Page 5 of Better Than Gelato
3. She’s got a pretty good arm. Those pencils went everywhere.
“Do you like coloring?” Isa asks me.
“I do,” I say. “It helps me calm down.”
“Me too,” she says.
She finishes the tortoise and shows it to me proudly.
“I think you have real talent,” I say, meaning it. “I bet you could color anything and make it look awesome.”
I can’t tell if I’m being too obvious, so I keep my head down and color my seaweed. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her go to the kitchen and come back with her homework page.
It takes her two minutes to complete it.
“Nice pattern,” I say.
“I think you should have made the dolphins bluer,” she says of my picture. “All the dolphins I’ve seen look bluer.”
“That’s a good tip for next time,” I say as Sofia comes into the living room.
“Tesoro! You finished your homework!”
Isa scowls. “Yes, I finished. It took two seconds.”
Neither one of them mentions the fifteen minutes of hysterics that preceded it.
“Well, I’m headed to bed,” I say. I lean over and give Isa a kiss on the head. “Buonanotte.” Good night.
I brush my teeth, change into my pajamas and snuggle under my turquoise comforter and check my email. I have a sweet message from my mom and dad, and an email from Sharon, my college adviser.
Sharon is a large woman, who swears a lot and hugs a lot and gets things done. I know she had to do some fast talking to get the scholarship office to sign off on this year in Milan. When the school is paying your tuition, they don’t love it when you take off to Europe. Sharon pointed out that it would be a good educational experience. And I’m pretty sure she bribed them with front row tickets to all the home basketball games. Her son is the starting forward, and the team is on fire this year.
She reminds me to pick out my classes for next year and get them to her by the end of the month so they can get approved by the scholarship office. I look at the list and my eyes glaze over. I would rather swim naked with piranhas than sit through a class called Statistical Analysis of Supply Chain Economics.
I’ll choose my classes tomorrow, when I’ve had another day to settle in.
I’m about to turn off the lamp on the nightstand when there’s a soft knock on my door.
“Come on in,” I call.
Sofia opens the door and takes a tiny step inside.
“I just wanted to say thank you for helping with Isa tonight,” she says. “She can be pretty stubborn...”
“No problem,” I say. I give her my most confident smile.
When she leaves, I admit the truth to myself: that creature hurling colored pencils and shrieking is more velociraptor than child. I turn out the light and pull the blanket all the way up to my chin.What in the world have I gotten into?
ChapterTwo
The horns and cursing of Italian traffic are, to my ears, the sweet sounds of freedom. It’s Friday night, I’m riding the tram downtown, and I’ve never been happier to get out of the apartment. In the last week, Isa has dumped her pasta on the floor, given me the silent treatment for twenty-four hours, and written on the living room wall with permanent marker.
When a girl named Carmen called my new cell phone and invited me to a rock concert, I eagerly accepted. Her Italian was accented with Spanish and hard to understand over the phone, but she said she’d been friends with the last two nannies, and we made plans to meet at Piazza Duomo on Friday at 7p.m.
I have no idea who Carmen is. This could all be an elaborate trap to harvest my organs. But I’ve spent the last five days either being bullied by Isa or wandering the city alone. I’m desperate to make some friends.Plus, how many kidneys do I really need?
I leap off the tram at Piazza Duomo in the heart of downtown Milan. It’s a massive square, bigger than several city blocks. Dominating the space is a colossal cathedral that looks like something from a fairytale, but not where the princess lives. The spires are spiky and there’s a cluster of gargoyles lurking along the roofline. It’s ominously beautiful. My hands itch for my camera.
