive around and around to get Maisy to sleep, her eyelids thick as her head bobbed and fought in her car seat. Jessa would ride next to her, watching, waiting for that exact moment they’d close for good and they were safe to go to the drive-through coffee place, latte for Mom, mango smoothie for Jessa.
Finally, she said, “OK.”
They watched everyone regroup, wander back to the steps from the little shops they had been perusing. Mr. Campbell stood a few feet away, checking his watch every few minutes.
Tyler motioned toward the note tucked into her book:
Reason #11: Café Dumbass.
“But in the spirit of full disclosure as you now know that I know what’s coming next, I always thought this one was Carissa at her bitchiest.”
“Me too.” And it was. Usually after a show, they all went to Tony’s, an old diner out on Highway 174, mostly because it was open late and also because Tony Stevens, the owner, gave them free French fries and acted like they were some kind of celebrities because they were in the high school show. But during the Hamlet run, they had wanted to find a café for after the Sunday matinees. So L. E. had suggested Café Dumas, a new one that had opened downtown that was supposed to have really yummy muffins and play good music on Sundays. Another kid who worked there had been passing out little glossy cards after the show that day.
Sean got lost finding it, so they were already fighting, but when they walked in, he said, “What kind of place calls itself Café Dumbass?” and he wasn’t trying to be funny. Jessa tried to make it seem like he was joking, like he didn’t just totally mispronounce it and look like an idiot announcing it to the room. But Carissa knew better, eyed Sean with icy eyes from her perch next to Aaron Wright, who played Laertes and was too cute for his own sweet nature. Carissa had taken to flirting with him like she might qualify for an Olympic trial in toying with nice guys’ feelings.
“It’s Doom-ah, moron,” she had drawled. “But we could call you Café Dumbass if you’d like.”
And even though most of them meant it in fun, Jessa still watched Sean prickle anytime he walked into a room and someone yelled out, “Café Dumbass!”
Jessa pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?” Tyler peered over her shoulder, watched her text.
“Telling Carissa that I’m not doing it. She should’ve come up with some other ideas than having me shout things at him, throw things at him. Her need to have things hurled in his general direction is getting a little generic.”
“But don’t tell her you know about the manual!”
“I won’t! Shut up for a second.”
She was halfway through the text when she realized the group had fallen silent. Jessa paused, her thumbs hovering over the tiny keys.
Mr. Campbell was boring a hole into her head with his eyes. Not a happy hole. A dark, smoldering hole.
“What?” Her question was barely a breath.
“See,” Mr. Campbell addressed the group. “This is what I mean. This is what I’m talking about. Here we are. In Italy. Halfway around the world, walking through ancient ruins and buildings with ancient stories. And all you guys can do is bury your heads in your machines.” He threw up his hands. Ms. Jackson stood next to him, her face unreadable.
The group was silent, their phones, iPods, cameras, PSPs, Nintendos drooping like overripe fruit at the end of their arms. What had she missed? Had he been talking? Her face went hot. She jammed the phone into her bag. The other group hurried away as if avoiding a sudden rainstorm and reconvened on the other side of the courtyard.
Francesca leaned into Mr. Campbell, whispered something. He waved her off. “No, really. It’s ridiculous. You’re trying to talk to them and they’re so plugged in they can’t even hear you. It’s embarrassing. You’ve got all this reality around you, all this history and you’re too busy…” At this point, Mr. Campbell did something that could be described only as performance art—sort of a mime mixed with bleeps and clicks that was surely meant to be them texting, talking on phones, listening to iPods, but it made him look like Pinocchio on speed.
Clearly, he’d lost his mind.
“Put them away,” he finished, his face beading with sweat. “Away. Text your parents, friends, whatever. And tell them you’re offline, unplugged, deactivated—for the next twenty-four hours. You’re done.”
“Ben…” Ms. Jackson started, quietly, her eyes down.
“No way, Amy. No way. We’re done. Turn them in.” He zipped open his backpack, held it open.
One by one, they each dropped their electronics into Mr. Campbell’s bag. Hillary went three rounds with him over whether her Kindle really counted since all she did on it was read books and was he taking books away? With a sigh, he let her keep the Kindle.
Soon, though, his bag was bulging, so Ms. Jackson bit her lip, unsnapped her bag, and held it out away from her as if someone might puke in it.
Jessa sent a text to her parents:
Doing experiment. Offline 24 hours. No worry. Fun. Talk tomorrow. Luv U. Text Mr. C if you need me.
She dropped her phone and iPod into Ms. Jackson’s bag, who sighed and widened her eyes a bit at Jessa. “You’ll get them back tomorrow. Or when Ralph Waldo Emerson over there cools off a bit.”
Mr. Campbell stood in a clench, arms knotted across his chest. When all devices had been surrendered,
he took a long, steady breath. “You have one hour. I don’t want you with anyone or talking to anyone. Just walk around. Listen to this place. Smell it. Hear it. Then we’ll meet back at the bus.”
***
This part of the world had been quilted, patchworked in swatches of olive trees and stone, green and earth and sky knitted together. The layers of hills, the bleached pastels of the little houses. The world smelling of sunlight, Jessa found a shady hollow of ground beneath a tree and instinctively reached for her iPod.
Maybe Mr. Campbell had a point.
She rubbed her eyes, leaned her head against the tree trunk, felt her body settle into the air. “Listen,” he had told them. Nothing. So quiet she could hear the air dreaming through the leaves above her.
Jessa took stock of her body, something the yoga teacher made them do when she and her mom went to class on Wednesdays together. Aware of feet, of legs, of stomach, of shoulders—aware of the tight skin around her eyes, aware of the way her eyes felt slightly dusted with sand.
Aware that here it was earth that flooded her veins, not water, like in Venice. Earth. Sky. Clouds. She opened Portrait and started to read where she left off last night, when her eyes where too blurry to read the already shifting and looping words of Joyce. Talk about Café Dumbass. She could open a cafe of her own right here in Assisi. She was pretty sure she didn’t understand the book at all, so much of it blurred on the page before her eyes. Still, something about his language, something about the way he put words next to each other, made her breath catch, made her feel like Joyce could see deep into the dark parts of her. Even if she didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
She sighed.
“Such a sad sound.”
She started, sat up. Francesca’s mystery companion, Giacomo, stood a few feet away, dressed in denim, a snug black T-shirt, those funny shoes all the Italian men seemed to wear, his sunglasses fixed into the curls atop his head. Edged in sky, the Assisi landscape behind him, all castles and towers and stone, he was a god—or a prince. He should have a white horse. Maybe a cape of some sort. Jessa laughed out loud.
Instructions for a Broken Heart Page 12
