AVERY: It wasn’t as boring as it sounds, honestly. It wasn’t thrilling, but it wasn’t awful. We really didn’t leave Coco’s house that much, though. I think we went to the movies once? God, no wonder Bizzy Stanhope thought Dan was imaginary.
HUTCH: The art of robotics construction can be fascinating—in the right hands. But it’s hard to imagine anything approaching artistry coming from someone who participated in the Rebound Rumble.
COCO: I wasn’t jealous or anything. I just missed having Avery and me time—just Avery and me.
AVERY: And I missed having Coco and me time. It was weird how dating someone who had literally brought me closer—geographically, I mean—to Coco than ever made me feel more far away from her than ever! I didn’t like forcing my best friend to constantly third-wheel. Maybe this could have worked out if Coco had a boyfriend who also lived in her house, but that seems like an uncomfortable situation at best, and a sister-wives situation at worst. I probably would have broken up with Dan eventually because it was weird dating someone who lived with Coco, or because I got tired of watching him build robots, but something bigger intervened. Something bigger than me or Dan or Coco or any of us. Something as big as … a whole country.
DAN: We had a good thing going, for sure. But I couldn’t compete with Italy. Who could?
AVERY: I was going to the nazione d’amore. And I knew I had to go there single.
COCO: The minute I heard that Avery was going to Italy, I knew Dan was toast. As if Avery would pass up a chance to date some cute Italian boy! No way. Not possible. Dan didn’t seem too upset by the breakup, though. Maybe his robots had taught him how not to feel.
DAN KIM: Did Coco make another robots-don’t-have-feelings joke? I can feel. I just wasn’t particularly upset about Avery breaking up with me. Things were getting really busy with competition season anyway, and it made more sense to be single. Easier to focus.
Editor’s Note: Obviously, I’m glad that I didn’t cause Dan any undue emotional distress, but his complete lack of emotional distress was slightly unflattering.
HUTCH: I hoped that last interview hadn’t been too hard for AD. She must have been so embarrassed that one of her exes had been crushed so thoroughly by the University of Maryland at this year’s RASC-AL Robo-Ops competition. From what I gathered from the robotics blogosphere, it was pretty brutal.
COCO: Back in freshman year, it was arrivederci, Dan, and ciao, Fabrizio. Avery took her dating game international.
AVERY: My dad wouldn’t let me go back to Camp Kawawa after freshman year—he said it was time for me to spend more “productive” summers so my college applications would look better. But I found something that was even better than Camp Kawawa and Charlie’s s’mores-scented embrace. I found a way to get to Europe without my parents.
ANNABETH NESS, Director of Teen Travel Trip Programming, European Division: All students on Teen Travel Trips are fully supervised one hundred percent of the time. That is a personal guarantee I make to parents and guardians.
AVERY: Sure, Teen Travel Trips looked educational—from the brochures. It definitely looked educational enough to get Dad on board. And I would absolutely conjugate some verbs if I had to. But grammar was the last thing on my mind. I was heading over to Italy with only three things in mind: gelato, amore, and fulfilling my lifelong dream of riding on the back of a Vespa.
ANNABETH: I may not personally accompany the students on any of our trips, but I am one hundred percent confident that all Teen Travel Trip counselors, chaperones, and staff uphold the high standards that I have set for all Teen Travel Trip employees.
AVERY: The supervision on my Teen Travel Trip was lax at best. There were forty high school kids and four counselors in their early twenties. Frankly, I think the counselors were worse than we were.
COCO: No, I didn’t get to go to Italy with Avery. My mom thinks Italy is full of butt pinchers and pickpockets. So that summer, I started volunteering at the Moya del Pino reference library in the hopes that next year, my mom would let me apply to an internship at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston. It was a very quiet, very dusty summer.
Editor’s Note: Spoiler alert—Coco got that internship and she’s gone back every summer since. She revolutionized that boring old library’s social media platform, and the entire staff of the JFK Presidential Library is completely obsessed with her. If you ask me, JFK’s biggest flaw was being from Massachusetts, because Coco is going to college in stupid Boston so she can keep archiving with those dumb presidential librarians. Why couldn’t Coco have been obsessed with Ronald Reagan? His presidential library is only thirty-four minutes from Pepperdine! But Coco fell asleep when I showed her Reagan: American Experience on PBS, so that wasn’t happening. Curse you, Gipper!
HUTCH: I cannot believe AD’s parents let her go to Italy alone. I also can’t believe there wasn’t some kind of international incident.
Editor’s Note: I am an extremely responsible, excellent traveler who has never caused any kind of incident, international or local. Well, except that one time, at the In-N-Out in Pinole, but a drive to Pinole hardly counts as travel. And I absolutely helped with cleanup, so I think it was fine.
AVERY: I’ve always felt that I had a bit of European flair about me, so Italy seemed like my destiny. I stuffed my suitcase full of chic tiny neck scarves and jetted off to Rome.
HUTCH: Tiny neck scarves! Roman Holiday! It’s all coming full circle now. I was wondering why she went to Italy when San Anselmo Prep doesn’t even offer Italian.
AVERY: But because I am a born-and-raised Californian, I couldn’t spend the whole summer away from the beach. So I picked the trip that would give me a couple days in Rome and then the rest of the summer would be on the beach in Riomaggiore, where I could wear Audrey Hepburn–style tiny neck scarves with my bikini. Best of both worlds.
HUTCH: San Anselmo is forty-five minutes from the beach. We’re not all wandering around with surfboards, despite what Avery might have you think.
Editor’s Note: It’s called having pride in your state, Hutch! California has the best beaches in the world. Also, just because I can’t go to the beach as much as I’d like doesn’t mean I don’t love it. And forty-five minutes is a nothing drive. Hutch hates the feeling of sand between his toes, so his opinion on the beach is irrelevant. He once called sand “nature’s glitter,” and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Although he does have a point about it getting everywhere and being impossible to clean up …
JANELLE DEMARIA, senior at Short Hills High School, Avery’s Teen Travel Trip roommate: I knew Avery and I were going to get along from the very first day I met her. We had to go around in a circle and say what we were most excited about in Italy, and Avery said she wanted to ride on the back of a Vespa. You ever see When in Rome? With Mary-Kate and Ashley? That movie’s crazy old but still awesome, in a so-bad-it’s-awesome way. When I met Avery, I felt like I had found the Mary-Kate to my Ashley.
AVERY: Rome was … not exactly what I expected. This wasn’t the Rome of Audrey Hepburn.
JANELLE: I feel like nobody wants to say anything bad about Italy, because who gets salty about a European vacation, but whatever, I’ll say it. It was crazy hot. And super crowded. Why didn’t Mary-Kate and Ashley sweat, huh? I spent all of Rome unsuccessfully trying not to sweat my eyeliner off.
AVERY: But there was something worse than the heat and the crowds and the dirt and the noise. Where were all the cute boys? I hadn’t seen a single Vespa I wanted to ride on. I was starting to panic.
JANELLE: I told Avery not to worry. My sister had done a Teen Travel Trip two years ago and met the hottest guy in Cinque Terre. That’s why I signed up for the trip that went to Riomaggiore. I figured there must be something in the water there.
Editor’s Note: Cinque Terre is a region on the west coast of Italy made up of five towns. Riomaggiore is the southernmost town. They are all super beautiful but IMHO, Riomaggiore is the most beautiful of all.
<
br /> FABRIZIO MONTEFIORE, ex-boyfriend: I saw Avery the first day she arrived in Riomaggiore. I saw her right away. I knew she was a real American girl—real California girl. She was like from a movie.
Editor’s Note: OMG I forgot how much I loooooved listening to Fabrizio talk. Who knew “Avery” could sound like “Aaavaarrrreeee”?
AVERY: We got off the bus in Riomaggiore—of course I had total bus hair, ugh—and it was like stepping into a fairy tale.
HUTCH: Oh good lord, AD and the “bus hair.” Every time we go on a school trip, she’s convinced her hair has undergone some sort of chemical process that transforms it into the dreaded “bus hair.” It looks exactly the same when she gets off the bus as it did when she got on the bus. Hey, maybe now that Avery has short hair, bus hair won’t be part of our lives anymore!
Editor’s Note: If anything, this short haircut is only going to make my bus hair worse! But I just realized that I probably won’t be on a bus with Hutch again anytime soon. We definitely won’t be going on field trips together anymore. Huh. That’s kind of sad. Who knew I could be nostalgic for bus hair?
AVERY: If you’ve never seen a picture of Riomaggiore, I strongly suggest you google image search it right now. There are all these brightly colored houses built into the hillside, right above water so blue it looks like the Caribbean. Riomaggiore is basically a tropical vacation destination but with better-quality carbs.
FABRIZIO: My family has run una pensione—a small hotel—in Riomaggiore for generations. My father began hosting Teen Travel Trips fifteen years ago, so I have seen many American girls come through our hotel. But I had never seen one like Avery.
HUTCH: Wait a minute. Hold up. This guy had a new group of young, dumb teenagers coming through his family’s hotel every summer? He must have been a huge player.
Editor’s Note: When his family started hosting Teen Travel Trips, Fabrizio was four. I think the teenage girls were safe, Hutch.
FABRIZIO: I was running late. Mama had warned me to be there to meet the bus, but the Americans were already off the bus when I pulled up in front of our hotel. I knew Mama would be angry!
AVERY: It was a miracle. A young Gregory Peck drove up on a Vespa and stopped right in front of our hotel. He was even wearing a suit. A suit!
FABRIZIO: Yes, Mama always makes me wear a suit to greet the Americans. I do not mind it, so much. A nice suit, it is an important thing. The Americans, they did not dress so well, not usually. Avery, she was different.
AVERY: When I met Fabrizio, I was wearing a short-sleeved white button-down shirt tucked into a full navy blue circle skirt and of course a little striped neck scarf. I went the full Audrey. Ordinarily, I would wear sweatpants on a bus, but I didn’t bring a single pair of sweatpants to Italy. That seemed like the kind of garment they might seize at customs for being horribly un-chic. I even brought a full-on pajama suit to sleep in.
JANELLE: When Fabrizio rode into the piazza in front of the hotel, Avery was squeezing my arm so hard I thought she was gonna leave nail marks. Was I surprised when I saw him? No way. I knew the magic of Cinque Terre would deliver. Like an idiot, I’d gone and gotten myself involved with another kid on our trip who was from exotic Maplewood. Why hadn’t I held out?? Avery would have to live the Italian dream for both of us.
ANNABETH: Romantic relationships between fellow Teen Travel Trip students are strictly prohibited, as are relations of any nature between Teen Travel Trip students and young people who are not affiliated with the program.
FABRIZIO: Of course I had been in love before. A hundred times. A thousand! But every love is different. And Avery, she was special.
HUTCH: Man, this guy was like a cliché of a cliché.
FABRIZIO: I pressed my hand to my heart and staggered, struck by the force of her beauty. She giggled with her friend, the pretty one with the dark hair, and from that moment Avery, she had my heart.
HUTCH: I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Fabrizio had fed the same line to AD’s roommate, too. I didn’t like the way he was talking about her. There was something definitely fishy about this guy.
JANELLE: No way. Fabrizio never hit on me! He was so into Avery it was ridiculous. I was definitely the Nurse and not the Rosaline in this situation.
Editor’s Note: Nice literary ref, Janelle.
FABRIZIO: I blew Avery a kiss, and then Mama shooed me inside to help Papa with the keys. But I could tell by the dancing in Avery’s eyes that her heart had caught my kiss.
Editor’s Note: At “dancing in Avery’s eyes,” Hutch pretended to barf into my trash can. All science and no poetry, that Hutch.
JANELLE: The minute Avery and I got into our room, we started talking about the mystery guy on the Vespa. And then we pretty much talked about him the rest of the night, even as we plowed our way through huge bowls of trenette with pesto, which must have been attractive.
AVERY: I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night, until Janelle and I were getting into bed, when I heard something hit our window. Then another something. Fabrizio was legit throwing pebbles at our window, like in a movie! Janelle and I raced to the window, and I was so grateful for my adorable striped pajama suit.
JANELLE: I was wearing this horrible tank top that said TASTEE on it. But whatever, it wasn’t about me. Fabrizio called out, “Mia cara bionda ragazza! I burn for you! I yearn for you! I die for you!” A couple stray cats yowled, but it was still completely romantic.
HUTCH: I’m sorry—seriously? Are people seriously buying this? This is the cheesiest, most ridiculous, insane thing I’ve ever heard of! Who would be into this? The whole thing reeks of phoniness.
Editor’s Note: It’s called a grand gesture, Hutch! It was like he’d never seen a romantic comedy.
FABRIZIO: I told Avery everything in my heart until Mama found me and told me I was disturbing the neighbors so I must come inside.
AVERY: I think it speaks to the level of supervision at Teen Travel Trips that it was Fabrizio’s mom who came and got him, not any of our alleged chaperones.
HUTCH: This whole thing sounds completely unacceptable. One benefit of AD swearing off dating is that she’d now be far away from guys like this. I think I’ll be leaving a very strongly worded review on Teen Travel Trips’ Yelp page.
JANELLE: I didn’t even think they’d made plans to meet, but when we got out of class the next day for free time, there Fabrizio was, waiting on his Vespa. It was like they could communicate without words.
AVERY: I wouldn’t call myself fluent in Italian, per se, but I would go so far as to say I’m remarkably proficient. Brilliantly proficient, maybe.
FABRIZIO: Avery’s Italian, it is not so good. But we spoke the language of love. And also my English, it is very excellent.
AVERY: Listen to me parlo Italiano. Fior di Latte, Cioccolate, Limone, Zuppa Inglese, Bacio, Frutti di Bosco, Nocciola …
FABRIZIO: She can order many, many kinds of gelato. But these are her limits.
Editor’s Note: Limits? Please! La Dolce Vita, La Vita e Bella … hmm. Well, sue me. I was out of practice.
AVERY: After class on our first full day in Riomaggiore, I took the helmet Fabrizio offered me—because safety is even more important than hair—and climbed on the back of his Vespa like it was my destiny. Which it was.
JANELLE: Avery just hopped right up on that Vespa and they drove away. Nobody even tried to stop her! I guess the chaperones weren’t paying attention. I looked at Brian from Maplewood and regretted all of my life choices.
AVERY: First we drove to a bakery and Fabrizio bought me a warm bag of what turned out to be the best focaccia I’d ever had in my entire life. Then he drove to the beach, and we sat on the rocks and ate focaccia and watched the waves roll in, and when he kissed me, I felt like I was in a movie. Riomaggiore Holiday.
FABRIZIO: Un bacio perfetto.
HUTCH: Let the record show that this clown made a horrible kissing noise that was audible over a tran
scontinental phone connection, like a cartoon chef presenting a plate of tortellini.
AVERY: Let the record show that I determine the historical record, not one James “Hutch” Hutcherson.
HUTCH: I was just trying to keep AD objective! All dealings with this Montefiore character clearly needed a healthy dose of skepticism.
FABRIZIO: My Avery, she gave me the most magical summer of my young life.
AVERY: Honestly? I can’t really think of any other way to describe it. Molto magico!
HUTCH: Magical? Let’s all take it down a notch, here. So he can wear a suit and buy bread and drive a dumb tiny scooter. But who is this guy? All I’m hearing is he does this and he does that—all about the things he does, but nothing about who he is. Did you guys ever even have a conversation?
AVERY: Fabrizio and I absolutely had conversations! But somehow … I couldn’t remember anything about any of them.
FABRIZIO: I told Avery I loved her every day, every night, every hour! But she could never say it back. La mia principessa di ghiaccio.
Editor’s Note: Oh, right. That’s what we talked about. Well, that’s what Fabrizio talked about.
HUTCH: Avery cannot have been into that. For someone who dates as much as she does, she’s usually not the mushy, saccharine type. That’s one of the things I like best about her.
Editor’s Note: !!!! A compliment, from the great James Hutcherson?!
COCO: Wow—the dramatic juxtaposition that was Avery’s freshman year just occurred to me. First, Ben said he loved her, and that was too much. So she started dating Dan, who, I am one hundred percent confident, did not profess his love, since the only thing Dan loves is robots. Then she left robot boy and started dating the florid Fabrizio! Wait—maybe florid was not the right word choice. But what I meant was that she went from lovey-dovey Ben to stone-cold Dan to mucho-amore Fabrizio, looking for the right fit, yet none of it was right! She was like the Goldilocks of love.
Editor’s Note: “Mucho amore” is not Italian. And aren’t we all Goldilockses of love, searching for the right fit?
It's Not Me, It's You Page 10