Saving Francesca

“The guacamole was a mistake,” he says matter-of-factly.

For the second time that night he makes me laugh. “Don’t make me have to like you,” I tell him.

chapter 20

IT’S THE END of the term, and instead of feeling excited, I’m depressed. The thought of two weeks in the house with my mum in the state she’s in is unbearable. Worse still, I’m frightened that any type of progress I’ve made with people at school will be lost over school break. The foundations of our friendships are too weak, and I’m not sure if they will hold.

I ring up my Stella friends, one by one. I haven’t heard from them since the time on the bus with Tina, so I figure it’s about time I made an attempt.

I get invited to a Pius party, but all I want, really, is to see them on their own. The way it used to be.

A part of me itches to ring up Justine Kalinsky and the girls, but I don’t. I’m scared they’ll say “Who?” when I tell them it’s me, and I know they’ll probably have a hundred other things to do. But I have nothing. Just Luca, and even he’s too busy for me.

On the weekend, I have a dress fitting with Angelina and the bridesmaids. One’s her best friend from college, and the other is her cousin Vera from her mother’s side, who my aunt insisted on.

For someone who’s never sewn in her life, Angelina has done a brilliant job. She’s got enough taste to be able to pull off something extraordinary, but the dresses are low-cut and I can’t help looking down at my cleavage at least every five seconds.

“You look great,” Angelina reassures me. “Just don’t think about it.”

“It’s in my face, Angelina. I don’t have a choice.”

“You should be proud of it. You could be like Vera, who has nothing.”

Vera is obsessed with dieting and the gym and has lost any body fat she ever possessed.

“Thanks, Angelina,” Vera says dryly, adjusting her push-up bra.

Later on, Angelina and the bridesmaids take me up to Haberfield for coffee and ricotta ca

“How’s Mia?” she asks.

I shrug.

“Don’t let her get comfortable with this, Francesca,” Vera says, as if the whole world knows about it. “Robert’s a good-looking guy and he’ll get sick of—”

“Vera, shut up,” Angelina tells her.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“She means she’s an idiot and she doesn’t know Uncle Robert.”

“Men don’t hang around depressed women forever. They get sick of it. They need to have sex,” Vera continues.

Angelina stands up and takes me by the arm.

“I’m going outside for a ciggy.”

My head is spi

“She’s an ignoramus, like everyone on my mother’s side of the family,” she tells me outside.

“Are people saying that my father is going to leave my mother?”

“They’re jealous, so they’re going to go around putting the malocchio on it,” she says, referring to the evil eye.

“Just say my mum stays like this forever? Like Zia A

“Says who? No

“No

“Uh-huh. And the flirty younger sister, No

“Wow.”

“Plus she nicked off with Zia’s S biscuit recipe.”

“Oh my God!”

Angelina nods.

“That town in Sicily was like Melrose Place and No

She puts out the cigarette. “Don’t listen to Vera. She’s got as much intelligence as those dumbbells she holds on her power walks.”

“I just want it to go back to the way it was.”

“It’ll never go back to the way it was, Frankie. But you have to make sure it goes forward.”

She drops me off and I go straight to my mum’s room. My dad’s in there with her, holding her. She’s asleep and he’s kissing her cheek.

“She doesn’t want to have sex!” I yell. “She’s sick.”

He looks at me in shock.

“Frankie, what’s got into you?”

I storm into my room and slam the door, furious at him for allowing people to make up rumors. I ring up Michaela from Stella’s and I ask her if she’d like to do something. I try to remember what made our relationship work in the past. Was it because she had a sense of humor and treated me well? And if it was because of that, why did I feel so grateful that people treated me well?

But Michaela can’t do anything tonight. She’s having a sleepover at Natalia’s. I want to invite myself over, but I keep on thinking she’ll invite me instead.

But she doesn’t.

So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, “It’s Francesca Spinelli,” and she says, “Francesca, you’ve got to stop using last names. How are you doing?” and I say, “I feel like shit,” and I don’t know how it happens, but by eight o’clock that night I’m lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we’re eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie.

And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life.

chapter 21

WE START TERM three with a House meeting, and I get to look at Will Trombal for a whole twenty minutes while he speaks. He is a man of minimal words, Will is. His stares are long, his pauses never-ending, and he always thinks before he speaks. He has a quiet confidence devoid of the ego, and earnestness and sincerity I find confronting to witness. When the meeting is over, as I’m jostling out of the foyer, I feel someone grab my arm from behind and he’s there, facing me, an irritated look on his face.

“What?” he says.

We’re pushed and shoved, but I don’t mind the contact.

“What what?”

“Why did you roll your eyes?”

“I didn’t,” I lie.

“Every time I spoke, you rolled your eyes,” he accuses.

“Then don’t look at me when you speak.”

“If I want to look at you, I’ll look at you.”

“Will, this conversation is ridiculous. Now, I’m an expert on ridiculous conversations, but you’re way out of your element, which means that I’ll win. And going by the Tolstoy/Trotsky thing, I don’t think you’ll cope very well with your loss.”

He looks at me for a moment, and then he seems to relax and that half smile kind of appears.

“So, how was your break?” he asks.

“Long. Yours?”

“Confusing.” He’s looking at me intensely. “I’m a month away from recording my university preferences.”

I can tell he’s all over the place.

“And I know exactly what I’m going to write down,” he continues, as if I’ve responded, “and that frightens the hell out of me.”

“Do you know what my theory is?” I tell him, although it’s really Mia’s theory. “Fear’s good. It keeps things interesting.”

His face softens. “In a good year, you kind of look as if you’d be fearless.”

I shake my head. “I haven’t had a good year for a while.”

Somehow he ends up walking me to class. It’s like something out of an American teen flick, and I find myself swinging as I walk alongside him, to music that I can hear in my head. I can’t look at him, so I have to rely on every other sense. The smell of his aftershave, the feel of his elbow when we accidentally brush up against each other, the resonance of his gravelly voice.

A great feeling comes over me. Because for a moment, I kind of like who I am.

In drama, we start a Shakespeare unit and Ortley suggests a production for fourth term. “Henry IV, Part 1,” he says. “You’ll relate to the rebellious son wanting to hang out with his idiot friends at the pub.”

I like looking at his face when he speaks. Sometimes he spits, actually he spits all the time, but I think that’s passionate. He loves words and he rolls them around in his mouth like a luscious plum, slobbering on the sides, and then he’ll use his hands, touching his mouth as if he’s taking the words out and throwing them to us.