Chapter 1 #2
“Thank you for letting me drive you,” he replies, his hazel eyes warm. “I promise not to make it a habit. I know teenagers don’t like it when their parents cramp their style. I don’t want to be… cringe. Is that how you say it?”
I giggle softly at his attempt to use slang. It’s the effort that matters.
“I don’t mind,” I tell him. “You can drive me every day if you want.”
“How did we ever get so lucky?” he murmurs, pressing a tender kiss on the top of my head.
My smile falters just a little at the endearment.
My parents often say things like this to me, almost as if they were thanking me for being easier, quieter, and better-behaved than the others.
It makes me feel self-conscious, as though something is viscerally wrong with me.
Like I should be more rebellious, more outspoken, more like my siblings. Just… more.
But I’m not. I’m just me. And sometimes I wonder if that’s enough. Or if it’s even a good thing at all.
“Are you nervous about going back to school after Christmas break?” he asks gently, sensing the shift in my mood. “It’s okay if you are. A new year can be daunting sometimes.”
“I’m not scared.”
It’s not a lie. What do I have to be afraid of? It’s not like I’m going to a different school just because it’s the start of the year. I’ll see the same faces I’ve known since primary school, people who never really grew past who they were in kindergarten.
I’ll still be the same girl without real friends to call her own. The same social pariah. The goody-two-shoes with a criminal family no one dares get close to.
I’ll still be alone. That won’t change.
“Okay. Well, I’ve just texted Marcello to pick you up after school,” my father says, interrupting my sullen thoughts, while pressing a few buttons on his phone. “But if you’d rather go with the twins—”
“No,” I blurt out quickly. “Marcello is fine. I… I miss him.” The words slip out of me before I can stop them.
My father frowns, his eyes clouding with sadness. “I thought as much. I miss him too,” he says quietly, leaving it at that.
We sit in silence for a moment, both of us weighed down by things too heavy for a morning drive to school. We don’t speak them aloud, but we feel them all the same.
“Are there any subjects you’re looking forward to this semester?” he asks after a while, steering the conversation somewhere lighter. “Any extracurriculars I should know about?”
“There is one,” I admit, my voice brightening. “I’ve been waiting for it since I found out it’s compulsory in high school.”
“Oh?” He smiles. “And what’s that?”
I launch into an excited explanation about Sacred Heart’s community outreach program.
Volunteering is required once you reach high school, but they open the sign-up list every January to seventh and eighth-graders who want to get a head start.
I signed up for the soup kitchen and St. Mary’s homeless shelter the second the list went up online this morning.
Even from a young age, helping people has always mattered to me. Offering whatever I can to those who need it most is not only the right thing to do, but necessary.
Especially when you’re born into privilege.
Not everyone is given the same luck in life.
If you don’t help those who got a raw deal, can you really say you’re living meaningfully?
Is being kind to a stranger and offering help not a better use of your time than pretending the need isn’t there to begin with?
Isn’t their dignity just as valuable as yours?
The world doesn’t feel so big when you really think about it. Everyone hurts in one way or another. And if you can help even one person, just one, and make their life a little better, then I genuinely believe your own life becomes fuller, richer, more human.
My father listens without interrupting, pride softening his features. I don’t notice it right away, but it’s there. And for once, I don’t feel strange for being the way I am.
My mother says that acts of service and kindness are my love language.
That I remind her of Grandma whenever I talk fervently about such things.
She says her mother was just as passionate about making the world a better place as I am.
Maybe that’s where I get it from. After all, I was named after her, so it makes sense that a little bit of my grandmother rubbed off on me.
I wish I had met her, though. There are questions I would have asked, given the chance. Did she like helping people because it gave her the same warm feeling in her stomach that I get? Because it gave her purpose? Or was she trying to level the playing field, even just a little?
The Bianchi family was a key figure in the Outfit, especially my grandfather, who spent most of his life drawing blood from his enemies. So, was her altruism born out of guilt, or was it genuine love for her fellow man?
Sometimes I ask myself those same questions, too. Would I be so driven to help the world if my family weren’t profiting from so much of what’s wrong with it?
I wish my answer didn’t change depending on the kind of day my family was having.
When we finally arrive at Sacred Heart, I glance out the window and see the same familiar faces climbing the building’s steps.
The year might have changed, but nothing else has. Not unless I do. And I don’t see that happening any time soon.
“Have a great first day back. Ti voglio bene, angelo mio,” my father says in farewell.
“Ti voglio tanto bene, Papà,” I reply in Italian.
I wrap my arms around him to give him a quick hug before rushing out of the car, so he doesn’t see my eyes starting to well up. If he saw, he’d ask questions. And I don’t want to tell him that I’m sad because it will be hours before I’m around someone who truly cares about me again.
With my backpack slung over my shoulders, I keep my head down as I walk up the steps and into the building. The halls are jam-packed with students of all ages, talking animatedly about their winter break and how excited they are to be back.
I keep walking straight ahead until I reach my locker. After stowing my bag, I head toward the chapel, since it’s mandatory to attend Mass before class starts. But just as I turn in that direction, I feel a strange vibration against my skirt pocket.
I slip my hand inside and remember that I still have Raffaele’s phone. Since the day he left it with me, it hasn’t rung once. And yet now it’s vibrating insistently, demanding my attention.
I pull it out, and when I see an unknown number on the screen, I bite my lower lip, unsure whether to answer or ignore it. Instead of doing either, I hurry to the nearest bathroom, lock myself into a stall, and stare at the screen.
The call stops, and disappointment sinks in for being too much of a coward to answer. But when the phone starts vibrating again with the same unknown number, I don’t wait for the second ring to finish before answering. “Hello?”
“Hello to you, too, beautiful. Miss me?”
I slide down the door and sit on the floor in utter disbelief.
“Rafe?”
“Were you expecting someone else?” He chuckles.
“I…” I stammer. “I didn’t know if you’d want to talk to me after…” I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“You didn’t do anything,” he says, his voice lower now.
I don’t add anything to that. Yes, I wasn’t the one who killed his brother, but does that even matter when the person who did was my own flesh and blood?
All I can manage to say is what feels like the smallest word in the English dictionary. A word so inadequate, it could never truly capture the sorrow I feel for his loss, even if his brother was a traitor.
“I’m sorry.”
The line goes quiet, and for a moment, I almost believe he’s hung up on me.
“I know. Me too,” Raffaele says softly. That’s all he says.
It feels like he’s placing a heavy stone over the whole event, acknowledging it briefly without disturbing what lies beneath.
Because if he were to disrupt what lies beneath, it would mean I’d be the last person he would ever call.
“Anyway… that’s not why I’m calling,” he continues.
“I wanted to wish you luck on your first day back at school. So this is me. Calling you. To say, good luck today, kid.”
“Kid?” I smile, my chest warming at the fact that I’m actually talking to him. “Aren’t you only a year or so older than me?”
“Nineteen months, to be exact,” he says, teasingly. “I counted.”
I laugh, already picturing the playful grin tugging at his lips.
“If you say so.”
Raffaele chuckles, and the sound loosens a tension on my shoulders, one I hadn’t realized I was carrying.
“What about you?” I ask. “Have you started school yet?”
“Yep. Same lame ass show as always.”
“Same here,” I admit. I’ve barely been here five minutes, and I can already tell that nothing much has changed.
“I am excited about one thing, though.”
“Oh?” I ask. “What’s that?”
“Now I get to spend my time texting you instead of wishing the walls would collapse on me.”
“Well, there’s a visual,” I giggle, but I know he means it. Raffaele and I are more alike than I first thought. He’s just as lonely as I am.
“I’m happy you called,” I say quietly. “I was… hoping you would.”
“I’m happy I called too,” he replies, and I can hear his smile through the line.
“Send me your schedule,” he adds. “I’ll text you at lunch.”
“Will you send me yours?”
“Like you even have to ask?” He chuckles. “Talk to you later, kid. Knock ‘em dead.”
“I’ll get right on that.” I laugh.
We hang up at the same time, and I press the phone to my chest, cradling it as if it were something precious, something fragile and worth protecting.
Maybe this year will be different after all. Perhaps this year will be better. Even though Raffaele lives in another state, knowing he’s just a text or a phone call away makes me feel less alone, something I haven’t felt in a long time.
Hope settles in my chest, warm and dangerous.
I don’t notice it right away, but somewhere deep down, I know better than to trust it.
In our world, hope is never a gift—it’s a warning sign.