6. BLUE
BLUE
The door to the apartment was open when I arrived. Inside, on the last step of the staircase, my mother stood with a cigarette between her fingers, still wearing her maid’s uniform. Her black hair, streaked with gray, was twisted into a bun, and her blue eyes swept over me the moment I walked in.
The shorts I was wearing had a dirt stain across the back, and as I stepped inside, I tried to brush it away.
She had always lectured me about how dirty I was.
I remembered how Gianni and I had practically grown up eating dirt outside while she complained we never knew how to keep our clothes clean. We were just kids doing what kids did.
That small part of me had never left, so even now, when I shouldn’t have cared what she thought, I found myself hiding the stain, afraid she’d start lecturing me again.
She stood, took two slow steps toward me, and before she said a word, she raised her hand and slapped me across the face. The sting came instantly. The imprint of her fingers burned against my cheek, carrying the stale smell of cigarette smoke.
“Gianni was with Oliver last night?” she asked. Only then did I notice her eyes were red and glassy with tears.
“Yes,” I said quietly, my hand rising to my cheek.
Another slap cracked across my face, harder this time, knocking me back a step.
“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” she shouted.
She lunged at me, grabbed my hair, and yanked me to the floor. Pain shot through my scalp, ripping a scream from my throat.
My lungs filled with shallow breaths as she brought her fists down on my back, blow after blow. My eyes burned with tears, my vision blurring as one thought kept circling in my head. What had she found out?
She never cried without a reason. The last time I’d seen her like this was in 1997. when Gianni showed up on our doorstep, high and wrecked from using.
“No,” I whispered.
“Stop!” I shouted.
I pushed the hair out of my face and tilted my head up to look at her, but she only slapped me harder. The cigarette between her fingers grazed my neck, and heat bit into my skin.
I screamed. The veins in my neck stood out, my face burned, and tears spilled down my cheeks.
“Harry fired me,” she said, nodding as she slapped me again. “He said I can’t work for them because my own son stole his yacht worth two million fucking pounds.” Her voice cracked into a scream. “And you covered for him.”
The room tilted. The kitchen darkened at the edges until it blurred into black. My chest rose and fell in frantic breaths while her lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear a word. A sharp ringing swallowed every sound. I dragged in another breath, yet my lungs still felt empty.
I wanted to ask, What did I do? But I couldn’t force the words out.
Black spots crowded my vision until they swallowed everything. The spinning pulled me under, dragging me back to 1997.
It was the first time I’d seen Gianni like that.
He came home with his eyes half open, barely able to keep himself upright.
His black T-shirt was stained with vomit, his black jeans torn and soaked with urine.
By then we knew something was wrong, that he was taking something.
We just didn’t know what. I never understood why there were so many needle marks on his arm.
At first, he hid them under long sleeves.
I caught a glimpse once, but after a while he stopped hiding them.
Mother noticed him in a heartbeat after I did.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she rushed across the room, slapping him hard across the face.
“You will be the death of me,” she shouted as he laughed, while she was the one crying. “Do you hate me this much?” she asked, cupping his face.
I took a step forward, wanting to pull them apart and drag him upstairs to clean him up. But before I could reach them, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Not you, I hate me!” he shouted. “Me. I hate me.” His voice broke into sobs. “I hate myself so much because I’m useless, because I can’t do shit.”
He let her go.
“It would be easier for all of us if I just disappeared.”
“Where did I fail in raising you?” she whispered, reaching for him as he pushed past her.
“Mom, he has a problem.” My lower lip trembled. “Can’t you see he’s destroying himself?”
I caught up to him and slipped his arm over my shoulders. The stench of urine and vomit made my nose wrinkle. I wiped away my tears, lifted my head, and carried him upstairs, shutting out everything but the desperate need to bring him back to himself.
I could hear her crying downstairs. Her screams tore through the apartment, followed by the sharp sound of something breaking.
Gianni’s eyes closed shut, then slowly opened again.
“I’m sorry, 1sorella. I never wanted you to see me like this.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered as I led him into the bathroom. “Just stay with me. Don’t leave me.”
I helped him into the bathtub, lifting his legs over the edge before climbing in beside him and crouching at his side.
I turned on the cold shower, holding his hand while the other gripped the shower head.
Tears slipped down my face as I looked at him.
Dark circles shadowed his eyes. He wasn’t himself.
Cold water poured over both of us, soaking our clothes as I rested my head against his shoulder.
And just as I blinked twice, I was ripped back into the present.
My arms were empty. He wasn’t here anymore. Instead of resting against his shoulder, my head laid against the cold tiled floor. Water splashed across my face. My mother stood above me. She had thrown a glass of it over me to wake me.
I pushed myself onto my knees and looked up at her. Every part of me screamed not to say it, but the words came anyway.
“This is why we never told you anything,” I said. “We were too fucking scared. We’d rather die than be lectured by you.”
She stared at me, still holding the empty glass.
“You’re so damn lucky,” I sniffed. “Lucky to have kids like us. Kids who loved you so much we’d give up everything rather than disappoint you. And instead of hearing ‘thank you,’ all we ever got was a slap across the face.”
I screamed at her.
“Gianni is missing.”
I wiped the tears from my face.
“Instead of shouting at me, you should be at the police station, begging them to find your son. Because that’s what mothers do.”
I looked her straight in the eyes.
“But you’re not a mother.”
She raised her hand again.
“I gave birth to you. I can damn sure kill you if I want to. I have that right, you spoiled brat.”
“Spoiled?” I shouted.
“I never asked for anything.” Tears flooded my cheeks. “I walked around for years wearing Gianni’s and Oliver’s clothes because I never had anything of my own.”
I stood up, each palm pressed against the opposite arm as I held myself together, trying not to come apart even more.
Everything I’d kept buried inside me for years spilled out in just a few sentences.
And she didn’t even bother to keep up. She didn’t even bother to listen.
She just stared at me, weighing what she could do next to hurt me enough to make me give in.
My legs trembled, but I moved past her and walked back upstairs to my bedroom. Cigarette smoke came after me, reminding me that nothing had changed in her eyes. But for me, everything had.
She knew now, and it was official— Gianni is a missing person.
The soft ringtone of a phone woke me. I hadn’t slept for long, but exhaustion had finally claimed me after I’d cried into the pillow I clutched beside me until it was soaked with tears.
I was still lying in bed with my clothes on.
I hadn’t even bothered to change into anything comfortable.
The pink phone Isabella had given me was still tucked into the back pocket of my jeans.
I pulled it out and saw an unknown number on the small screen above the flip cover. I opened it and pressed it to my ear.
“Hey,” Isabella sniffled. “The police came by my place today.”
I pushed myself upright, drawing my knees to my chest. My fingers tightened around the phone.
“I think they set him up, Gabby,” she whispered. “I think something really bad happened.”
“Who?” My voice came out barely louder than a breath.
“I… I don’t know.” She fell silent for a moment before speaking again. “My uncle works at the station. He heard they found a severed finger.”
A chill crawled down my spine.
“They matched the fingerprints,” she continued. “It belongs to Gianni.”
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
“What?”
“Gianni found a map a few weeks ago. He said it pointed to some old treasure hidden near the islands.” She swallowed. “They only wanted to borrow the yacht.”
My pulse raised as I finally managed to speak up.
“What are you talking about?”
“I think whatever he found…” Another sniffle. “…was never supposed to be found.”
Silence settled between us.
“Gabby?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“What if they’re all dead?”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it.” Her breathing came louder. “They’ve been gone for two nights. I haven’t gotten a single call or message. Now the police show up asking questions…” Her voice trailed off.
A knot tightened in my stomach.
“Isabella?”
The line crackled.
“Isabella?” I called her name again.
“I think someone’s outside,” she whispered. “I have to go.”
The line fell silent, followed by the beep as she hung up.
I lowered my arm, my hand trembling as I set the phone on the nightstand.
My eyes moved from one finger to the next while my mind spiraled, wondering which finger Gianni might have lost and how it had happened.
Had they left it there by accident, or on purpose to cover up whatever happened on the yacht?
My gaze dropped to the angry red marks on my skin. They still burned, and some had already begun to bruise. But they didn’t hurt as much as the news about him.
When I was about twelve, I used to watch the black-and-white Doctor Who.
I remember wanting to leave home so badly that I climbed to the top of the hill near my school, squeezed my eyes shut, and wished the Doctor would appear in the TARDIS.
I imagined him taking me away on some space adventure, and I would choose to stay, helping him fight whatever threatened the world. I wanted him to save me, too.
Looking back, it feels childish. Silly. But I still wish for it.
I still wish someone would come and save me, pull me out of this awful place. Deep down, though, I know that if anyone is going to do it, it has to be me. A loud crash came from outside, making me push myself onto my trembling legs. I moved slowly to the window.
When I looked outside, I found the source of the noise.
A man was tied to a street lamp with his trousers around his ankles.
Something had been scrawled across his bare ass in thick blue marker.
I squinted, trying to make out the words, and a smile tugged at the corner of my lips as I read. “Look, Mom, I’m a real-life boy.”
Between his cries, he sang,
“Call not her name when fog is near,
The drowned still watch, the drowned still hear.
A lantern glows where none should be…
Another soul belongs to the sea.”
His voice was a deep tenor, and somehow it made the song even more unsettling, as though he were calling out to the sea itself.
Whoever he was, he probably deserved it.
I closed the window and returned to bed.
Part of me wanted to check on Mother, but experience told me I’d only pour oil on the fire.
Tomorrow, I'll find work. I needed money to buy myself a few hours of peace, to keep her anger pointed somewhere else until I found my brother. Then I’d leave.
I had to. And since no one can save me, maybe I can save myself.
And somewhere along the way, maybe I can save him too.
A severed finger doesn’t mean he’s dead.
It only means someone wants us to believe he is.
1. sister