Authors: Ruth Houston
"Does it always take you that long to wake up?" I asked, tightening my tie as we hurried down the stairs after we had given up on waiting for the elevator.
"Sorry," Leo apologized breathlessly, shrugging into his jacket as we dashed down the last couple of stairs and into the lobby. He had had to forgo his morning shower in order for us to eat. I followed him as we nearly ran out of the dorm house and through the cool winter morning down the gently sloping hill to the cafeteria building.
When we got there, I stopped in the doorway, shocked at the mass of people in front of me, eating breakfast, all wearing the school uniform. People were getting up and dumping their trays, and the huge room was slowly emptying of students.
"What are you fucking
waiting
for, Zack?" Leo asked impatiently, already inside, "C'mon, let's eat. It's already –" He checked the large, round clock on the wall, " – shit, 7:50. Ten minutes to eat and get to first period. What do you have?"
I wracked my brains. "Italian with Felisatti."
"Nice, we have the same class –"
We managed to bolt down some toast, gulp down a bit of orange juice, and we were on our way to Felisatti's classroom. Luckily, the languages strip was in the closest quarter of the quad to us. Apparently, since we were in
Italy
but this was an American school, everyone was required to take Italian, along with their choice of another language. I still had my Spanish 3-4.
Miss Felisatti was a tall, slender woman in her mid-thirties, a native Italian.
"Settle down, settle down," she was saying mildly as Leo and I dashed inside, just as the bell was ringing. "Leonardo Fedele di Orazio, you are nearly late again. Ah, a new student?" Miss Felisatti looked at me curiously. "Come up here.
Come ti chiami
? What's –"
"Zackary Crowne," I said, before she could translate the sentence. "I just transferred in."
Thirty heads turned to look at me interestedly as Leo slid into his seat near the back. I made my way to the front of the classroom, standing in front of her desk.
"
Lei capisce l'italiano
?" Miss Felisatti said, blue eyes gazing at me, astonished.
"
Si
," I said. Feeling that the statement needed some further explanation, I said, feeling rather foolish, "Uh,
mia madre era nata in Italia
." I had told her that my mother had been born in Italy.
"
Affascinare. Lei parla l'italiano molto bene
," Miss Felisatti complimented me, looking rather pleased and nodding. "You have a good tongue."
"Uh,
grazie
," I said, blinking a little, not understanding what she meant by my having a good tongue.
She laughed. "What I mean is, you don't really have an American, English accent. Very good. You can have that seat over there, next to Belinda. Belinda, raise your rand,
per favore
. Zack, welcome to Italian 3-4."
Belinda? Not
the
Belinda-Caterina? I sat down next to the girl and shot Leo a look over my shoulder. He nodded grudgingly, and I grinned at him.
There was only one word for Miss Felisatti's class, and, as unkind as it may sound, that word would be
boring
. I sat through half an hour of listening to my classmates struggle through simple conversations, butchering the Romantic language. Apparently, we started each class session with speaking exercises. She called on me a few times to contribute, and it was simple – I found that all I had to do was mutter a few stupid phrases, like "the pen is blue," or "the chair cost fifty Euros," and she'd tell me I was doing great. I spent part of the wasted time seeing how much of Chopin's Ballade No.2 I could scribble out on paper from memory, and part of the time discreetly studying Belinda-Caterina out of the corner of my eye. I guess Leo was right – she was "gorgeous;" at least, I could understand why Leo and some other guys might think she was anyway. She had fair skin, light grey eyes, blonde hair, and a slender build. She kind of reminded me of Eva in a way, except for the eyes and the fact that Eva was most likely taller and had a body that was more toned from hours of athletics. And thinking about Eva, even in passing, inevitably brought my mind back to Winter. I was a goner after that. I completely zoned out, wondering what she was doing right now, and how her first day of the new semester was going. I realized after a bit that, in all actuality, Winter was probably sleeping, what with the time zones and all.
I was just in the middle of thinking about that Sunday we had spent together when Miss Felisatti called on me again. "Zack,
dov'è il treno?
"
"
Il treno?
" I said, snapping back to Earth and frowning. "Do you mean
il tren
?"
"No,
il treno
."
"A train? Like, a steam train or something?"
Il treno?
What the heck?
"
Esattamente
," Miss Felisatti said encouragingly. "The train. Where is the train?"
"In the train station?" I suggested. The class tittered. I hadn't meant to be funny. I glanced at Leo – he wasn't laughing. He seemed rather sympathetic. "I mean,
la estación de ferrocarril
. I mean –" Everyone laughed again. I had inadvertently reverted to Spanish. I searched in my head for the right phrase. "
La stazione ferroviaria
," I said at last. "Sorry. I've never heard the phrase '
il treno
' used to name 'the train'. I've always used '
il tren
'."
Miss Felisatti cocked her head a bit. "Really? Where is your mother from?"
Hadn't we already gone over this? "Italy," I said. The class giggled again and I was sorely tempted to glare at them.
"I know," she said soothingly, "I meant, where in Italy? What city?"
I shook my head and said, "I have no idea."
"Somewhere in the Mezzogiorno, perhaps?" Miss Felisatti asked.
I shrugged helplessly. "The Mezzogiorno, Miss?"
"The southern half of Italy," she explained. "You look like you might be from the Mezzogiorno."
"How does a person from the Mezzogiorno look?" I asked. The rest of the students had all turned to listen in on our conversation by now, and I turned to look again at Leo for a moment. He offered me a small shrug and half-hearted smile.
"Darker complexion, dark hair and eyes," she said. "Most people from the south look like that. They get more sun down there."
"They're poorer too," someone called out rudely from the middle of the classroom. The class burst into conversation. Even Belinda-Caterina had turned and was saying something to her friend on the left.
I had no idea what was going on. I didn't even know that there
was
this division in Italy, between north and south, fair and dark, rich and poor. But apparently it was a very controversial topic.
"
Per favore, silenzio!
" Miss Felisatti said loudly, then gave up after a moment and yelled, "Everyone shut up!" Immediately the class quieted. "
Grazie
," she said to the rest of the students, then turned to me. "I'm sorry Zack. I didn't mean to get this whole discussion started. We're not really here to talk about who's from where and who's skin color is what and everyone's
monetary situation
–" She had had to raise her voice a little at the end to talk over everyone; they had started whispering again. " – I'm sorry, Zack," she said. "
Classe, aprire i suoi libri per chiamare gli ottanta-due
. Now."
I followed everyone else and opened my book to page eighty-two, speculating over what had just gone on. I didn't really care that everyone had been laughing at me and that Miss Felisatti had just accidentally made a fool of me in front of my peers. I didn't care about that. I was thinking harder about the little north-south rich-poor talk that had just occurred. So my mother was from the southern half of Italy, perhaps? The poorer half of Italy? What was
that
supposed to mean? I wondered how she had ended up with a rich American like my father, then. The rest of the block passed with minimal trouble and Leo waited for me right outside the door, two other guys next to him.
"Hey man," he said. "Tough first class to have. If Italian were a person, I know she'd be out to get me," he joked. "Zack, this is Andy –" The taller of the two guys with him nodded at me. " – and Darius. We hang out with this guy named Langston too, but he doesn't have Felisatti."
"Oh, okay," I said as we walked down the hall. "What do you have next?"
"I've got Algebra 3-4," Leo said. "You?"
"Chemistry for me."
"Oh, you better walk fast, the science strip isn't in the quad," Leo said. "You have to walk out in that direction," he waved his hands to the left, "past the gym and the field to the square building. Chemistry rooms are upstairs. Have fun." He slapped me on the back.
"See you," I said, examining my schedule. We had figured out over a rushed breakfast that we had roughly half of our classes together.
Darius, who wore glasses, had followed me. "I've got chemistry too," he said as he caught up, shrugging his shoulder to ease the weight of his book bag, which looked quite heavy. "Can I walk you over there?"
"That'd be good," I said, relieved. "I don't know where I'm going."
Darius was easy to talk to, and he explained a bit about the other guys in Leo's group as we hurried off to the science building.
Slowly, I got used to the new environment and quickly befriended the guys in Leo's circle of friends. The days melted into each other, class after class, meal after meal, uniforms, laundry days, days where we were bused out to the heart of the city for hang-out afternoons and laughing at Langston's antics. Days spent mucking about with Leo and the boys out at the athletics field. Thursday nights spent cramming for tests with Darius, who was the most intelligent and academics inclined of the five of us. Weekends spent exploring the huge campus by myself, early mornings passed with jogs, usually solitary ones, but sometimes with Andy, who was extremely athletic. Nights spent feeling like my heart was slowly being cut up into a thousand tiny pieces. I carried my wallet with me everywhere, because inside it was a picture of a secret I wanted to keep all to myself. At odd times during the day, I'd touch my pocket, where I knew it was hidden, and would feel a little better. When I couldn't sleep, which was everyday, I'd take it out and stare at it, tracing the curve of Winter's face with my fingertip, my chest tight and my head pounding, wondering what she was doing.
I missed her so much it was driving me crazy. She had never sent me that letter; I guessed that she was still mad, and the thought tortured me. I knew I had screwed up, but had I really messed up that badly? If I knew Winter at all, she'd still send me a letter, even if she was so mad that if I was still in California she wouldn't be on speaking terms with me.
So I waited, and waited, and waited…and, one day in the first week of March, a month and a half into the new semester, I received mail.
Everyone at the school was allowed to receive letters, and usually you just went down to the main desk in the office building by yourself to check the list to see if you had any mail. If you did, you would ask the secretary, Miss Bonetti, to unlock the mail room and get your mail for you.
I got a call one weekend afternoon when Leo and I were stuck in our dorm doing homework. Langston, Andy, and Darius had also come up to our room, but they had already given up on their homework and were playing cards. BS was the choice of the day. Langston was shouting angrily at Darius because the latter had pulled the biggest BS on the other two that I had ever seen when the phone rang.
Andy dove for it, yelling, "I GOT IT! Hello?...Yeah, he's right here. Zack, it's for you."
"Oooh, someone's in trouble," the rest of the guys chorused as I took the phone from Andy.
"Hello?"
"Is this Zackary?"
"Yeah," I said, casting a curious glance in Leo's direction. He shrugged, stretching in his chair and yawning. The phones we had in our dormitories were only used to call between rooms and to receive calls from the office. Darius, Andy, and Langston had turned back to their game of BS while all trying to pretend not to be eavesdropping. They were failing quite miserably.
"Zack, this is Miss Bonetti, the secretary."
"Oh," I said blankly. "Hi."
"Do you ever get mail?"
"No," I said, stifling a yawn of my own as Leo asked me, "Who is it?"
"Miss Bonetti," I muttered, covering the mouthpiece.
"Well, we have about eight letters for you downstairs right now, so we decided to give you a call and tell you come down and collect them," Miss Bonetti's voice told me.
I stilled for a split second, dropped the phone right away, and pelted out of the room in sweats and a beater without even bothering to put on my shoes.
"Oi!" Leo yelled out our open door as I pushed past him. "What the hell, Zack? Put on some
clothes
, man!"