Chapter Text
So. Here are the facts as you see them.
Fact number one: Giulia is going to be on the train for Genova in two days. She's going back home--because Genova is her home, apparently, and you're still grappling with the idea that there are places outside your island and Portorosso, BIG ones, they keep telling you, all over the globe--where she'll spend the next nine or so months going to school.
Fact number two: You and Luca now own your very own Vespa. It's not road-ready yet, and it might not be for a while, which is fine actually because it turns out now that the Paguros aren't going to send Luca away to the bottom of the ocean, you're going to have to whittle them down into giving him permission to run away with you.
Fact number three: That's not even really a plan that makes sense, if you think about it for more than a few minutes at a time.
Fact number four: You haven't forgotten that Luca doesn't actually want to run away with you anymore. He's just pretending he never said it.
So that's where you stand.
Where you lie, rather, as the afternoon's storm clouds continue to drizzle well past midnight. You watch Luca sleep deeply next to you, exhausted from the excitement of the day and unbothered by the rain, his human facade washed away to reveal his pretty, vibrant blue-green scales. It might be your last night sharing Giulia's little platform in the tree outside her bedroom window. Too bad she's going away soon, because now that you're on good terms with her, you could probably teach her a thing or two about maintaining a decent hide-out.
When she does leave, it's just going to be you and Luca left, which ought to be the dream. Was the dream. Even if the two of you just stay here in the bay and Luca moves back home with his parents and you go back to the island and you got to visit each other sometimes, that would still be nice. It wouldn't be the same as seeing the world and sleeping next to him under the fishes--stars, whatever--and he'd still have to herd goatfish and ask parents for permission and you'd still be...well. Alone. But it could work.
Except…
Except Luca will never be happy here with you. Being here isn't what he wants, and the realization of it sits in your chest like an anchor, weighing you down to the ocean floor, doomed to watch the sun pass overhead and refract and scatter through the waves, but never feel its warmth on your human skin ever again.
He doesn't want to be with you. He wants to be with Giulia.
And as much as that truth stings, a host of little sea urchins prickling at your heart and lungs every time you breathe, more than anything, for reasons you can't even begin to comprehend yet, you just want him to be happy.
So you start to formulate a plan.
"Alberto! You're up early!"
You flinch and check back over your shoulder, where Luca sleeps on. "Shh! Don't wake him up. I need to talk to you, in secret."
"Ooh! Secrets." Giulia steps aside to let you climb through her bedroom window, then quietly secures the shutter behind you. Her room is the barely-furnished, hardly lived-in single tiny bedroom over the pescheria, but she's made it so thoroughly Giulia with photographs and art and books and toys, you would never have guessed she doesn't live here year round if you didn't already know.
"Scusa, Machiavelli," she says to the sleepy cat claiming exactly enough of her bed to be a nuisance, but you don't wait for him to comply and just very unceremoniously and bodily scoop him up with one arm like a sack of flour and take his spot. You dump him in your lap, and he makes a momentary show of being offended about it, but then settles right back down across your thighs, heavy and warm.
"Huh." Giulia seems impressed. "So what's the big secret?"
"Luca wants to go to school with you and I want to know how to make that happen."
Her eyes go wide as dinner plates.
"Wow. Okay. I know he wants to go, but I-"
"Just tell me what I need to do."
Giulia paces back and forth in the small space and taps her chin thoughtfully as she considers. You dig your fingertips into the fat rolls of Machiavelli's scruff until he starts purring while she puzzles out her answer. "Okay," she says finally. "Three things, I think."
"Shoot."
"Uno: like I said, money. Train ticket to start with. Then admissions, supplies...I'll have to ask how much but I don't think it's a lot."
"I can get money."
"Due: a place to stay. I do think he could stay with me, if mamma says it's okay. Can sea monsters even go to school? He wont have any papers. I don't know. I'll have to call her, as soon as possible. Santa Mozzarella, I'm gonna have to get her caught up on everything."
"Okay, you call your mom. What's the third one?"
Giulia grimaces. "Tre…is permission from his parents."
"Oh boy."
"Yeah."
You both share a moment of quiet contemplation. Machiavelli rolls over in your lap, and when you foolishly put your hand on his belly, he hooks all of his little claws and teeth into your forearm.
So that feels about right.
"We’ve got this under control. You talk to your parents. I'll talk to his."
"And the money?"
"That's the easy part. Don't worry about it."
She doesn't seem convinced, but doesnt question you.
"What about you? Aren't you coming too?"
"Pffft. Nah, that nerd stuff's not for me." You try to couch it in arrogance and confidence, but the truth is you know you'd never be able to keep up with them. You'd rather be their third wheel from a distance, someone they can come back to once a year and be stupid and reckless with, rather than forever trailing behind them, confused and struggling and out of your element. You'd be as unhappy there as Luca would be stuck here.
"I guess." She joins you on her bed and reaches over to scratch Machiavelli behind the ears. He releases your arm. "Alberto… you're sure about this? Won't you be lonely? Why send him away?"
You honestly don't know. There's something far over the cusp of the horizon, a glimmer of an idea obscured by atmosphere and sea spray, but it's one you aren't ready to face yet, irritating and inconvenient, a fish hook caught in your dorsal fin, just out of reach.
But you know it's what he wants, and that he'll be happy, and that’s all that matters to you.
When you don't answer, she sighs. "Do you know why my mamma lives in Genova?"
"Uh...no, I don't think so." You hadn't really thought about it. Your track record with parents isn't super great, so if there was anything odd about it, it hadn't occurred to you.
"So, they were together when I was born, but after a while they became….mmmm. Incompatible? My mamma, she-"
"Alberto?" Luca's sleepy voice comes from beyond the shuttered window. Machiavelli makes a half-hearted attempt to sink his claws into your thighs to prevent tumbling to the floor as you jump up, but ultimately decides, in the way that cats do, that getting up was his idea all along and that if he heads downstairs right now he might find some breakfast.
"Morning, sleepy head," you say brightly as you throw open the shutters. The sky is clearing already, but the air is still damp and dripping, last vestiges of an early morning sunshower.
Luca blinks vibrant yellow eyes and yawns an enormous yawn full of sharp teeth. "Where'd you go? We actually got to sleep in today."
"Sorry, I had to, uh-”
“Papà needed his help with something.” Giulia comes to your rescue while simultaneously pushing you out the window. “Luca! You’re going to help me with deliveries today, if we get them done twice as fast we’ll have more time together before I have to leave.”
“Okay,” he agrees, still half asleep as he starts the slippery process of scaling down the tree trunk. You follow his lead, and by the time you reach the garden, Luca is doing his wet-dog shake to fold away his fins and scales. As soon as his head erupts in cherubic dark curls, you plant your hand in them and give his hair a good, solid tousle. If you could just keep one hand on him, maybe you could keep him in place, stop him from drifting away.
“But first," you say, dropping an arm around his shoulders and steering him out of the garden towards the piazza, "Breakfast.” There’s just enough money in your pocket for cappuccino and focaccia, and that’ll give Giulia enough time to make her case to her parents, and let you spend a little time with him before you pawn him off on her to sneak away and talk to his family.
"You're the boy who tried to run away with my son," Daniela Paguro says when you turn up on her underwater doorstep a few hours later.
It takes every ounce of strength and self control not to say and you're the reason he ran away because you are still so incredibly protective of him, and for the entire time you’ve known him, he’s been living in fear of her. So many times have you seen his bright eyes go wide and dull in terror and the blood leave his face at the thought of being at her mercy, of being punished for the crime of being curious.
Maybe you’re being too hard on her. Maybe she means well. Maybe she really is coming around. But this is a sort of sore spot for you, a point of contention, when children live in fear of being rejected by their parents.
For no reason in particular.
So you put on your best, unaffected smile, stick out your hand, and say, “The one and only, ma’am. Alberto Scorfano, nice to finally meet you.”
“Scorfano…?” Luca’s father Lorenzo floats in distractedly from the next room. “Do I know a Scorfano, from the club? A brother, or an uncle maybe?”
“Couldn’t tell you, sir. I’m not... in touch with any of my family. Last one I knew was my dad, and he left me when I was twelve.”
”Left you,” Daniela gasps, scandalized, hand to her breast. It’s a struggle to unclench your teeth and maintain a friendly facade. “You poor thing! Look at how skinny you are-” she plucks at your arm, then clucks when she turns it over and sees the still-fresh harpoon slice marring the scales of your bicep, “Come in, you’ll eat.”
“Actually, I just-” you try to say, but she’s scooped you up to the table and is magically materializing food from nowhere before you can get the words out. She drops a bowl of kelp-wrapped something-or-other in front of you, and you’re trying to endear yourself to her, so you pop one in your mouth. Lobster. It’s a far cry from strawberry gelato or fresh pasta, but it’s not bad.
“Listen,” you swallow. “I wanted to talk to you about Luca.”
“Oh,” Daniela drops a plate of mussels and roe at the table, then turns in a circle, chasing her tail, distracted between worrying about feeding you and worrying about Luca. “Where is he? I thought he’d come home by now.”
“He’s working with our human friend today. Mrs. Paguro, about Luca coming home....”
“The red-head? The girl from the race?”
“I like her,” says a voice from behind you, and you shoot up about half a meter in the water when Luca’s grandmother reaches around to snatch one of your kelp-lobster things. “She’s a little crazy.”
“Yes, she’s definitely, mmm...passionate,” you agree. “This is about her, too, actually, in a way.”
“Oh, he has a thing for her, doesn’t he? I was afraid of this, a human--”
”No,” you blurt, too quickly and far too loud, and for a moment that glimmer of an idea on the horizon comes into focus, but slips away again before you can get a grasp on it. “It’s not… Giulia goes away to school in Genova--that’s a big city--tomorrow. Ever since Luca heard about school, it’s all he thinks about. The Marcovaldos, that’s Giulia’s family, have agreed to help him go to school, if you’ll allow it. He’d stay with Giulia and her mom...until next summer.”
“Oh absolutely not. Until next summer? Out of the question.”
“Mrs. Paguro-”
“I’ll let him go to the surface to play with you sometimes, but this school isn’t an option. It’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t want him to go either,” you say, and it’s the first time you’ve said it out loud. “He’s my best friend. Before I met him, I was all alone. I didn't have anyone, at all, for more than a year. He wanted to be my friend, and I'm sorry he had to sneak off to do that, but…" You're coming dangerously close sounding less like a responsible young person pleading a rational case and more like a manic, frustrated child. "If he and Giulia go to school, I won't have any friends left. Believe me, the last thing I want in the world is for him to leave.”
Daniela and Lorenzo exchange a look. They probably think you’re crazy, too. Luca’s grandma takes another of your kelp-lobster things, unfazed.
“But he’s so smart, Mrs. Paguro. You should see the way his brain works. The way he lights up when he's figuring out a problem, or trying to build something, or learning how to do something new. You worry so much about him, but you don't give him enough credit. You can't be paying enough attention to him if you don't know how amazing he is. He's clever and brave and determined, and if he doesn’t get to go, he’s going to be so miserable. No offense, but he's wasted on...on this." You gesture vaguely at the general concept of everything down here: his oppressive family, the sleepy farm, herding goatfish all day. "I realize that was rude, but. He's bored and unhappy. If you love him so much, that has to matter to you.”
No one really has anything to say about that. Finally, Luca’s Grandma speaks up.
"Say they let him go. What do you get out of this, kid?”
You look at her, and then to Lorenzo, and then to Daniela. Finally you look down at your hands.
“Absolutely nothing."
You surface and heave yourself into the gozzo with a boneless wet flop, like a pile of soggy laundry hitting cobblestones. You lie there, exhausted, while hungry seabirds wheel overhead and the sun bakes you human again. This is an awful lot of work for something you don't even really want.
Massimo clears his throat.
"They said yes," you inform him. "They're gonna come up and talk to you about it later on."
"That's good news."
"Yeah, sure."
You don't say that you'd secretly hoped they'd say no, that you could tell Luca at least you tried. He'd be unhappy he couldn't go, but it wouldn't be you he resented for it. You tried, after all. And then you could keep him all to yourself, guilt free. Fix up your Vespa, and then…
...Then what?
You sit up and put your face in your hands.
After many long, quiet moments punctuated only by the waves lapping the boat and the seabirds crying for sardines, Massimo finally says, "What will you do when he leaves?"
You scrub your face with your arm and sigh. "Go back to the island, I guess."
"The island?"
You gesture at it, cutting out of the ocean and into the sky like a green knife. Your feelings about it are complicated; those weeks with Luca throwing yourselves off the cliffs into the sea were the happiest of your life. The view of the sky at night is still unparalleled. It's a lawless neverland, only yours.
But it's lonely with no one to share it with. It's haunted by the ghost of your absent father in more than three hundred and fifty scratches on a crumbling lighthouse wall. Now that the local fisherman know their tall tales arent of bloodthirsty monsters but one reckless, curious teenager, they won't keep their distance anymore.
Massimo looks at it, rough cut emerald in the distance, then looks back at you.
"Giulietta's room will be empty," he says at last. "I don't see why you shouldn't have it."
You're not sure you heard him correctly.
"Huh?"
"If you need a place to stay, you are welcome to stay with me. She loves you like family." He pauses a moment and adds, "Machiavelli, as well. I trust their judgement."
You're not ready to grapple with the concept of Giulia loving you when you've spent the entire time you've known her resenting her for monopolizing Luca's attention. She's another good one you're wasted on.
And Machiavelli tolerates you, at best.
But...Giulia's cozy bedroom, with her warm bed and her well-loved books and her Paperino toys and her fat, soft cat. Giulia's home and her very large, unbelievably cool, protective dad in it, and hot, comforting meals eaten at her kitchen table. Giulia's little hideout in the tree outside her window when you need a break from the walls, and want to hear the ocean and taste it on the air when you sleep. The hard, satisfying work of running and stocking and delivering for the pescheria, and learning something useful and fulfilling, because Massimo likes you and thinks you're worth teaching.
Being wanted, and valued, and cared for.
You swallow around a lump in your throat the size of a lemon.
"I, uh. You know. Maybe. I'll think about it."
The corner of Massimo's mustache ticks upwards. "Do that."
You keep your eyes trained on the town ahead, taking extra care not to blink. "Okay."
"No work today," he says as he starts the motor and steers you back to town. "Go spend time with your little friend." When he docks, you jump out and take a few steps, then turn back to him.
"Aren't you going to ask me why?"
Massimo raises an eyebrow. "Would you like me to?"
"Everyone else keeps asking and I don't have an answer that makes sense. Maybe you can give me a clue."
"Mi dispiace, Beto." His voice is soft and patient. "You'll know for yourself, in time."
That’s really not what you want to hear, but he just called you Beto and that’s all that will be occupying your thoughts for at least another hour. Massimo just gave you a nickname. You stagger to the first secluded alley you find and sit with your head between your knees for a good twenty minutes while you try--and fail--not to cry, because even you're smart enough to puzzle together that it's not the love of Giulia or Machiavelli that led him to invite you to stay with him, though they might have contributed.
You bring the Vespa around to the front of the shop, sad, rusted, beautiful thing it is. It's too bad you'll never get to see it fixed up; it would have been so fun to spend afternoons with Luca taking it apart and making it better, like your time spent building rolling deathtraps on the island together, except for real. He would have been so good at it.
"Luca!" You call into the shop, where he and Giulia are chatting animatedly while condensing and draining the ice tables. "C'mon, let's go for a ride!"
His whole face lights up, and his eyes sparkle like sunlight as seen from beneath the waves. He drops what he's doing and leaps onto the seat behind you.
“Oh, should we ask Giulia-”
“What about Giulia, don’t worry about Giulia, Giulia’s fine.” Then, loud enough for her to hear: “Bye Giulia! Have fun with the fish!”
“Drive safe, boys. If you’re not back in time for dinner I’m not saving you any!”
You salute her and accelerate, and the engine immediately backfires, a loud ugly crackshot that earns complaints from half the people milling around the piazza. Luca wraps his arms around you in alarm, and he must decide he doesn’t feel entirely safe, because he stays that way even long after you get up to a modest, reliable speed.
Not that you mind.
You take the Vespa through town and when you decide it might actually be up to the task, out of the too-narrow streets and alleys and slowly, carefully up the mountain and into the countryside, where crowded brick buildings gradually give way to green pastures, meticulously terraced farmland and lush groves of fruit trees. The Vespa doesn’t love the incline any more than Luca did the first dozen or so times he did it on bicycle, but it tries valiantly and it gets you there in the end.
Forza, brave, beautiful little Vespa!
It’s stunning up here, rolling viridian hills and bright white clouds close enough you think you could reach up and touch them. You lean back against Luca until he fits his chin over your shoulder, and you say, "What kind of clouds are those?" because you've seen him poring over the illustrated weather diagrams in Giulia's science textbooks.
"Big fluffy ones are cumulus, I think." You won't remember that in five minutes, but it's nice that he knows.
“What kind of trees are those?” You point at rows of thin-leafed trees with gnarled trunks as you putter past them.
Luca laughs. “Alberto, those are olives. We’ve slept in an olive tree every night for two weeks straight!”
“I knew that! I was just testing you. Good job, you passed.” You reach back with one hand and ruffle his hair. “You’re so smart.”
Luca giggles again, adjusts his arms around your waist, and rests his cheek on your shoulder. His breath tickles your neck in a warm, gentle little puff, and for just a moment, the fog on the horizon clears again. It’s there: a spark, a glimmer, catching the light but still out of reach, and if you could just get a closer look-
“Alberto!”
You snap back to reality and slam the handbrakes. You’ve nearly taken the Vespa off the path and put it straight through an elaborate arbor thick with woody, leafy fruit-bearing vines.
“Uh.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” You point at a cluster of green fruit hanging over your head as a distraction. “What are-”
”Grapes,” Luca sighs, exasperated. “The Marcovaldos have some in their garden.”
“Have you ever eaten any?”
“No...I ate an olive off the tree once and I’ve been a little afraid to try anything out of the garden since.”
"Bad?"
"Awful."
You can't help the fond grin creeping across your face. "Luca, I'm hurt. If I'd known, I would have eaten one too."
"Well, it's never too late to do something stupid together."
"I'm glad you agree." You reach up and break a whole bunch of the fat, green grapes off the vine and drop it into Luca's hands as you back the Vespa back onto the path.
At the top of the mountain, or at least as far up as the Vespa is willing to take you, you stop in the shade of a copse of lemon trees to admire the view. The land falls away beneath you in steep ridges and steps of green, all the way down to Portorosso, where sun-soaked buildings gather at the edge of the sea like the rows and piles of books in Giulia's room, haphazard and at odd angles, but warm and friendly and inviting anyway. Beyond that: the ocean. Turquoise-blue and as far as the eye can see. You were born there, hatched in the protective shade of a rocky nest somewhere, and it does feel so nice to go back to it now and again, to slip effortlessly through the waves and to ride the currents...but it hasn't been home in a long while.
Right now, home is with Luca in the dappled light of these lemon trees. Tomorrow it will be in Giulia's borrowed bedroom and at Massimo's kitchen table.
After that? Hard to say.
Luca braces himself against your shoulders as he shifts to sit side-saddle on the back seat to better drink in the landscape with you. He offers you the grapes, so you take one and hold it up to the light to inspect it. At first glance it's not unlike the olives that hang from the tree outside Giulia's window, but slightly translucent and tempting like the largest fish egg you’ve ever seen.
"You go first," Luca dares you, so you oblige.
Into your mouth it goes, and you bite down on it without thinking too deeply about it. The minute your teeth pierce the thin skin, it floods your tongue with juice, sweet and tart at the same time.
“Oh, wow.”
You turn to Luca just as he follows your lead, and you can see the moment he registers the taste, because he lifts his chin and his eyelids flutter closed, dark lashes on rosy cheeks freckled with little stars of sunlight filtered through the leaves and there’s a terrible moment where your breath leaves you empty and craving...something else it its place. Something stupid and unreasonable but feels a little like the idea of lifting a grape to his lips so he can eat it directly from your fingers, except without the grape between your fingertips and his mouth.
What the hell does that even mean.
You shove four or five more in your mouth at once and chew them up angrily, looking away, face and ears burning tomato-red. That imaginary fish hook in your dorsal chafes. You rotate your shoulders trying to relieve the feeling, but there’s no dorsal fin and no fish hook, so you just squirm irritably in place.
“Way better than raw olives,” Luca announces, oblivious, around a mouthful of more.
Together you finish off the stem and leave it behind in the grass under the trees. The trip back down the mountain is more perilous than the trip up it, because the Vespa is far keener to take you downhill than it was up and not half as keen on braking when you ask it to. Gravity pushes Luca tight to your back and thrill clenches his fingers tight in the front of your shirt, knuckles pressed to your stomach.
One of your hands drifts to lay over his, and you think, again, if only you could keep one hand on him, you could stop him from drifting away.
When you get back to town, Giulia is closing up the shop for the afternoon. A conspiratorial wink when Luca isn’t looking lets you know everything’s on track.
She takes Luca up to her bedroom to pretend to leave him more books to occupy him while she’s gone.
And you sell the Vespa.
"My record player, and my records, be careful with them, okay? Help yourself to all my books and comics, Paperino's really good, I think you'll like him a lot. You have to keep the door open at night because Machiavelli cries, no matter which side of it he's on, sorry. Uhm….oh! Luca said you like to draw, right? There's a big box of things under the bed, pencils and pastels and paints and stuff, and some books to help you learn, they're all yours, mamma can always get us more. Ah…." She looks around and considers, seriously. "My summer clothes….they're mostly boys clothes, so if you want them for anything help yourself, but you're probably too big…."
"You're being very generous," you say. You expected a big long list of rules, things you couldn't touch or do while you slept in her room for the next nine months, but that doesn't seem to be the case. She's just...giving everything to you.
"You're my brother now! We're family. I'm allowed to be generous." She puts a friendly arm around your waist because she's too short to comfortably reach your shoulders, and you're aware she's already damp in the armpits of her school blouse.
"Oh, I don't know about that," you start to say, because you're still not totally convinced there can be a place for you here in someone else's home with someone else's family, but you remember Massimo calling you Beto and saying Giulia loves you, and you're surprised to discover that you don't want to hurt her feelings. Three days ago you would have bitten her fingers off if given the chance.
"Don't be silly. Papà is very fond of you. I could tell he liked you from the start. I'm glad you'll be here with him while I'm away. I think he gets lonely. Be good to him, sì?"
"Yeah. Hey, and uh. Take… take good care of Luca?"
Her eyes go soft and her arm tightens around your waist. "Certo! I'll write to you and keep you updated.”
“Good. You’d better. Every week I go without a letter, I’m getting pesto fingerprints all over one of your precious books.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
You give her a sly, lazy smile as if to say there’s only one way to find out, little sister as you disengage the hug and pick up her suitcases to carry them downstairs.
In the end, you weren’t able to keep a hand on him.
It’s what he wanted, and what you wanted for him, so it’s...fine. But he’s taken such a huge chunk of you with him that you feel too fragile and hollowed out, an empty brittle seashell after whatever once lived inside has been scooped out with hungry fingers, washed up and sun-bleached on the beach.
Massimo comes to join you in the rain.
"This was a very grown up thing you did, Beto. You should be proud."
"Excuse my language, Signor Marcovaldo, but I feel like shit."
He laughs, but not unkindly.
"It will hurt less in time."
It doesn't seem possible, but you'll just have to take his word for it.
Caro Alberto,
Genova is so big and there's so much to see! It's much noisier than Portorosso and there are so many cars. And Vespas! I saw a silver one that made me think of you. I wish you were here to see it all with me.
Did you know that Signora Marcovaldo is an artist? I think you would like her a lot. I showed her your drawing and she said it was very good, and she's going to help me find a frame for it to keep it safe.
I'm going to start school in a few days. They tell me I wont be in the same classes with Giulia, which is a little scary. I'm excited but nervous.
I miss you and hope you and Signor Marcovaldo are having a nice time and catching lots of fish!
Ciao
Luca
Ciao Fratellone!
You'll be relieved to know Luca never shuts up about you for two minutes. He said your name thirteen times during our first dinner with mamma, alone. I counted. It's honestly pretty exhausting. (He also cried twice in the first night and in the morning I found him in the bathtub, but please don't tell him I told you that.)
Otherwise I think he's adjusting well. He's excited to start school. It's been decided he'll have to take primary school classes because he's so far behind, but he's so smart and absorbs information like a sponge, so I'm sure he'll catch up fast. He hungers more than you do, Beto. He'll be a teacher's pet in no time. If anyone gives him any trouble, I'll be sure to beat them up for you.
I hope you're adjusting well too, and getting along well with Papà. He's worried about you, but you didn't hear it from me. Please give Machiavelli a kiss for me.
Tua sorella,
Giulia