by Ruth Houston
"Yeah," I said, sitting down in one of the desks near her.
"Actually I'm glad you're here; there's a project I need to you know about," the young teacher said.
I nodded mutely and re-started in on my sandwich, my heart weighed down with a burden I couldn't put my finger on.
There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by the quiet sound of her pen scratching on paper before Miss Cooper said to me, "Are you alright? You look kind of down in the dumps, Winter."
I shrugged. "I don't know, Miss Cooper," was all I could come up with.
"Is it about Zack Crowne?"
My head shot up and I gave her an odd look. "Miss Cooper, with all due respect, I don't know what you're talking about," I lied for the second time that day.
She just smiled at me in a friendly way and said, "Winter, I'm not blind. There are things that go on in this school that probably even you don't know about. Teachers are more observant than you think." She winked at me.
"Oh," I said, rather impressed. This woman didn't even have Zack as a student; how much more observant could you get if she knew something was up with the two of us? "So what do you know?"
"I know that he went out with Eva Westley for a while," Miss Cooper said, setting down her pen and gazing at me thoughtfully. "I know that every single time I see you two within a twenty foot radius of each other, Zack is always staring at you, sometimes looking like he's perplexed about you, sometimes with a small smile on his face, sometimes sad, and sometimes like he wants to jump you."
I flushed, protesting, "That's not true!"
She just laughed. "Trust me, it's true. Most of the time it's a mix of several of those. Though personally I like it the best when he looks like he wants to jump you." She smirked a little and I looked at her, horrified.
"Zack n-never wants to – to – jump me," I spluttered. "Why would he want to do that?"
Miss Cooper smiled mischievously. "Well that's for me to know and for you to find out, I suppose," she said cryptically.
I groaned. "I hate it when people use that line," I muttered. "I thought in English we were supposed to stay away from the clichés, Miss Cooper."
If teachers were allowed to giggle like schoolgirls, Miss Cooper came very close. I'll settle for saying that she chuckled a bit. "Now do you want to talk about it, Winter?"
I paused half-way through my sandwich and set it down, and suddenly, all of it came out. It was like my brain had chosen today as the day to turn on, and I found myself telling Miss Cooper all of it, every single bit, even the parts I hadn't yet told Eva. She was quiet through the whole thing, pushing her reading glasses up on her head and actually listening to me. And once I started talking I couldn't stop – everything just came spilling out, and the more I talked, the better I felt. By the time I reached the end, my eyes were stinging a little and Miss Cooper had to give both of us a tissue.
I laughed a little. "That's my sob story, Miss Cooper," I said in conclusion, rubbing my eyes and sniffing. Why had I been turning on the waterworks so much lately? I was usually not one to get over-emotional or teary about things (that was Eva's job), but I felt like lately I had been a walking emotional wreck. I decided it really didn't suit me very well.
She smiled slightly. "Those are the facts. The most important part though, is how he makes you feel."
"Feel?" I said.
"Yes," she said, settling back in her chair. "How does he make you feel?"
I shook my head slowly. "I don't know how to talk about it."
She gave me an encouraging smile. "Try."
I stared off into a corner of her room, thinking a little, then repeated, "How does he make me feel?" My eyes lost focus as I thought about the question, then realized I couldn't answer it properly if I was thinking. Instead, I imagined Zack was here, with me, at that very moment, sitting next to me. What would he be doing?
"I guess…sometimes I don't know how he makes me feel," I said softly, lost in a swirl of emotions and heartaches. "Zack used to make me mad a lot. Especially when I first met him, and he and Eva had been going out. Maybe it was because I was jealous that Eva was giving him so much time or something, or maybe I was just looking for a reason to hate him. Zack annoyed me; I didn't know why and I still don't know why, but he did. But then…after that night he took me out to the warehouse parking lot to look at the stars, it was like something changed between us. And especially that Sunday at the park, when he told me everything about him and why he is the way he is, after that, it was just…I don't know. He confuses me a lot.
"Most of all, I think I don't know what to feel when I'm around him. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. He makes me smile, and he makes me furious and frustrated and ready to kill him. It's absolutely crazy most of the time. But sometimes, he makes me feel good too. When I'm around him, it's like I don't have to be anyone else but myself, because it's good enough for him, and it's so easy to laugh with him. When he smiles, I smile too, I can't help it. And we talk so easily, but we can be quiet together for a long time too without feeling awkward." I furrowed my brow a bit, eyes still unfocused. "But it hurts too. Now that he's gone, it hurts. There's this…ache, really, and I guess it never goes away. I wish it would, but it never does." I blinked slightly and was jolted back to the real world as Miss Cooper sighed.
She said lightly, "Have you figured it out yet?"
"Figured what out yet?"
She smiled again. "You will soon, I think. It hurts though, doesn't it?"
I touched my chest in the spot where my heart was and nodded.
"If it's real, it won't go away. Keep sending him letters. I'm sure he'll be just ecstatic to get them," she said. The bell rang, making both of us jump.
I gathered up the remains of my lunch, no longer hungry, and said, "Thanks, Miss Cooper. You're a good listener."
She nodded. "You're very welcome, Winter. Ask Rebecca for the notes on the project. She usually takes good notes."
I left her room feeling a little better than I had in the past couple of days.
It was my first day of school without Eva and Zack. It would have even been nice to see Tristan or Anthony, but no, they were gone as well. Rebecca was alright, I guess, and so was Martin, but (and I know it sounds mean and shallow) they weren't the same. I managed to pull myself through the rest of my classes and realized I had to take the bus now that Tristan was unable to give me a ride. The great part about it was, I realized this exactly thirty seconds before the buses were scheduled to leave.
I rushed through the hall, out of the building, through the student parking lot, past the athletics field, and got there just in time to see my bus, number 31, drive away.
"Come on," I said disbelievingly, dropping my backpack to the concrete and sitting down on the curb. Needless to say, I was feeling a little sorry for myself. Today had sucked. The whole Westley family had been re-located to Hampton, and here I was, sitting on the dirty curb of Branner High and not knowing how I was going to get home. I sighed after a moment of miserable contemplation, got up, and started walking. I'd get home eventually, I told myself. Unfortunately, my sense of direction is not as sharp as I'd like it to be, and it took me about forty-five minutes and nine wrong turns to complete a walk that otherwise would have taken twenty minutes. Mental note: never go on a camping trip without either a compass or my handy-dandy personal navigational genius Eva.
Once I had figured out the correct way to get home, I thought back to my conversation with Miss Cooper at lunch time. Something odd struck me about what she had said: "If it's real, it won't go away." What was that supposed to mean? If what was real, it wouldn't go away?
-Zack-
The night before the first day of class, I got no sleep at all. Leo proved to be on the opposite end of the spectrum – it took me a full fifteen minutes to drag him out of bed after I had realized at 7:30 that if he didn't wake up soon, we would miss breakfast and be late to first period.
"Does it always take you that long to wake
up?" I asked, tightening my tie as we hurried down the stairs after we had given up on waiting for the elevator.
"Sorry," Leo apologized breathlessly, shrugging into his jacket as we dashed down the last couple of stairs and into the lobby. He had had to forgo his morning shower in order for us to eat. I followed him as we nearly ran out of the dorm house and through the cool winter morning down the gently sloping hill to the cafeteria building.
When we got there, I stopped in the doorway, shocked at the mass of people in front of me, eating breakfast, all wearing the school uniform. People were getting up and dumping their trays, and the huge room was slowly emptying of students.
"What are you fucking waiting for, Zack?" Leo asked impatiently, already inside, "C'mon, let's eat. It's already –" He checked the large, round clock on the wall, " – shit, 7:50. Ten minutes to eat and get to first period. What do you have?"
I wracked my brains. "Italian with Felisatti."
"Nice, we have the same class –"
We managed to bolt down some toast, gulp down a bit of orange juice, and we were on our way to Felisatti's classroom. Luckily, the languages strip was in the closest quarter of the quad to us. Apparently, since we were in Italy but this was an American school, everyone was required to take Italian, along with their choice of another language. I still had my Spanish 3-4.
Miss Felisatti was a tall, slender woman in her mid-thirties, a native Italian.
"Settle down, settle down," she was saying mildly as Leo and I dashed inside, just as the bell was ringing. "Leonardo Fedele di Orazio, you are nearly late again. Ah, a new student?" Miss Felisatti looked at me curiously. "Come up here. Come ti chiami? What's –"
"Zackary Crowne," I said, before she could translate the sentence. "I just transferred in."
Thirty heads turned to look at me interestedly as Leo slid into his seat near the back. I made my way to the front of the classroom, standing in front of her desk.
"Lei capisce l'italiano?" Miss Felisatti said, blue eyes gazing at me, astonished.
"Si," I said. Feeling that the statement needed some further explanation, I said, feeling rather foolish, "Uh, mia madre era nata in Italia." I had told her that my mother had been born in Italy.
"Affascinare. Lei parla l'italiano molto bene," Miss Felisatti complimented me, looking rather pleased and nodding. "You have a good tongue."
"Uh, grazie," I said, blinking a little, not understanding what she meant by my having a good tongue.
She laughed. "What I mean is, you don't really have an American, English accent. Very good. You can have that seat over there, next to Belinda. Belinda, raise your rand, per favore. Zack, welcome to Italian 3-4."
Belinda? Not the Belinda-Caterina? I sat down next to the girl and shot Leo a look over my shoulder. He nodded grudgingly, and I grinned at him.
There was only one word for Miss Felisatti's class, and, as unkind as it may sound, that word would be boring. I sat through half an hour of listening to my classmates struggle through simple conversations, butchering the Romantic language. Apparently, we started each class session with speaking exercises. She called on me a few times to contribute, and it was simple – I found that all I had to do was mutter a few stupid phrases, like "the pen is blue," or "the chair cost fifty Euros," and she'd tell me I was doing great. I spent part of the wasted time seeing how much of Chopin's Ballade No.2 I could scribble out on paper from memory, and part of the time discreetly studying Belinda-Caterina out of the corner of my eye. I guess Leo was right – she was "gorgeous;" at least, I could understand why Leo and some other guys might think she was anyway. She had fair skin, light grey eyes, blonde hair, and a slender build. She kind of reminded me of Eva in a way, except for the eyes and the fact that Eva was most likely taller and had a body that was more toned from hours of athletics. And thinking about Eva, even in passing, inevitably brought my mind back to Winter. I was a goner after that. I completely zoned out, wondering what she was doing right now, and how her first day of the new semester was going. I realized after a bit that, in all actuality, Winter was probably sleeping, what with the time zones and all.
I was just in the middle of thinking about that Sunday we had spent together when Miss Felisatti called on me again. "Zack, dov'è il treno?"
"Il treno?" I said, snapping back to Earth and frowning. "Do you mean il tren?"
"No, il treno."
"A train? Like, a steam train or something?" Il treno? What the heck?
"Esattamente," Miss Felisatti said encouragingly. "The train. Where is the train?"
"In the train station?" I suggested. The class tittered. I hadn't meant to be funny. I glanced at Leo – he wasn't laughing. He seemed rather sympathetic. "I mean, la estación de ferrocarril. I mean –" Everyone laughed again. I had inadvertently reverted to Spanish. I searched in my head for the right phrase. "La stazione ferroviaria," I said at last. "Sorry. I've never heard the phrase 'il treno' used to name 'the train'. I've always used 'il tren'."
Miss Felisatti cocked her head a bit. "Really? Where is your mother from?"
Hadn't we already gone over this? "Italy," I said. The class giggled again and I was sorely tempted to glare at them.
"I know," she said soothingly, "I meant, where in Italy? What city?"
I shook my head and said, "I have no idea."
"Somewhere in the Mezzogiorno, perhaps?" Miss Felisatti asked.
I shrugged helplessly. "The Mezzogiorno, Miss?"
"The southern half of Italy," she explained. "You look like you might be from the Mezzogiorno."
"How does a person from the Mezzogiorno look?" I asked. The rest of the students had all turned to listen in on our conversation by now, and I turned to look again at Leo for a moment. He offered me a small shrug and half-hearted smile.
"Darker complexion, dark hair and eyes," she said. "Most people from the south look like that. They get more sun down there."
"They're poorer too," someone called out rudely from the middle of the classroom. The class burst into conversation. Even Belinda-Caterina had turned and was saying something to her friend on the left.
I had no idea what was going on. I didn't even know that there was this division in Italy, between north and south, fair and dark, rich and poor. But apparently it was a very controversial topic.
"Per favore, silenzio!" Miss Felisatti said loudly, then gave up after a moment and yelled, "Everyone shut up!" Immediately the class quieted. "Grazie," she said to the rest of the students, then turned to me. "I'm sorry Zack. I didn't mean to get this whole discussion started. We're not really here to talk about who's from where and who's skin color is what and everyone's monetary situation –" She had had to raise her voice a little at the end to talk over everyone; they had started whispering again. " – I'm sorry, Zack," she said. "Classe, aprire i suoi libri per chiamare gli ottanta-due. Now."
I followed everyone else and opened my book to page eighty-two, speculating over what had just gone on. I didn't really care that everyone had been laughing at me and that Miss Felisatti had just accidentally made a fool of me in front of my peers. I didn't care about that. I was thinking harder about the little north-south rich-poor talk that had just occurred. So my mother was from the southern half of Italy, perhaps? The poorer half of Italy? What was that supposed to mean? I wondered how she had ended up with a rich American like my father, then. The rest of the block passed with minimal trouble and Leo waited for me right outside the door, two other guys next to him.
"Hey man," he said. "Tough first class to have. If Italian were a person, I know she'd be out to get me," he joked. "Zack, this is Andy –" The taller of the two guys with him nodded at me. " – and Darius. We hang out with this guy named Langston too, but he doesn't have Felisatti."
"Oh, okay," I said as we walked down the hall. "What do you have next?"
"I've got Algebra 3-4," Leo said. "You?"
"Chemistry for me."
"Oh, you better walk fast, the science strip isn't in the quad," Leo said. "
You have to walk out in that direction," he waved his hands to the left, "past the gym and the field to the square building. Chemistry rooms are upstairs. Have fun." He slapped me on the back.
"See you," I said, examining my schedule. We had figured out over a rushed breakfast that we had roughly half of our classes together.
Darius, who wore glasses, had followed me. "I've got chemistry too," he said as he caught up, shrugging his shoulder to ease the weight of his book bag, which looked quite heavy. "Can I walk you over there?"
"That'd be good," I said, relieved. "I don't know where I'm going."
Darius was easy to talk to, and he explained a bit about the other guys in Leo's group as we hurried off to the science building.
Slowly, I got used to the new environment and quickly befriended the guys in Leo's circle of friends. The days melted into each other, class after class, meal after meal, uniforms, laundry days, days where we were bused out to the heart of the city for hang-out afternoons and laughing at Langston's antics. Days spent mucking about with Leo and the boys out at the athletics field. Thursday nights spent cramming for tests with Darius, who was the most intelligent and academics inclined of the five of us. Weekends spent exploring the huge campus by myself, early mornings passed with jogs, usually solitary ones, but sometimes with Andy, who was extremely athletic. Nights spent feeling like my heart was slowly being cut up into a thousand tiny pieces. I carried my wallet with me everywhere, because inside it was a picture of a secret I wanted to keep all to myself. At odd times during the day, I'd touch my pocket, where I knew it was hidden, and would feel a little better. When I couldn't sleep, which was everyday, I'd take it out and stare at it, tracing the curve of Winter's face with my fingertip, my chest tight and my head pounding, wondering what she was doing.