9. BLUE #2
She walked over, her eyes sweeping over Isabella from head to toe. She didn’t know she was Gianni’s girlfriend. She had never cared enough to ask. Instead, she judged her like she judged everyone else, scoffing under her breath before saying, “The manager from Deep Blue called.”
My eyes widened.
My heart pounded so hard it felt ready to leap out of my chest and land at her feet.
“You never said you were looking for a job. And on a yacht, of all places.” She let out a dry chuckle. “Congratulations. You got the job.”
I blinked twice, then looked at Isabella, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard. The words didn’t feel real.
Before I had time to think, the answer escaped my lips.
“I’m not going.”
“You are.” She walked past me and sat down on the sofa, lit a cigarette, and took a long drag. “I asked for an advance because of the situation, and they already gave me the money.”
“You’re lying.” My hands started to shake as my voice rose.
“Call them and ask.” She exhaled a cloud of smoke, her voice calm.
Isabella squeezed my hand.
“Maybe it’s a good thing?” she whispered.
I gently pulled my hand free and stepped toward my mother.
“You’re only saying this because you want me gone.” The words burst out of me. “You don’t even care if I want this or how I feel.”
“Suck it up, Gabriella.” She said it as if she couldn’t care less, and maybe that was the harsh truth. “If I hadn’t taken the money, we would’ve lost the apartment.”
“No.” My voice trembled. “You don’t get to decide what to do with that money.” I was shouting now. “Give it back.”
She stood so abruptly the cigarette ash scattered onto the floor. Before I could move, her hand struck my cheek.
Behind me, Isabella gasped.
She knew things between my mother and me were bad, but from the sound of it, she hadn’t realized just how bad.
“You are leaving this instant and going to that yacht to work. I raised you all by myself. You owe me that much.” She sat back down on the sofa as if nothing had happened. “Besides, all your clothes are already packed. You either leave for work, or you leave to sleep on the streets.”
There wasn’t a single ounce of fight left in me.
I stepped back and walked to the suitcase, wrapping my fingers around the worn leather handle.
A tear slipped down my cheek.
She hadn’t spared a single thought for what working on that yacht would mean for me. How every wave would tighten my chest. How every day at sea would force me to live inside my worst fear.
And this time, I couldn’t even tell myself she didn’t know.
Sometimes I wondered if she hated me because she saw herself in me, and she hated herself just enough to treat me this way.
Or maybe she hated that I was still young. That I was still free enough to leave, and she was stuck. The years had been taken from her, spent trying to keep us afloat. Even if she had been there, she hadn’t really been with us.
In the end, we raised each other.
I exhaled. “Let’s go,” I told Isabella.
She turned around, let out a breath, then shouted toward my mom, “I hope you choke on that money. Gabby will always have a place to stay, you ungrateful potato of a woman.”
My mother just laughed.
“Bye-bye.”
My hands clenched into fists. My skin prickled with anger.
Isabella took the suitcase from my hand and carried it out of the apartment.
“You can stay with me.”
My steps were slow, as if I still expected my own mother to change her mind at the last second, even though deep down I knew she never would.
After closing the door behind me, I followed Isabella into the hallway, tears running down my cheeks. We stopped halfway down when she turned to face me.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Isa…” I whispered, sinking onto the stairs.
She set my suitcase on the bottom step, climbed back up, and sat beside me.
“The good thing is we’ll be working together,” she said. “It’ll give us a chance to find out what happened to Gianni, and neither of us will be alone.” She nudged my shoulder gently. “It’s only a week.”
“Just promise me you won’t tell anyone about my phobia.” I swallowed hard. “I’m always afraid someone will use it against me.”
“I promise.” She pulled me into a hug. When she leaned back, she searched my face. “Now let’s get to my place before it gets too late. You’re afraid of the sea, and I’m afraid of the dark.”
I let out a quiet laugh and wiped away my tears as I followed her out of the house.
By the time we stepped outside, dusk had settled over the coast.
I glanced at her, searching her face for any sign of unease. I found only the slightest hint of it.
I wanted to ask how she managed to live with her own phobia, but before I could, she spoke.
“As long as there’s light in the dark, I’ll be fine.”
I nodded.
While I had been studying her face, she had been studying mine, as if she already knew what I was going to ask.
Maybe her fear of the dark wasn’t so different from my fear of the deep sea.
She needed light to push back the darkness. And I needed shallow water to keep the depths away. But no matter how bright the light or how shallow the water, fear stayed with you.
You don’t simply grow out of it.
It was almost ten at night when we lay down in bed.
I looked around. Her bedroom was the size of my kitchen and living room put together.
Three closets stretched from wall to wall, and where the last one met the wall, a bookshelf stood crammed with books.
The walls were a pale white, and the wooden floor was light enough to creak beneath every step.
Pictures of her and her family covered the walls, with one of her and Annie in a frame beside the bed.
Pink glitter clung to both of them, and judging by what Annie was wearing, it had been taken at the Light Festival in 2001.
A lump formed in my throat. I only had one picture with Annie, and it was still sitting in the apartment where my mother was.
We lay beside each other, staring at the ceiling while the fan above us turned in slow circles, cooling the air.
Stars that glow in the dark were scattered across the ceiling, shining softly in the dim light from the lamp beside the bed.
Outside the bedroom window, crickets chirped from the summer heat.
Her house was close to the port, in the same neighborhood where we used to live, and I could hear distant sirens blending with the crash of waves against the dock.
I felt nauseous at the thought of tomorrow, but I tried to calm myself by remembering I’d be inside the yacht.
I wouldn’t have to stand outside staring at the sea.
I lost count of how many times I told myself it would be fine, but the words never untied the knot in my chest. My mother had already taken the money, so I had no choice but to work for them.
It was the money I needed to leave, yet she still found a way to keep me chained to her and that house.
People would probably say, Just leave, as if it were that simple. It never was. Everyone had always left me, so being the one to leave came with its own kind of fear.
“I have something to tell you,” Isabella said, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I turned onto my side, propping myself up on my elbow, my cheek resting against my palm.
She sat up, her feet dangling above the floor as she searched through the drawer of her white nightstand.
When she turned back, she placed a worn piece of an old map on the white sheets between us.
Written across it in faded red ink were the coordinates 40.
583° N, 14.429° E, along with the year 1809.
Only part of the island was visible, but near the top, a small letter X had been marked.
“Gianni found this with Dante while he was diving near the cliffs,” she said.
“It was hidden inside a plastic bag tucked into an amphora. He brought it back with him, and he said he’d read about a ship that sank in 1809 near the Siren Islands, Li Galli.
It was carrying church treasures evacuated from Naples during the Napoleonic Wars. ”
“Do you think this is what he was searching for?” I asked, taking the piece of the map between my fingers. The paper was worn and wrinkled beneath my fingertips.
“I think it was part of the job he was so excited about,” she said, lying back and looking up at the ceiling. She lifted a hand toward the glowing stars, trying to change the subject. “We put these up together the night Annie died. It’s Ursa Major.”
“The Great Bear.” I smiled as a tear rolled down my temple.
I lay back too, resting the piece of the map on my chest.
“The story says Ursa Major represents Callisto, a nymph and huntress whom Zeus, the god of the sky, fell in love with. She became pregnant, and when she gave birth, Hera, Zeus’s wife, grew jealous and turned Callisto into a bear, forcing her to spend the rest of her life in the woods.
Years later, her son was out hunting when he spotted a bear and chased her, not knowing it was his mother.
Just before he threw his spear, Zeus stopped him.
To protect Callisto, Zeus lifted her into the sky by her tail, stretching it until it became the constellation Ursa Major. ”
I knew the story. My dad had told it to me once.
“Do you think Annie is one of the stars now?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I think she’s right next to Callisto.” She pointed to the brightest star beside Ursa Major. “That one.”
I closed my eyes and thought about Annie. I imagined her watching over us, and when we boarded the yacht tomorrow, she’d be there with us.
I guess that’s how legends are born. People lose someone they can’t forget, so they keep them alive in stories instead.
1. Little one