by Ruth Houston
I hauled myself out of bed, nearly tripping on my covers when they got pulled to the floor, and dashed downstairs as quickly and as silently as I could. I searched the whole first floor of my house, but he was gone.
Gone.
For good. I knew with certainty that this time, he was definitely not coming back. Zack was going to Italy to that goddamn American school for the next two and a half years, he would fall in love with some hot Italian chick and totally forget about me, and I'd never, ever see him again. Vaguely, I noticed from the sounds of falling water outside the window that it was raining. I sat down on the couch, hard, and an overwhelming sense of loss overtook me, so much that I couldn't breathe. When I was finally able to, it came in short, ragged breaths. I hunched forward and cradled my head in my hands, rubbing my temples.
He was gone.
Chapter 24: Italy (edited Jan. 19, '05)
-Zack-
I hated flying. I really did.
It wasn't that I was scared of heights, or that I was afraid we would suddenly crash and all die in a huge, colorful explosion. I wasn't freaked out by the idea of sitting in a little tin cabin tens of thousands of feet up in the sky, floating in thin air with no breathable oxygen outside the window. I didn't throw up when we were at thirty thousand feet, and had no particular disinclination for turbulence. In fact, I thought turbulence was kind of fun. No, it was none of that.
It was more the idea sitting in a box of metal with a fancy name like Boeing 747 that seemed completely random, with about 300 other people for company. It was more the thought of having to sit squished next to a window for x number of hours, or, even worse, sitting between two absolute strangers for those x number of hours without having any privacy at all. Christ, I couldn't even get up to have a piss without the people next to me not know exactly where I was going. Can't a guy just go use the bathroom in peace? I mean, for god's sake, there was only one place you could go to when you got up, and that was the lavatory. Every action I did for the entire flight would be seen by the people I was sitting next to, and the thought drove me nuts. No privacy. Not my idea of a fun time.
We were flying first class, and I took out my CD player and hung the headphones around my neck, blasting some CD, I didn't know which one (Brock had given it to me; I hadn't thought to listen to it until now) as loud as it would go, just to give the other rich people in the cabin something to talk about when they got off the plane. "Did you see that boy? Did you hear the profanity in the music he was listening to? How rude. Teenagers these days, they have absolutely no respect for others." Shut up, you dumb-ass hypocrites. You were all teenagers once too.
I was bored out of my mind. That was another thing I hated about airplane rides. There was nothing to do. I wasn't really a computer-inclined kind of guy, and I didn't like the movies they were playing; I wasn't a poet or a writer, so what the hell was I supposed to be doing? Sleeping? Yeah, right. If I could only get two hours of sleep in the relative comfort of my house, did you really think I was going to be able to fall asleep on a plane, sitting next to two strangers? Luckily, neither of them had tried to speak to me yet. I hated it when people tried to talk to me. So I sat there, closed into myself, half listening to a random rock CD and half thinking about things I really shouldn't have been thinking about.
Like how my head was hurting from my jumbled mess of thoughts. Like how I didn't have a hangover, but still couldn't remember exactly what had happened last night. Like how I had woken up this morning, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed fully clothed. Like how, after I had seen Winter slumbering peacefully with her head resting in her arms, I had picked her up and tucked her back inside her covers, then ran for my life.
What had I done last night? I really, honestly didn't know. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know. I had found from previous experiences that drinking tended to create large holes in my memory. I didn't drink often; I wasn't an alcoholic. I was smarter than that. Including yesterday, I had probably consumed alcohol about four times, not including the little sip I had taken from Brock's beer cup at Melissa Noble's party three years ago, which had permanently turned me off of the stuff. I only drank wine, red wine, not white. I was picky. White was too dry for my tastes, too sour and flat. I never got hangovers, headaches, or passed out, just got these times, like now, when I couldn't remember what I had done after the second glass. My dad's wine collection held a few bottles that were pretty strong.
What had I done? Why had I been at her house? What had I been thinking? It was too hard to piece together, so I just sat there in my uncomfortably firm seat, with my seat belt off. I wasn't awake, but wasn't exactly sleeping either. My eyes were open, staring blankly at the food tray in front of me.
When the CD was over, I turned it off. The girl sitting next to me gave me a curious look while the man who was sitting on the other side of me looked relieved that I had finally shut it off.
"Lei ama la musica di Green Day?"
I started. Oh. The girl was talking to me in Italian. She had asked me whether or not I liked Green Day. Why Green Day? That was absolutely the most random thing anyone had ever asked me.
"Uhh, suppongo," I muttered back in Italian – 'I suppose.' Her accent was atrocious. It was obvious she was American. As before mentioned, I hated it when random strangers tried to start up a conversation, and was a little irked that she had taken it upon herself to chat with me.
She laughed, and said in English, "You can't 'suppose' that you like a band. You either do or don't." She looked to be about my age, maybe a year or two older.
"Okay, I do," I said finally, just to get her off my back. It was after I said this that I realized the CD Brock had burned for me was Green Day's American Idiot album. Huh.
"I don't," she said cheerfully, brushing back a strand of blonde hair. "They suck. They're so whiny, don't you think? You're cute."
'And you're stupid,' I wanted to say, irritated. I had never before in my whole life been called "cute" to my face. It was not an adjective people usually thought of when they saw me. "They don't suck and they're not whiny," I said, just to contradict her, even though I didn't yet have a fully formed opinion of the band. I had only listened to them this once, and for the majority of the CD I hadn't even really been listening. "And I'm not cute," I snapped at the end as an afterthought.
"So why are you going to Italy?" she asked, apparently very deaf. She needed to get her ears checked.
"Photo shoot. I'm a model," I said sarcastically, but again, she didn't catch on.
"Oooh, really? That's so neat. I'm going for vacation." She was getting excited over nothing. Idiot Girl flipped her hair and took a compact mirror out of her purse to check her mascara, which was too heavy and clumpy. I shot her a look of disgust but she didn't catch it.
"That's nice," I said absently, putting my CD player back into my backpack. Could the girl just do me a favor and shut up?
"Where are you going for your photo shoot?" she asked me, dabbing on some lip gloss that looked like pink, slimy honey. Childish, I know, but the first word that came to mind when I saw it was "gross". Just gross. I was so glad Winter never wore any of that stuff.
"The Colosseum," I smiled at her sweetly. "In Rome," I added on, just in case she didn't know what I was talking about.
After a few more questions, she finally caught on and left me alone to be immersed in my thoughts. God. Hopefully my new school would not be filled with brainless people like this. I thought I just might commit suicide if I had to put up with this for the next two years.
xxxxx
When we got to the airport, I found myself standing in the middle of a swirl of different languages; obviously the most prominent was Italian. It took me by complete surprise that I could understand most of what I heard. I realized with delight that I could translate passing phrases like "Dov'è…?" and "Andiamo!" and "Arrividerci!" It had been years since I had heard or spoken a sentence in Italian. There had been no one to speak it with after the phone calls from my mother had ended.
On the taxi ride to my new school, which was located in the outskirts of Milan, my mom was poring over some brochure or other about how "prestigious" it was and how it had a history that dated back to such-and-such year, and it just went on and on and on, like an Energizer bunny, yadda yadda yadda. I tuned her out after a while, watching the passing scenery and examining some of the Euros my father had given me. I had never handled Euros before, and wasn't quite sure what the currency exchange was. All I knew was that one Euro was worth more than a U.S. dollar. My father was saying that he was glad when they had changed everything to Euros, instead of the different currencies for each of the European countries, but I had thought that the individual currencies, like Italy's previously circulated liras, had added to each place's unique culture. It was too bad.
Well, if my mom wanted history, she got history – the campus was huge, and the office building of my new school looked like it was going to collapse any moment. Don't get me wrong, it was a very nice building, just old. Beyond old. Centuries old. At least, that was what it seemed like to me. When we stepped inside the front hall though, the transformation was so huge that I blinked a couple times and turned back toward the door we had just walked through, unable to fathom how one six inch wall could change a building so drastically. The inside looked like a hotel lobby, no joke. There was a receptionist's desk and everything.
We asked the lady at the front desk what to do, and she said to follow her. She led us to the office of 'Saviero Tancredo, Principal', and let us in.
Saviero Tancredo was a tall, broad-shouldered, salt and pepper haired man. He was not unkind, but didn't mince words either.
He shook my father's hand, said a few polite words to my mother, and got straight down to business. He spoke half in English, half in Italian. His English, like my mother's, was nearly perfect except for a light accent. He explained that this one-story central building was the office part of the school. The dorm houses were down the road; Casa di Prodi consisted of the boys' dormitories while the Casa di Vivaldi was for the girls. Obviously, the opposite sex was not allowed in the other house. Classes for the most part were held in the quad, an enormous square of classrooms with a spacious courtyard in the center. Meals were eaten in the mess hall, a separate building also down the road. After explaining a whole bunch of other things to me and handing me my schedule and room key, I was free to leave. I was expected to be in class on Tuesday morning (Monday was still part of the semester break here and I silently cheered for an extra day of no school), eight AM sharp, no excuses. My father and mother helped me to move my suitcases to the boys dorm house.
Outside room 257, I turned and bid them goodbye. My mother gave me a hug again, and my dad simply nodded and said sharply, "Don't get into any trouble." Trust me, it wasn't said in the kind way that meant he wanted me to watch out for my own well being. What he meant was that if he heard of any hints of disturbance from the school administration about me, any at all, I'd be in big trouble. I rolled my eyes a little.
"Goodbye," I said to them. I didn't even watch them walk away. They would return to their picture perfect casa in Florence, do their advertising business again for all the big companies, and life would be back to normal for them. Meanwhile I would be here, an ocean separating me from my real home. Italy could be theirs, but it wasn't mine.
I was halfway through the motion of inserting my key into the lock when the door flew open and I found a guy staring at me.
What?
No. I was not sharing a room with someone else. There must have been some mistake.
"Who're you?" the guy asked me, his voice carrying a hint of a Southern accent, of all things. He was an inch shorter than me (which was still pretty tall, considering my height), had black, spiky hair, the darkest blue eyes I had ever seen, and was dressed in a white polo shirt and khakis. Can anyone say prep extraordinaire?
"Zack," I said automatically, a little preoccupied with checking the number on my key. It said 257. I frowned at it.
"There's no mistake," the guy said. "This is room 257. So you're Zackary Crowne, huh? We're roommates. I'm Leonardo Fedele di Orazio. Just call me Leo." We shook hands.
"I didn't know I'd be sharing with someone," I said.
Leonardo Fedele di Orazio laughed. "Old Saviero didn't say anything, huh? The bastard," he said good-naturedly.
"I see," I said, rather irrelevantly, wondering exactly how I was going to survive for the next two and half years if it meant I had to share a room with someone. Hey, call me secretive, but I'm a private sort of guy. The fact that I could barely live through the plane ride was enough to attest to that statement. I shuddered a little, then glanced back at my new roommate.
"Need help moving all your shit in?" Leo asked me, eyes slightly crinkling up in the corners in a friendly way.
"That'd be nice," I replied.
"What the fuck you got in here, boy?" he asked cheerfully a second later, dragging the biggest of my suitcases into the dormitory. "A fuckin' library?"
"Just stuff," I said vaguely, wondering how he had managed to swear a grand total of four times in the twenty seconds since I had met him. That was an average of five seconds per swear word. Impressive. He was a clean-cut guy with a dirty vocabulary.
I pulled my other (lighter) suitcase inside with my backpack slung on my shoulders, and Leo dropped my duffel bag on what I assumed would be my bed.
"Welcome to room 257, Zackary," he said.
"Zack. Call me Zack."
"Zack it is, then."
The room was carpeted and had two beds, each on opposite walls. Next to the beds were desks. The one farthest away from me was Leo's – it was covered in books and papers and pens and pencils. His computer was on – he had multiple AIM windows, several web browsers opened to various web sites, and a word document layered on top of each other. His side of the room had a closet and dresser that mirrored mine, and there was a separate door that opened to a shared bathroom.
Leo explained more about the school and teachers and rooms than I ever needed to know or could remember. He was funny. Not the kind of funny that made you clutch your sides and made your stomach hurt and gave you stitches because you were laughing so hard, but funny in subtle ways that made me grin. Every other person he knew was the "idiot son of a fuckin' bitch" or a "fuckin' dumb-shit", but he never said it like he was insulting them. In fact, he announced these things pleasantly in that voice tinted with the faint traces of a Southern drawl. To him, these were just the facts of life. Saviero Tancredo was just the idiot son of a fucking crazy ass bitch, and the head mistress, Amadora Agosto, was simply a dumb-ass with too much fuckin' money who didn't know sincerity from shit. Leo was incredibly creative with his words – in the one and half hours that it took me to unpack all of my belongings, I heard a huge number of variations on all the swear words. I even heard a few I hadn't known existed. Leo brought a whole new angle to profanity – I would never view it in the same way again.
Leonardo Fedele di Orazio did not live life halfway. For him, something either was or wasn't, it was all or nothing; there was no grey, no fuzzy area in the middle, no unknowns. He loved baseball, chess, history, pizza, his computer, alto saxophone, and his dog Duke; hated Saviero Tancredo, The Odyssey, cats, cold weather, chips and salsa, school work, Tetris, cigarettes, and the school uniform. He was in love with a girl named Belinda-Caterina, the most fucking gorgeous girl he had ever met and the only unknown in his life, and was convinced that she loved him too, but was just being too stubborn to admit it. Secretly, I wondered whether Belinda-Caterina was a quiet type of girl, because if she wasn't, it might have caused some conflict with Leo's talkative (but not unfriendly) nature.
The campus was very empty. There was a kind of quiet that pervaded the school, the sort of countryside, rural, nature induced peace, and it was rather nice. The distance between the quad, office building, cafeteria, and dorm houses were long, and the foot paths between them were winding and old, and the stone of the roads was
crumbling. There was grass and flowers and trees everywhere you went, but the place had a clean, fresh feel to it.
"Everyone's away, back at home in the States, visiting family, see?" Leo said as we walked along the path to the quad. He was giving me a tour.
"How come you're not?" I asked, glancing upwards at the sky, where a few lazy clouds were meandering their way about as a weak winter sun shone on the tiny yellow flowers dotting the grass beside the path on either side of us.
Leo shrugged and grew oddly quiet. "Dunno." That was all he had to say on the matter. He then brightened up. "Hey, you know, the food here is good – greatest stuff ever –" He talked on, kicking at a little stone in his path as he walked, and I let him without interruption.
The school wasn't bad. Still, it wasn't Branner, California, USA, zip code 92107. Oh, yeah. And there was that little fact that Winter wasn't here.
As we walked through the courtyard of the quad, strolling over the grass lawns, I snapped my fingers. Leo gave me a weird look.
"What?"
"Nothing," I said automatically. I had realized why I had gone to her house, though I didn't know exactly what had happened afterwards. I cursed myself for being so stupid. Why had it taken me so long to figure it out?
Chapter 25: Reconnaissance and Cookies
-Winter-
I sat there on the couch for what seemed like forever. It was probably more like twenty minutes, because my mom woke up shortly after and asked me why I was just sitting there on a Saturday morning, staring blankly out the window at the rain like a dead fish, because really, rain was not that interesting, and appearing to be a dead fish was not all that flattering.
I sighed. "Yeah, mom," I replied, turning around a little to look at her. "You're right. It's not that interesting or flattering."
She gave me an odd look and tucked her hair behind her ears. "Well, breakfast is in about fifteen minutes, if you're up for French toast." She left for the kitchen and I resumed looking out the window.
