Jessa dug through her memory. Had he tried to talk to her about it? She mostly remembered wanting to kick him in the shins. She shook her head to clear it, but he mistook it for disagreement.
“I did. I tried. You didn’t listen.”
“Um, that was a few days late. Generally, you talk to your girlfriend before mauling another girl in the costume barn.”
“OK, yeah. But I did try. And you just used it as an opportunity to attack Natalie.”
Jessa felt her body start to tremble, start to fill with tiny bubbles on the surface of her skin. “I think if anyone has a right to attack her, it’s me.”
He sighed. And for some reason, Jessa got the impression he was thinking about pizza.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Am I boring you? Is smashing my heart into a million pieces and humiliating me in front of all my friends not so much worth an explanation?” She knew what was happening to her voice. She was going to the banshee place, the nether world of screechdom, as her dad would say. She put a lid on the banshee.
“You know what, Jessa?” Sean went to his quiet, zombie, blank place, a perfect mini-replica of all their past fights. Her screaming, him silent. Quietly, he said, “Maybe for once you could learn that the whole world isn’t here to owe you an explanation.”
“How about just you?” She could feel the tears, hated them, wanted to erase each single tear as they bulged in her eyes, but she couldn’t stop them.
“You know what? It just always seems like when girls say they want to have a conversation, they just really want to do all the talking.” Sean sighed again, ran his hands through his hair—his great hair.
For a minute, she imagined shaving it with one of those sheep-shear things she’d seen at the farm they visited with the environmental club last month. It helped, a little. “I want to have a conversation,” she whispered. “I want to know what happened with you and me. One minute we’re about to go on a romantic Italian trip and then the next minute I’ve got standing room only to your romantic vacation with another girl, which, by the way, has been just a rocking great time for me—not that you’d notice.”
“Yeah, really romantic.” His eyes over her shoulder again.
“It was a horrible thing to do to me.”
“Jess…” Every once in awhile, Sean looked at her as if she were the only person in the world, the rest of the world falling away around her like a dark stage, leaving her flush in the middle of a circle drenched with spotlight. Now was one of those times. “Jess,” he repeated, leaning in toward her a little. “It’s like you’re in a race. You’re always in a race.”
“What do you mean?” Her stomach prickled with his words. Always racing—after that elusive future.
He dropped his hands, his face going slack. “I just…I wanted things to be easier. You’re…not easy.”
“No,” she said, her voice hiccupping, fighting the tears back down to her belly. “No. I’m not.”
“I do miss you. You said in your note. What I deserve. I deserve to miss you, you said.” His eyes searched her face. “But, it’s just…” his voice trailed off, his eyes on something over her shoulder. Maybe Natalie and Jamal had invited a mime to participate in their little show?
“Jessa, bella.” The voice caught her from the side, like a sudden wind.
She turned as Giacomo moved in next to her, his arm coming around her shoulder in one clean move and settling there, warm.
“You are crying.” His eyes darted to Sean, who, Jessa smugly noted, looked guilty.
“I’m fine.” She wiped at the skin beneath her eyes. It felt papery, like tissue.
“We get something to eat?” Giacomo motioned toward the busy square behind him. “We drink something?”
“We were kind of talking,” Sean said. He stood up a little straighter, folded his arms across his chest.
Jessa leaned into Giacomo. “I’d love to get something to eat.” She caught Sean’s eye. “That way your evening can be easier.”
Giacomo whisked her away into the blurry, busy Rome night.
***
Giacomo wiped his mouth with a napkin and pulled the letter closer to him. “So she writes you these reasons. With these instructions. And you forget this Sean?” She thought he might be making fun of her. His eyes glinted, crinkled at the corners.
“It’s not going so well.” Jessa read the note upside down.
Competition Piece.
Carissa had reminded her of their festival piece they had taken to competition that winter. About Sean’s sulking that he didn’t make it in.
No one wants a big baby for a boyfriend!
But apparently, Jessa glowered, it was fine to kiss the big baby backstage when he was already your best friend’s boyfriend.
“Why the lemon face?” Giacomo sipped his wine. “You don’t enjoy the wine?”
Shaking her head, Jessa took another small drink of her own dark red wine. “No, that’s not it. I was just thinking about something.” She tried to clear her thoughts, focus on the fact that she was sitting in the shadowed courtyard of a Roman restaurant, sipping red wine with an Italian man. She tried really hard not to slouch.
Giacomo pointed to Carissa’s instruction. “What is word for word?”
“It’s a type of theater.” Jessa finished chewing her bite of caprese salad. “You perform a piece of prose, like a novel, word for word. We did Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax.”
The waiter set down two plates of pasta and the smell of garlic and herbs permeated their table. Jessa took a deep breath. Giacomo said something quickly in Italian to the waiter, laughed, then refocused his gaze on her.
“What did you guys say?” Maybe they were laughing at her. The American kid with the stupid notes. She took another quick sip of wine.
Giacomo checked his BlackBerry, stuck it back in his pocket. “What we? The waiter?” He picked up his fork and spoon, swirled the noodles with his fork into the belly of the spoon before taking a quick bite, setting the utensils down again. “I told him that Roberto must love his garlic.”
Jessa didn’t know who Roberto was. Maybe the chef? She just nodded.
Giacomo studied her from over his wineglass. “So this Carissa says you should pick a word-for-word piece for Sean. One that says something about him.”
She swirled her noodles, feeling very sloppy and young—no spoon, noodles everywhere. “Yep,” she slurped.
“And what would you choose?”
She set her fork down, resting it on the plate at an angle, the way Giacomo had his. “Who knows? Is there a book about a boy who doesn’t know what he wants?” As the words tumbled out, Jessa realized she was currently reading that very novel.
“I think that’s what most novels are about.” He ate another bite of pasta. “Unless the book is about a girl.”
She laughed, folded the letter up, and stuck it back in the envelope. Giacomo’s eyes glinted in the candlelight.
He smoothed the tablecloth, then set down his wineglass. “You don’t want to do her instructions? Don’t want to read her reasons?” He took a sip of wine.
“Not really.” She paused, realizing she had grown completely tired of Carissa’s little game, her know-it-all instructions to Tyler. But there were envelopes left—unopened—and she had already gone this far. She had promised Tyler she’d finish, not that he seemed that interested anymore.
“So don’t.” Giacomo waved to the waiter, who filled his wineglass.
“There are still six envelopes.”
He laughed. “You Americans. So many rules. Always having to finish things. So…what is the word? Productive?”—said as if he might have uttered the word toilet or congested.
Jessa flushed. “‘You Americans.’ That’s a bit of a generalization.”
“What is this ‘generalization’?” The word rolled in his mouth like working it around a triple wad of gum.
Jessa thought about it for a second. “When you state something about a whole group. Like Italians care too m
uch about shoes.”
“Italians do care about shoes. Too much? I don’t know.” He smiled, seemingly enjoying Jessa’s annoyance.
She stabbed at her pasta. “Why are you suddenly here?” She snatched the small dish of cheese and dumped a spoonful over her pasta.
“I asked you to have dinner. And we are here.” He sat back in his chair, his palms up in defense.
“No, not here, the restaurant. Here on this trip.”
His face darkened. “I was asked to leave school.”
Jessa set her fork down. “Why?”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Narrow minds.” He leaned on the table. “My mother locked the house and left no key. So here I am.”
“Your mother?”
He mimed the frog bobbing along, a big goofy smile on his face.
“Francesca’s your mom!”
He nodded, returning to his pasta.
Jessa took another small sip of wine, a smile pulling at her mouth. “OK. Interesting. But she doesn’t look like that. At least not the smiling part.”
“Yes. My mother could smile more.”
His smile was like something in one of the fountains, lit and otherworldly and maybe, at the edges, a little sad.
***
Rome buzzed with the night, something alive and electric as she walked with Giacomo back toward the bus. She had never had dinner for three hours before—pasta and lamb, gelato drizzled with strawberry sauce, a sweet dessert wine in tiny, smoky glasses. Jessa wasn’t much of a drinker. Was always happy to be designated driver at her friend’s parties. As they walked, the wine whirled about her head, drawing a dreamy cloak behind her eyes. And she had never eaten lamb before, was actually fundamentally against lamb. A baby sheep—who ate that? But it had been seasoned with what could only be herbs grown in heaven and marinated in something smoky and dark.
She felt a little criminal eating it.
On their way out of the restaurant, she realized she had left Carissa’s envelope on the table. She didn’t go back for it. Didn’t care if it ended up in the bottom of a garbage can filled with congealing noodles and leftover salad.
She laced her arm through Giacomo’s, the sounds of water from the fountains filling her ears, and tried to watch him without him noticing. Giacomo was eighteen. Amazing. He could pass for his early twenties. Jessa had always been jealous of her friends who could pass for older. Last summer, she had been carded for a PG-13 movie, which made her want to rip off the ticket-window glass and strangle the little idiot selling tickets who was like fifty years old. PG-13? Sean had not stopped laughing through the entire previews. “Why don’t you call Maisy and see if she can come down and get you into the movie,” he’d said, slurping his soda. She’d thrown most of her popcorn at him and moved three seats away. Not funny. OK, sort of funny, but the worst thing was she’d had to use her school ID card to prove she was in high school. Idiot troll working at the movie theater when he was fifty. But Jessa knew she looked young. Something her mother always told her she’d be grateful for when she was thirty. Whatever.
Giacomo didn’t seem to find her young.
“Oh, I want to show you this.” He unwound his arm, grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward a side street.
Her heart began to pound. Was he going to kiss her? He would, right? She licked her dry lips, brushed at some strands of hair that had fallen from her ponytail. She really, really wished her hair wasn’t in a ponytail. She probably did look thirteen.
The side street was suddenly quiet, the air still and shadowed.
Her heart skipped. Maybe she shouldn’t be heading down this street with a total stranger—an Italian stranger, who had been kicked out of school. Why had he said he’d been kicked out of school? Narrow minds. What did that mean? What if people were narrow minded about him killing people?
He led her down the little street, the buildings pressed a bit too snug next to each other. Jessa eyed the balconies overhead, the hanging plants and pots of flowers, their petals velvet with night. From one of the windows, an opera played and its steady, lilting sound made her think of the Sarah Brightman she’d been listening to earlier that day, the way her voice always made Jessa feel like nothing in the world could go truly wrong, not when a voice like that existed.
“Here.” Giacomo motioned to the outside of a small café, closed for the night, tables and chairs pulled inside and stacked. “What do you think?”
“Um…” Jessa hesitated, not quite sure what she was being asked to look at.
“The mural.” He gestured to the wide, modern fresco on the café wall. In the painting, the earth seemed to split behind a shadow of cloud, spilling curls of color in a sunburst, almost a spiral toward a black, starry background.
“It’s beautiful.” Jessa stepped back, trying to take it all in, but the narrow space didn’t allow her to look at the whole thing at once.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s not the best space. You should stand back farther. Yes.” He shook his head, bit his lip.
“It’s yours?” Jessa watched him study the wall.
“Yes. Mine. And my friend, Aaron. He does most of the original design and I’m the color, the brush.” He squinted, frowned at a small patch of graffiti on one side of the mural, said something in Italian Jessa was pretty sure she wouldn’t find in her guidebook.
“It’s wonderful.” Jessa felt the color escaping from the wall even in the darkness, the passion in the brushstrokes. “It has amazing energy.”
He snapped his fingers, smiling at her widely. “Yes, energy! That is what we wanted. I knew you would see it.”
She grew warm, his compliment like a towel just out of the dryer wrapped around bare skin. She took his hand again. “You’re very talented.”
He flushed. “Grazie.”
Jessa checked her watch. “The bus!” She dropped Giacomo’s hand.
She was more than twenty minutes late.
***
“Nice of you to join us.”
Jessa slid into the seat next to Dylan Thomas, pausing at the snip in his words. “I lost track of time.” She settled her bag on her lap.
His eyes strayed to where Giacomo was in a heated whispery discussion with Francesca at the front of the bus.
“We didn’t do anything,” she added, feeling oddly self-conscious.
Dylan Thomas plugged up his ears with his iPod and stared out the window as the bus began to pull away into the night.
“Hey…” she started, reaching out to touch his arm, but he didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice, and she decided not to indulge it. She rested her head against the back of the seat, her body light and floaty. Several seats away, Sean turned and studied her, then folded his arms across his chest, slumping into his own seat. Even with two mad boys, Jessa could only smile into the warm glow of Rome.
#15: friendship
Jessa woke suddenly—breaking glass, shouting. She sat up, rubbed her eyes. In the bed next to her, Lizzie fumbled for her glasses on the side table, knocking them to the ground. Jessa slipped out of bed, picked them up, and handed them back.
“Shanks,” Lizzie said, her voice thick with sleep, and mumbled something that sounded like, “Blind shout shasses toncats,” which Jessa assumed had something to do with being blind without her glasses or contacts. Jessa’s mom was the same way.
Another shattering of glass. The shouting seemed clearer, as if the voices were coming down the hall.
Jessa, with Lizzie on her heels, cracked the door open an inch and stared into the dim light of the hallway.
Cruella stood in a glittering ring of glass, like some sort of witch in a trance. Her husband, looking rumpled and small in striped pajamas, was pleading with her. “Please just come back to the room…”
“I hate it here!” she howled, and Jessa realized she would have to concede screechdom to this woman. Her pitch must be what broke all that glass.
Lizzie, attempting to get a better look over Jessa’s shoulders, leaned into her, but not
before Jessa could get her footing and the two of them toppled into the hallway.
Cruella and the world’s most boring world history teacher suddenly took in their audience. “Go back to bed, girls…It’s fine,” Bob started. Cruella held a crumpled tissue to her face.
“Um,” Lizzie said fully awake now, her voice small and airy. “Do you need something…Can we get you something?”
Cruella’s eyes fell like embers on them. “You and your horrible friends have done enough, thank you very much.” She reached for her husband, who took her arm, and started to step carefully over the glass—a water glass from the looks of it. Jessa and Lizzie both had one by their bedsides.
Jessa studied Cruella—the mascara-streaked face, the deep orange silk of her kimono robe, the pale, thin legs. A rotting pumpkin of a woman.
“Why do you think that is?” Jessa heard herself asking, felt Lizzie’s wide eyes on her.
Cruella turned. “Excuse me?” She drew herself up tall, the way some women could, made herself a few inches taller as if her skin expanded like a cobra’s.
“Why do you think they’re hard on you?” Jessa swallowed, her heart racing.
“Hard on me?” Cruella took a step toward her, and Jessa’s feet cemented themselves to the floor. She was not afraid. OK, yes she was. She couldn’t move out of fear. But Cruella didn’t need to know that. “Those children aren’t hard on me. They are vicious. They’ve ruined my Italian experience. My whole life I’ve dreamed of Rome and now…I am going to demand a full refund.”
She was very close to Jessa now. Only a few feet away. Bob stood behind her, his eyes on the floor. Jessa could feel Lizzie behind her, hear her breathing, low and steady.
Jessa locked eyes with Cruella. “My grandmother would say you’re the kind of person who can’t find something sweet in a candy store.”
Lizzie let out a surprised laugh.
Cruella’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“In fact,” Jessa continued, her voice taking on the edge of the glass on the floor. “If I were you, I would start to wonder, Why do all the bad things keep happening to me all the time? Why is everything so awful? Everything. Think about it. I mean, you know what flies are attracted to?” And then Jessa answered her own question.
Instructions for a Broken Heart Page 15
