I hold my breath and stare at his retreating form. There’s no way. It can’t be.
“There you are! Come,” Bruno says, tugging on my hand.
Feet firmly on the ground, I shake his hand away. “I’m getting gelato. I wasn’t exactly invited into your conversation.” I look up again to locate the guy with the mess of dark-brown curls. Where did he go?
“Jealous, Pippas?” His voice is bright like I’ve just presented him with a trophy for Player of the Year.
“Please. I know exactly what you are.”
As if on cue, yet another girl greets him with a quick kiss-kiss on the cheek before she takes off.
I step out of the gelato line, no longer in the mood. “I rest my case.”
Bruno’s eyebrows press together as he studies me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he almost looked offended. “We go back,” he finally says.
I glance down the street toward the sea one more time, searching in vain. Oh, well. There’s no way it was him anyway.
The next morning, I ask for half the day off to explore even more of the seaside trail, but on my own. I need some time away from Bruno. Need to clear my head.
I scarf down a breakfast of fruit, cheese and bread, and check my e-mail. To use the Internet, I have to plug into the wall like I did at the hotel in Rome, only the cable that Bruno has hooked up is super long. It pretty much reaches everywhere in the apartment.
I gasp when I see that Gram finally responded. My dad may write in uppercase letters, but Gram types in all caps. I guess it’s easier for her old eyes to see. It makes me laugh anyway.
To:
Pippa Preston
From:
Lorelei Mead
Subject:
Re: Ciao from Italy!
PIPPERS!
SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO SEE YOUR E-MAIL. YOUR MOTHER IS CRACKING THE WHIP AROUND HERE. I’M GLAD TO HEAR YOU ARE SAFE AND SOUND. HOW IS SCHOOL GOING? I WANT TO HEAR ALL ABOUT IT.
AND WHY DOES IT SURPRISE YOU THE BOYS ARE WHISTLING AT YOU? YOU ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD.
I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU!!!
GRAM
I swallow the lump in my throat and type up a quick response. I tell her how hot the weather is, how I’m making friends with my roommate, and that I’m taking pictures of everything, getting comfortable with the area I’m staying in. Not quite lies, not quite truths. I just skip the part about school. It kills me that I can’t tell her everything.
I also send a message to Mom—a shorter, less enthusiastic version of the one I sent to Gram.
I fill my backpack with bottled water, a few energy bars, extra sunscreen, money for shopping and food, my trail pass, and one very wrinkled map. The five seaside villages have paths between them and today I hope to at least make it to the third, Corniglia. And if I get tired, a five-minute train ride can take me right back where I started.
I spend a couple of hours in Manarola, exploring the shops—I’m still on the lookout for a silly souvenir for Morgan—people-watching, eavesdropping on conversations I can’t understand, sampling foods so delicious I couldn’t describe them to someone if I tried. Finally scoring a cone of gelato, I let it cool me as I start the path from Manarola to Corniglia.
This section of trail is not as well kept as la Via dell’Amore, which was mostly paved and relatively flat. At least it’s fenced so I’m not completely terrified of falling off the ledge, but the rock-strewn terrain demands my eyes to bounce between my feet and the spectacular view that I don’t want to miss a second of.
But a second is all it takes. The path makes a sharp right turn, and my eyes are focused on the hazardous stone steps ahead, not on the loose rock I step on. My ankle rolls and I cry out as I slam onto my knees, palms scraping against the gravel. I gasp as my camera dangles perilously close to the ground.
I stand as quickly as I can, afraid someone may have witnessed yet another feat of public embarrassment. Fire climbs up my faulty limb to my hip. This is not something I can walk off. I turn around and aim for a bench I remember seeing not that far back. It must take me a good ten minutes to shuffle to it.
It’s occupied by a hyperventilating overweight woman and her husband, but I squeeze myself onto the end, my back to them. I examine my hands. A couple of tiny rocks still cling to my palms. I knock them off and a bead of blood appears just below my right thumb. The antibacterial hand wipes burn but they’re better than nothing. I guzzle half a bottle of water and eat two granola bars before my body relaxes and the stabbing pain in my ankle reduces to a dull pulsing. The wheezing couple finally leaves and I spread out a little more.
The sun is roasting. There’s not much escape from it on this cliff trail anyway, but for some reason being stationary makes the rays feel a thousand times more severe. I finish off a water
bottle, then perch my sunglasses on top of my head, swiping at the sweat on my nose and forehead with my arm.
I can’t sit here all day. At some point I’m going to have to tough it out and walk back. I stand on my right foot first, then slowly add weight to my left. A jolt shoots up my spine and tickles my brain, heart pounding in my ears.
I lower myself back down to the bench. No phone—not that I know who I’d call anyway. I’m going to have to hobble back to Manarola, take the train to Riomaggiore, and once I get there … hop on one foot up a steep hill and three flights of steps to the apartment. I can do it. I have to.
I prepare to stand, when a voice I recognize says, “Pippa?”
Chapter Twenty
I turn and a warm tingle generates in my chest and spreads through me. “It
was
you!”
With one eyebrow raised, Darren—
the
Darren—walks over and sits beside me. Same thick curls fly out at all angles, framing his face, stubble still magically the same length. He’s so close I can smell the musky heat radiating off his body.
“It was me? When?”
“Yesterday!” I say. “I thought I saw you. In Manarola.”
“That’s where I’m staying, actually. Well, until the morning anyway. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I wasn’t sure it was you. You were sort of far away.”
And I was with a guy I didn’t want you to see me with who kept trying to hold my hand
. “And I saw you last week at the metro too. Back in Rome.”
“I saw you!” He’s rocking on the bench like he has so much
energy traveling through him he doesn’t know what to do with it all. I know exactly how he feels. “I went to your hotel later that night when I got back to that side of the city, but the woman at the front desk wouldn’t tell me anything.”
My heart leaps. “You came to see me?”
“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his curls and shrugs. “I wanted to see how your summer of freedom was going, but the woman practically barked at me to leave, like I was a thug or something.”
I laugh. “Well, you do look a little sketchy behind all that hair.”
He laughs like I just delivered the best line in the world. “Speaking of hair. You went dark.”
In a panic, I attempt to smooth down all my sweaty flyaway pieces. “My new friend Chiara took me for a ‘makeover’ back in Rome,” I say, complete with air quotes.
“Looks good.”
My eyes seek out the ground. “Thanks.”
He leans his back against the bench. “Man, this is so crazy, running into you here.”
“What are the chances?” we say at the same time. I’m still focused on the ground, but I can feel him looking at the side of my face.
He asks what I’ve been up to, and I tell him about meeting Chiara, the invite to Riomaggiore, and how I got the job helping at the trattoria in exchange for room and board. I make a point to leave out Bruno.
“After you mentioned Cinque Terre, it came up again,” I tell him. “And I just had this feeling. I knew I was supposed to come here.”
“What, like fate?” The eyebrow rises again, but half his mouth is turned up too.
I copy his smile and allow myself to stare at him for a moment. He stares back.
“Yeah. I think so, maybe,” I say.
His smile widens and he clears his throat. “Guess your summer’s turning out okay after all, huh?”
I look out at the sea. “Until I go back home and get the paddle.” I force a laugh, upset that I reminded myself summer isn’t eternal.
“They actually
beat
you?” Darren asks, his smile gone.
“No no no.” I amend, “But I doubt I’ll be allowed to do anything again until I’m thirty.”
He laughs. “Well, let’s hope that’s not true.”
“Sometimes I forget what I’m getting away with, that my parents still have no idea where I really am. Then I remember and it feels like I’m having heart palpitations. Like my heart might actually explode.” I wave the subject away with my hand. “Enough about me. Tell me about your summer program. Are you loving it? The digging part, I mean.” I nudge him with my elbow. “Are you digging it?”
“Wow.” He laughs deep. “Haven’t heard that one before.”
“Really?”
He cocks his head to the side, scrunching his eyebrows and biting his lip.
I join in his laughter. “Of course you have.”
“It’s a lot of work,” he says. “Meticulous work. You have to log every little thing you find. But yeah, no matter how geeky I am admitting it, it’s a pretty sweet gig.”
“What’s the most interesting thing you’ve found?”
“Like me, personally?” I nod. “A human jawbone.”
I reach up to my own jaw and touch it. “Just the jawbone? Nothing else?”
“No skull or anything, just the jaw. Even had a few teeth still attached.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“We’ve found lots of animal bones, especially when you get to a section that used to be a street gutter or something. But that jawbone was definitely random.” He unbuttons a pocket on the leg of his shorts and buttons it back, several times over. “It sort of puts things in perspective for you.”
“What do you mean?” I turn to face him once more.
A seagull lands on the railing across the path and stares us down before pecking at a black speck and taking off.
“Well,” he begins slowly, “finding tools or broken pieces of pottery is one thing. They’re just things people used. But finding a part of an actual person? That bone used to be covered in muscle and skin. The teeth used to chew food to fuel a body that used those tools. Makes a person think about their own life. How short it is. How temporary.”
I swallow, attempting to bring moisture back to my throat. “That’s—”
“Too heavy, I know. Sorry.” He shakes his head and laughs at himself. Between curls I can see his ears turn red.
“No. Well, it’s a serious thought, yes, but …” I laugh at myself.
“What?”
“Well it’s just … when I went to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, that’s the kind of stuff I kept thinking. I
wondered about the people who walked there when the city was at its height. About what it all looked like.”
“Right? It’s incredible the inventiveness they had so long ago. We think we’re so smart now, but if it weren’t for them—”
“Who knows what things would be like today?”
“Yes, exactly. It’s all just so—”
“Fascinating,” we say simultaneously.
We hold our gazes on each other until the button Darren’s been playing with breaks away from his shorts and falls to the ground. We both lean down to pick it up and our heads smack together.
“Ugh!” I say, popping right back up, rubbing my forehead. “I’m sorry!”
Abandoning the button, Darren reaches for his head too. He parts his hair where I hit him and tilts his head down toward me. “Am I bleeding?”
For the split second I think he’s serious, I lean closer and search for anything out of place. Then it registers that he’s joking, so I dig my hand into his hair and gently but quickly push him away. His hair is so much softer than I expected.
“Pansy,” I tease.
Once we get over the laughing fit, Darren fidgets on the bench, preparing to stand. I move too, but then remember my ankle.
“I believe I owe you dinner,” he says, hooking his thumbs on the straps of his backpack. The same green one I saw him with at the metro station.
“Dinner!” I say at a near-shout, checking the angle of the descending sun. “I promised to be back in time to help with
dinner at the trattoria. I was sitting here for, like, an hour before you even sat down.”
“Why?” he asks, observing our surroundings with a sweep from left to right. “I mean, there are better views than this one.”
I slouch, defeated. “Don’t laugh. I sort of hurt my ankle.”
Even though his eyes are concerned, he bites his lip, dimples in full force.
“I’d consider that laughing,” I say with a hand on my chest, pretending to be offended.
“I’m not laughing! It’s just—” He looks down at my feet. “How were you planning on getting back?”
“Well, I didn’t
plan
on twisting my ankle!” I stand but keep the bum leg bent. “Walking. Walking is my plan.”
Adrenaline pumping, I take a step forward, putting all my weight on my left leg. I let out a shriek as pain worse than before tears through me and I stumble. Darren jumps up to steady me, one hand at my elbow, the other at my waist. A sharp breath sneaks through my teeth.
“You need a crutch,” he says, wedging himself alongside of me, our hips touching. He pulls my right arm over his shoulder and keeps his other hand loosely on my side. “If you weren’t so tall, this would be really awkward.”
I want to ask how this isn’t awkward anyway, but I can’t really concentrate enough to speak. The throbbing is gone for this instant, but someone let loose a flutter of butterflies in my chest and that’s all I can feel.
We work our way along the path toward Manarola, most of it simple enough. But since we have to walk side by side, forming somewhat of a roadblock on such a narrow path of two-way
traffic, we often have to move over to let people pass. And even though the sun is sinking lower in the sky, it’s still ridiculously hot. Our clothes are damp between us, and sweat rolls down the side of Darren’s face from his hairline.