So, it should have bothered me that Renata tainted my sanctuary each night when she crawled out of bed at two in the morning, crept inside here, and read the books that had previously only been touched by myself and my mother. But it didn’t bother me. And that was dangerous.
For most of the summer, Renata locked herself in her room by day, the staff dropped food off to her room, and the only reprieve she had in this prison happened to be my reprieve, too. I understood that in ways I’d never tell anyone. It was why I left her to enjoy the library. Except today, when the lashing Angelo’s belt had given me earlier still burned my back and the idea of company enticed me. Sue me.
Tonight, she was quiet as she crept out of her room. Not a single step heard. I stared at the framed article on Great-great-grandfather Ludovico De Luca as I waited for her to pass the painting of Ludo in the hall. (Angelo had an obsession with him.)
She pushed the double doors open, not a hint of surprise on her face when she saw me, though I know I surprised her. She was good at hiding. I’d give her that. But not from me. Never from me.
With my legs propped on two accent pillows formerly owned by a European prince three centuries ago, I laid on one of two ebony velvet divans in the library. A first edition copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov rested between my palms. The same copy she’d been reading and left lying on the side table last night. I could still smell her vanilla scent on the cream pages.
She stood there for a moment, and I wondered how flustered I had her. I also wondered how smart she was. My contacts had informed me she had the best education money could buy, and lust tempted me to test her.
“There are goosebumps rising along the length of your arms.” I didn’t once look up from the book. Even if I had, several feet separated us. I couldn’t actually see the goosebumps, though I had no doubt they existed.
“I don’t recall reading that line in the book.” She sat on the divan across from mine, probably deciding this was better than another minute in her room.
I turned the page, not looking up, and continued with my test. “They’re a physical manifestation of your attraction to me.” My tone left little for debate. Like my words were fact—they were—and trying to argue against me would be met with failure—it would be.
Her level voice impressed me. “So, my goosebumps, which don’t exist,”—bullshit—“are a physical manifestation of my attraction to you, which also doesn’t exist.” Bull fucking shit. “I take it the rumors of insanity running rampant in De Luca territory are true.”
“Those aren’t rumors. They’re facts.” I met her eyes and dared her to argue otherwise.
“Do you hate me?”
My eyes flicked back to the book, mostly to hide my surprise at her boldness. “Hate would require emotion, and I do not possess any of those where you are concerned.” I adjusted my body, doing my best to be sure she couldn’t see my pain. Angelo stopped hitting when welts began to form. His way of assuring no scars surfaced as evidence. It still hurt like a bitch.
“The hair on your forearms are raised.”
So, the princess played games.
My lips tilted upward. I let it settle for a second before I tampered the smile. “Is that so?”
“It’s a manifestation of your attraction to me.”
“Possibly,” I allowed, swallowing as I shoved down the thrill shooting through me. I didn’t know what souls were made of, but in this moment, I suspected ours were the same. “It’s certainly not natural.”
And there we had it. The truth of my attraction, spoken out loud. Would she say something? Admit she lusted for me, too? Or let the opportunity slip through her fingers. Rational Damian knew this had to stop. Fuck-All Damian, who rose each time Angelo whipped me, didn’t give a damn.
She didn’t admit her attraction to me. But didn’t stop this either. Her eyes traced the way my fingers caressed the Dostoevsky pages. “Do you really think neuroses can physically present themselves?”
Most high school curricula didn’t include Freud’s “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” so the fact that she recognized my references impressed me. Moreover, it built a bridge between us, and we stood at the center, wondering which side we’d walk to.
I flipped a page. “It makes more sense than the alternative.”
“Not to me.” She tucked her feet under her thighs, leaned against the cushion, and allowed herself to get comfortable.
I gave her the silence to think. Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy. In Freud’s essay, he argued Dostoevsky’s epilepsy materialized after his father’s death as a physical manifestation of his guilt over wishing for his father’s death. I understood Dostoevsky wishing for his father’s death—I felt the same way—yet I’d never feel guilt over it. Intentional or unintentional. But perhaps Renata was a better person than me. That wouldn’t be a surprise.
I felt her eyes on me as she spoke. “Death should be a last resort. Not some trivial wish to be thrown about. And goosebumps, your example of emotions eliciting physical responses, aren’t as severe as a condition like epilepsy.”
I peered up from the novel and, for the first time since Ren had walked in, took in the sleeping shorts that exposed most of her legs and the satin spaghetti strap shirt, which hid nothing. Her nipples poked at the fabric, and my Adam’s apple bobbed.
My eyes returned to her face. “Would you have stayed if I accused you of developing a heart condition over your attraction to me?”
She eyed where the throw blanket pressed against my hips. Maybe she did have goosebumps. “It wasn’t an either-or situation. You weren’t limited to goosebumps and cardiovascular disease.”
“Perhaps.” My hands untangled the blanket, flattened it as I held it open above the floor, and tossed it so it covered her body almost perfectly when it landed on her. “You overestimate my desire to converse with you.”
“Which one of us was the first to speak?”
“If I recall, it was me… after I caught you sneaking around my room.”
“You didn’t catch me snooping. You caught me laying on your bed.”
“Yet, you deny your attraction to me. Which is it, Knight? Are you attracted to me, or were you snooping?”
Probably both, now that I considered it.
“What is it with you and absurd either-or scenarios?”
I set the book aside and swiveled, so my feet touched the floor and my forearms rested on my knees as I leaned forward and hit her with a heavy stare. “Dodging my questions isn’t going to earn you any respect from me, and seven days from now, when we start our senior year of high school, you’ll be wanting that respect.”
She met my actions, unfolding her legs and leaning forward, so mere inches separated our faces as we sat across from one another on the divans Mama and I once picked out together. “I have your respect.”
“Is that so?”
“What do you call this?” She gestured between us. “Are you in the habit of discussing the psychology of literature with people you don’t respect?”
Touché.
The pain in my back should have been a reminder to build higher walls. Instead, it torched them to the ground. The dangers of letting her see me in a vulnerable state didn’t deter me, and something in her eyes begged me to believe she wasn’t the enemy here.
Did she see my loneliness? Did she connect to it? It couldn’t be fun stuck in that room all day.
I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off. “It’s okay not to hate me. It’s okay not to like me, too.” She dipped her eyes to the blanket that had pooled at her lap before returning them to me.
Had it been wrong to give her the blanket? I was an asshole, yes, but Mama raised a gentleman.
My eyes followed hers to the blanket. “Hate would require emotions, and I—”
“—don’t possess any, where I’m concerned. Yeah, I got it. There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude.”
Her words reminded me of choice. I had two. I could be lone
ly, I could have solitude by choice, or I could chase the outlet she gave me. The cure. And I made my choice the next night, when I returned to the library, and we read Infinite Jest together and argued over the psychological consequences of having absent parents.
This isn’t a big deal, I told myself as we walked back to our hall. It’s just an outlet. Just an outlet.
I wondered what she told herself.
* * *
Trust is like a mirror.
You can fix it if it’s broken,
but you can still see the
crack in that mother-
fucker’s reflection.
Lady Gaga
* * *
I could ask myself what I was doing here a thousand times more, and I still wouldn’t have an answer. Reading a book is like peeling the pages back on your soul. For eighty-thousand words, you become someone else. You bare yourself to the words, and you feel what the character feels. When you share that experience with another person, it’s like sharing the same soul.
For the past three weeks, I’d been sharing the same soul with Damiano De Luca. I didn’t trust him. Hell, I barely even knew him, but there are people I’ve known all my life that I wouldn’t trust to water my plants let alone spend night after night reading with.
Yet, like clockwork, when the clock beside my bed had turned to one a.m., I had slipped my sheets off and wandered down the hallway. Damian sat on the divan with a book in his hand and an identical copy for me. I eyed the paperback in his outstretched hand. Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand.
I took a seat but didn’t touch the paperback. “No.”
It was an impulsive reaction. A need to feel power after feeling so helpless in my decision to show up here. The best explanation I could come up with was, my father had taught me to build walls around myself. That included my heart, which seemed too interested in Damian for my own good. Attraction could be brushed off. But this need to seek company in him? Unshakeable.
Trust no one, I reminded my heart, then begged it to listen.
Damian laid the paperback beside him. “No?”
“Nope.” I popped the P.
“Why not?”
I flummoxed for a reply. “It’s in third person.”
He looked unimpressed. “You read The Brothers Karamazov just fine.”
My shoulders shrugged, and I tried my best to look like I wasn’t pulling excuses out of thin air. “That was Dostoevsky. He’s in another league.”
“This is Ayn Rand.”
“I can leave if you’re committed to reading Atlas Shrugged.”
Damian stared me down. I wanted to give in, because yes, I was so damned lonely in that room all day. I couldn’t afford another hour alone. It would drive me insane. As Damian stood, I almost backtracked, but I shut my mouth when I realized he was making his way to one of the shelves.
He pulled out a paperback and approached the divan. Junot Díaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. If anything, this made it worse. It meant he wanted me here just as much as I wanted to be here.
“There’s only one copy. I’ll read.” Damian opened the book.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why he was doing this. Instead, I swallowed the words down as he read. Damian had a voice like Zachary Webber’s, and when he read in his light Texas accent, I swore he ruined me for audiobooks. No one could compare.
Stretched out on the divan at such a late hour, it was easy to fall asleep to Damian’s voice. My eyes drifted shut. When I opened them again, he was carrying me down the hallway, his movements quiet and effortless.
I let out a yawn, my vision blurred from sleep. The darkness didn’t help. When I shifted, Damian tightened his hold on me. So, I closed my eyes again and rested my head on his chest. He was supposed to hate me. I didn’t trust him. I’d stolen his phone from him. I was a Vitali, and he was a De Luca.
But this didn’t feel like hate.
* * *
The best way to find out
if you can trust somebody
is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
* * *
Most schools have a mean girl. Devils Ridge High has three. Laura Willis. Maria Delgado. Adalasia Ricci. I’d clocked them the second I stepped into the hallway, my new schedule crumbled into a ball in my fist, already memorized.
They strut down the hall like a scene out of Mean Girls. Step. Hip sway. Step. Hair flip. Step. Wink. Step. Lucky for me, they gave me nothing more than narrowed eyes and thinly veiled jealousy. I encroached in their territory, still managing to draw attention despite the mess of clothes I wore.
My name protected me from bullying, and perhaps that drew the most resentment. Here I was, a privileged Vitali, the mafia princess they wanted to be. It was as glamorous as the title suggested, and yes, I had money, education, and status.
If that was your thing, I could understand the animosity. But my thing was wholesome families with parents who cared less about territorial disputes and more about the report cards I brought home each quarter.
This made me aloof. The I-don’t-care expression made me easier to hate. The prestigious last name tacked onto my first? The nail on the green-faced coffin.
“Eyes up front, Miss Willis.” The white-haired Mrs. Bruno flashed a warning look at Laura. Italian last name. All-knowing stare. Mafia-affiliated, I’d guess. Meaning, she knew the war going against me could start.
Laura swiveled in her seat, her eyes finally shifting away from me. I relaxed a little against the cheap plastic backrest and toned out of the AP Calculus BC lecture. I took it freshman year, and using derivatives in growth and decay models didn’t challenge me.
Instead, I cataloged the students in the classroom. Most took the phone ban seriously. Nearly everyone in this classroom sported pagers attached to their clothes. Laura, on the other hand, texted beneath the table each time Mrs. Bruno looked away. I added her to my mental list of potential candidates to steal a phone from. After all, I still needed to check my email to see if Maman had responded.
Damian came into the classroom ten minutes before class ended. No one said a word. Mrs. Bruno greeted him with a smile and continued her lecture. He took a seat in the chair diagonally beside mine but didn’t take out paper and a pen.
His body reeked of alcohol, and for all I knew, he’d been holed up in the local strip club or a brewery. We spent every night in the library together, yes, but we never talked about things that went on outside that room. I knew his dad beat him. He knew I needed company to chase away the loneliness. Beyond that knowledge, we kept things strictly book-related.
Except last night. I didn’t know what last night was. Him covering his ass by making sure no one found me asleep in the library? But he could have just woken me up and let me walk myself back to my room. I was at a loss.
Damian turned his face to me and caught me staring. Sleep rimmed his eyes, and he mouthed, “Caught you,” before he leaned his head on his desk and closed his eyes.
The bell rang, people filtered out of the classroom, but no one woke him up. I took my time gathering my things. Laura’s frown stayed on her face as she strode out of the room, unhappy about my proximity with the school’s It Boy but unable to do anything.
Mrs. Bruno hesitated, looked between me and Damian, and left when she caught the unimpressed stare I gave the poor woman. In my defense, I needed privacy, it was rare to catch Damian at home, and our library was a sanctuary I didn’t want to tarnish with anything but books.
“I know you’re staring at me.” His voice surprised me, but I tamped my reaction. I’d thought he’d fallen asleep.
I leaned against the desk and crossed my arms. “Is our time in the library wearing you out?”
“You don’t wear me out, Princess.”
“Knight,” I corrected. Ugh, I hated being reminded that I was a mafia princess. “But you’re worn out. Your shoulders are tense, and you can’t shake the sleep from your eyes. We’re in public.” Fatigue was weakness, and weakne
ss was not for public consumption.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I’m alert, Princess. Agata wore a black cap. Backwards. Chuck Taylors. Isabella. White sundress. Flip flops. Braided hair. Brando. Black skinny jeans. White tee. Leather jacket. Gold chain. Pippa—”
“Okay, I get it. You’re Shawn Spencer.”
“And you’re still here. Did you need something?”
It was like, as soon as we left the safe space of the library, civility fled. We stayed away from each other in public, but I couldn’t help the concern, which crept into my body. I opened my mouth, a little afronted by the hostility.
Well, you stole his phone, Renata. What did you expect? For him to forget about it just because you spent some time in a library reading together?
An amused smile lined Damian’s lips, and he stared at me like no one else before him. “I know you’re concerned.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. It’s cute, but it’s not welcome. These people follow your family’s rules because they’re precedent and they won’t survive a war against the Vitali nor domestic and international syndicates, but they’ve been bred to distrust you, Renata. If I’m seen with you, that distrust will extend to me.”
Message received.
“Fine.” I swallowed and tilted my chin up. “But if you’re really concerned over the impression you give, you should fix whatever has you falling asleep in class.” I swung my backpack over my shoulder, turned, and left.
I could have sworn I heard him mutter, “I’m trying.”
Try not to be an asshole while you’re at it.
* * *
For there to be betrayal,
there would have to have
been trust first.
Suzanne Collins
* * *
My best friend Cristian slid a package my way. “Here.”
Brown box. Plain. Nondescript.