The Wonder of Us

by Kim Culbertson

  “Riya?” Abby has gone still next to me, her sundress still partly tucked into the waistline of the miniskirt.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you see that guy over there?” I follow her finger, to where a boy slightly older than us in a black T-shirt and jeans slumps against a far wall of the square, texting on his phone.

  “Oh, yeah, cute,” I say, perking up.

  “No, not cute. I think he’s following us.”

  My body tingles. “What?” I look more closely. He’s muscular and, upon closer inspection, gorgeous, with dark, wavy hair. Every minute or so he seems to glance toward us, but when he notices us watching him, he slips suddenly around a corner. “Why do you think that?”

  Abby studies the corner where he disappeared. “He was near that pig fountain when we were there, and I saw him earlier at the market.”

  My heart twitches. “Are you sure?”

  We wait to see if he reemerges, but he doesn’t. Abby shakes her head. “Maybe I’m just imagining things.”

  And she thinks I’m melodramatic.

  But then, there he is again. On a different side of the square, leaning and texting, trying to seem like he’s not peering at us. “Um, Riya?”

  “I see him.” I’m on my feet next to her. “Let’s go.” In a flash, we’re around our own corner and checking to find out if he’s noticed.

  He’s running across the square.

  Running.

  Toward us.

  “Go!” I shout, and we take off, our sandals slapping against the stones.

  “I’m definitely not sure about this skirt,” she gasps at my heels.

  A half hour later, we’re sitting at a café table on a quiet side street. Neel stands in front of us, arms crossed over his chest, doing his best Angry Dad expression. He’s scarily good at it. Black T-shirt Guy’s name turns out to be Damiano, and, yes, he was following us. When Abby heard his name, she nervously announced that Saint Damian is the patron saint of physicians. History tidbit. Of course, this guy seems to be the patron saint of buzzkills. I don’t care how hot he is.

  Neel frowns. “I called Aji, and your parents, Riya. Thankfully, Abby’s parents don’t even know you went missing. We didn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily.”

  “‘Went missing’ makes it sound like we were kidnapped, or did something wrong,” I tell him. “Which we didn’t. We’re allowed to explore the city on our own terms, Captain Control Freak.”

  “Actually, Dora the Explorer,” Neel says, not to be outdone in the name-calling department, “you aren’t just allowed to disappear without so much as a note or a text.” He pulls out a chair and joins us at the table. Abby glances at me, her eyes shining with I told you we should have just texted him back. I look away. “To not even answer my texts is childish.”

  I cross my legs and sigh dramatically for his benefit. “Thanks for the maturity lesson. Tell me again what it’s like to be old before your time?” Damiano grins at this, and Neel shoots him a death stare. Maybe Damiano’s not so bad after all. His smile gives me confidence. “Speaking of which, where’d you come from anyway?” I ask him. “Italian stalkers for hire?”

  Damiano starts to answer, but Neel cuts in. “He’s a mate from uni and was born and raised here. He’s home for the summer. It wasn’t hard for him to spot two clueless American girls wandering around Florence. It’s not that big a city. He was going to be our guide today before you two took off.”

  Maybe I was a little hasty this morning. Damiano might be a buzzkill, but he looks like a god. An Italian one. All the chiseled clichés properly in place. He would obviously make an excellent tour guide.

  “Well, it’s only one o’clock,” Abby reminds us. “Day’s not over yet.”

  I glance hopefully at Damiano. This can’t be the guy who was going to show us the recycling program. I’m guessing architecture.

  I guess wrong.

  We spend the next couple of hours learning about the history of garbage in Florence. Still, with Damiano’s dark eyes, an Italian-British lilt to his English, and that easy laugh leading the way, refuse has never been this interesting. This guy just made me care about garbage for two straight hours. He should probably have his own reality television show.

  At the end of our tour, Damiano deposits us on some shady steps in the Palazzo Vecchio and disappears to find us gelato. I peer up at Neel. “He’s cute. Can we keep him?”

  “I think his girlfriend would miss him. She’s a model, by the way. And a doctoral candidate in anthropology.” He pockets his phone, enjoying my pout. “So stop flirting with him.”

  I feign surprise. “Was I flirting?” I glance at Abby, who toggles her flat hand back and forth to say ehh.

  Neel rubs his hands together. “Okay, my turn to teach you something.” He leads us to a corner of the Palazzo Vecchio near the Uffizi. A small crowd of people stare at a carving in the bricks that looks like a man’s face. “The Palazzo Vecchio is the ‘Old Palace’ and the town hall of Florence.”

  “We were actually both at the tour with Matteo yesterday,” I remind him. “We know this already.”

  He narrows his eyes at me. “Can I talk?” When I motion him on, he continues, “Legend has it, this is a carving that Michelangelo made on a dare. The dare: that he couldn’t carve the likeness of a man’s face behind his back, without looking. So he did. Right into the wall.”

  I nudge Abby. “Wow, Neel, way to promote vandalism in the name of ego.”

  His words, though, have the desired effect on Abby. “Can I touch it?”

  “Sure.” Neel grins smugly at me. You’d think he carved the face.

  Abby runs her fingers over the grooves worn through time and then motions for me to try it. As I track my hand over the ridges, I try to play it cool so Neel doesn’t think he’s made some big impression on me, but I shiver despite myself. This is something Michelangelo carved hundreds of years ago, and hundreds of years from now, some futuristic girl might trail her fingers over the fading hollows, wondering why he took the dare. Abby always says that history isn’t just Wikipedia entries and documentaries and pages in textbooks—it’s something you can touch. She’s right. It is.

  “Ah, yes, Michelangelo’s dare.” Damiano comes up behind us carrying four gelatos, already starting to drip in the heat.

  I snap my hand back, feeling like I probably shouldn’t be touching such a famous landmark. “Neel said I could touch it.”

  “Yes, yes. Many do.” He hands out the bacio cones (which taste like Nutella grew up and became the best ice cream ever). “Here, eat these and then we’ll go up in the tower. Our reservation is at four. Best views of the city.”

  I’m pretty sure there aren’t any bad views in Florence. There’s certainly no bad gelato. “I would make out with this gelato if it wouldn’t alarm those small children over there,” I announce loudly, mostly to bother Neel, but also because it’s sort of true.

  “Classy as always, Riya.” Neel glances at Damiano apologetically. “But it’s good to know you have lines.”

  I scowl at Abby when she cracks up at this. “What?” She shrugs, chasing a drip on her own cone. “It is good to know you have lines.” I don’t enjoy the knowing look she exchanges with Neel.

  The narrow climb up the brick tower stairs leaves my legs burning, even with the short break we take in the prison halfway up. Ten minutes into Damiano’s vivid description of the wretched prisoners who spent their last moments in the bleak cell, I feel sick and leave Abby and the boys behind to head up the rest of the steps. Abby finds me a few minutes later. “Too gruesome?”

  “I think I ate too much gelato.” We stare out at the city, our hands matching curls on the stone edge of the tower wall. It’s a wider, more aerial view than the one we thought was unbeatable this morning.

  “Wow,” Abby breathes. Again, the only fitting word.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “I love Europe.” She shoots me a funny look, so I ask, “What?”

  “You sound so wistful.”


  “I just really like it here.” And Berlin. And Paris. And Zurich. And London. All of the places I visited this year just seem to keep making me want more of them.

  Abby shrugs. “It’s not Yuba Ridge, that’s for sure.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Frowning, she presses slightly into the wall to let a group pass behind us. “So, what’s next for us, then, on this grand tour of yours?”

  “Already sick of Florence?”

  “Um, that would happen never.” Only her face holds a shadow of ache. It’s an expression I had a lot my first month in Berlin. Dad called it my missing look. Missing the river, missing my bunk bed, missing the light in the sky above the pines. I haven’t had that look at all lately, but I recognize it.

  “I’m worried you’re not having fun. Is it Neel?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head, pulling out her phone and scanning it slowly left to right to take a panoramic picture. “Neel’s bothering you, not me. I mean, he can be a pain, but he’s fine, really. He’s kind of funny and sweet when he wants to be.”

  “Which is never.”

  “He’s not so bad. And he’s giving up part of his summer to take us on this trip.”

  “Yeah, rough life he leads.”

  Abby sighs as she looks out at Florence. “This might have to be our first wonder, this view.”

  It’s cliché, staring at views, but there is something wonderful about being made to feel small and expansive all at once. “If views could speak, this one would say: Here you go, ladies—your future awaits!”

  “And our future is in …” she prompts hopefully.

  “Okay, you win.” My stomach flutters with the secret of our next stop. “I was going to wait until dinner, but here goes: Tomorrow we’re taking the train to Zurich!”

  “We’re not staying in Italy?”

  “Nope. You are going to love Zurich. I went with my parents a few months ago and you’ll see—we’re heading for the best hot chocolate you’ve ever tasted.” I frown at her silence. “Wait. You’re not excited?”

  “It’s too much, Riya.” Abby returns to the view, the Duomo, the river, the swirl of tiny toy people in the square below. “Too expensive. I feel like I should help pay for some of this.”

  Oh, Abby. How many times has she tripped on her own practicality our whole lives? “If you keep worrying about the money, it’s going to be a long trip.”

  “Right.” She takes a few more pictures, and I can practically see her mind spinning. Finally, she turns to me, her eyes serious. “Earlier you asked if Kate started screaming at my mom when she told us.”

  I’m caught off guard. “Yeah?”

  “You think she should have, right? You think one of us should have yelled at her? Told her she was ruining the family?”

  I hurry to say, “Abby, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what I would have done.”

  She tugs absently at her low ponytail for a moment. “I’m so mad at her, I feel numb.” Before I can reach out to her, she abruptly heads for the stairs. When she reaches the top stone step, she hesitates and waits for me. When I catch up, she tries to smile. “I won’t mention the money again, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We take the fast train to Milan, where we switch for our final leg to Zurich. Riya sits across from me, reading a novel, her bare feet kicked onto the seat between Neel and me. Neel reads the Economist. Having failed to get Riya to keep her feet on the floor, he uses them to prop up his magazine. I stare out the window, trying to absorb the shifting countryside as we slip from the terra-cotta palette of Italy to the lush greens of Switzerland.

  Out the window, Switzerland looks like a life-size set for model trains, the kind my dad used to take us to at the county fair with the miniature houses and trees, the people the size of a Tootsie Roll waiting at a miniature railroad stop or restaurant. Kate would roll her eyes every time we went. “This is so lame,” she’d whine. “Can we please go do something less lame?” But I liked the precision of the model train world, the way the engineers considered every diminutive detail. My favorite was the snowcapped mountain in the middle of it, with its dark tunnel, the train’s light glowing for a blink before it emerged into the dim glow of the fluorescent-lit room. Switzerland has the Godzilla version of that mountain, and now I’m the one in the tiny train shooting through it.

  “What are you reading?” I ask Riya.

  She studies me over the pages of her book. “You wouldn’t like it. It’s not written before the 1950s.”

  “I like books written after the 1950s.” As long as they are historical fiction set before the 1950s.

  She knows me too well. “Sorry, it isn’t set before the 1950s, either.”

  “I’m out.”

  Neel laughs but doesn’t look up from his article. Riya returns to her book, and I stare out the window at the blur of green. I try to get into the book I brought about ancient Alexandria, but it’s pretty dry, even for me, and I can’t seem to stay focused. The scenery keeps drawing me back to it. After another hour of passing through storybook villages with patchwork fields and sheets of striking blue lakes, we near the urban center of Zurich. It doesn’t look like the cities I’m used to. More like Santa’s village. The buildings seem made of gingerbread. Flags, mostly Swiss, flutter along the ordered streets. Leafy trees shade people sitting at outdoor cafés on the wide sidewalks. Pots of geraniums bloom in containers and smartly dressed men and women chat on their phones.

  Soon, we’re swallowed by the enormous train station and pull to a stop. As we gather our bags, Neel’s cell buzzes. “That’s Will. He’s picking us up.”

  We follow the herd into the vaulted space of the station, which is lined at the top with pale orange-slice windows. I attempt to maneuver my bag to my other side so I can give my shoulder a rest. “Who’s Will?” I ask Riya, rushing to keep up with her.

  She slows, letting me catch up. “A university friend of Neel’s. He’s from here. We’re staying at his parents’ while we’re in Zurich.”

  “Neel has stalkers for hire in all cities, huh?”

  “Apparently.”

  Around us, people hurry through the station, which is more like an upscale marketplace than any train station I’ve been to before. “Wow,” I mutter to Riya, “I could live in this train station.”

  “Just wait until you taste the hot chocolate.” She hurries after Neel, who has not stopped once to make sure we’re still following him.

  I pick up my pace. Hot chocolate has always been a thing for Riya and me, and not in that normal little-kid way. Most kids probably like hot chocolate, but not like we do. Over the years, it’s evolved into a sort of science for us, actually. A quest for the perfect chocolate, the perfect amount of milk, the perfect temperature. Many a Yuba Ridge Sunday has been devoted to the execution of the perfect cup of hot chocolate.

  And I thought we’d agreed on one. “Better than the Brandon Special?” I ask Riya when we step outside into the overcast light of Zurich.

  “Just wait.”

  “Nothing is better than the Brandon Special.”

  “You’ll see.”

  Neel’s friend Will waits for us on a bench outside the train station. He lifts a hand in greeting, moving his lanky body toward us as he adjusts the heavy black-framed glasses that rest against his thick eyebrows.

  Riya gapes up at him. “How tall are you?”

  He grins as if he’s used to the question, and hunches his wide shoulders forward. “Six six—six four from years of practiced bad posture.”

  Riya lets out a bright burst of laughter that suggests he’s just told the most hilarious joke in the history of comedy. Then she tosses her hair and asks him to “tell us about what we’re looking at here,” and motions to the city around us. Uh-oh. Peal of laughter. Hair flip. And she’s doing that glance-up-through-her-lashes thing Riya does when she thinks a guy is ridiculously cute or interesting. Not just her average, recreational flirting. She’s bringing her A game. I don’t bl
ame her. He’s cute, this Will, and as he starts to point out elements of the city, I can practically swim in the easy, rich tenor of his voice. Listening, I fall in step behind them, enjoying the fresh air, the overcast sky. It must be at least ten degrees cooler here than in Florence.

  As we cross a bridge over the Limmat River, Will points out the tower of the Fraumünster Church. “Built on the ruins of an abbey from 853 that Louis the German built for his daughter, Hildegard.”

  “That’s so interesting! Abby, it’s history tidbit, Zurich edition,” Riya calls over her shoulder, her roller bag bobbling over the uneven ground as we reach the other side of the bridge. “I wish my dad would build me a tower.”

  “You’ve done okay,” I say to her back. “Your dad built you a river cabin.” But she doesn’t hear me. She’s too busy hanging on Will’s every last word. I watch him lean toward her to answer a question. He has good hair. The thick, floppy kind that always seems to know right where to fall across his forehead. Gotta give Riya credit. For the most part, she has good taste. On the train, Neel told us Will’s studying to be a banker. He seems too tall to be a banker, which I realize is an absurd thought. As if bankers have height restrictions. I take a deep breath of cool air coming off the water, trying not to let Riya’s over-bright and sudden interest in history annoy me. She chatters away, finding everything Will says “fascinating!” or “incredible!” and commenting on how gorgeous the landscape is. Right, the landscape.

  I catch Neel’s eye and can tell he’s thinking the same thing. He falls into step beside me. “What do you think of Switzerland so far?”

  I study the scenery—the gray river, the cloudy sky, the intricate old buildings. “Stunning.”

  “Right, nothing if not picturesque, Switzerland.” He watches Riya and Will chatting up ahead, then nods at the corner of the Alexandria book poking out of my bag. “Been meaning to ask you, why the Seven Ancient Wonders?”