Authors: Ruth Houston
"I see," I said, rather irrelevantly, wondering exactly how I was going to survive for the next two and half years if it meant I had to share a room with someone. Hey, call me secretive, but I'm a private sort of guy. The fact that I could barely live through the plane ride was enough to attest to that statement. I shuddered a little, then glanced back at my new roommate.
"Need help moving all your shit in?" Leo asked me, eyes slightly crinkling up in the corners in a friendly way.
"That'd be nice," I replied.
"What the fuck you got in here, boy?" he asked cheerfully a second later, dragging the biggest of my suitcases into the dormitory. "A fuckin' library?"
"Just stuff," I said vaguely, wondering how he had managed to swear a grand total of four times in the twenty seconds since I had met him. That was an average of five seconds per swear word. Impressive. He was a clean-cut guy with a dirty vocabulary.
I pulled my other (lighter) suitcase inside with my backpack slung on my shoulders, and Leo dropped my duffel bag on what I assumed would be my bed.
"Welcome to room 257, Zackary," he said.
"Zack. Call me Zack."
"Zack it is, then."
The room was carpeted and had two beds, each on opposite walls. Next to the beds were desks. The one farthest away from me was Leo's – it was covered in books and papers and pens and pencils. His computer was on – he had multiple AIM windows, several web browsers opened to various web sites, and a word document layered on top of each other. His side of the room had a closet and dresser that mirrored mine, and there was a separate door that opened to a shared bathroom.
Leo explained more about the school and teachers and rooms than I ever needed to know or could remember. He was funny. Not the kind of funny that made you clutch your sides and made
your stomach hurt and gave you stitches because you were laughing so hard, but funny in subtle ways that made me grin. Every other person he knew was the "idiot son of a fuckin' bitch" or a "fuckin' dumb-shit", but he never said it like he was insulting them. In fact, he announced these things pleasantly in that voice tinted with the faint traces of a Southern drawl. To him, these were just the facts of life. Saviero Tancredo was just the idiot son of a fucking
crazy
ass bitch, and the head mistress, Amadora Agosto, was simply a dumb-ass with too much fuckin' money who didn't know sincerity from shit. Leo was incredibly creative with his words – in the one and half hours that it took me to unpack all of my belongings, I heard a huge number of variations on all the swear words. I even heard a few I hadn't known existed. Leo brought a whole new angle to profanity – I would never view it in the same way again.
Leonardo Fedele di Orazio did not live life halfway. For him, something either was or wasn't, it was all or nothing; there was no grey, no fuzzy area in the middle, no unknowns. He loved baseball, chess, history, pizza, his computer, alto saxophone, and his dog Duke; hated Saviero Tancredo,
The Odyssey
, cats, cold weather, chips and salsa, school work, Tetris, cigarettes, and the school uniform. He was in love with a girl named Belinda-Caterina, the most fucking gorgeous girl he had ever met and the only unknown in his life, and was convinced that she loved him too, but was just being too stubborn to admit it. Secretly, I wondered whether Belinda-Caterina was a quiet type of girl, because if she wasn't, it might have caused some conflict with Leo's talkative (but not unfriendly) nature.
The campus was very empty. There was a kind of quiet that pervaded the school, the sort of countryside, rural, nature induced peace, and it was rather nice. The distance between the quad, office building, cafeteria, and dorm houses were long, and the foot paths between them were winding and old, and the stone of the roads was crumbling. There was grass and flowers and trees everywhere you went, but the place had a clean, fresh feel to it.
"Everyone's away, back at home in the States, visiting family, see?" Leo said as we walked along the path to the quad. He was giving me a tour.
"How come you're not?" I asked, glancing upwards at the sky, where a few lazy clouds were meandering their way about as a weak winter sun shone on the tiny yellow flowers dotting the grass beside the path on either side of us.
Leo shrugged and grew oddly quiet. "Dunno." That was all he had to say on the matter. He then brightened up. "Hey, you know, the food here is good – greatest stuff ever –" He talked on, kicking at a little stone in his path as he walked, and I let him without interruption.
The school wasn't bad. Still, it wasn't Branner, California, USA, zip code 92107. Oh, yeah. And there was that little fact that Winter wasn't here.
As we walked through the courtyard of the quad, strolling over the grass lawns, I snapped my fingers. Leo gave me a weird look.
"What?"
"Nothing," I said automatically. I had realized why I had gone to her house, though I didn't know exactly what had happened afterwards. I cursed myself for being so stupid. Why had it taken me so long to figure it out?
Chapter 25: Reconnaissance and Cookies
-
Winter
-
I sat there on the couch for what seemed like forever. It was probably more like twenty minutes, because my mom woke up shortly after and asked me why I was just
sitting
there on a Saturday morning, staring blankly out the window at the rain like a dead fish, because really, rain was not
that
interesting, and appearing to be a dead fish was not all that flattering.
I sighed. "Yeah, mom," I replied, turning around a little to look at her. "You're right. It's not that interesting or flattering."
She gave me an odd look and tucked her hair behind her ears. "Well, breakfast is in about fifteen minutes, if you're up for French toast." She left for the kitchen and I resumed looking out the window.
God. Was Zack confusing or what?
Let's do a quick recap. First he ignored me for about a month, then I found out from Eva that he was leaving for Italy, and the day before he was scheduled to leave he came to my house in the
middle of the night
and
kissed
me? I thought he was deranged. Seriously. I did. He was hot, but very, very deranged. Hotly deranged.
I sighed, frustrated. Hotly deranged? Since when were people
hotly deranged
? I was losing my mind. I wasn't even making sense to myself anymore. Then I remembered. Zack had shoved something in my hand last night – this morning, whatever – the point was, where had I put it? Suddenly, I was angry again, furious with Zack for doing this to me. I bounded up from the couch, filled with electric, incensed energy, and sprinted upstairs. What had I done with it? It had better give me a
damn
good explanation. What the hell made him think he could just – just – I nearly screamed.
I tore through my room, not even really knowing what I was searching for since I had not gotten a good look at it before. I had been a little preoccupied seeing as Zack had had his tongue down my throat (not, of course, that I had been complaining then).
"Okay Zackary Crowne," I spat to my empty room. "What did you give me last night?" My eyes glanced at my bed, jumped to my dresser, closet door, desk, carpet…
There. There, on the floor near the end of my bed.
I dove for it and my hand immediately recognized the familiar straight lines of the package. It was rectangular and about the length of my hand, and was wrapped roughly in brown paper, like it had been done in a hurry. I ripped off the wrapping paper, heart in my throat, and found…
...a cassette tape.
I didn't know what I had been expecting, but it certainly had not been a cassette. I mean, a
cassette
? I hadn't seen one of these things in a long time. Goodness, I didn't think I even owned a cassette player anymore.
I rushed to my window, opened it, and stuck my head out, screaming into the rain, "What the fuck, Zackary Crowne?! What the
hell
is this supposed to be? A fucking
cassette
? You can go rot in hell, you shit-faced bastard!" Luckily the rain muffled my yells, otherwise I would have had some very disgruntled neighbors to contend with. The rain was dripping steadily on my hair, and I pulled my head back in. "God," I ranted to my completely innocent, hapless room, "Fuckin' hell, Zack. I don't know if I hate you or if I –" I couldn't finish the sentence. "Christ," I muttered, pacing about. I stopped, glared at the stupid cassette, disgusted, and threw it down on my desk on top of some miscellaneous papers.
"What the hell are you trying to do to me, Zack?" I whispered, collapsing on the carpet and resting my back against a wall. He was killing me here.
It took a couple minutes for me to calm down, and by then, it was time for breakfast. My mother yelled at me to come downstairs. I rolled my eyes and hollered, "Be right there, mom."
"Daddy?" I said later, after breakfast. I hadn't said a word throughout the whole meal until now. My mom had given up trying to engage me in conversation after numerous attempts. They both visibly jumped upon hearing my voice. I restrained myself from rolling my eyes again. "Do you have a boom box or something that has a cassette player in it?"
"Hmm," he said, stirring the cream into his coffee and rubbing the stubble on his chin. He was hunched over his mug, still in his old maroon robe, contemplating my question. "I think there's one in the garage. Want me to get it out for you?"
"No, it's okay," I said quickly. "I'll do it myself."
"What do you need with an old boom box like that?" he wondered aloud, dark chocolate eyes that mirrored my own glancing at me in curiosity.
I merely shrugged in response and nicely, "May I be excused?" Without waiting for the answer I knew would never come (everyone in my family simply asked the question out of habit and never expected a reply to it), I got up, put my plate and utensils in the sink, and made straight for the garage.
It was a black, large, heavy old thing, but I managed to clean off most of the dust and drag it upstairs to my room, where I plugged it in and crossed my fingers that it would still function. I popped in the tape and sat down cross-legged on my carpet to listen, wearing Zack's jacket. The tape crackled for a bit, then the sound smoothed out, and his familiar low voice was amplified by the speakers.
"
Hey Winter. Um, it's Zack
," he chuckled a bit, wearily. His voice sounded so sad it sent a sharp pain through my chest, and automatically I pulled the jacket tighter around my body and crossed my arms, curling up so I could breathe in his scent. Even if I was furious with him, for the life of me, I couldn't help myself. I had never washed this jacket because it still smelled really nice, just like him.
"
Look, you're probably furious with me right now, but I just wanted to give this tape to you. It took me the whole winter break to finish it. Think of it as a going away present of sorts, even though I'm the one going away. About that. Look, I'm really sorry, honestly, I've been an ass about the whole thing.
" I silently agreed. "
I realize now that I should have told you sooner, but I guess I thought it would be easier if… Well… Actually, I don't even know the 'if', I don't even remember what I was thinking when… Never mind. I'm rambling. Anyway, I wrote all the tracks on the little slip of paper for you. My new address is on the back; if you're not too mad, it'd be really nice to get a letter from you, maybe? I promise I'll write back. You're my last link to Branner, California.
" I could hear the traces of a wistful smile in his voice. "
Winter, for what's it worth, I'm so, so sorry about this whole thing, I know I screwed up, just please,
please
write to me, I'd love it if you would. Seriously. I'm going to be all alone in Italy; you don't know how much it would mean to me if you would just write. Thanks for… everything. You're a great friend, which is probably more than I can ever say for myself. I always feel like our relationship is unbalanced, with you giving me so much, while I'm only returning a little. Anyway, I really hope you enjoy this. Oh, yeah, and the first song is one I've been practicing for weeks. It's by this composer who lived in the Romantic period; his name's Franz Liszt. Brilliant guy. Hope you like it.
"
And with that, his voice was gone. Romantic period? What was that? I looked in the cassette case and found the piece of paper he had been talking about. It was folded up into fourths, and I opened it to find his familiar scrawl outlining 19 tracks – there were nine on the A side and ten on the B. The first was one was called "Waldesrauschen", which I couldn't pronounce. He had written in small print next to it that it was translated into "Forest Murmurs".