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GIOVANNI HARDLY SPOKE a word on the out-of-the-way journey to his house. We got off two stops beyond our usual one and circled Giovanni’s block to ensure Dad was nowhere in sight. The fear in his eyes hinted that my paranoia and anxiety had rubbed off on him.
While Giovanni unlocked the door, I kept an eye out on the street as an extra precaution.
Mr. Vitali and his wife were already home. Their frustrated voices echoed from the kitchen. Instead of announcing our presence from the living room, Giovanni put a finger to his lips. He instructed me to hide by the staircase. He eavesdropped on their heated argument.
Mr. Vitali clomped through the dining room. Giovanni hurried me upstairs and barely cleared his father in time. I ducked inside of the bathroom since it was the only room I’d ventured into on the second floor. Giovanni joined me and softly shut the door.
“Why didn’t you tell your parents we’re here?”
“Because they never talk to each other like that,” he said, pressing his back to the door. “Something is wrong.”
I rubbed the owl pendant between my fingers and stared at his shoes. Was my family’s curse contagious?
“He says his friend offered him a job, but my ma does not trust the man.” Giovanni gripped his hair. “We moved to New York for the company my papá works for now. I do not understand why he would want to leave.”
“Ask him.”
Giovanni stared at me pensively but kept his thoughts to himself. Opening the door, he listened for movement downstairs and waved for me to follow.
Once we reached the landing below, Giovanni opened and closed the front door. The leafy plants under the window swayed from the wind. His mother rushed through the dining room with tear-stained cheeks and shouts in Italian, expecting to see her husband. Upon seeing me, Mrs. Vitali spun on her heels and dashed back the way she came to hide her embarrassment.
“Ma!”
She ignored her son.
Giovanni met my eyes.
“Maybe I should go,” I suggested.
“No. I want you to stay.” He twisted his hair again. “I will speak to her. Sit. The remote is there.” He pointed to the glass side table and traced his mother’s footsteps with his own.
I flicked a button on the remote. A fight scene from Aquaman, which I assumed was toward the end of the film, flashed across the screen. I let the movie sounds drown out the passionate conversation coming from the kitchen, especially since I couldn’t understand what was being said anyway. I sank into the cushy sofa and messaged Selena for the update on Mom.
—It’s been nothing but quiet here. She’s still asleep. How are you? The nurse called, so don’t lie.
—I got overheated and couldn’t catch my breath. Does Mom know I fainted?
—Nope. But that sounds like a panic attack.
I hoped with all my heart it wasn’t. One time was humiliating enough without it becoming a recurring issue.
—The nurse told me to rest.
—We all need that. Try not to stay out too late.
Giovanni rejoined me in the living room as I finished reading Selena’s final message. With a fake smile, he flopped onto the couch.
“How’s your mom?” I inquired.
“Better.” His eyes said otherwise. He released a slow breath and stared distractedly at the TV.
“You think your mom would let me cook dinner for you guys tonight? I won’t make anything fancy since Selena doesn’t want me out too late. I wanna help, if your mom will let me.”
“But you wanted to eat her cooking, remember?” He nudged me playfully in the ribs.
“I’m sure I’ll have plenty more chances. She looked like she could use a night off.”
“She is making something already. It is very simple. I promise.”
Giovanni turned his full attention to the movie again when Mr. Vitali returned. The goofy man of yesterday had long left the building, and an indignant one had taken his place today.
The anger in his eyes subsided at the sight of us. I stood to greet him.
“Joy, hello.” Scarlet flushed across his ears, cheeks, and throat as we shook hands.
I settled into my place on the couch and watched Giovanni make his approach and whisper a few words. Mr. Vitali nodded solemnly and rubbed the back of his neck in response.
“Excuse us for a moment.” He marched behind Giovanni into the kitchen with his head low.
Staring at the TV in a daze, my eyes grew heavier and heavier until I dozed off.
The Vitali’s laughter woke me from my nap. I checked the time on my phone. Giovanni had been mediating his parents for an hour, or at least that was how long my siesta lasted.
Aquaman’s superhero theme song played on repeat until I flicked the power button on the remote—my signal to Giovanni that I was awake. But his whole family hurried to welcome me to the land of the conscious.
“Gioia.” Mrs. Vitali pulled me to my feet and hugged me. “You are ready to eat? Everything is ready now.”
“I’m ready.”
Mrs. Vitali reached out and lost her hands in my curls, her new favorite pastime. “So soft,” she said in awe. She led me to the dining room table by the arm. “Giovanni has a surprise for you,” she whispered, showing me to my seat beside him.
I smiled at the reminder and detoured my thoughts from food and surprises to Giovanni and his parents. Had I awoken in another dimension where peace and harmony reigned supreme, or were the Vitali’s professional pretenders?
Mrs. Vitali brought out meats, poached asparagus, fennel, snap peas, and spring onion orderly arranged around a large plate with a generous drizzle of olive oil. She made a second trip into the kitchen for a long cutting board topped with mozzarella di bufala (a soft cheese made from buffalo milk) stacked diagonally in quarter inch disks.
While we nibbled on the antipasti, I sensed an ever-present tension between Giovanni’s parents despite their forced smiles and polite conversation about our school day.
Chewing and drinking sounds amplified the absence of human voices for a never-ending two minutes when Mr. Vitali showed off an uncanny ability to read my mind.
“Please forgive us for our strangeness this afternoon,” he said.
I checked my reflection in one of the two oval mirrors on the brick wall across from me. There was no way my face had given me away.
“You don’t need to apologize.”
He sat forward in his seat. “As our guest, you should always feel welcome and comfortable.” He sipped from his wine glass.
“Yeah, but neither of you knew I was here,” I said. “So, there’s nothing to apologize for.”
Judging by his deep-set scowl, Mr. Vitali disliked being challenged. He expected me to be a gracious guest—accept his apology and shut up about it. But how could I?
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to argue,” I said, moving the leftover food around my plate. “I just don’t want you guys feeling guilty for being normal. It’s normal for people to get frustrated with one another. Nobody’s family’s perfect and happy all the time. I don’t expect that from you guys or anyone. It’s been a weird day for everybody, I guess.” I sipped from the glass beside my plate.
“You had a weird day?” Mr. Vitali asked.
Giovanni and I locked eyes. “Yeah...Your son saved my life on our way to school.” I nodded at Giovanni. “Tell them about it.” I sat back in my chair, grateful for the shift in attention.
While Giovanni related the short story to his parents in Italian, they beamed proudly. Mrs. Vitali squeezed him and planted a few kisses onto her son’s grinning face before ducking into the kitchen for the main course.
She divvied out generous portions of pasta al forno onto our plates then settled onto her chair at last.
The first delectable bites of the stunning pasta dish were eaten in stark silence. It was just the comfort food we all needed—melted mozzarella, saucy rigatoni, chunks of ground beef, and fresh basil garnishes.
Mr. Vitali smiled at me, exposing the piece of basil between his two front teeth. I smiled back with my mouth closed and glanced away to keep from laughing.
“Joy, what does your father do for work?” he inquired.
I nearly choked on my food at hearing his question. Giovanni patted my back and uttered a few words in Italian. I swallowed more refreshing water from my glass.
“He is...he was an artist...a portrait artist. But he could do anything—build and design sets for shows, murals, factory work...and he used to fight for money. We don’t live with him anymore, so...I don’t know what he’s doing now.” I stuffed another bite into my mouth.
Mr. Vitali’s large brown eyes fell to the pan of baked pasta between us.
“My mom is an ultrasound technician,” I added, hoping to erase the awkward energy.
Mrs. Vitali frowned in confusion.
“She uses a machine to see inside of people, like what they do with pregnant women to see their babies. She actually had a pregnant girl come in the other week, and the baby had no heartbeat. It’s so sad. And my mom couldn’t even tell her. She had to wait for the doctor to do it.”
Mrs. Vitali’s eyes turned glossy as they searched the room for a comfortable place to land.
I wished I would have kept the story to myself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, especially during dinner.”
All three of them forced the same smile. Mr. Vitali reached for his wife’s hand to soothe her agitation. The way he lightly traced circles on the back of her hand and brought it to his lips shook loose memories of my parents from when they were still together. Of Dad in a lucid state—his long, scarred fingers, like creeping, knobby vines, navigating the bruises he’d left on Mom’s skin while tears glided down his face.
I tried to shake the memories from my mind, but the damage had been done. The food turned sour in my stomach. I stared at the half-eaten dinner on my plate with repulsion.
“Gioia, are you ready for your surprise?” Mrs. Vitali’s smile slipped as she looked to Giovanni to cheer me up.
How could she think of me when she was struggling to hold herself together? I was convinced the woman was a saint.
“Yes, I’m ready.” I forced another bite of food into my mouth and smiled warmly at her, wishing I had something to offer the Vitali’s in return for their sweetness towards me.
Giovanni spent a fraction of a second retrieving my surprise. He re-entered the dining room with his hands behind his back.
“Pick a hand,” he said with a goofy grin.
I pointed to his left hand.
Giovanni revealed the surprise and lowered a white wire basket, brimming with apples and oranges to the table beside my plate.
I blinked at him. “Oh. Fruit. Thank you,” I said, trying not to lose my manners amid the confusion. “Is the basket mine too?”
Giovanni and his parents chuckled.
“I prank you,” he said, genuinely pleased with himself, and hurried into the kitchen to replace my fake surprise with the real one.
He carried the long white dish into the room like a priceless treasure. My jaw dropped in awe at the stunning strawberry and pistachio topped dessert he lowered before me. “What is it?”
“Semifreddo,” he said. “It is like ice cream. I made it this morning. You can taste it when you are ready.”
I scarfed down the rest of my food.
Mr. Vitali watched me with concern. “It is not good for the digestion to eat so fast,” he said. But it was too late.
Mrs. Vitali sliced into the creamy, rectangular, cake-looking dessert. Pistachio and strawberry pieces glimmered like jewels throughout the semi-frozen treat. She offered me the first serving. It was almost too pretty to eat. Almost.
I scooped a bite onto the spoon and held it inches from my mouth. However, the look of anticipation on everyone’s face made me pause. “This isn’t another prank, is it?”
Giovanni’s straight eyebrows angled upward. “No. But you can have the fruit in the bowl too if you want it.”
I mirrored his wily grin. “Try it with me, then. I can’t trust your face.”
He grabbed his chest as if I’d wounded his heart. “Okay. Okay. But be nice. This is my ma’s recipe. I only followed the instructions,” he said, holding his hands in surrender.
“Well, then, I know I won’t like it.”
His lips curved downward.
“I know I’ll love it,” I said at the last second.
I immersed the spoonful into my mouth and straightened up on the chair. “You put white chocolate in this?”
Giovanni bobbed his head and tasted a bite for himself. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, inspiring his parents to poke fun at him for it.
“Will you teach me to make this?” I asked Giovanni.
He looked to his mother for permission.
“You want to know my secrets?” Mrs. Vitali asked with a hint of pretend fear in her eyes.
“Only this one,” I assured her. “This is literally the best surprise anyone’s ever given me. I’ve gotta surprise you somehow. Maybe your mom can help me.”
She nodded enthusiastically and served me a second slice. “It will be easy. My son, he eats everything.”
As she finished her sentence, the phone in the living room rang. Mr. and Mrs. Vitali exchanged an uncomfortable glance. The answering machine beeped. Mrs. Vitali’s lips quivered into a nervous smile. “Do you want more semifreddo?” she asked before dropping her eyes to my plate. I had yet to make it through the second serving dished out to me.
Sliding onto her chair, Mrs. Vitali force-fed herself a spoonful of Giovanni’s dessert. She relaxed ever so slightly when the caller hung up without leaving a message. Giovanni questioned her with his eyes.
I pretended not to notice.
With my belly full, a wave of sleepiness crashed over me. I laid the spoon in the soupy remains on the dessert plate and said, “I should probably get goin’. I promised my mom’s friend I wouldn’t stay out too late.”
There was a subtle relief in Mrs. Vitali’s face upon hearing my announcement. Her deep gray eyes hinted at a desire to address something urgently, so I gathered my bag and jacket, said my thanks and farewells, and hurried out of there.
As Giovanni latched the fence behind us, his mother’s cries reached our ears outside, stopping us in our tracks. The sheer curtains over the bay window barely masked his parents’ silhouettes, of Mrs. Vitali crashing into her husband’s steadying embrace.
“I am sorry you see my ma acting weird today. When you spoke about your mama’s work...” Giovanni sighed and started a slow walk towards Selena’s. “She lost many babies. The last one...she gave birth to, but—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, keeping pace with him. “And there’s nothing weird about being human. God. I can’t imagine what she’s been through.”
“But it happened before I was born.” He pocketed his hands in his blue jeans and kicked a twig out of his way.
“You don’t know what memories I reminded her of talking about my mom. Some people never get over losing their children, whether they were born or not.”
The light of a cigarette glowed in the darkness from the direction of a neighbor’s shadowy stoop, silencing our conversation. We hurried under the black shade of a tree toward the bright lights of Selena’s building.
“Your parents are so nice,” I told him. “And you’re just like them. They’re lucky to have a son like you.”
Giovanni’s smile was tinged with sadness. He paused outside of Selena’s towering brick building and angled his body toward me.
“They adopted me...when I was two years old.” He spoke like his adoption was a secret he needed to share.
“Have you known about it for—”
“When I was five years old they told me. Two years ago, they told me about my real parents. My mother was sixteen, and my father was twenty-one. He left her after a few months, and she...my ma said she started to use drugs and could not take care of me.” Giovanni waited for an Asian couple to wander past us into the building before continuing.
“My parents adopted me because they lost their babies. I know that if they lived...” Giovanni dropped his head. “I would never know them.”
“You don’t know that for sure. I don’t believe in fate and destiny, but I think, sometimes, when people, good people like your parents, suffer, they learn to appreciate everything that they have while they have it. I think your parents love you even more because of their losses.” I smiled sweetly. “You’re a momma’s boy. Nothing’s gonna ever change that.”
Giovanni grinned. Then, his smile slowly faded. He studied me and said, “You are a good person too, and you suffer more than anyone I know before.”
I shrugged. “The sad thing is there are millions who’ve had it worse. Thanks for not treating me like a charity case. I really needed a friend now. I know I wouldn’t have made it through this week without you guys and Selena.”
I stared at the car-lined street in the near distance when Giovanni hugged me unexpectedly and rested his cheek on top of my head. I patted his back awkwardly and moved away.
“Would you walk me inside just in case?”
He swept his gaze up the building’s facade. “What if your father is there? What will we do?”
I shrugged. “Run and call the cops.”
Fear paralyzed his eyes at the thought.
“You don’t have to walk me to the door. I–I can just call Selena to meet me here in the lobby.”
He stopped my hand from typing the message on my phone. “I will go with you.”
“No. You’ve already done so much for me. Selena won’t mind.”
He took hold of my hand and led me inside like a lost child.
I CLOSED THE DOOR SOFTLY to avoid disturbing the peace within the apartment. Selena had left her vintage microphone inspired lamp on in the living room. Leaving my bookbag inside of my room, I tiptoed to Selena’s office, following the sound of Mom’s snoring, and peeked inside, using the light from my phone’s screen to see. The peach and turquoise floral comforter twisted around Mom’s curvy frame. She slept with her pretty face smushed against an exposed corner of the futon.
“What are you doing?” Selena whispered, scaring me so badly I almost peed myself.
I closed the door gently and tiptoed to my room with her on my heels.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I said, doing my pee-pee dance and switching my shoes for comfy slippers.
Selena chuckled quietly. “Why? You gonna use your Kung Fu on me?”
I scrunched up my face at her corny joke and gathered a change of clothes for a shower.
“Have you talked to her today?”
“Not since you left,” Selena said. “She’s been snoring away all day and only got up twice—once to pee and once to get something to drink.”
“Did you get to sleep too?”
“Yeah, but now I’m gonna be up all night.” Selena folded her arms. “So, tell me what happened at school.”
“Let me pee first, and I’ll tell you everything.”
Selena made herself comfortable on my bed and awaited my swift return.
“JUBILEE.” MOM SANG my name early Friday morning.
I uncovered my head and grunted.
She watched me from the hallway, already dressed in her scrubs. “Lucy called. She wants to know what you have in mind for food on Saturday. She said to think about it and let her know.”
I nodded and burrowed under my blankets again, thankful that Mom was normal today. I couldn’t handle another day like yesterday, especially when I was still recovering.
Her footsteps retreated down the short hallway.
“Can I help you?” Mom said to someone in the living room.
“Hi. My name is Giovanni Vitali. Joy and I walk to the bus together.”
“Crap! Crap! Crap!” I stumbled out of bed, jerked the silk scarf off my head, and dressed for the day.
“Joy,” Mom called. “Joy!”
I burst through the door of my room. “Hey, Giovanni. I’m still getting ready. I, uh, need a few minutes.”
He grinned sheepishly and shifted from side to side. Mom wasted none of her renewed energy disguising her dismay at my secret friend’s unexpected arrival.
Why’d he have to come so early?
I brushed my teeth and splashed cold water onto my eyes to de-puff them. All I could think of was the torture poor Giovanni was enduring in the living room. I picked out my curls quickly, recoiled the frizzy strands with conditioning cream, and skipped making up my face altogether. I had to get Giovanni out of here before Mom relapsed into a zombie in front of him.
She stood with her back to the counter, more interested in keeping a careful eye on his every move than drinking her coffee. So much for her good mood!
I retrieved my bookbag from the hallway closet—Giovanni’s cue that the end to his torment was in sight. He hopped from the sofa and inched his way to the door with uncertain strides until I finished rushing back and forth to my room for my phone and a clean change of gym clothes.
I SPEED-WALKED TO THE elevator. Giovanni hurried to keep up.
“Joy, why are you moving so fast today?”
I slapped the button three more times like it would make the elevator come sooner. “Because I didn’t want my mom to see you. But now it’s too late.”
“Why not?”
I nibbled my bottom lip and watched the numbers over the doors change with every cleared floor on its ascent. “‘Cause she’s weird, and I didn’t want her to know about you.”
The doors parted. We stepped inside, and I found myself tapping the buttons impatiently again.
“But last night you said that weird is normal.”
“When it’s your family, it is. Not when it’s mine.” I crossed my arms and sighed.
Giovanni frowned in confusion.
“How is your mom today?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
Giovanni sighed. “Not good. She was calm when I got home,...until the phone rang again. I heard a little of what the man said to her, but then she started to cry again.”
“What did he say?”
We exited the elevator and ambled casually toward the lobby door.
“He said: Time is running out. That is all.” Giovanni rolled a patch of hair between his fingers.
“Does your dad know about it?”
“He did not understand when I asked him.”
“This was on your house phone?”
Giovanni nodded.
“I’d wait for your mom to calm down and ask her about it,” I suggested, recalling how openly he spoke with his parents. “I didn’t think people used house phones anymore. We used to when I was younger, but only ‘cause when the power got cut off, we couldn’t recharge our phones, so, at least we had a way to call for help.”
“My pa uses it to talk to my nonnos in Italy. They do not use smartphones. We also have a security system.”
A man with a navy ball cap passed us at the crosswalk, reminding me of my close encounter with Dad yesterday. I dug through my bag for the wooden skewer I’d stolen from culinary and slipped it up my sleeve.
Giovanni raised a questioning brow. “What will you do with that?”
“My Dad is still out here, remember?”
“You are sure that man you saw was him?”
I squinted at Giovanni as we joined a scattered group of people waiting for their buses. “I’ve lived most of my life with the man. I can always pick him out of a crowd, no matter how long it’s been.”
WE MADE IT TO SCHOOL unscathed and undisturbed by my father. Then again, the day had barely begun.
Gray clouds circled overhead and dropped light rain—a lesson to the majority of us wishing we’d brought umbrellas while we waited for the line at the school’s entrance to move along.
“I thought you said Giovanni was gay,” a girl behind me said to her friend.
“That’s what I heard,” replied her friend.
Giovanni turned around to show me a funny Tiktok, ignorant to the speculation going on behind him.
“I don’t get why he likes her. She ain’t even that pretty,” the second girl continued. “And I still can’t believe she tried to fight Imani the other day.”
“Wasn’t that the same day she fought that boy?” the first girl asked.
“Yo. I forgot about that. She looks like a psycho.”
Me? A psycho? What did they know?
I could’ve educated them. But I decided my breath was too precious to waste on irrelevant people.
During culinary, Crystal approached me about the same rumors.
“So...” She grinned and stared me down.
“What? Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”
“Everyone’s talkin’ ‘bout you and Giovanni. You guys got together quick!”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re not together.”
Imani raced through the door before the final bell rang.
“Just in time,” Mr. Clement said, closing the door after her.
She weaved around the metal table on giraffe legs and glided onto her stool.
I wrote a note asking if she was responsible for the annoying speculation about Giovanni and me and slid it to her. Returning the folded paper after reading it, she grinned and whispered, “It wasn’t me.”
I slumped on my seat, wishing for the good old days when most people would have hardly glanced at me.
“Is she gonna pass out again?” Mason disrupted Mr. Clement in the middle of taking attendance.
Mason’s wide, round eyes watched me expectantly, unmoved by my death stare.
Crystal leaned over. “Mason likes you, by the way.”
“Yeah. Okay,” I said, pursing my lips at her and wishing all of the lingering stares would subside already.
“It’s true,” she said. “I heard him telling his little friend over there that the next time you faint, he’s gonna catch you and then kiss you.” She shook my arm and giggled. “Look. He can’t take his eyes off you.”
I shrugged her off.
“I know what you should do,” she said with an excited grin. “Since you and Giovanni are just friends, you should give Mason a shot. He’s kinda cute...if you squint and look at him sideways. Go ahead. Try it.”
I lowered my head, hoping she’d quit talking.
“He’s looking at you again. Aww. He’s waiting for you to turn around. Come on, Joy. Give the little guy a smile.”
Mr. Clement cleared his throat. Crystal burst out laughing. “Maybe you should wait till you have your hair net on. I think he likes you better with it.”
“What is wrong with you today?” I asked, trying not to laugh at her giddy chipmunk sounds.
The silly girl could not get a hold of herself.
“I swear. Your freckles bloomed like baby roses all over your face,” she continued. “So, that’s how you blush.” She watched me in pretend wonder and cracked up again.
“I’m not blushing. Would you shut up?” I said, bouncing my gaze between her and Mr. Clement on his way over to us.
He zeroed in on me. “Miss Luminieé, is there something you wish to share with the rest of the class?” he asked sternly.
“No.” My voice cracked, triggering Crystal’s inner chipmunk all over again. I rolled my eyes and pressed my lips together to suppress my smile.
Tears dampened her eyes. Turning her maraschino cherry face toward Mr. Clement, she made a weird squeaky sound, unable to form the words. The whole class, including Mr. Clement, erupted.
I slouched on my stool, relieved that Crystal had swung the spotlight from off of me and onto herself. After my horrible day yesterday, I couldn’t have been more grateful for a break from the attention.