Me, I’m a singing telegram. Nobody to save. Nobody to fight. Just words—words I don’t even know yet. Clara’s the heroine of the book. I’m the delivery girl.
I remind myself that there have been a lot of heavenly messages delivered in the history of man. It’s an important job. It’s vital. It’s not all wrapped up in the personal, like Clara’s is. It’s not about who or what I am. It’s a job I have to do. Simple as that. Easy. But still important.
That’s what I tell myself.
Clara gives up on the shirt, tosses it down on top of her suitcase. Sighs heavily. “So, now your family thinks I’m a freak, right?”
I shrug. “They already thought that. But they think I’m a freak, too. Too many books,” I say, shifting to Italian. “A girl like her should be going out, meeting the young men, getting a boyfriend, not hiding away in libraries and churches.”
She smiles, a real one this time. Freaks love company. “Okay, then. Just so long as you’re a freak too.”
“Never underestimate the power of freaks,” I tell her.
She looks thoughtful. “I thought you had a boyfriend, though. In Italy, I mean. Didn’t you?”
Like she doesn’t already know that this is a subject I don’t talk about. But I’m a decent actress when the situation calls for it. I grew up in a theater, after all. So it’s not too hard to play the slut card. I arch my eyebrow at her and angle my body suggestively across the bed and say, “Not that the Zerbinos know about. I’ve had all kinds of sexy Italian studs in here, and Nonna never had a clue.”
“Oh. I thought . . .”
“We’ll have to find you one,” I say quickly. “That’s just what the doctor ordered, I think. A summer fling.”
Out goes the light in her eyes. That’s the last thing she wants. She’s still pining for the cowboy, still thinking about him in like half of her waking moments and most of her dreaming ones. Over the last three weeks, since we’ve been on this trip, I’ve learned all of her wistful thinking-of-Tucker expressions.
Clara thinks she’s good at hiding her emotions, but she’s pretty easy to figure out. She wears her heart on her sleeve for everybody to see. And her heart, for the moment, is definitely broken.
She doesn’t know the first thing about the state of my heart. Or that it’s kind of broken, too.
CLARA
We’re on the metro when it happens again, on the way back from the Hard Rock Café in Rome. It’s dumb, I know, going out for a plain old cheeseburger in this city of eternally amazing food, but after almost a month in Italy, pasta’s getting old. I stand next to Angela as the train follows its rickety path under the city, my shoulder bumping hers as we take the corners, the light in the car dim and greenish in a way that makes everything feel like a film noir. We’re talking about how we want to spend our second month in Italy.
Well, Angela’s talking. Me, I’m thinking about Tucker. I’m wondering what he’s doing right at this moment. It’s almost nine o’clock at night here, which means it’s almost six in the morning there. He’s sleeping, probably. Soon his dad will come in and wake him, and together they’ll go out to the barn and milk the cows. The air will smell like sweet alfalfa and horse sweat, and maybe he’ll pause in the middle of the barn and think of me, in the place where we first kissed, and he’ll wish I were there.
Or maybe, because he’s a smart guy, he won’t think of me at all. He’ll have realized that being with me is not worth all the angel baggage.
He’ll have moved on.
“There’s this one old library I go to in Milan,” Angela’s saying. “I’d love to see if they have something about the . . .” She stops, as we’ve agreed not to say the word Triplare out loud in public. “The T-people, in there.”
I raise my eyebrows at the term T-people, clear my throat to get some of the Tucker-related tightness out. “Oh come on, Ange, enough with the libraries. We’ve been to a dozen libraries already. I say we go to Pompeii. Embrace the tourist thing.”
“Pompeii’s sad,” she says with a been-there-done-that roll of her eyes. “There are all these plaster casts of people in the positions that they died in. Very depressing.”
“I hate to remind you, O-she-whose-entire-wardrobe-is-black, but you’re all about the depressing,” I say. “You know you love a good tragedy.”
She gives me a hint of a smile like she’s about to say Yes, yes, I do, but I don’t hear because by that point, just that fast, I’m thrown into a vision. And then bam—I’m back on the train.
I inhale sharply, like I’m breaking the surface from underwater. There’s a hand on my shoulder, chipped black nail polish—Angela. She’s guided me to a seat and is sitting across from me, staring at me with knowing, sympathetic eyes. A river of Italian flows around us, so many people simply going about their evenings, unaware that anything is out of the ordinary. I blink a few times. Everything’s slightly blurry. Angela digs in her bag for a minute and produces a crumpled-up tissue.
“It’s clean,” she says, and when I don’t understand, when I don’t respond, she quickly dabs at my face.
I guess I was crying.
“Are you all right?” she asks in a low voice.
I’m still trying to catch my breath. This sucks. What I wouldn’t give to be normal, for once.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Angela says when I don’t respond. “Not here, obviously.”
I stare at the floor. I’ve been having this new vision for a little more than a week now, the first time at the Zerbino family dinner (boy, was that ever a spectacle—I should start charging admission), once in the shower, and once when we were on a bus coming back from Venice. Of course Angela’s noticed, but I haven’t really gotten into the details with her. Something about the vision this time, about what I feel inside of it—it’s bad. Like people dying, bad. But not like last time. Last time my vision was marked by grief; this time what I feel is fear. Sharp, heart-squeezing, abject terror. I don’t want to talk about it later.
“Well,” Angela says as my pulse returns to its normal rhythm. “At least you didn’t fall down. I don’t know how I would have explained that to all these people if you—”
She stops, the words fading on her lips. Her entire body goes rigid, like she’s been turned to stone, her eyes fixed on something over my shoulder. Or someone.