Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Bambalina
Six months later.
One should never aspire to be normal.
My aunt’s words echo through my head as I watch my friends return from the counter, their arms filled with blueberry muffins and skinny lattes.
My aunt would describe Clara and Annalise as ‘normal.’ This coffee shop as ‘normal.’ In fact, anything we can no longer entertain as a family, she’d describe as ‘normal.’
And today, just like every other day, I wish I were normal.
Clara slides into the booth across from me and pushes a latte in my direction, then turns to Annalise. “So, go on, what happened?”
Annalise sits beside her and pushes her shoulders back, the smug expression of someone who’s earned her stripes beamed across her face.
She leans forward and lowers her voice to a dramatic whisper.
“Okay, so I sit down and the nurse asks me all these questions. Then, she tells me to go take a test.”
My nose wrinkles. “What kind of test?”
Clara playfully swipes my arm. “A pregnancy test, silly.”
Heat surges into my cheeks, but thankfully no one sees it because Annalise is champing at the bit to share her story and Clara is ravenous to hear it.
“So, I go take the test, and thank God it’s negative…”
Clara makes a show of appearing relieved. “Well, of course. Because you never know. I mean condoms aren’t always a hundred per cent effective.”
Annalise throws out her hands. “Exactly! And that’s why I need the medication, right?”
“Is that what you told the nurse?” Clara asks.
“God, no. I couldn’t admit to being sexually active in front of my mom.”
I swallow. My knowledge of birth control is embarrassingly limited. “What reason did you give?”
“Well, my cramps, of course,” Annalise says, a conspiratorial edge to her tone.
Clara arches a sceptical brow. “What cramps?”
Annalise throws her head back with a laugh. “The ones I invented so I could get my mom to agree to the birth control.”
I sip my latte. It suddenly tastes a little bitter.
Clara shakes her head. “I really need to get a doctor’s appointment too. I keep putting it off.”
“Oh, you should definitely go. Even if you’re not having sex, it’s supposed to be great for getting rid of pimples and stuff,” Annalise says, encouragingly.
Clara props her elbow on the table and lifts a hand to her face as if shielding it from us.
I try to ignore the little twist of envy in my stomach. They talk so casually about stuff I can’t even imagine asking permission for. Birth control. Doctors. Normal young adult decisions. Things that require freedom I don’t have.
Annalise’s phone buzzes on the table just as she launches into her next story. She glances down mid-sentence, her smile faltering. She taps the screen, goes still, then flips the phone face-down.
“What?” Clara asks. “What happened? Don’t tell me it’s your mom again—”
“It’s nothing,” Annalise says, but she’s a terrible liar. Her throat tightens and she peers up at me.
“Annalise,” I say softly.
She sighs, picks the phone back up, and shows me the screen.
It’s my latest Instagram post—the picture Clara took of me laughing in the school hall yesterday. Beneath it is a new comment from Taylor—the idiot who stole my work and passed it off as his own, among other crimes.
“Hey Bambi, your skirt just got shorter. Is that to make it even easier for everyone to kiss your ass? Although, anything’s preferable to your face.”
Clara inhales sharply. “Are you kidding me? What is wrong with him?”
Annalise frowns. “I’m deleting it. Or reporting it. Or—”
“Don’t.” My voice comes out resigned. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Clara snaps. “You didn’t even do anything to him.”
“He’s just bitter that you don’t salivate over him like all the other girls in our class.”
“I don’t salivate over him,” Clara says, hastily. “I used to, but not since he started this hate campaign against Bambi. Suddenly, he got real ugly.”
I stare at the table, tracing circles in a puddle of condensation. I act as if it doesn’t bother me, but it does. It just makes pretending to be normal even harder.
Clara nudges me with her foot. “Hey. Don’t listen to him. You know you’re gorgeous, right? Like, you’re literally the most beautiful girl in school.”
I bark a laugh. “Yeah. Sure.”
They both stare at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“Why do you say it like that?” Annalise asks. “You act like no guy would ever look at you.”
“Because they wouldn’t,” I say quickly, darting my gaze away to hide the hope in my eyes.
Clara doesn’t miss it though. “Oh my God, you like someone don’t you? Who is it? Someone in English? That guy with the eyebrows?”
I scrunch my face. “No!”
“The lacrosse captain?” Annalise tries. “Or, wait, is it someone older? Who doesn’t go to our school?”
My stomach flips and heat crawls up my neck.
“No one,” I say firmly. “There is no one. Seriously.”
They trade a knowing look and I glance away fast, my cheeks on the cusp of burning. If they ever guessed the truth… No. I can’t even let myself think it. Having a crush on someone I absolutely shouldn’t—even if he’s not blood, even if we barely speak—would only make my life more complicated.
And my life is already complicated enough.
Outside, a black SUV pulls up to the curb and my heart drops.
“Bambi…” Clara breathes, watching as two men in dark suits step out and scan the street before heading for the coffee shop. “Is that—?”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “It’s mine.”
Mine, as in my normality.
The bell over the door chimes and the security guys nod at me, politely, but firmly.
I force a smile and gather my things. “I’ll text you guys later.”
“We’ll finish the conversation then,” Clara says gently.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
But we all know I won’t. Not today. Maybe not ever.
As I follow the men toward the SUV, I catch my reflection in the glass. Skirt too short, legs too long, lips too full.
I know how I look. I know I’ve been blessed with good genes. But, if anything, they take me just a little further beyond the realm of normal. And I would give pretty much anything to be normal.
If I were normal, Taylor would probably leave me alone, I wouldn’t have to cut short my time with friends… and I wouldn’t be obsessed with someone who doesn’t even know I exist.
***
The house is silent when I step inside. There are no footsteps echoing from the kitchen, no voices coming from the office, no clatter of someone dropping keys on the marble console. Just the low hum of the refrigerator and the steady tick of the hallway clock.
Since Papa remarried, he and Antonia have been away traveling a lot. It’s nice for them but it means I’m left alone a lot of the time. And even though I’m not a particularly social creature, I do get lonely sometimes.
I’ve been surrounded all my life by three overly attentive sisters and an equally overbearing aunt. But now that I’m seventeen, and we’ve become more and more entrenched in the Di Santo mafia family, it’s like they’ve all moved on with their lives while I’m still here, acclimating to the quiet.
Opening her own art gallery and being the wife of a don keeps Trilby pretty busy. Actually, a lot busy. I see her on occasional weekends, if I’m lucky.
Moving to Massachusetts with a new husband and starting a career lobbying politicians has taken away my second eldest sister, Sera.
We talk every other night but it’s no substitute for her being here in person, perched on my bed at the end of a bad school day, or smoothing down my hair when I can’t sleep.
Dancing with a New York company, and keeping the Di Santo consigliere from pouncing on her every five minutes keeps Tess occupied.
Allegra has also moved on, or rather out. She took the apartment next door when Trilby moved in with Cristiano, and with all this free time she now has, she’s taken up bridge and has a whole new circle of friends.
And you know what? I’m happy for them all.
I am.
Well…
I’m trying to be.
I slip off my shoes and head upstairs. I close my bedroom door behind me, cross to my desk and take out my photography journal.
It’s worn at the corners, despite being only a year old, and filled with taped-in prints, scrawled notes, dates, and a few—okay, a lot of—private thoughts I’d never say out loud.
Not even to Clara or Annalise. Especially not to them.
I sit on the floor with my back against the bed and flip through the pages, letting the familiar images ground me.
The first one I see is a photograph of the boardwalk at Rockaway.
I’d taken capture to include the grey clouds, empty tables, a seagull mid-flight.
The atmosphere was bleak but peaceful and I wanted to freeze a moment that proved both could co-exist.
Beside it is a picture I took last month from my bedroom window. The late dusk stained the skyline in bruised shades of pink and amber. I was determined to capture the exact tones in the dark room, but sometimes nature simply won’t be replicated.
I pause on a blank spread.
Two new prints sit tucked in the back pocket.
The first picture is a close-up of Trilby holding the gun at the shooting range. She’s gripping it at arm’s length, a frown of concentration across her pretty brow, her dyed blond hair curled around her shoulders.
I smooth it onto the page with a strip of tape and jot a note beneath it:
Taken in South Boston, Mass. What’s more powerful? The gun or the girl?
The second print is one I’ve been avoiding since the moment I developed it.
It’s of my stepbrother.
I took it last week. I’d been at Trilby and Cristiano’s, waiting for my eldest sister to finish getting ready so we could go to lunch.
He was standing at the edge of the pool, his head tipped back, laughing at something my brother-in-law had said.
The sun’s rays caught the strands of his hair, brightening them, and his relaxed stance made him look younger than usual. Dare I say it… softer.
Taken at our last session. What’s darker? The suit or the man?
I pause, then add: Unplanned.
We’re encouraged to take pictures spontaneously, and not to worry too much about framing, lighting or composition. This is how I explain away what I did.
But I have to put the pen down because my hand is shaking.
The memory of that day flickers through my mind. It’s clearer than the photo, sharper than anything else from that day.
As soon as the shutter clicked, I’d lowered the camera. I thought I’d been subtle. I thought he was still laughing. But when I looked up, he was watching me.
His smile had dropped and his eyes had darkened. There was nothing relaxed about him anymore. It was almost like the second I took the picture, he’d felt it.
Our eyes locked, and the air in my lungs disappeared. A hot shudder rolled through me, sudden and disorienting.
He wasn’t the one who looked away. I was.
But the image of him remains as clear now as it was then. And it haunts me every night.
The house is still quiet, but my heart isn’t quiet anymore. It’s loud with things I shouldn’t feel, with reflections I shouldn’t write down, with a photograph I shouldn’t have taken.
I turn to the following page.
Photography is all about interpreting what’s there, playing with perceptions, questioning what’s real.
But in the last six months, I’ve felt the need to explore what cannot be captured with a film, a click and good lighting.
I start writing again, and this time, I allow myself to be released from the confines of reality.
As much as he fascinates me, I could never be with Nicolò.
He’s my stepbrother, for one. He’s also a senior capo in the Di Santo family and even though he doesn’t kill people like it’s going out of style like his peers, he’s still a killer of sorts, which I can’t bring myself to think about.
And he’s far too good-looking for me.
Even if I have been blessed with good genes, Nicolò Di Santo is a freaking God. He’s tall and broad in a way that makes me feel tiny. His handsomeness is casual, like he has nothing to do with it, but also aggressive, like it will back you into a corner if you attempt to resist it.
I imagine him standing over me, brushing his knuckles over my cheek, those black eyes of his burrowing beneath my skin. My hand flies across the page as I picture him licking his lips while trailing a finger down my stomach.
My breaths shorten and my head swirls with thoughts of him touching me, watching me, staring at me the way he did in the shooting range, and I write it all down. It feels cathartic, like a total release.
It’s one entry of many, and as always, I stare at the pages, feelings of deep relief slowly giving way to nervousness and anxiety.
Someone could find this and read every illicit thing I write.
Our rooms are searched periodically for wires and such—nothing I own is sacred.
If someone were to read this and realize I have impure thoughts about my stepbrother, I would die. Or be killed, perhaps.
I can’t talk to anyone about how I feel. I’ve been bottling these emotions and thoughts up for so long, and it always feels like such a relief to get the words down onto paper, but it simply isn’t worth the risk of them being found.
For a second, I consider tearing out the pages, but a thought comes at me out of leftfield.
What if I didn’t have to cease writing about how I feel? What if these thoughts couldn’t be traced back to my real life? What if they could be explained away as fiction?
I scramble to my desk, open the drawer and pull out a tube of Wite Out. Settling back on the floor, I carefully erase Nicolò’s name and any reference to me, replacing both with fictional names: Brodie and Ava.
To go one further, I return to the drawer and rummage around for an unused padlock and key. I then attach it to my desk ready to conceal the journal as an extra precaution.
Then I breathe out a satisfied, slightly excited breath. I can continue to live out my dreams, if only on paper.