Chapter 27
Veronica is waiting outside a grand palazzo with a long, complicated name I can’t pronounce or remember.
Her henna-red hair and all-black dress are a dead giveaway, even with her face behind a mask.
She double-checks who we are before lining the class up for a group photo, so our costumes must be convincing.
She looks at mine, Alessandra’s and Nadia’s a beat longer than the others, then nods like she actually approves of our homemade tweaks.
Alessandra takes off the wonky wire-frame glasses she found in the box of odds and ends, realizing she doesn’t need to defend our choices.
Inside, we’re shown to a long table in a massive hall.
Real candles drip into chandeliers, their glow flickering over silver trays carried high by masked waiters.
We squeeze in shoulder to shoulder and I drag my chair round to make space for Alessandra, but a woman passing with menus shakes her head and gestures to the stage up front.
‘Cabaret seating. You’re meant to face the show. ’
Fulvio, who’s also come as his true self in full Venetian pomp, laughs unkindly. ‘She’s probably never been to one before.’
‘Who cares? She’s here now.’ Alessandra tosses her head, the paper-lace mask fluttering.
I give her hand a grateful squeeze.
A ripple goes through the room as a man in head-to-toe white makes his way to our table, clapping people on the back and laughing loudly, mask pushed high like he wants to be recognized. He joins our table and takes a seat beside Veronica.
So this is the famous Martino Ballarin.
Fulvio’s shaking his hand before he’s fully seated. ‘Signor Ballarin. It’s wonderful that you could be here. Isn’t Leo with you?’
I know he isn’t.
I’ve been checking every boy who walks in – the slope of their shoulders, the curl of their hair, the shape of their fingernails.
None of them are right. And that’s the strangest part; I know Leo so well on the outside, and Rebel so well on the inside, it’s like I’ve met two separate versions of him but not the one that’s whole.
‘Sadly, Leonardo had other commitments,’ Martino replies. ‘He’s helping out at a gallery this evening.’
I suppose being ill isn’t something to brag about.
Veronica moves straight on. ‘Ah, Martino, this is our exchange student, Evie. The one who’s staying with us. You two haven’t had a chance to meet yet.’
Martino leans over to crush the bones in my hand, still looking at Veronica. ‘The one from the portrait academy in Scotland?’
She doesn’t correct him. Just glances over, silently begging me not to either.
I lower my head. What would she think if she knew the truth about me and Leo? Probably the same thing she’s thinking now – that I’m not quite who she wants me to be. Not only could I never belong to this world … I could never belong to this family.
The entertainment begins as we eat. A comedian I can’t follow, acrobats, then musicians playing set after set while masked performers sweep between tables.
Still, it’s hard to focus on any of it when Martino’s opposite, battling his massive lace cuffs every time he tries to get food anywhere near his mouth.
Veronica has to pick the bones out of his sea bream for him.
They remind me of a documentary I saw in S1 Biology – flashy male birds in bright plumage strutting around while the drabber females do all the work. Not that Veronica could ever be called drab. But, hey. A sciencey thought for once.
By the time dessert’s finished, I’m uncomfortably full – which is exactly when a couple takes the floor to show us the steps for the dances.
I regret every bite of tiramisu. The only group dance I’ve ever done is a ceilidh, and at least there you’re expected to mess up.
When one of the boys from the Institute offers a hand to me, I almost refuse. But Nadia and the others are heading to the floor, so I follow.
At first it’s chaos – shoes slipping, skirts tangling, everyone bumping into each other.
I get swept from partner to partner, laughing despite myself, until I lose track of who I started with.
A boy in a harlequin mask twirls me out, and just as I’m finding the rhythm, someone taps him on the shoulder.
I assume it’s just another swap.
But the moment harlequin boy steps back, I know it isn’t.
Recognition jolts through me. Even though the boy waiting to take his place is in full costume, I already know it’s Leo.
Only, not Leo exactly.
He’s wearing the mask he made at the workshop. And now I get why he didn’t care about the paint I spilt on it. The blue matches the colour misted across half his face in his Art Exchange avatar – the way my costume mirrors my own.
The girl from the loch. The boy from the lagoon.
Our online selves, face to face.