Saving Francesca

I’ve never really been embarrassed by much. I just couldn’t be bothered doing things, that’s all, an aspect of me that Mia can’t cope with. Sometimes I think I do it even more just so she won’t win. At this moment, though, I’m willing to give in. To do anything to make her better.

No

“Tutto a posto,” she says, shutting the closet door. Everything inits place.

But my family is split into three, and no one is in their place.

chapter 8

I LOOK FOR Luca at lunchtime to see how he’s coping at my aunt’s place. He’s looking miserable by the cafeteria, and when he sees me, his little face lights up, which makes me want to cry.

“Are you having fun?” I ask over-cheerfully.

“Mummy’s having a nervous breakdown,” he says, and I can tell he has no idea what it is.

“Have you got your lunch?” I ask, fixing up his tie and socks because the administration around here are Nazis about such things.

“That’s what Anthony says has happened to Mummy.”

“Doesn’t Anthony still believe in Santa Claus? Doesn’t that prove that Anthony doesn’t know much?”

Mr. Brolin walks by and stops beside us. “Seniors’ lunch area is on the roof.”

“Can I just finish speaking to my brother?”

He gets me on an answering-back call and I get another afternoon of detention. I can’t even open my mouth to plead my case. Any attempt is construed as answering back.

Luca looks at me helplessly and I can sense he’s close to tears.

“I’ll ring you,” I say, “and then maybe we can talk to Zia Teresa about Pinocchio staying over.”

“Promise.”

“Cross my heart, hope to die.” My voice cracks as I say that. And he hears that crack, and I know it kills him a bit inside.

The day gets worse. We have drama, and for me, drama class is a four-times-a-week nightmare. Every lesson Mr. Ortley puts on a piece of music and asks us to dance, and every lesson we stare back at him, some of us with disinterest, others with horror. Nobody ever dances. Nobody but him. He dances like a maniac, which is a bit embarrassing because he’s about fifty, and seeing a fifty-year-old dancing to Limp Bizkit is pretty nauseating.

“If you can’t lose your inhibitions, you’ll never be able to convince a crowd of people that you’re someone else. That’s what you have to do as an actor,” he says between breaths.

As usual, no one moves.

“Mr. Mackee? Are you going to grace the dance floor with your moves?”

Thomas Mackee gives a snort, which is kind of like a no.

“And you did drama for what reason?”

“Because I thought it would be an easy pass, sir. And you went to the National Institute of Dramatic Art for what reason?”

Ortley doesn’t care. He seems to like what he does. He tells us that he’s waiting for one of those perfect teaching moments when he can say it’s all worth it and then he’ll quit.

“Miss Spinelli?”

I’d love to do the snort thing, but it would give Thomas Mackee too much satisfaction.

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll make me feel self-conscious,” I lie.

“Why?”

I shrug and look down.

I’ve perfected the art of shyness. I had three years of practice at Stella’s, and it’s brought me great comfort over the years. When I was being my un-shy self, I got a different sort of spotlight. Not the one I wanted. I got detentions, was tested for hyperactivity, ridiculed, hassled, ostracized. By the time my Stella friends came to save me, I was ripe for it. Ready to go into some kind of retirement. Because it gets pretty exhausting being on the perimeter.

Here in drama, I don’t actually care what people think of me, and deep down I’m not really self-conscious. I just don’t have the passion for this or the drive. I would like to go onto autopilot for the whole of Year Eleven drama. It’s not as if we’re going to be able to perform this year.

“Are you scared people will make fun of you?”

This man does not give up. He looks me straight in the eye when he speaks to me. No one in this school has done that all year except William Trombal, and that was to intimidate me.

“Maybe,” I mumble.

“You want to dance.”

“You want me to dance?”

“No. You want to dance. Every time the music comes on, you sway.”

Everyone’s looking at me.

“It’s instinct.”

“Then act on instinct rather than on what other people think,” he says in a flat, hard voice.

He turns away from me dismissively. It’s as if he couldn’t be bothered.

My mother forced me to take drama. “You’ll be in your element,” she said.

“She’s shy,” my dad tried to explain.

“Yes, in her left toe she’s shy. She’s just lazy. That’s her problem. She’s too busy worrying about what her friends—”

“I don’t care what my friends think.”

“You care what they’ll do when they remember that you’re the one with personality.”

“Is it okay if I have a say over what I want?” I asked.

“That’s the problem, Frankie. Once you start hanging out with them, they don’t give you a say.”

“You just want me to be like you,” I shouted.

“You are like me. Get used to it,” she shouted back.

My father would go around and shut all the windows in the kitchen so the neighbors couldn’t hear us shouting, but Mia and I would go at it until I backed down or my dad would say, “Mia, she’s a kid. Couldn’t you just let her win for once?”

But it was never in Mia’s makeup to back down.

“Is that what you want, Frankie? That I let you win?”

Yes, I’d want to scream. Just once, let me win.

We’d go to bed furious with each other, and then she’d wake me in the middle of the night and come and lie on my bed and we’d talk for hours, about nothing and everything, and she’d let me touch the scars on her stomach—the scars from where they cut me out of her.

“My pelvis was too small,” she’d say, “and you were in such a hurry to come out that they had to deliver you by Cesarean, and by the time I woke up from the anesthetic, No

But here I am at my grandparents’ house, knowing that this is killing Mia more than a breakdown. And I need to get myself back home, and Luca too. Because if we don’t, my mother will feel as if we’ve been ripped from her without the anesthetic, and the pain waves will be felt by all of us.

I need to get back. But I don’t know how.

My detention with Mr. Brolin means that I have to come into contact with Jimmy Hailler again. He gives me a wave, as if we’re long-lost friends, and I ignore him. So he turns his attention to some Year Eight kid next to him, who is looking over at Mr. Brolin, frightened of being caught speaking. The kid looks miserable. Not just Brolin miserable or Jimmy Hailler miserable, but it’s there in his eyes and Jimmy Hailler doesn’t make things any better.

Later, I sit under the tree in Hyde Park: it’s one of those fantastic weather days that bring everyone out, and I sit among strangers enjoying the sun and watching the old guys play on the giant chess game. I like this park. It’s full of life. Of greenies selling points of view, of lovers lying on the grass smooching, of Japanese tourists having their photo taken in front of the fountain, of the cathedral looming over us. At this time of the afternoon, there are no Sebastian kids around and I feel a bit at peace.

I see the Year Eight kid from detention walking as fast as possible down the pathway, and sure enough, there’s Jimmy Hailler trailing him. A fury builds up inside of me. I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m up on my feet and walking toward him before I can talk myself out of it.