Chapter Seven
The next few days pass quietly. I face a barrage of questions from the Dip Squad, but I mostly shrug and say, “You’ll have to check the tabloids.” It’s driving Kelsey and Guin out of their minds. Patrick just looks at me once and says, “Gotta admit, Herriot, I didn’t think you had it in you. Even if it’s not going to last.”
“Leave her alone, Pat,” Jack says.
I give him a smile of thanks. Whether his new friendliness is real or fake, it’s better than the silence he gave me before. Especially since I’ll have to see him around campus in the fall.
On Friday afternoon, I walk to the Keats-Shelley House to see Anna Maria. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of a camera, but no one surrounds me like before. I haven’t gone anywhere except school since the concert, so I imagine they’re busy chasing down Luca instead. His life seems to be one nonstop party.
“We need to celebrate your graduation,” Anna Maria says as we sit in the tiny gift shop. A few customers come through, but the place is never crowded, even at the height of tourist season. “What are you doing Sunday afternoon? We could go to a nice restaurant, maybe after a shopping spree at Via del Governo Vecchio?”
“I’d love to, but I can’t. I promised someone I’d go to an art exhibit at the Casino dell’Aurora Pallavicini.” I cringe a little as I say this because I know it’s going to make her eyebrows shoot up. I’m not wrong.
“Is this something to do with your mother’s job?”
“No. I’m going with some kid from Scotland I met a few days ago. He goes to these kinds of things.”
Anna Maria is not having my light take on it. She grabs my hand.
“Tell me everything.”
So I tell her enough. I tell her that I met him at the gelateria up the street and we went on an impromptu tour of the Trevi. I tell her he took me to the Jamie Talon concert. I don’t tell her about the paparazzi or that we went on VIP tickets or that I’m now his fake girlfriend.
“Is he handsome? Is he hotter than that Jack boy?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and shake my head. “They’re both more gorgeous than they should be, but in different ways. Jack is boy-next-door handsome, but Luca is like Dangerous Liaisons beautiful. It’s nothing serious. I just said I’d show him around while he’s here.”
She laughs but seems content. I’m pretty sure I don’t have to worry about Anna Maria ever seeing me in a tabloid. They aren’t something she’d read. I hang out with her until closing time, and then go meet my mom for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.
“I’m sorry no one could come in for your graduation,” shesays.
I shrug. My granddad was supposed to come, but he tore his deltoid muscle, so he shouldn’t be lifting a suitcase. My dad’s parents were also on the guest list, but my cousin is about to have their first great-grandchild. I don’t blame them for picking a baby over watching me walk through our lunchroom to get a piece of paper, surrounded by the Dip Squad. So it’s just my mom and me, the way it’s been most of my life. We go home and call all my grandparents.
“Okay, kiddo,” she says when we hang up. “Big day tomorrow!”
“Good night, Mom.”
She pulls me over to her and kisses my temple. “Your dad would be so proud of you.”
I bite my lip.
“I love you. We love you. All of us.” She slips some hair back from my face.
I squeeze her. “It’s okay. I know.” She’s told me so many times that my dad’s problems didn’t have anything to do with me, I could recite the lecture verbatim. She means well, though, and that’s what really matters, as my granddad says.
When I climb into bed and turn out the light, the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling burn a faint green. I hope my dad would like this memorial scholarship. I wish I could tell my mom. And I will tell her. But not until after it’s a done deal. She wouldn’t approve of my methods. But she knows this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. The thing is, when someone’s addicted, no one cares when they die except the people who really loved them. And even they’re pretty tired of being afraid the life they want to save might be lost. It’s kind of like watching someone die from cancer, I guess, except that they’re helping their tumor grow. But my dad wasn’t a loser, like the kids at my school in Rio said when he died. He had a disease that beat him. He was hurting, too. No one wants to be addicted. Maybe this scholarship will redeem him. No matter how wrong some of the things my dad did were, he was still a human being.
Tears slip from my eyes as my room lights up from a text. I pull my phone from the nightstand. It’s Luca.
Hey, I just wanted to wish you Happy Graduation tomorrow.
Thanks.
Doing anything special afterward?
Not really. My mom and I are going to a restaurant we like down on Via Urbana. Then we’ll probably walk around and get some ice cream. Definitely not as exciting as you’re used to.
Excitement can get pretty boring after a while. I don’t know that street. Where is it?
Near the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, kind of between the train station and the historic district.
You need to show me more of Rome.
I smile in spite of myself. Okay.
What’s your favorite color?
Blue. I like blues and pinks and purples. Why?
Just getting to know my fake girlfriend. See you on Sunday.
See you.
The next morning, eighteen long-stemmed pink roses are delivered, interspersed with bright blue delphiniums. The card says, “Happy graduation to my favorite Dip kid, Luca.” He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d treat me like a princess. I think about telling him it isn’t necessary, but it’s kind of fun. Besides, it’s not like he’s doing it. He’s just telling his assistant to send me flowers.
It impresses my mom, though. “This boy must really like you, Story.”
“I think it’s just the kind of thing people do in his circle.”
“Well, when do I get to meet him?”
“I’ll make sure it’s before the wedding.”
She laughs, but my sarcasm lets her know I’m not losing my head, and she doesn’t mention him again. The apartment, however, smells heavenly.
Graduation is as stupid as I expect it to be, except the room is a hundred and twelve times hotter than usual because of the number of guests crammed into it. My mom, of course, cries, and that’s the one part that gets to me. I guess because I’ve only been here a year, I’m really not attached to anything I’m leaving behind except for her and Rome itself. But it does feel a little like the day after Christmas when I look around at all my classmates’ big families gathered together while mine isn’t.
When we get to the obligatory reception, the Dip Squad has suddenly become my besties. Even my mom notices as they flit around me over cannoli and fruit punch, but I tell her it’s just because they’re impressed by Luca’s money. “He must be really rich,” she says with arched eyebrows. I just shrug. I still have to see them around the apartment building all summer, and Jack for the next four years probably, but at least today is the last time I have to fake smile.
On Sunday, Luca picks me up for the art exhibit. I’m not sure how people dress for these things, but since it’s in the middle of the afternoon, I wear a sundress and cover my shoulders with a white shrug, in case it’s like going into church. I’m glad our apartment faces the back of the building, so my mom can’t see the Ferrari from the windows as I slip into it. Kelsey and Alicia are coming down the sidewalk with iced coffees, and they whisper together and then wave to us as Luca pulls away.
“They seem—” Luca presses his lips together, at a loss, so I help him out.
“Typical. They are. It’s like living in every teen movie you’ve ever seen. Kelsey is the queen, and Alicia and Guin are her worker bees. Although, Alicia’s not as vocal about it. She just follows.”
“And what are you?”
“Their favorite thing to sting. Unfortunately, they’re more like wasps that can just keep stinging than like honeybees that are one and done.”
“You should stand up to them.”
“Say all the people who have never been picked on in their entire lives.”
Luca shakes his head. “I’m just saying that you’ve got it all over those girls, from where I sit.”
The compliment makes me uncomfortable, as all compliments do, even though it’s just Luca being polite. But then I smile. “I guess from where I sit, too. I guarantee you they would kill to be in my place right now, fake and all, being whisked away in Luca Kinnaird’s Ferrari.”
He laughs. “While you would rather be somewhere else. Why are you shaking your head?”
“I was just thinking about what my granddad would say about your car.”
“He’d like it, huh?”
“No, the opposite. He’d think it was…impractical.”
“I see. So what would he say?”
“Probably something like ‘You can’t move a cow in that.’?”
Luca laughs.
I already texted him yesterday, but I thank him again for the roses because he never replied. Maybe he didn’t see it.
“You’re welcome. I told Hodges pink roses and blue something. Is that what you got?”
“Yes. He’s a good butler. Or assistant. Or whatever you callhim.”
“You think I’m pretty ridiculous, don’t you?”
“Maybe a little. Mostly, I just think we’re from very different worlds.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t have things in common.”
“I guess so.” Although it doesn’t matter, since this will be over in a couple of months.
We reach the Casino, which isn’t actually a casino but more of a convention center that’s like a beautiful museum from olden days. There’s valet parking, of course, but no red carpet to smile through.
Inside, Luca introduces me to our hosts, the UK ambassador and her husband. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres float by, and I meet people wearing clothes that look like they come straight from a runway. A photographer is walking around. I try to avoid him even though he’s definitely not a paparazzo. I guess he’s from la Repubblica’s society page, Rome’s version of the Washington Post, because he’s wearing a name badge on a lanyard. Most of the guests are older than us, which is probably good because it keeps me from standing out more for how underdressed I am. No one appears to be interested in the art we’re actually here to see. People ask me what I do a lot, so I drop the name Princeton like it’s a calling card, which seems to work well. When Luca becomes engaged in conversation with a Danish prince, I slip away to see the exhibit. The art is amazing, and I wish I could have brought my mom. I mean if I could even explain why we were here in the first place.
I’m standing in front of a marble sculpture called Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by Antonio Canova when Luca finds me. Cupid is cradling Psyche’s head as he raises her from the ground, his wings outstretched, and they’re gazing at each other as if it’s the last moment of the world.
“I’ve put in my appearance,” Luca whispers, bending his head to mine and slipping his hands around my waist.
“This is so beautiful,” I say, and take a step away from him. It’s stupid to be nervous, but I look around anyway as if I’m doing something I shouldn’t be. But this whole ruse is something I shouldn’t be doing.
He stops and looks at the sculpture and then gazes at me just as closely. “It really is. You’re a funny girl, Astoria Herriot. Do you know the myth?”
I shake my head.
“Well, there’s a lot of ‘don’t do that,’ and then she does it anyway kind of stuff, but, essentially, Psyche and Cupid are lovers, until she breaks a vow to not look at his face, and he abandons her.”
“Just for looking at him?”
Luca nods. “Distraught, she asks Venus to help her win him back and is sent on a series of quests, the last of which is to go to the underworld and retrieve a dose of Persephone’s beauty. But, on the way back, Psyche looks in the box she’s been told not to look in, because she obviously hasn’t learned her lesson about not looking at things you’ve been told not to look at, and she falls into a lifeless sleep.”
He stops and looks at me until I look away. It’s like he’s determined to ferret out who I really am. Which was never part of our deal. I’m about to tell him that when he adds, “This is the moment when Cupid finds her and, wrecked with despair, revives her with his kiss.”
There’s something about the way the words fall from his lips that stops me. As if maybe he almost wishes it were true. “Wow, it’s even prettier now that I know the story, despite your obvious disdain for Psyche’s lack of self-discipline.”
Luca laughs. “Well, all’s well that ends well, because Cupid grants her immortality, and they get married and live happily yada yada.”
“Don’t you believe in true love?”
“Love, maybe. True, well, let’s just say I haven’t encountered it. I take it you do believe?”
I’d like to say yes. My parents really loved each other. But it wasn’t enough to help my dad. “I don’t know.”
Beyond him, Patrick and Jack’s parents are walking toward us. I turn my head quickly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Two of the Dips I go to school with, Patrick and Jack, are the US ambassador’s kids, and he and his wife are headed this way. I should have realized they’d be here. Remember the big blond kid who loved your Ferrari?”
“That roaster? Holy crivvens.”
I smile and peek back. Someone has stopped them to chat. “Maybe they’ll forget they saw us. It’s not me they want to talk to, anyway.”
Luca shakes his head. “Come on, I want you to show me something in Rome I’d never find without you.”
He takes my hand and leads me to the exit, deftly getting us out of a couple of conversations on the way, one of them in French. I think my introverted self could learn a lot from him about how to handle people better, instead of using my snarky tongue or silently complying.
When we get in the car, he unlocks his phone and hands it to me. “Where to?”
“I don’t know the street name, but it’s near the Piazzo Vittorio.” I type that into the maps app. He waits for it to load and makes the first turn. “There’s no valet parking, though.”
“You may have to carry me, then,” he quips.
“I thought I already was,” I say, and we laugh as the Ferrari roars its way across Rome.