The Wonder of Us Read online

  She immediately texted back: i hope you stay in germany.

  I threw my phone across my bedroom, where it hit the wall, the screen cracking. I’ve been carrying around that visible crack ever since.

  After that terrible text, we didn’t have any form of communication for three weeks. It was the longest I’d ever gone without talking to her. Finally, I express-mailed her the package for our trip and waited.

  A week later, she called to say she would meet me in Florence the last week of June. “Thanks for the drawing,” she added, her voice quiet, hard to read. “It’s hanging on my board.” Along with the letter and a printout of her ticket, I’d sent a picture I sketched of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, her favorite wonder, only I’d drawn it looming over our own river back in Yuba Ridge. I pictured her tacking it to the layers of pictures and concert ticket stubs and other paraphernalia Abby keeps on an enormous, messy bulletin board in her room.

  We texted off and on again since, but nothing real. Just trip stuff. What to pack. What the weather might be like in Florence. Little pebbles to rebuild the crumbled bridge between us.

  Now Abby watches the modern buildings move past us. “This isn’t how I imagined Florence.”

  “Just wait.”

  Soon, the scenery shifts from the more modern outskirts to the historic center of the city, the buildings going back in time, turning into towers and arches and wide stone, the colors muted with sepia tones. Abby perks up, sitting forward, practically pressing her nose flat to the glass. Abby’s history addiction spans much wider than Wikipedia and history tidbits. Sitting here, I can sense her excitement for the history passing by us, but I feel something else there, too, the faint trace of the invisible ribbon that has always connected us. I can’t help but smile. This is exactly what we need. This will fix us.

  The taxi driver stops at the corner of Via del Proconsolo and Via del Corso. “We’re going to the Albergo Firenze,” I tell him, frowning.

  “You walk from here.” He motions vaguely in the direction of the hotel. “Is close.”

  We step out onto the buzzing street corner, hauling Abby’s duffel and backpack out with us. I’d checked in earlier and it’s not that close, our hotel. As we start walking, a group of young Italian guys wave to us, offering to help carry our bags, but I wave them off: “No grazie.” They mime being seriously wounded by our rejection. Abby’s eyes go wide at their exaggerated pouts, and I laugh. “Get used to it.”

  We trudge through the hot sun. I turn to point out the hotel awning up ahead, but Abby’s fallen behind, kneeling next to a scruffy beige dog, scratching him affectionately behind his fanlike ears. His owner, an old man in trousers, a matching vest, and long-sleeved white shirt beams down at them. She sees me waiting, gives the dog a final scratch, and catches up. “Cute dog.”

  “You’re here ten minutes and you find a dog to cuddle.”

  “They find me.”

  “Of course.” I tug her toward the awning. Almost there.

  At the hotel entrance, she pauses, turning to me. “I can’t believe this, Riya. I can’t believe we’re in Italy. I will never be able to thank your grandma enough.” She looks more stunned than happy.

  “You can thank her by loving it here, by seeing the sights and shopping and eating great food, okay?” I usher her through the front door. “Come on. This hotel is next to the Torre dei Donati, where Dante’s wife was born. Just one of the soon-to-be-many fabulous history tidbits you will learn on this trip.”

  My promise draws a smile to Abby’s face, even if it looks like a ghost there.

  “Riya, slow down. It’s too hot to walk this fast.” The whine in my voice seems directly linked to the amount of sweat running down my back. “Are we in a hurry?”

  Riya looks distracted, stops short, and then pulls me across the street, barely missing a shirtless man on a Vespa. “We’re almost at the café.”

  I catch a quick flash of a dramatic-looking arch up ahead, but then we duck down a side street and it’s gone. “It doesn’t seem very Italian. All this hurrying,” I grumble, glad I changed into the yellow sundress of Kate’s she’d told me to take because I’d “live in it” while I was in Italy. Kate spent a month in Rome after her sophomore year of college so I guess she knows.

  “Neel is a little fussy about punctuality.”

  “Neel?” I stop, grabbing Riya’s elbow. “Wait, your cousin Neel? British Neel? Percy?”

  Riya chews her lip, her liquid eyes darting to the side. “Okay, so it’s not going to be just us on this trip.”

  I squint at her, my eyes feeling almost sticky with exhaustion. “Right, your grandma is going to be with us.”

  “Not exactly.”

  She tugs me into a café, its windows a rainbow of stained glass. We blink into the dim light inside, Riya searching the room until she spots her cousin. Riya has long described Neel as an Indian Percy Weasley, that bossy redhead from the Harry Potter series. Even though Riya has spent time with Neel in London and India, he’s never been to California, so I’ve never met him. In my mind he’s drawn from Riya’s stories about her know-it-all cousin and the pictures of the skinny, sullen kid in glasses always toting a show-offy leather-bound book or cricket bat or some other prop you might see on a PBS period drama. Now Riya waves to a cute, preppy guy across the café. “Wait,” I whisper. “That’s Neel?”

  “Ugh, I’ll explain later.”

  “Hello, ladies,” he says when we arrive at his table in the back corner. “How nice of you to finally make it.”

  “We’re fashionably late.” Riya smiles in an overly sweet way and settles into a chair next to him.

  “I ordered,” he says, snapping a napkin into his lap.

  “For all of us?”

  “Of course not.”

  Riya rolls her eyes. “Neel, this is Abby. Abby, Neel Sharma.”

  Flashing white, even teeth, he leans across the table to shake my hand (who does that?) and says, “A pleasure,” like he’s forty instead of nineteen.

  I mumble something sleep-deprived and unintelligible as Riya gets the waiter’s attention and orders something for the two of us. I sink into my chair, the soft light and savory smells infusing the air adding to the dizzy sensation of needing sleep. Maybe I can just nap under the table until the food comes. I reach for some bread, hoping that chewing might keep me awake.

  “So, I thought we’d set up some ground rules for the trip,” Neel says crisply, scooting his chair back and folding his hands in his lap. He’s wearing slim pants and loafers and doesn’t seem warm at all, even as I can feel sweat beading on my upper lip.

  Riya grimaces. “No way, that’s not how this works. It’s my grand tour and you’re not the cruise director.”

  This wakes me up. “Your what?”

  “My grand tour,” she says mysteriously. Then she narrows her eyes at Neel. “A gift from Nani to me as an early birthday present. You had yours already.”

  “Except I had to actually turn eighteen to get mine,” Neel points out.

  My sleep-deprived brain tries to catch up. “Wait, where is your grandma? I thought she was taking us?” A waiter sets what looks like half a pan of lasagna in front of Neel.

  He picks up his fork. “Our grandmother is traveling in Scotland for a month,” Neel explains. “So I have the honor of being your tour guide for this trip.”

  Riya shakes her head. “Not guide. Chaperone. That’s it. No guiding, no telling us a schedule, no dictating the restaurants or sights we choose. You follow us around and make sure no one kills us. That is all.”

  “So I’m kind of like Batman.” Neel winks at me over his lasagna, and I can’t help but smile back. Riya has called him many things over the years. She left out charming.

  Only Riya doesn’t seem to find him charming. “You are nothing like Batman. You are, at best, Batman’s butler guy. What’s his name?”

  “Alfred,” Neel and I say in unison, and he grins at me.

  Riya glances between us. “Don
’t encourage him,” she tells me.

  Neel raises his glass of red wine at me. “Cheers.”

  “No cheers.” Riya waves off his glass. “Are you perfectly clear on your job description?”

  Neel sets down his glass and looks at me. “You’ll excuse my cousin for being rude. She’s never gotten over my win at the sack race at my sister’s wedding five years ago.”

  Riya makes room for the waiter to set down a plate of steaming pasta. She points her fork at Neel. “Because you cheated?”

  “Did you cheat?” I ask Neel. “Tell the truth.”

  “I most certainly did not.”

  Riya groans and digs violently into her pasta. I take a bite of mine and am grateful for the delicious burst of flavor because I’m trying to ignore the buzz in my stomach that started when Neel first smiled at me and hasn’t gone away since.

  After dinner, we walk to the Arno, the lights wriggling across the night water of the river, and I try to stay awake, to take in the hum of this new city pulsing around me. When I first hear the distant ping of bells, I think my ears must be ringing. Some sort of by-product from the jet lag. But then the jingling intensifies behind me, and I have a flash of Santa bearing down behind me in his sleigh.

  It’s not Santa.

  I step aside to allow a jangling gaggle of people clad in masks and vibrant costumes to hurry by us. “What the—”

  Her eyes bright, Riya watches them shuffle down the street. She grins at me. “You should see your face right now.”

  “Did I just dream that?”

  “No. That was real. Probably commedia dell’arte actors. Off to do a show in a square somewhere. We can try to find them later if you want.”

  “Commedia dell—what?” I peer at the space where they disappeared down a side street, their ringing growing faint before dissipating entirely.

  “It’s an old form of Italian theater,” Riya says. “With stock characters. They improv a loose script based on the reactions of their audience.”

  I squint at her. “Why do you know that?”

  “Who wants gelato?” Neel cuts in, motioning to a small gelateria nearby.

  A few minutes later, we stand at the glass case, staring at the dozens of bright rectangular mounds of gelato. The colors swirl in front of me, my tired eyes trying to decipher the names. Fragola. Cocco. Stracciatella. Amarena.

  I frown into the case. “I’m not sure I can eat anything else after that dinner.”

  But I’m wrong.

  We find a bench where we can sit and see the water. From my first bite, I know that I have found love in Italy. And its name is gelato.

  “What is in this? This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire life,” I say, between mouthfuls of my chocolate-and-cream mix.

  Riya grins. “Try the coconut.” She holds out her cone, and I take a lick. Neel makes a face from where he stands a few feet away. “What?” she asks him.

  He takes a careful bite of his hazelnut. “Nothing.”

  “You are such a germophobe.” Riya tries mine and laughs at Neel’s grimace. “Seriously, it bothers you?”

  He shakes his head, clearly disgusted. “All very hygienic, I’m sure.”

  “She’s like my sister.” Riya catches a drip before it lands on my dress.

  “Glad I stand firmly in the cousin position, then.”

  Riya jumps up and pretends to descend on his cone. “Aw, come on, Neel, let me try yours.”

  We both giggle at his discomfort as he turns in circles, attempting to keep it away from her. “Just stop.” He holds it up over his head. Changes hands. “Stop it, Riya.”

  “Aw, come on.” Riya takes more swipes at it. “It looks yummy. Let me try it.”

  “Fine, try it.” And before she can react, he has planted it straight into her face. He looks almost as shocked as she does. When he pulls it back, her nose and mouth are covered with sticky cream, her mouth a wide O of disbelief.

  Her eyes narrow to slits. “You did not just do that.”

  “You wanted to try it.” He glances at me. “Right?”

  Waving him off, I say, “I’m not getting involved.” Then I add, “But it doesn’t seem like a very chaperone-y thing to do. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  He takes in Riya’s livid face, her coiled body ready to spring, but he’s too quick; he manages to dodge her just in time as she hurls herself at him, and they take off down the sidewalk, Riya chasing him with her own cone poised and ready.

  He moves surprisingly fast for a guy in loafers.

  It’s after ten when I half carry Abby back to the hotel so she can get some sleep. When we finally reach the Via del Corso, she’s moving like an extra from a zombie movie, nearly colliding with other people or a streetlamp, tripping over her own feet, her glasses askew. I resist the urge to laugh. We must be quite the pair: Zombie Girl and Gelato Face.

  Upstairs, I wash off the remaining sticky mess. We brush our teeth and change into pajamas. Abby falls into the narrow bed near the bathroom. I watch her for a minute, her breathing evening out into a steady rhythm. Abby has slept like this for as long as I can remember, on her side in a curl like a comma. I pull the duvet over her, envying how quickly she’s out. No way I’m sleeping before midnight tonight. Stupid Neel and his you wanted to try it, Riya. Tour guide. More like tour dictator. The fascist kind. Every muscle in my body is a clenched fist. Even worse, I missed Neel when I chucked my cone at him before. That’s a miss and a loss of delicious gelato. Double fail. On the walk back, I texted my dad to complain and he said not to let Neel get to me. Easier texted than actually done. Trying to relax, I pull a wooden chair next to the open window as quietly as possible. Outside, warm lights dot the rows of buildings along the Via del Corso and snippets of conversation float up through the air. Italian. French. A man bellows in German, was geht, which I recognize as what’s up? I’ve learned a few things this year.

  Like, a year can be terribly long and aggressively quick at the same time.

  When we left for Berlin in late August, Abby’s dad, Geoff, had driven us to the airport in Sacramento. We’d shipped most of our things ahead of us, so we only had a few carry-on bags. Abby and I stood hugging on the sidewalk by the passenger drop-off, the Sacramento air hot around us. At the time we promised to check in every day, and for the first month or so, we did. She kept me updated on school and work and, sometimes, things happening with kids we knew at Yuba Ridge High. I texted pictures of the intense new city I’d landed in: of the vibrant, ubiquitous graffiti; of massive buildings where modern new ones were built towering over historic ones; of food vendors selling fresh pretzels and currywurst; of the dark swirl of the Spree River at night.

  Then it stopped being every day. It would be every two or three days. It would be once a week. At first, we tried to Skype at least twice a week. Then it was once. We sent gifts at Christmas. On New Year’s Eve, we’d Skyped at midnight, both for my New Year’s Eve and then again for hers. But a few days later, she called to tell me about her parents, her voice like a shadow. My family was sitting at our table in the Berlin apartment, the sky outside like steel in the winter light. Mom was slicing a loaf of sweet bread Dad had bought from a nearby bakery. As she listened to my end of the conversation, her brow knitted in concern, and she set down the knife. “What?” she mouthed. I held the phone against my chest. “Abby’s parents are splitting up.”

  Now Abby’s phone beeps, glowing on the floor next to her bed. A picture of her German shepherd, Henry, fills the screen. I tiptoe over to see who sent the text. It’s her dad wanting to know how things are going.

  I text: geoff, it’s riya. abby’s crashed out.

  I take a picture of her and send it to him.

  He texts back: Sleep is good! Just wondered about your first day in Florence?

  Me: fabulous. pasta. gelato. a walk by the arno.

  Geoff: Rough life.

  Me: sure is.

  Geoff: Yuba Ridge misses you, kid.

&nb
sp; I pause at this, opting for a smiling heart-eyed face and an off to bed! text. A ribbon of guilt moves through me at what an honest reply would have been.

  Because I don’t really miss Yuba Ridge.

  I set Abby’s phone back down and breathe in the warm Italian night—just not too deeply since the Florence air seems to smell slightly like pee. Which I guess is like most cities in the summer. Still, the air also has something sweet in it. Something like a promise. From the moment Nani offered this trip, I instantly suggested we start in Florence, with its buttery light and gelato and the entire city bursting with shopping and beauty and something new around every twisting street. When I came with my parents last fall, it struck me as a city I would want to return to time after time in my life, with its magical ability to feel both brand-new and familiar. Its dreamy hold is the perfect place to spend the first few days of our trip while Abby shakes her jet lag. She doesn’t know it yet, but in the next two and a half weeks, we’ll tour six cities, exploring the nightlife and history and art and food across the constellation of places I’ve mapped out for us.

  Now it’s my phone buzzing with a text, and I hurry to grab it from the dresser.

  Neel: Uffizi tomorrow morning.

  I send back: you’re not in charge!

  Neel: I booked us a tour. You can thank me later.

  Me: turning my phone off!

  Too bad I can’t turn off the sour twist in my stomach when I think about having to share this trip with Neel. When Mom told me he’d be coming along as our chaperone, I’d begged for her or Dad to come instead, but Nani had already asked Neel, and Mom insisted we’d have more fun with him along. “No one has ever had more fun with Neel along,” I said, sulking, silently pleased at the belly laugh I elicited from Dad in the next room. He knows Neel is worse than having a grown-up with us. Which is probably part of their evil plan.

  As Abby snores in her thin, even rhythm, my theatrical thoughts send a second, smaller flicker of guilt through me. There is no evil plan. Just Nani sending me and my best friend on a fabulous trip. And I’m sitting here like an ingrate thinking murderous thoughts about my annoying cousin. So what if he has to come as part of the deal? We’ll have an incredible time—a grand time on our grand tour. How many people get this kind of opportunity? Not many. I sit up straighter in the chair. Nothing will ruin it, especially not Neel and all his Neel-ness. I won’t let him.