The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

by Melissa Jensen

  “I don’t know, Nonna. Elizabeth Benedetto?”

  “Hah!” Nonna slapped her hand hard against her knee. It bounced soundlessly off the leopard plush. “Elisabetta. Elisabetta, daughter of a man who works on another’s boat. Elisabetta who has many sisters and who is intended for the Church if she does not marry. I don’t remember her family name, if I ever knew. Maybe Benedetto. Why not? It does not matter. What matters is that no one understands why Michelangelo Costa chooses this girl. No one can . . . oh, the word . . . to say a picture of: descrivere.”

  “Describe?”

  “Sì. Describe. No one can describe her. Small, they think. Brown, maybe. Maybe not so pretty, not so ugly. Just a girl. She sits by the seawall mending nets her family does not own. She is odd, too, her neighbors think. They think it is she who leaves little bit of shell and rock when she is done with the nets, little mosaico on the wall. So why? the piu bella girls ask, the ones with long, long necks, and long black hair, and noses that turn up at the end. Why this odd, nobody girl in her ugly dresses, with her dirty feet?

  “Michelangelo sends his cousins to her with gifts. A cameo, silk handkerchiefs, a fine pair of gloves. Again, the laugh. Then, you would not have laughed at a gift of gloves, piccola. Oh, you girls now. You want what? E-mails and ePods?”

  “That’s iPods, Nonna.”

  “Whatever. See, that word I know. Now, Elisabetta sends back the little gifts. So my bisnonno sends bigger: pearls, meters of silk cloth, a horse. These, too, she will not take. And the people begin to look, and ask: Who is she, this nobody girl, to refuse him? No money, no beauty, no family name. You are a fool, they tell her. Accept. Accept!

  “And my proud bisnonno does not understand. He can have any girl in the town. So again, he gathers the gifts, he carries them himself, leads the horse. But Elisabetta is not to be found. She is not at her papa’s house or in the square or at the seawall. Michelangelo fears she has gone to the convent. But no. As he stands at the seawall, a seabird, a gull, lands on his shoulder and says—”

  “Nonna—”

  “Shh! The bird tells him to follow the delfino . . . delfin? Dolphin! So he looks, and there, a dolphin with its head above the water says, ‘Follow!’ So he follows, the sack with gifts for Elisabetta on his back, like a peddler, the horse trailing behind. The dolphin leads him around the bay to a beach, and there is Elisabetta, old dress covered in sand, feet bare, just drawing circles in the sand. She starts to run, but Michelangelo calls to her. ‘Why,’ he asks her. ‘Why do you hide? Why will you not take my gifts?’ And she says . . . ?”

  I’d been fighting a losing battle with yawning for a while. I was failing fast. “I have no idea. ‘I’m in love with someone else’?”

  Nonna snorted hard enough to shake the mattress. “With who? There is no one else like Michelangelo. He is king of the sea! In love with someone else. Pah.”

  “Okay. Fine. Tell me what she said.”

  Nonna leaned toward me, eyes bright. “She says, ‘You do not see me.’ And my bisnonno, he says, ‘Of course I see you! Every day I see you by the seawall. I see you in my mind, too, in pearls and furs and silk. So, here, here I offer you these things.’ And she says . . . ?”

  “‘Thank you?’”

  “Per carita!”

  “‘No, thank you?’”

  “Ah, Fiorella. I think you are not the child of my child! Rifletti. Use that good brain.”

  “Nonna . . .”

  “She says, ‘You do not see me!’ And she sends him away.”

  I wasn’t sure I was getting the point. Here’s an ordinary girl in ratty clothes who’s going to end up a nun if she doesn’t get married. Along comes a decent guy with money, promising to take her away from it all . . . Wasn’t that where it usually faded to Happily Ever After?

  “So.” Nonna tucked each of her hands into the opposite sleeve, a wizened Confucius in a leopard bathrobe. “Michelangelo, he goes. For days and days he stays away from Elisabetta. The other girls, the prettier girls, have hope again. And then, there he goes once more, carrying only his nonno’s ugly old glass—his telescope—and a bag of figs. These he lays at her feet.

  “‘I see you,’ he tells her. ‘Every day for months, I watch. I see you. Where you sit, the sea is calm and dolphins swim near you. I see your mended net looks like a lady’s lace. I see you dance in the rain before you run home. I see the jewel mosaic you leave to be scattered and remade again and again, piu bella than gold and pearls. You are piu bella than any other, queen of the sea.

  “‘You do not need silk or pearls. I see that. But they are yours if you wish. I am yours if you wish. If you like what you see.’ He gives her the glass. She takes it. Then she asks, ‘What about the figs?’ My bisnonno, he laughs. ‘It might take time, your looking to see if you like me. I bring lunch.’” Nonna slapped her knee again, clearly delighted with little Michelangelo’s humor. “There is the love story. You like it?”

  I swallowed another yawn. “Sì, Nonna. It’s a good story.” I couldn’t resist, “But . . . a talking seagull? A dolphin guide? That kinda stretches the truth, dontcha think?”

  Nonna shrugged. “All truth, not all truth, does it matter? My nonno Guillermo came to Michelangelo and Elisabetta, then my papa Euplio to him, then me, your papa, you.” She lowered her feet to the floor. Then pinched my cheek. Hard. “Buona notte, bellissima.”

  “Okay, Nonna.” I yawned and pulled the white eyelet quilt up. I’d inked abstract swirl-and-dot patterns all over it when I redecorated my room. They’re a little optic when I’m that tired. “Buona notte.”

  As I was dozing off, I heard her rummaging in the linen cupboard next to my door. Reorganizing again, I thought. She does that when Mom can’t see her. They fold things completely different ways.

  16

  THE PIT

  There aren’t many classrooms in the school basement. Most of the space is for storage and utilities. As far as student use goes, the darkroom is down there, along with yearbook and the school paper. Places that either don’t require much light or are used by students so happy to be there that they don’t care. The only illumination comes from the fluorescents overhead and what filters in from the hallway through the glass upper half of the doors. It usually takes me about ten minutes in French to lose my focus completely.

  This time, it took less. We were learning the past imperfect tense, which, as well as being completely incomprehensible in practice, in theory describes a state where every action was either left incomplete, unfulfilled, or repeated over and over.

  It was me, Sadie, and Frankie, European version.

  “Ah, si j’étais riche!” Miss Winslow (distant cousin to Sadie, direct descendant of Abigail and John Adams, reminiscent of a buff-colored French bulldog) recited. “If I were rich!”

  “Nous croyions aux contes de fées.” We believed in fairy tales.

  “Vous cherchiez . . .” You are searching.

  By the time she got to everyone being in the process of arrivaient somewhere, I was somewhere else completely. Some malevolent office elf had arranged my schedule for the term. Actually, it was probably just the office underling, who didn’t hear any bells, whistles, or cash-drawer clang at the name Marino. To give me English with all the Phillites after I’d just had lunch at Table 12—and French before lunch, when I was starving, was a little evil, as far as I was concerned. At we believed in fairy tales, I’d started thinking about Nonna and Michelangelo, which had quickly devolved into thinking about his bag of figs.

  “Mademoiselle Marino?”

  It didn’t fully register that the words meant me until the freshman Bee Boy behind me snorted and kicked the back of my chair.

  “Ella!”

  “Oui, mademoiselle?”

  “Dormez vous?”

  “Ah . . . oui?”

  There was a flutter of laughter in the room. Mademoiselle Winslow crossed her arms over her chest. She had a sailboat on the front of her sweater. Scrunched up, it looked like a nunchu
ck. “D’accord. D’accord. Avez-vous de bons rêves?”

  It took me a sec. Then I felt the blood rising in my face. “No. Non. I mean. I wasn’t dreaming . . . revving.”

  A few people weren’t even bothering to muffle their laughter now. Mademoiselle Winslow’s mouth thinned, making her look more bullfrog than dog. “Vous me parlerez après la classe,” she snapped. “Compris?”

  I got it. Just. I would be staying after class.

  It took her a while to get to me. I waited miserably in my seat while a stream of mostly freshmen, all of whom were more proficient than I at the language, said their au revoirs and accepted their bien faits. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a “well done” from a French teacher. Art, absolutely. Math and science, sometimes. English, sure—before Mr. Stone.

  “So, Ella.” Mademoiselle Winslow sat down heavily in the desk next to me. “So, so.” The story is that she lived in Paris for a year between Vassar and coming to work at Willing. Apparently, she picked up the French habit of repeating words there, and has clung to it fiercely ever since. “What are we going to do with you?”

  I felt myself flushing again. “I’m really sorry, mademoiselle. I have stuff on my mind, and I wasn’t paying attention. It won’t happen again.”

  She almost looked sympathetic when she replied, “It happens all the time, Ella.”

  That wasn’t fair, but I was getting a faint sense that maybe if I kept my mouth shut, I would just get a scolding before she let me go.

  “Is this stuff something you would share with me?” she asked.

  Not likely. I shook my head.

  “Okay. Okay.” She tapped a blunt fingertip on her desk. Elegant Frenchwomen, she’d informed the enraptured freshmen girls who thought having us translate a French Vogue in our 2A class was brilliant, don’t wear nail polish. “Have you thought about talking to a peer counselor?”

  Like Amanda Alstead, of the Chanel rouge-noir nail polish and black heart? I actually shuddered. And was about to come clean and admit I was just hungry and tired, when she added, “Look, Ella, I can’t force you to talk to anyone, but I can put my foot down about this class. You’re teetering on the wrong edge of a C-minus, and while that might be acceptable to you, it isn’t for me. So we’re going to strike a deal. We’re already nearly in November. I’ll hold off giving you a midterm grade; you’ll do the work. D’accord?”

  I was ready to sign over Frankie and my firstborn to get out of this particular hole. It would kill my dad—and possibly my scholarship—if I got a D in anything. “D’accord.”

  “Excellent. I have a few upperclassmen who tutor some of my French 1A students. I think even an hour a week would make a difference, providing you put in the effort.”

  “Fine.” I could do it. I could stomach an hour a week with some earnest Star who would quiz me on conjugations and probably try to recruit me for the French Club. They do a cabaret each year, which consists of lots of striped shirts, one mime, and a few Liza Minnelli-alikes crooning into a mic. I sighed. “I’ll put in the effort. I promise.” Mademoiselle Winslow looked satisfied. “Can I go to lunch now? S’il vous plaît?” I drew the line at saying it twice.

  “Meet with the tutor first. There’s one here now, waiting to use the room.” She waved toward the door.

  As soon as I turned, my stomach dropped. Even through the mottled glass, there was no mistaking the figure there, even from behind. Of course. It would have to be . . .

  “Oh, no. No,” I whispered. Then, before I could stop myself, “Can’t you find someone else?”

  Mademoiselle Winslow blinked at me in surprise. “Why?”

  Oh, I wasn’t about to answer that one. “There has to be something else I can do. I’ll read Dumas. I’ll listen to Celine Dion. I’ll join a Johnny Depp Fan Club. He lives in France—”

  “Ella. You are just being silly.” The patient bonhomie (Frankie likes to use that word about Dean Martin; it had nothing to do with any hidden French aptitude on my part) was gone, replaced by a sort of sugary snobbishness with a dash of impatience. “He’s just a boy who happens to speak French well. You mustn’t let where you come from make you feel”—I don’t think she meant to look at my neck—“at a disadvantage.”

  I actually felt the ache of tears at the back of my throat and swallowed angrily. Trust this product of thin blood and fat bank accounts to completely misunderstand. She hadn’t had an instant’s concern that I might have even the smallest of valid reasons for not wanting to learn French from Alex Bainbridge. It all came down to money.

  Then she made it worse. “You have an advantage,” she said brightly. “It’s so much easier to develop true facility in one Romance language if you know another. Capisce?”

  She smiled at me brightly. Just call me Scar Fascia, I thought.

  “So.” She tapped her unpainted fingers against the knees of her cords. “So, Ella. Keeping in mind that it might be the difference between failure and your future, what will it be?”

  My stomach growled. “Figs and tuna fish, apparently,” I answered.

  Mademoiselle Winslow’s eyes bugged out more than normal. Before I could explain that it had just slipped out, that I wasn’t being a smartass—not that it would have mattered, probably—she shouted, “Alex! Entrez!”

  He shoved his way through the door, looking far too cute and cheerful to be in a basement. “. . . tu me fais chier, il me fait chier . . .” he was saying slowly to the small and slightly awestruck-looking freshman boy behind him.

  “Alex!” Mademoiselle Winslow managed to sound disapproving and totally charmed at the same time. “Really!”

  He grinned at her and shrugged. Then he saw me. And kept grinning. “Hey.”

  I lifted one hand halfway off the desk in greeting.

  “Sebastian, you can wait with Ella in the hall while I talk to Alex for a minute.” Mademoiselle Winslow shooed the boy out. I got up to follow. “Don’t even think of disappearing,” she ordered me grimly. “And close the door behind you.”

  I slung my bag onto my shoulder and followed Sebastian. He was even shorter than me, and he leaned back against the wall in a gravity-defying way that made him look even smaller. “Is Alex helping you, too?” he asked after a couple of silent minutes.

  “No.” It wasn’t a lie if I meant it. “Is he a good tutor?” I couldn’t help asking.

  The kid’s face lit up. “Awesome! He’s teaching me all the cool words. I will kick butt. No. Je démonterai,” he corrected, then giggled.

  “In French 1A?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be critical; it just sounded like an empty victory.

  “Chamonix” was his reply. “We’re going for winter break, and my parents want me to be conversational.”

  Fortunately, the door opened again, and both Mademoiselle Winslow and Alex came out. She patted me on the shoulder and stumped off down the hall in her nautical-blue clogs. Alex levered Sebastian off the wall by the front of his shirt. “Go in. I’ll be there in a sec.” When Sebastian, clearly delighted to be treated like one of the guys, didn’t move, Alex bared his teeth. “Dépêche-toi!”

  Sebastian dépêched. Alex turned back, all Cheshire cat smile.

  “No,” I said.

  “No what?”

  “No, you are not going to teach me all the cool words so I can go to Chamonix and be conversational.”

  “Good.” He leaned in so I could see the faint dusting of freckles on his nose and smell spearmint gum. “Chamonix is so 1990s. Everyone who is anyone goes to Courchevel these days.”

  I turned on my heel and started to walk off.

  “Jeez. Ella.” He loped after me. “What is your problem? Conversational, my ass. Talking to you is like dancing around a fire in paper shoes.”

  I stopped. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s an expression my Ukrainian babushka likes. I’ll explain it at our first tutoring session.”

  I scowled at his shirt. This one had what looked like a guy riding a dolphin instead of the
ubiquitous alligator or polo player. “There isn’t going to be a tutoring session.”

  “Winslow seems to think otherwise.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first thing she’s wrong about,” I muttered.

  He gave an impressive sigh. The dolphin lurched, but the little guy on it held tight. “You don’t want to fail French, do you? That would a serious admission of weakness from an Italian girl.”

  I almost smiled. Instead, I announced, “Fuhgeddaboudit. I’ll buy a ‘Teach Your Poodle French in Ten Easy Lessons’ online. Problem solved, and Winslow will never be the wiser.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that. So how’s this Friday? I don’t have practice.” When I shook my head, he demanded, “What is it? I’m a good tutor. Ask Sebastian. I was just teaching him how to tell the obnoxious French dudes on the slopes that they suck.”

  That did make me smile just a little. “Look, Alex. It’s pretty simple. I don’t want to do this; you certainly don’t want to. So . . .”

  I hadn’t realized he was slowly bending his knees until his chin entered my line of vision, followed by the rest of his face. He wasn’t grinning now. He looked very serious. “Ella. I really do want to do this. Help you, if you’ll let me.” He sighed again, but I couldn’t see the fate of his dolphin logo person. I was completely fixated on his eyes. They’re a pretty amazing combination of green and bronze. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s weird, and it shouldn’t be. I’m a decent guy.”

  “Of course you are.” I sighed. And caved. Apparently, my Phillite defenses were worthless around this particular specimen, no matter that he couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether I was worth noticing or not.

  Truth: Yes, I am that naive.

  “Good. So. Friday after school. We can meet down here.”

  I could just see Amanda’s face when she caught us on our way into the dark depths of the school. “No.”