Chapter Three Cammie #3
I flip through a few of the tabs, feeling this illogical need to check that all the two-dimensional people smiling in Polaroids or described in my mom’s stories made it overseas safely.
One slight challenge when it comes to connecting these characters to the real humans who were once involved in my mother’s life is that Young Alex decided to call everyone by their initials.
I don’t know if she was trying to protect their privacy or trying to save time, or if it was simply an artistic choice.
But the result is that all the Potential Father Candidates (PFCs) I’ve made note of so far are only known to me by two letters each.
All save for one guy, who doesn’t even get initials.
I stop on one of the pages where he’s the focus, which are scattered throughout the first two-thirds of the journal before he is abruptly never mentioned or pictured again.
Not that he’s very identifiable even when he is present—none of the Polaroids with his sandy-blond curls show his face, only a side profile as he kisses Alex’s cheek, or the back of his head as he walks away from her.
The accompanying journal entries refer to him only as a heart symbol, their sappy notes to each other written and signed back and forth to my and your .
My first instinct was that it had to be him.
Boom, search over. But the more I read about their intense feelings toward each other, the more I became convinced of the opposite.
Unlike some of the shorter flings in these pages that seemed to come and go with minimal damage in their wake, Alex and seemed to have something bigger.
I’d never been in love, but I couldn’t imagine theirs was anything but real and powerful.
And someone who loved my mom’s twenty-five-year-old self that much wouldn’t have left her when he learned she was having his child.
Would he?
A noise in the hallway startles me into snapping the book shut and throwing it back into my pack, before I remind myself that no one else has a key to this room, nor any reason to barge in here.
But the sound helps yank me away from the journal rabbit hole I could’ve easily fallen down for the rest of the night.
It’s not like my dad is going to pop out from between the pages if I look over them enough.
No, it’s time for the real investigation to begin.
To get down in the proverbial dirt and start digging.
There are answers around here—in the halls of Villa Russo, the trenches of Villa di Bronzo, the streets of Naples, and who-knows-where-else across the vast Italian countryside.
I’m more determined than ever to find them.
Twenty minutes later, I’m standing in an indoor pool of my own making. Mom might have been on to something with the offer of her private shower.
I don’t know what I thought I was proving, forgoing the more luxurious bathing option in favor of the Villa Russo communal shower.
Let alone who I was proving it to, since I still haven’t laid eyes on any other humans allegedly living on this floor with me.
What I do know is that the only two water temperatures here are “North Pole” or “surface of the sun.” And that neither option managed to get all the shampoo out of my hair, though I might have second-degree burns on my scalp from the effort.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that the drains in the floor are more cosmetic than functional.
I wring out the heavy, still-slightly-sudsy mass of red curls hanging over my shoulder one last time, trying to aim the excess water toward my stall’s imposter drain. It’s like trying to keep a wet bathing suit off the outdoor furniture during a tsunami—completely pointless.
My rubber flip-flops feel just as pointless as I begin to slosh my way out of the flooded stall and into the equally flooded room, clutching my towel tight to my chest with one hand and my old clothes, travel-size toiletries, and detangling comb with the other.
I peer around, wondering if I’ve missed something—a series of dials by the entrance, perhaps, that allow users to choose a Level of Difficulty for various aspects of their shower, all of them turned to a setting that’s simply a middle finger emoji.
But I only see identical shower stalls with orange walls and doors lining three sides of the large square room, sinks and mirrors along the fourth.
I splash-step to the middle of Russo Reservoir, where a long shelf sits at my eye level between two columns.
The two rows of hooks on its underside are empty except for the one where I left my fresh clothes hanging, limp and lonely.
Between the water underfoot and the steam clouding the air, I don’t see any way I’ll dry off enough to get dressed while I’m in here, so I grab the clean T-shirt, shorts, and underwear and wriggle them into the bundle already in my arms.
It’s only when I reach the door to the hallway that I pause, looking down at the white terry cloth covering me from chest to mid-thigh. The risk of a towel-clad run-in feels low in this ghost town of a residence hall, right?
Wrong, as it turns out. So tragically wrong.
I’ve almost made it back to my room, just a couple doors away, and glance back at the trail of wet flip-flop prints I’ve left.
When I face forward again, I hear a low, slow creak.
I register too late that it’s a door opening—the door right beside my own, the one that I’m about to pass by.
The one from which a tall figure emerges… and walks directly into me.