Saving Francesca

“So you’re telling me to go out there and be a slut?”

She looked up from her marking. “Firstly, I’m not telling you to go out there and lose your virginity. I trust that you’re not going to do it just because you’re hanging out with the Siobhan Sullivans of the world. And secondly, losing your virginity doesn’t make you a slut. I slept with your father when I was your age… .”

“Mia,” my father roared from the other room.

“What? So we’re going to lie to her now?” she shouted back.

He walked in. “What if your mother finds out? Or my mother?”

“Robert, it was twenty years ago. I don’t think there’s much they can do.”

He looked at me, pointing a finger. “No sex for you.” He used the Soup Nazi’s accent from Seinfeld.

“Stop treating this like a joke,” Mia said, irritated.

“You think Frankie having sex is a joke to me?”

“I don’t want her to have sex, Rob. I want her to stop hanging around people like Michaela and Natalia, who suck the life out of who she is.”

The people I’m stuck with in my life now aren’t sucking the life out of me, they just suck. That’s what I’d like to say to her.

“I’m not going,” Tara says, referring to the party. “I’ve got better things to do.”

“You wish,” Siobhan mutters.

“I think we should make an attempt,” Justine Kalinsky says. “I’ve got a piano accordion recital, but it’ll be over by eight.”

“Don’t say that too loud,” Siobhan tells her.

“Making fun of the piano accordion thing is a bit passé now, Siobhan,” Tara Finke tells her.

“So are you, Tara.”

Oh, what a united group we are!

“I’ll pick you up, but after that you’re on your own,” I tell Siobhan. “I’m not spending the night looking for you.”

By the time we arrive, everyone is paralytic. Even Will Trombal.

The guy throwing the party is handing out vodka Jell-O shots, and after a couple the sensation is strange.

On the dance floor, Eva Rodriguez is surrounded by a bunch of guys. Her parents are from the Philippines, with the usual Spanish-and-Filipino mix of caramelized skin and almond-shaped eyes. Most of the guys think she’s gorgeous, but the Filipino guys adore her. I watch them move. Their bodies are like liquid as they dance. When they walk, dance, play basketball, they all seem to glide to a tempo that the rest of us can’t hear or respond to.

Will Trombal sees me from the other side of the room and he grins and he makes a beeline for me and my mind is buzzing with the best opening.

Hi.

Hey.

How’s it going?

Great party.

Love your shirt.

Great music.

Crap music.

And he’s coming closer and closer and the way he’s looking at me makes me think that I’m going to have the most romantic night in the history of my life. I open my mouth to say something and he sticks his tongue down my throat.

We’re in a corner, pashing, and I don’t even know what’s got me to this point. A look in the corridor? A flirt outside my no

“Do that sober and I’ll be impressed,” I say before walking away.

Justine Kalinsky is a wallflower all night. I can tell she’s itching to dance, but she just stands there and there’s a worried, pinched look on her face.

“Siobhan’s gone into the bedroom with that Year Twelve guy who’s in charge of the microphones, you know, at assembly,” she tells me. “They’re really drunk.”

“Siobhan’s a big girl.”

“With bad taste in guys.”

“Not our problem.”

Over the weekend, I think of Will one thousand times a day. I think, what if he doesn’t speak to me on Monday? What if he doesn’t ask me out? What if my heart beats at this rate for the rest of my life until he does? Why isn’t he ringing? He knows I’m at my no

Oh, ring, ring, why doesn’t he give me a call?

And then it hits me. I’m going to ask him out. Except I’ve never asked a guy out before. Should I wait for him to ring me? He’s made it obvious that he’s interested, even if he was drunk, so why wouldn’t he ring? You don’t kiss me the way he kissed me and not mean business. Do guys shake like that with every kiss? I change my mind one hundred times in a minute. Michaela would wait. Natalia would say, “Let him ring you.” But I feel as if I’ve spent my life waiting. For phone calls from my Stella friends. For Mia to be okay. For someone else to decide that it’s right for Luca and me to go home.

I’m going to ask Will Trombal out! And for the first time in a month, I can see beyond the next five minutes and what I see doesn’t seem so bad.

There’s a lot of awkwardness on Monday. Not a lot of eye contact between the sexes. There’s a bit of snickering as Siobhan walks by, and Tara looks from the snickerers to Siobhan.

“I’m not going to ask,” Tara says.

I’m sitting on my desk, working out my strategy, when Justine Kalinsky approaches us. She has the most distressed look on her face.

“You’re going to be devastated,” she says.

“About?”

“I don’t know if I can tell you.”

“Then why bring it up?” Tara Finke asks.

“It’s not as if I wanted to overhear it.”

“She pashed Will Trombal. And the whole world’s talking about it, right?” Siobhan mocks.

“Not even remotely devastating,” I say.

“It’s much worse than that.”

“Can you stop being so dramatic? I don’t do devastation,” I tell her.

“Will Trombal has a girlfriend.”

Oh my God, I am so devastated.

“I think she’s devastated.”

I try to shake my head. “I’m not… .”

“Yes you are.”

I don’t want to look at them. I don’t want to see the I-told-you-so on Tara Finke’s face or the you-sucker on Siobhan Sullivan’s or the pity on Justine Kalinsky’s.

I feel as if my throat is made out of cardboard, and all of a sudden kissing Will Trombal is the most embarrassing thing in the world. I feel like Adam and Eve when God points out to them that they’re naked.

I feel tears well in my eyes and I can’t even stop them from happening. I can’t stop anything from happening in my life. I just want to get through the day, the week, the year, without ever having to see Will Trombal again.

During period five, I’m in class, not listening, looking out the window into the quadrangle, and I see Luca, his head down, walking toward the toilets. I ask to be excused and I wait for him outside and then we find a place, any place, for some kind of time together. Time that’s been taken away from us by everyone. We find a corner in the library and we hold on to each other tight and he begins to cry. I feel the sobs racking his body before I hear them. I can cope with my misery, but not Luca’s. His pain makes me ache, and I’m crying so much that my whole body is hurting.

“Don’t be sad, Luca. Please don’t be sad.”

And I don’t know why I’m saying something so foolishly simple. Don’t be sad.

Worse still, I realize we’re not alone. Thomas Mackee is standing there, staring as if he’s come across some alien life forms. He nods in acknowledgment and I nod back. And then he’s gone with the secrets of my family’s misery locked in his brain, and I wonder when he’ll use them as part of his arsenal, part of his repertoire of mockery.

“You know what I think?” Tara Finke says on the bus home. She’s the first to say anything to me after I’ve done a literal rendition of the sound of silence all day.