Saving Francesca

Don’t say it, I want to scream at her. Don’t say anything. Mind yourown business, you loser. Don’t intellectualize my misery . Tara Finke knows nothing but words that mean nothing when your insides are in pieces.

“We have an Alanis night.”

I look at her, confused.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Siobhan Sullivan says. “As if that’s going to help. It has to be Pride and Prejudice. I’ve got the whole six episodes.”

“I disagree. Food’s always good. It always helps,” Justine says.

They talk about me as if I’m not there.

“My place,” Tara Finke says.

An Alanis night is listening to Alanis Morissette’s music, where there’s a lot of revenge and anger toward men. We move on to Tori Amos and then Jewel. So much hate and depression is making me feel sick, although that could also be attributed to the Pringles that I sandwiched between two Oreos.

We watch Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy is such a hottie that it depresses me because his sideburns remind me of Will Trombal’s.

Tara Finke’s mother watches it with us. She talks through the whole thing, which gets very tense around the time Colin Firth, aka Mr. Darcy, comes out of his pond, soaking wet.

Tara Finke has had enough. “Mum?” Tara puts a finger to her lips threateningly.

We watch in silence, but I look at the others’ faces. All of them glued to the screen, a dreamy look on their faces. A hint of a smile on their lips. A sense of hope. They’re all the same. Cynical Tara, couldn’t-give-a-shit Siobhan, romantic Justine.

And I want to cry. Because my face looks just like theirs and I haven’t felt like anyone else since I was in Year Seven and Siobhan Sullivan and I did the Macarena in the foyer of the chapel and got lunchtime detention for a week.

Justine catches me looking and she smiles, and with tears in my eyes I smile back.

chapter 14

MY DAD COMES to see me at No

“This is wrong,” I tell my dad. “What’s happened to Mum isn’t right, but Luca and I want to come home.”

“She misses you,” he says.

“We miss you, Papa. We miss us.”

He nods calmly. “Then let’s get Luca.”

Mia cries when she sees us. Although she’s out of bed, she’s still in her nightgown, looking a thousand years old. Later, my dad, Luca, and I sit around the table. It’s back to the horrible way it was before I went to No

I get the calendar and put it down in front of my dad.

“Wednesday, choir practice,” Luca says, clutching on to Pinocchio, who is beside himself with excitement. “Mum picks me up at five o’clock.”

“I’ll stay after school,” I tell them. “On Tuesdays, you have to drop No

My dad begins writing. “Next.”

“No

“And Friday is cemetery day with No

“Plus Mummy has two conferences this year.”

“Frankie, you’ll have to ring and cancel them. We can do the rest, but the conferences are going to be out of the question.”

“She won’t want them canceled. It’s taken two years of lobbying to get these conferences.”

“What about the shopping?” he asks.

“You do the shopping and we’ll work around the rest,” I say.

Lots of nods. Lots of determination. And so much doubt that we can’t even hide it.

My dad comes home triumphant from his first grocery-shopping assignment. As if he’s accomplished God Knows What. I want to remind him that my mum does it every week without fanfare, but I’m too shocked at what he’s unpacking.

“What were you thinking?”

“What?”

He looks stu

“What is this?” I ask, holding up the yogurt.

“Yogurt.”

“With six grams of fat per one hundred grams. What happened to nonfat yogurt or ninety-seven percent fat-free yogurt?”

“Are we dieting?”

“Papa, it’s not about dieting. It’s about keeping our fat intake down. Look at this,” I say with a cry in my voice, pulling out some crackers. “What happened to rice crackers, ninety-four percent fat-free as opposed to Chicken in a Biscuit, twenty-two percent fat per one hundred grams?”

By this stage, my dad is looking a bit forlorn, but things only get worse.

“Oh my God!” I hold up the Ice Magic. The stuff you put on ice cream and it hardens like a chocolate top.

“Where did this come from? Do you know what this is? Luca is going to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and squirt it on his tongue. It’s like drugs for ten-year-olds. Today it’s Ice Magic. Tomorrow, heroin.”

We write out a list that he’s to stick to in the future. Luca is already pigging out on the Cheetos and looks disappointed as we eliminate any source of junk food.

I make us di

One morning, she’s throwing up in the sink. Nothing much, as usual. She’s leaning her head against the tap, retching, and the sound becomes as familiar as the music she used to wake us up with. I want to do what she did for me when I was a kid. Hold back my hair and make me cry, not from the feeling of having my guts ripped open, but just from the feeling of being taken care of.

But I stand and I stare. She senses me there and looks for a moment. I don’t know what she reads from my face. Am I angry? Sickened? Ashamed?

I want to say, Please, Mummy, be okay, please be okay, because if you’re not okay, we’ll never be.

But I say nothing.

I just go to school.

It’s June, about six weeks into the term, and it’s getting cold, but they won’t let us wear scarves because it’s not part of the uniform. I walk through Hyde Park behind the rest of the students, where Luca is ru

After a moment, I realize that I’m not alone. Will Trombal is walking alongside me and I know he’s not there by chance. It’s been a week since the party. In front of us is Siobhan Sullivan, her arms draped over two boys beside her, her uniform riding up. She lifts herself up and swings her legs in the air.

“I think you should speak to her,” he says to me.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There’s stuff written about her.”

I stop for a moment and look at him. “Would you ask me to speak to a guy about the same thing?”

“Why turn this into a gender issue?”

“Because you made it into one. Would you go up to a guy and warn him if there was stuff written about him?”

“Listen, don’t shoot the messenger,” he almost shouts. “The shit that’s written in the toilets is awful, and if she were my friend I’d talk to her about it.”

“Well, it’s not in my job description.”

“You’ve made it your job… .”

“No I haven’t.”

“I’m trying to work with you here… .”

“No you’re not. We haven’t got one thing on that list except for that humiliating basketball game, and now you’ve decided to be Mr. Moral Policeman.”

“Forget it,” he says, walking away angrily.

“And what’s the name for people who kiss other people when they’ve got a girlfriend?”

He stops and turns around, looking me straight in the eye.