Archive of Our Own

Morning

You don’t wake up to any ringing alarm, nor do you to the early bird’s song. It’s the morning light, the sun barely crested over the mountain’s peak, filtering in through your window shades that causes you to stir.

The old mattress whines beneath you as you groan and turn over. You had hoped that some of your hair would fall over your eyes and provide some shade, but your bonnet, a gift from your mother for your fifteenth, keeps them tucked neatly away. You release another groan as you sit up, knowing it’s no use.

You hiss at the stale, cold air that greets you, then move on. You climb down the ladder of your bunk bed, fixing your nightgown off of the last rung, and kick on your slippers before exiting for the bathroom.

The white light blinds you. Then, blinking and shielding your eyes, you peer at yourself in the mirror.

You look like a jellyfish, in your brother’s voice.

You take off the bonnet and stuff it away, awake enough for agitation.

Minutes later, your business done, you return to your bedroom for clothes. It’s an important day today, so you must wear something nice. You think of the yellow dress your father, already awake and cooking from what your nose can detect, gifted you for your fourteenth, but likely not. You’ve heard salt water does awful things to the fabric.

You move to sit on the bottom bunk but stop yourself.

He’s still asleep?

You scrutinize him. His chest barely rises and falls beneath the blankets, his eyes completely closed but his eyebrows pulled tightly together. His lips are slightly parted, lax, but you can see his teeth grind, locked into place. His knuckles turn white with the pillowsheet’s wrinkles.

You rest a hand on his shoulder, and that’s all it takes.

His eyes tear open like wounds, jade and glassy and nervous. In a second, he’s up and gulping for air like a drowning sailor. You cry an apology as you stumble backward, throwing your hands up in defense. His nervous eyes lock on your hands, trail up to your face, to your own eyes, and the whites of his knuckles subside. 

“Wha’s it? Wha’d you want?” His voice comes out groggy and hoarse like a man who hasn’t had a drop of water in days, his words slurring together like a drunk man as he pulls himself up. He rubs the crust out of his eyes and doesn’t make an effort to look at you.

You pat his shoulder, chiming in sing-song. “Chi dorme non piglia pesci, Alberto. Gotta get up.”

He rises -- you wince at the stench that assaults your nose -- and kicks on his house shoes that he used to despise with a vigorous passion. It’s an odd day, the 29th of August, so you get dressed in the bathroom, he in the bedroom. You walk out, still pulling on your cobalt fisherman’s hat, in a simple white blouse, bowed in the front bottom, and muted green shorts. 

You see him next in the kitchen working the coffeemaker for two cups of espresso, already clad in his lifeguarding garb. For some reason, you partially expected him to still be in his plaid pajamas, and you open your mouth to make a quip about caffeine and bouncing off the walls, but then he sets one of the cups at your placemat and takes the other to his. 

You move to your seat and find a saucer of biscuits already made exactly how you like them with a handful of strawberries as well. You don’t thank him, but you do smile and give your father a happy “Buongiorno.” He gruffs in response from behind his newspaper, and it’s enough for you. Looking for conversation, you turn back to your brother, remembering how he had woken up -- wide-eyed, terrified, looking guilty and run-through. You smile like the Cheshire cat as you question, “So…what were you dreaming about?”

His face scrunches like you knew it would, leaning back in his chair to feign an immodest gratification. You would have believed it, as anyone else would have, had they not noticed the subtle way his muscles drew slightly more taut beneath his skin and fat. “Nothin’,” he chews his words, cheeks as filled as a chipmunk’s. He glances over at you and sees the hard flicker of disbelief in your eyes. He revises his answer. “Nothin’ you’re interested in.”

“Boy stuff?” Your cheeky smile grows.

His eyes dart, half-lidded, to you, but he doesn’t say anything.

You cradle your mug of espresso on your lips, soaking in the warmth of the cup. “Boy stuff,” you confirm in a whisper and take a sip. Then, with eyes lighting, “A boy stuff?”

His heel digs into your calf beneath the table. 

“Ow! Hey!” you complain, returning the gesture so hard that your chair squeaks an inch closer to your father. 

Your father gruffs again, but it’s a different noise than the one he gave before. This one is deeper and rough like a spluttering car engine. It makes your ears, both yours and your brother’s, tint with a gentle burn. His is much less visible than yours, and yours is hidden by your hair, far longer now than it has been for quite some time. You’re growing it out.

“He kicked me first,” you argue, trying to lessen the playful mischief in your voice for something more annoyed.

“Wouldn’t have kicked you if you weren’t being so nosy,” Alberto said just before drowning his voice in his coffee.

“You suck.”

You brace yourself for a retort, another parry, but it doesn’t come. Instead, his coyness wavers. You see the corners of his mouth relax in unrhythmic, minuscule increments. He holds the cup to his lips far longer than need be, his eyes falling into a gentle, almost invisible, haze. You sit up straighter, feeling the shallow pool of guilt in your stomach, but you don’t let him know in any real way that you noticed. He’d be upset -- more upset -- if you did.

Breakfast continues as it does most days, quiet and comfortable. The only noise is the soft clinking of plates, the birds chirping outside the window, or your father flipping a page in the news. Sometimes there will be talk, deciding what adventures to go on, divvying chores, and light reminders of yesterday’s events, but today there is none of that. You already know exactly how today is going to go and how today is going to end.

But first, you and your brother work alongside each other at the sink. You dry, he scrubs, and your father opens up the pescheria on the floor below. You don’t get nauseous at his scales anymore, and he asks to accompany you on your deliveries.

“Sure,” you respond, running a towel through a glass. “Why?”

He just shrugs. “Might make it go faster.”

“Doesn’t matter if we go faster or not. We’re still not meeting Luca until the race,” you reason, drawing the other boy’s name into a teasing pitch. This time the red seeping into his ears is much clearer. “How did your date go, by the way?” You slide another glass into the upper cabinet, but he instantly hands you another to replace it.

“Oh, it was awesome,” he says, scrubbing a dish with more vigor than before. “The movie was boring as hell except for the monkeys beating the living daylights out of each other, but he enjoyed it a lot.” He nodded to emphasize the truthfulness of his words. “I couldn’t even get him to kiss me or anything, cause he was just so busy losing his shit over all the sci-fi tech stuff.”

You chuckle. “Sounds like Luca.” You toss his words over in your mind like mixing pasta and vegetables. “But you…didn’t like the movie?” you question.

He shrugs. “It’s just not my thing.”

“Ri-i-ight,” you drawl out the word in a deflated tone. “Because your thing is those god-awful operettas and,” you fake a gag, bending over and gripping your stomach with your hand as the other covers your mouth, “Romance Dramas.” You sigh with equal theatrics. “You wouldn’t know a good movie if it hit you in the face.”

“Or maybe you just don’t get it,” he retorts with an irksome, haughty shrug. “Just have a love life too dull and uneventful to really…” he circumducts his free hand, the light from the window bouncing off of his reflective scales as if searching for the right word. “Understand,” he finishes.

You roll your eyes and move in your defense, “Per favore. I get why people like them, I just find it kind of repetitive and lowbrow. I don’t see what’s so freaking amazing about romance when ninety-nine percent of it is all just the same thing, recycled and rehashed over and over again.”

Alberto is quiet for a moment as if truly taking your words into consideration. In the silence, the sink still runs, and you still towel off what’s passed to you and sort it away, but you take a minute to consider them as well. You wonder if you were too hard on him and his interests, but you aren’t quite sure how to backtrack from here. It’s weird, how often the two of you banter. You don’t do much of that with Luca, but maybe that’s because you’re not siblings. Mostly, if you’re slinging insults with him in the vicinity, it’s about a third party. Whenever you’re speaking about each other, it’s usually an anecdote or something personal. Something neither one of you would think to share with anyone else.

Alberto doesn’t do that -- neither one.

He doesn’t do personal, and he doesn’t do anecdotes. If he brings something up from his past, it’s only ever from an allotted time: June, two years ago, to the Present day. Everything beyond is purposefully shadowed.

When your father first told you that Alberto had been adopted into your family, you were elated. You had been lonely for most of your childhood, seeing the other Portorossan children with their brothers and sisters and longing for something like that. A permanent friend. Someone always there to talk and play, someone who couldn’t ever decide that they’d had enough and leave on a whim like you’ve grown accustomed to. Someone to tell all of your secrets and hold theirs in return. But this isn’t that.

You’ve played often. You’ve talked for endless hours. You’ve told him all of your secrets, and shown him all your stories and all your toys and all your ambitions, but he hasn’t shown you any of his. To the public, he’s charming, outgoing, friendly, and talkative. To the public, he seems like an open book, but he’s more bolted, guarded, and locked up than anyone else you know. You likely know more about Ciccio’s childhood than you know about his, and it angers you. 

You don’t understand what his deal is, and your best guess is probably wrong.

He snorts and shrugs again. “I guess,” he says, finally, but it’s forced. He takes a deep inhale in, and then, whilst handing you a fork, asks, “Anyway, how did your date go?”

You buck your head backward, thoughts scrambled, nose scrunching. “I never went on any date.”

A conman’s grin pierces across his face. He wags his finger as his head bobs up and down.

You scoff and shove him away. He laughs and returns his focus to his work, but you don’t. You watch him, trying to think of something else, some witty jab, but you’ve never been a wordsmith. That’s more of Luca’s thing. So instead of snagging a bit of cruel humor or an irking memory, you catch something else. Something unexpected: your aloof brother tensing up. The faintest grind of gears behind his eyes. He keeps his smile, but it wavers, and you can see his shoulders almost square as if carrying something heavy. The shadow over his eyes darkens, and his nose twitches like he’s about to sneeze.

Turning off the faucet, he quickly turns to you and, a bit louder than necessary, offers, “You know, I could probably get you a girlfriend if you want. I’m pretty good friends with most of the girls here and I’m sure that--”

You stop him dead in his tracks. “Absolutely not,” you state like a judge giving a verdict, punctuating your words with a quick snap of the cabinet door. 

With that, the conversation in the kitchen promptly comes to an end. He cleans off the scales from his hands on his shirt, and you tuck the towel away. 

In the bedroom, you find him rummaging through your nightstand, pushing over clipped letters and knickknacks in a lazy search. 

“Whatcha looking for?” you question, enlightened. You plop on the bed beside your old cat, loafed. He purrs contentedly as you languidly stroke his white fur.

“My whistle,” he says, not passing a glance.

“It’s in the bathroom,” you inform. He thanks you and exits while you buckle your sandals.

A boom from outside.

But before you can look out to see what it is, Alberto returns, scurrying to the window. “Oh, wow!” he gasps, heaving it up to lean outside.

“What is it? What happened?” you call, scrambling to finish the leather loop.

“The whole banner-and-pillars-thing fell over,” he breathes, running a hand through his tight curls. “Surprised it didn’t hit anyone.” A pause. “Caspita, that’s a huge crowd.” Invigorated by his words, you get up and move to the window. You don’t have to shove or nudge for him to make room for you, he does it without saying. 

“Santa Mozzarella!” you exclaim. “That is a lot!” Your mouth hangs ajar at the sheer number of people that have gathered. You see a few locals, the butcher and the barber work together to heave up the signpost with their sons. The florist and the priest set the table full of plates and forks. The nonnas gossip and the fisherman dangle their legs over the docks sewing up their nets, because the waters are to be completely clear today. But the majority of people are those that you don’t recognize. People from the neighboring villages of Cinque Terre, and a good handful even beyond that.

Your brother puffs. “Uff. I am not excited to get into that mess. Good for business, though.” He shakes his head and leaves you at the window. When you don’t follow, he questions, “You coming?”

You remove yourself from the window, almost knocking the back of your head on the glass.  “Be right there!” you call, closing the window and shutters. When you stand and turn, you prepare yourself to dash but halt. He had not left. He had been waiting for you.

You walk over to him. His eyes dodge you, and he leans away from the door, rounding shoulders and head tipping back before shaking himself forward. You hear him breathe through his nose as you step into the hall. The back of his hand brushes against yours, and he acts like it’s unintentional, but you know better.

You follow him out through the kitchen and down to the pescheria. Through the grease-stained windows, you see your father propping open the door with a stopper and readjusting the carts. Your brother goes to his post behind the counter, fiddling with your father’s radio. He turns it on, and it sings out, “Babbo, pietà, pietà!” until he — quite hastily — changes it over to a pop station.

You toss him a questioning glance; he makes up some excuse that suffices for now. You go out and your father hands you the list of deliveries. Alberto helps load the cart in the side yard as you fix the radio to the bike. You get situated on the seat, Alberto opens the gate for you, and both of you lead forward into the piazza. 

The crowd is too loud to make small talk, washing out conversation like salt in the sea, so you don’t chat as you go from door to door. If it’s an adult, they scrutinize your brother with a hint of wariness. He steps back and lets you take the lead. If it’s a kid, then you’re ignored in favor of your brother until an adult is retrieved. 

Over time, your load gets lighter and lighter. Peddling is easier, and the noise lessens but hovers at a level that still provides some covering, yet you still do not make any conversation. Your tire rolls over the brick, your brother walks beside you, and you do not say a word to each other until you pass by a group of kids.

You know each of them fairly well, having grown up in Portorosso until you were eight. They greet your brother before you, and he returns it with ease. You don’t pay much attention to the exchange, too caught up in the spectacle. You wonder how he does it. To have a whole conversation in seven seconds flat, and leave others smiling in his wake. You wonder if it’s something you can learn.

You sigh, but it’s not that you’re inconceivably lonely or ungrateful for your friendship with Luca and Alberto. Rather, it’s just that two isn’t a very large number. Plus, you’d like to have someone -- besides your father -- to go to when they escape to spend some solitary time together. 

You bike up to the next stop, answering the door. You rap your knuckle against the door twice before stepping away. In a moment, the door swings open, and, in a split second, you feel your gut sink like an anchor. You cannot raise your eye to look at her, darting it every which way instead of at her face, her brown eyes, her neatly cut bangs. “Here on delivery,” you say, throwing a thumb and a glance over your shoulder.

“Hold on, I’ll go get my mamma,” she says before closing the door.

You deflate like a balloon.

Your brother stands beside you with wild eyes and two fistfuls of tuna. “What was that?” And then, as if the metaphorical lightbulb hovering above his head clicked on, “Giulia! Do you like Beatrice?”

You silence him as the door opens again. The exchange of goods and soldi goes smoothly from there, but he’s back at it when the door closes again.

“You know she’s dating Marcello, right?”

“Stop!” you plead, almost losing your footing on the peddle. “I don’t like her like that. We just have history.”

Your brother quirks a brow. “And that history was…?”

You groan. “I used to be sorta friends with her, back when I was really little, and back before my mamma moved to Genova.” 

He backs off with a small “Oh.”

You hop back onto your bike and continue peddling. The air around you hangs thick and dense, Alberto even quieter than before. You chew the inside of your cheek, and you can see him avoiding eye contact, though you aren’t sure why. Disregarding the awkward silence, you both continue to make your way up the mountain. The tall, concrete houses bleeding out into the country, the alleyways widening, turning into streets, turning into patches of green, and neither one of you says a word.

You approach the farthest customer on the list, the transaction proceeds as normal and step away. But before you get back on your bike, Alberto pipes up. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that…what happened?”

You had forgotten your previous conversation, so you look back at him with a brow quirked and a small tug in your mouth. “With what?”

“With--” he hesitates, scratching nervously at the nape of his neck, readjusting his cap to fit better over his head. “With Massimo and your mom,” he winces. And, upon recognizing your slight surprise, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I mean, I can probably just ask him.” He shrugs.

You inhale, not having anticipated having this conversation today, and slightly wondering how he hadn’t heard about it from your father. “Well, it was mostly about monstri marini and career paths…My mamma wanted to quit her job, move to Genova, and become an artist, and papà wanted to stay a fisherman. They started fighting about that, but then I was born and it stopped for a while,” you inhale, “...until papà started trying to teach me to become a monstri marini hunter, like him.”

You cast a glance at Alberto, now leaning against the side of the bike, but he’s not looking at you. You follow his eye to the fishing boats on the water, then follow his hands to the faded scar on his upper arm. He squirms but manages to keep his face iron-locked in a detached stare. You feel your chest get a little tighter, so you inspect the chipping baby blue polish on your fingers to dissipate some of the tension. 

“My mamma thought it was lunacy -- she didn’t think you guys existed -- and, you know,” your voice drawls off. “Things happened.”

Alberto nods slowly. “Well, that sucks,” he coughs.

You snort, having expected something more poetic. Or a little less blunt, at least. “Yeah, but it’s alright,” you shrug, kicking up the dusty terrain. “It’s so much better this way, trust me.”

He nods again, more assured this time. “Yeah, I get it.” He swallows. “I get it.” The first time felt like a brush-off or friendly dismissal, the same intonation Luca gave to you when you had this conversation with him, but the second time was different. His voice drops in pitch and there’s more breath in his speech. There was weight to it, heavy as if it was laced with empathy instead of sympathy. As if he really did understand.

Which reminds you, “So, what happened with yours?”

You can almost hear the croak of the sudden frog in his throat.

Your eyes rush with blood, wishing that you were somehow able to gather up your words like objects and tuck them away, out of sight. “I mean, I know that you were, like, an orphan and everything -- obviously, otherwise you wouldn’t have been adopted.” You laugh. “But do you know who they were or is it, just, a total mystery--?”

In response, all your brother can give is a simple, “Er.” And then a sudden jerk, like he tripped on air or his own two feet.

Then, the rattling. The bike, slipping out from beneath him, starts moving, rolling down the hill.

Your brother gasps, “The fish!”

“Oh no!” you cry.

It takes a moment for either one of you to catch the bike -- running downhill is far more difficult than it seems, especially on this terrain and at this steepness. After wrestling it to a stop, and after collecting and dusting off the fish that had tumbled out of the bed, you both puff for air.

“What happened?”

“I think the kickstand came up,” he says, pointing.

“How?” You know it’s an old bike, but it can’t be that old. 

He makes a wholly unhelpful I-dunno noise in response.

You furrow your brow, guiding the bike in a U-turn so it’s facing the correct direction. Then, after hopping on and doing a double-check of the gears, you question, “...What were we talking about, again?”

He puts on fist on his hip and taps on finger finger on his chin, staring down at his feet. “Don’t remember.”

“Hmm…”

“Probably wasn’t that important, if neither one of us can remember,” he nods. Then, as he begins to walk back down the hill, “Come on. Massimo’s probably waiting on us to get back to the pescheria.”

You nod and begin peddling again. You pass by the Aragostas on your way down. They smile at you, but wave and say a buongiorno to your brother. He waves back at them, thanks one of them for fixing a tear in his shirt a while back, and continues walking.

“Weird question,” you announce, slowing your pace so he doesn’t have to walk as hard.

“Hit me,” he says, slowing his pace.

“Why don’t you call papà -- papà?”

“I do,” he combats, a scrunch in his nose.

“I’ve never seen you call him papà, though,” you retort.

“I just don’t do it all the time.” A pause. “Do you want me to call him papà?”

You shrug. “Makes no difference to me.”

“Well, I just thought it’d make you mad,” he explains. Your eyebrows lift. “Y’know, seeing as you had him first.”

You repeat his words in your mind, thrown back, out of the blue, to two summers prior. Back when you had just met Luca and Alberto, back when Luca started showing interest in the surface. Back when Alberto began to seethe and glare and fight you at every opportunity. Back when he slept in your bedroom for the first time, apologizing to you for getting so jealous. Back when you came to the understanding that Luca was his first, and only, friend, and he hadn’t yet quite grasped the concept of sharing. Back when being a sister was new.

“I mean,” you reason, “you already took my bedroom.”

“Yeah.”

“And my bike. And my books.”

“Yeah, okay.” You hear the playful annoyance entering his voice.

“And my closet,” you try not to grin. “And my cat. And--”

He throws his hands up. “Okay, okay! I got your point, mamma mia.”

“See?” Your sharp smile pokes your cheek. “It makes no difference to me.” If you had been walking, you would’ve been skipping, nudging him with your shoulder. You kind of wish you had been — you feel kind of silly up on this bike, like a faux queen in a faux throne. “So, are you gonna start calling him papá now?”

He shrugs again, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “I guess. I dunno.”

“You should.”

Noon

After lunch, you follow your brother into the sideyard. It’s always been a bit of a messy area, where your father stores his extra supplies -- rope, nets, harpoons, boxes, et cetera -- but it’s grown only messier after Alberto moved in. His hammock, made from a sail (god knows where he got a sail from), rests between the tree and the stone wall. Several of his own “supplies” (waterlogged scrap and trash) now litter the area as well. But there is some useful stuff lying about.

Your father won’t let you use his boat for fear of one of you misguiding it into a crash, or the motor failing at an improbable time. So instead, you’re stuck with basic wood and paddles. You try not to mar your hands with splinters as you, as well as your brother, grasp the trims of the old boat and pull it away from its lean against the old stone wall.

Your father stands in the side door, wearily clutching a once-white towel in his hand. His thick, dark eyebrows that usually shadow his eyes lift at a slight angle. He leans forward, then draws back with a grunt -- his way of asking if you want help.

“We’ve got it!” You call back to him. The boat crashes to the ground with a large thump. Both of you lean over it for inspections. No holes, no tears, no boards out of place.

“Looks good,” your brother confirms before taking it into his hands and lifting one end.

You settle yourself, widening your stance and drawing your shoulders back into a square. Every summer you forget how exactly heavy this old thing is, but it rises with ease. You follow your brother out into the piazza, the awkward thing in hand, and down to the beach. You both drop it into the sand -- you puff a great sigh of release -- and your brother moves to your side. The two of you then push it into the water until it’s bobbing on the ocean waves, until your brother is purple up to his chest, and you drenched to your chin.

He gets in first, using his tail to propel him out of the water, then pulls you up on board. Like a wet dog, he shakes himself dry while you grab the oars. You hand one to him, and you both get into place and start rowing out to sea.

You pass a glance back to the town, the water still relatively shallow beneath you. The piazza is overfilled, almost pouring over with people as more and more keep coming in. You see, just a blur now, Signora Marsigliese at her post, checking participants in on the sign-in, chatting with some parents. On the other side of the crowd, you see a gathering of people exchanging small white slips of paper -- bets, but nothing too extreme. Others walk around, mingling in small groups, signs with names and encouraging words or symbols in hand. In half an hour, give or take, they’ll be lining the stone wall, all eyes on the racers in their swimsuits, goggles, and caps.

You smile when you see Guido and Ciccio, just blobs of color, straightening the tablecloth and forks, no lambasting or slapping to be had. Not too long ago, you realized that whatever you suffered from Ercole’s awful reign, they suffered tenfold, though both you and Luca were highly perturbed at the news of your brother becoming their actual friend. Empathy or not, years and years of ostracization and belittlement are quite a lot to get over. 

“You gonna help me or not?” Alberto snarks from behind. “You know it takes two to move, right?”

“Whoops, sorry,” you giggle. You must’ve gotten too in your head for a second. “So, are you excited?”

He shrugs, maintaining a casual disposition. “Guess you could say that. It’s more like…anticipation, though. I haven’t seen him all day, and it’s felt like years.”

You roll your eyes. “I was talking about the Portorosso Cup, Romeo.”

He shrugs again, defensively this time, but still keeping his relaxed smile. “Ah, just work to me.”

“You aren’t excited to see who the winners are this time?” you question. “I’m betting that it’s gonna be Sofia, Federica, and Serena.” 

He nods wisely. “Maybe, but maybe not. I guess we’ll just have to see how things play out.” 

“You don’t think they will?” 

“I just like to keep an open mind,” he says placidly. “Plus, it’s my job to stay unbiased, remember?” He flashes you with his whistle, rotating the small piece of silver between his fingers. The sun reflects off of it and hurts your eyes.

“Right, right.” You say, blinking away the glint.

The Portorosso Cup, being a triathlon, has three legs: swimming, cycling, and eating pasta. For each leg of the race, there are a number of volunteers. Half of the volunteers have a simple job of making sure the kids are following the rules -- swimming the full distance, gathering the pasta with a fork, not taking any shortcuts, preventing any foul play -- but the rest of the volunteers have jobs specific to the leg’s components.

For the cyclists, there are water bearers and first-aid kit holders. For the pasta-eaters, there are cleaners and servers. And, for quite a while, there was even one for the swimmers: the monstri marini hunters, but that job has been omitted in recent years due to obvious social developments. Now, the only volunteers that look after the swimmers are the lifeguards -- or, rather, the lifeguard (your brother), his boyfriend, and you.

You stop paddling once you’ve made it a few feet past the buoys, you switch paddling directions to turn the boat to its side, marking the halfway point for the swimmers. The hot, August sun beaming down on your skin, the salty smell of the sea filling your nose, the distant noise of the Portorosso’s piazza, even from this distance, filling your ears. The boat bobs gently on the water, and you look down into it. You can’t see the bottom, only a deep, dark blue.

You used to be a little scared of it. Even though you questioned your father’s sanity (and intelligence) at times for his endless stories of great krakens and monstri marini, your skepticism didn’t bar you from falling prey to those fearful imaginings at times. Being a fisherman’s daughter, you got over it pretty fast, of course, but every now and again you do wonder, if no one had any real clue about monstri marini as you know them before a few years ago, what else could be down there?

Then, suddenly, the water breaks as something bright green comes lunging upward at you.

You yelp as you fall back into the boat, narrowly missing your (now squawking) Brother’s back and instead landing thoroughly on the wooden base. Ouch.

Something slimy -- a projectile -- hits you square on the forehead. You throw it off and scramble to get up and look over the side.

“Luca! Santa Mozzarella, you scared the hell out of me!” you chide.

“Please do it again, that was hilarious!” your brother, no longer startled, laughs.

“Sorry!” Luca slinks deeper into the water, pupils narrowed to slits. “I didn’t know you were right there.”

You dust yourself as you get up, hoping no one on the beach saw that, but knowing full-well it's hopeless. “It’s fine.”

He dips back under the water and resurfaces on the other side of the boat. He lifts his arms like a child asking their mother to carry them, and your brother leans over the side, gets him by the underarms, and helps him clamber up and into the boat. The boat rocks violently with the shift in weight, and you grip the trimming for fear of another stumble, but your brother just smiles and releases a satisfied huff as he sits back down.

Luca sits beside him. “There has got to be a better way to do this,” he says, rubbing at his sides from where Alberto gripped him. Green scales still cling to his body as his head falls to rest against your brother’s shoulder.

You laugh, fixing yourself paralllel to them, your hook nose pointing down to the steadying ocean waves. “You could meet us at the dock.”

Scandalized and nose-scrunching, if you could call that a nose, he retorts, “And swim the three chilometri to Portorosso when I’m just gonna be coming right back here, anyway? Absolutely not.” He puts his hand in the air and tilts his head away like he’s holding off something so disgusting that it’s unbearable to even look at.

Your brother chuckles, teeth grazing his bottom lip. “Well, we have a whole year to think of something. Plus, no use in carping about it now, now that it’s over, vero?” he says with a prize-winning grin and throwing an arm around the other boy, giving him a little shake.

Luca blushes, his own smile peeking through the cracks. “Alright,” he gives, but it sounds stifled.

If you were anyone other than yourself, and if they were anyone other than they are, you would have been swallowing down a gag in your throat — that’s your best friend and your brother, for Pete’s sake — but you’re Giulia Marcovaldo, and that’s Luca Paguro, and that’s Alberto Scorfano. Other sisters would vomit or break into hysteric laughter if they saw how relentlessly flirtatious their brother became around their lover, and other best friends would grow irate and their anger swell with the hurt of betrayal and overstepping boundaries if they saw their best friend flirting with their brother. But not you.

In times like these, where they ignore you, less than five feet away, for favor of their own convictions and conversations, you think back to the day you met them.

The first words you heard out of their mouths were each other's name. That, alone, is enough.

And so when you sit across from them as Luca scoops up his leftovers from his lunch off of the boat’s base, as Alberto averts his eyes and coughs, and conversation picks back up again, you don’t think much of it. It’s just how they are. It’s how things have always been and will always be. 

The conversation is usual. The three of you toss jokes back and forth, Luca agrees with you on your bets for the race and coaxes your brother to give a little slip of his withheld opinion, you pick at the uncomfortable swimsuit straps beneath your shirt, Alberto fills Luca in on some of this mornings events. Nothing out of the usual.

You hear signora Marsigliese’s voice, muffled by the waves and chatter but still distinct, booming out of a megaphone. You see the bell’s reflection from the shore, as the kids, lined up soldiers, race into the water and begin swimming.

The three of you rise, moving to stand post. You, then Luca, then Alberto. You hear your brother snort as he rubs his face.

“What?” You beat Luca to the question.

“He’s doing it all wrong—” your brother complains, gesturing, as inconspicuous as he can, to one of the kids in the water. Swimming, for sure, but not making any progress and lifting his head up and down, rather than side to side. Your brother drops his head into his hands in second-hand-embarrassment. “Humans,” he mutters. “Dìo, you all suck at swimming so much it’s painful.”

“Well it’s not exactly like we’re amphibians , Alberto,” you defend. “And open your eyes!”

“Yeah, you’re gonna get in trouble if they catch you not paying attention,” Luca adds.

So, he does. He draws his hand down with a sigh.

You revert your attention back to the kids. They’re making some progress, but it’s a much slower event when you’re not an active participant. The kids are barely at the halfway mark when you’re already bored and scanning the crowd for familiar faces.

The front of the crowd is, obviously, the proud parents and the sign-holders. Behind them stand their relatives and friends, beyond that, you couldn’t see. On the outskirts — from the sea-adjacent alleyway beside your side yard to the very end of the docks— were mostly teenagers and outsiders. They piled up, each one grinning and boasting that this was the perfect spot, that they could see all the action from here. In time, they’ll realize why the piazza is so densely packed. In time, they’ll scramble just to see the faintest hints of a kid scarfing down pasta or a bike tire screech to a stop across a finish line. It almost makes you laugh. Newbies.

You glance over at your brother to point this out to him, to make some rude comment or funny comparison between Caligolans and squirrels, but you stop when you see his face.

Disgust.

Or, maybe disbelief?

His mouth is in a silent, open snarl. His eyes are dead locked onto something, unmoving and dark, the pupil as small as a pin prick. You can see the lines of muscle in his neck, in his arms, how rigid they are but barely, ever so slightly, trembling.

“Alberto?” you say his name.

His breath hitches. The look he gives you is a lesser form of the one he gave you when you woke up. Wide eyes. Nervous hands. His voice cracks, “Wuh? Oh— yeah? What is it?”

“You…okay?”

“Hm?” Luca makes a small noise.

“I—“ his eyes flicker back to shore, his eyebrow still pinching together, just a hair. “Sorry,” he laughs into the back of his hand uncomfortably. “I just thought I saw—” His smile wavers, and falls into a line. He shakes his head.

“Ercole?” you guess.

“Forget it,” he mumbles, shaking his bead. He pressed his mouth into his hands, smile disappeared.

“Who?” you press onward.

He shakes your head again. “Forget it,” he grumbles, softer now, with closing eyes and a furrowed brow.

Luca looks worriedly between the two of you.

“Tell me,” you insist, louder.

“Giulia—” Luca tries to butt in.

Alberto cuts him off. “I said forget it,” he spits, then turns his face away. 

Luca grabs his arm and pulls gently. “Alberto.” His tone is worrisome and delicate, like something you’d hear in the movies.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Stai bene?” It’s almost a whisper. He tilts his head to study him, trying to catch his eyes.

Alberto nods. “Sorry, I’m just tired.” Then, shaking his head, “Didn’t sleep well.”

“Oh?”

It’s now that you you’ve realized you’ve been removed from the conversation. Whatever, it doesn’t hurt you that much. You know how cagey Alberto is, and if Luca’s someone that he’ll allow himself to receive help from, then you’ll take your rightful place to the sidelines with grace and dignity. Even if those sidelines are just a foot, just a few decibels, away.

You see Alberto glance at him through the corner of his eye. They flicker to the shore, then down, communicating something you’re deaf to. 

Luca’s face scrunches with understanding. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, a broken record. “Bad timing, I know.”

Luca shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. Let’s just change topic; we can talk about this later, alright?”

Alberto nods, takes a deep breath, and looks back to the kids. His pained expression dissipates into a prickly neutrality. He crosses his arms, slotting his hands -- the curvature between his pointer and his thumb -- directly below his armpits. Luca’s hand on his forearm moves to his back and stays there while he looks emptily at the kids swimming. Inhumanly vibrant jade green eyes growing dimmer through half-lidded stares. The crease between his brow stays, but softens considerably. 

One kid swims up, turns around, and he calls out a quick, “Good job, Bianca. Keep going!” but doesn’t do much to change his posture or his expression. It doesn’t matter either way, because the young girl will not be looking back at him, but something grows deep and dreadful in the pits of your stomach.

You may be a little dense, and you might not the best educated-guesser, but you aren’t stupid. To the public, he may be the Sunshine Boy with a Thousand Odd Jobs, or the Perfect Prince of Portrosso, but you know him as Alberto. Alberto, who you ripped out of a nightmare this morning that you let be played off as some teenage dream. Alberto, who nearly sacrificed a cart’s worth of produce just to avoid a simple question -- one that you answered with ease. He doesn’t hide his hurt as well as he thinks he does, but he’s not one to give in to any pity. He gets mad when you press and prod, just as you like to do. You may be withheld from information, but you know Alberto is fucked.

You just wish, information or not, that he would allow himself to depend on you the way he does with Luca and your father.

Afternoon

Through the smell of saltwater and fish, you get the faintest whiff of pasta cooking above. Years past, you would’ve guessed it was trenette, as your father always prepared it to comfort you after the upsetting loss until preparing it for celebration. But now, August 29th, the day of the Portorosso Cup, is just another day to you. Albeit, a far more busy day filled with far more reflections and callbacks than any other, but it doesn’t end too out of the ordinary.

Since your father doesn’t want you going out for fear of how crowded the streets have become (crowds do bring pickpockets, after all), you stay indoors, working in his pescheria, shucking the scales off of fish beside your brother, deboning and slicing as swift as a shark with his knife. On the other side of the bar sits Luca, doing as much as he can to provide conversation and entertainment to help ease the drudgery.

“Didn’t his bike break?” Luca recalls with a smile, gracing his hand over a book he stopped paying attention to over an hour ago. You wonder why he brought it all -- maybe it was so he could have something to do with his hands while the two of you were busy?

You nodded, hearing the rainlike trickle of scales into the tin bucket. “It was the tire,” you answer, “It just flew completely off -- whoosh!” and make a sweeping motion, dancing the butterknife through the air. “I’m lucky it didn’t hit me, can’t say the same for Ercole, though,” you laughed, delighting in the memory.

“It's sad that it landed on his ass instead of his face. Might’ve made him easier on the eyes,” Alberto grins toothily, giving no care to monitor his volume or his vulgarity. The pescheria’s cobalt door keeps open by a stand, and the noise frmo outside stays a constant wave.

You snort. Luca grins, nodding excessively. “Maybe it would’ve friction-burnt off some of those little catfish whiskers,” Luca adds, petting a fingertip across his own upper lip, as if there was something there. “Or some of that personality,” he speaks the word low and humorous through gritted teeth. You can feel your dimples showing up in your cheeks, so sore.

Your brother laughs in earnest, unable to even bite his lip. It’s like he’s completely forgotten about earlier on the boat, and even earlier than that -- your questions on the mountain. You want to congratulate Luca for his skill snapping him out of it -- whatever funk seized him today -- but you don’t want to ruin the happy, nostalgic mood. 

He gathers the bones and such into one bucket, rattling against each other. Then the unusables -- the heads, fins, and tails -- into their own. He takes the two buckets into his hands, tosses a “Be back in a minute,” to you and Luca, though you know it’s veered more towards the latter, and walks out the door. He curls them like dumbbells as he goes.

You turn to Luca with a look of judgment, hoping it to be shared, but instead you catch him staring with eyes droopy and all.

You grimace. “Stop it. You’re encouraging him.”

“I’m doing no such thing,” Luca argues, “I’m simply reacting to the environment around me.” He sighs through his nose, eyes drooping to the lines of his book as his head lowers to rest on his knuckles. He pretends to read, but you don’t see his pupils twitching; you know where his mind actually is.

You squint at him in friendly disapproval. “Then stop reacting.”

A lady strolls in. Olive skin with blue eyes and straight, auburn hair pulled into a ponytail. A long, yellow dress around her with a blue polka-dotted undershirt. Creamy slip-ons rather than sandals, and a light blue handkerchief over her hair. Definitely not a lady you’ve ever seen before, so you watch her closely as she steps inside. Her eyes dart around, then down, her head bucking backwards as if in surprise.

Luca doesn’t turn to eye her, but you can’t help but look up to her in question. You meet eyes, and she begins to apologize.

“Oh, mi dispiace,” she begins with a nervous laugh, taking a step back. “I thought this was a restaurant.”

“Oh no.” You straighten out your back, and lay the butter knife in your hand a little flatter, as to not bring it any attention. “You’re on the wrong side of the piazza,” you inform. “Most of the trattorie are on the right side with the big dock.”

“Grazie,” she ducks her head as she turns around. Exiting through the door, she steps aside for another.

This time, it doesn’t take a detailed analysis of his outfit or hairdo to tell you that this guy isn’t Portorossan.

He walks across the tiles with a heavy cadence and bare, unkempt feet. With each step, you can see the bones in his dark and dirt-encrusted knees shift as if the skin was a loose covering around a skeletal frame, not much fat or muscle to speak of. His clothes aren’t indecent, but they look old, beaten, and worn out. Like something that should have been thrown out for good years ago. His hair looks greasy, pitch black in wavy curls that hang down to his neck, and you can barely see his eyes.

You glance at Luca, just as habit, but he doesn’t see you. He’s staring at the man. Back straight, wide and dialated eyes. His book closed over the counter, nose twitching.

Your eyebrows knit together as you return your gaze back to the man. He’s not looking at any of the fish for sale, but rather the walls. The pictures your father has hanging up and the souvenirs he’s caught over the year. He crooks his head to pass a glance out the door, back to the center of the piazza.

“Is there something I can help you with, signor?” you question, leaning a little backwards. Your voice cuts through the silence room like a revving saw.

“What happened?” He says. His voice was as rough as you had expected it to be, a frog’s croak or a jackfruit’s rigid exterior.

“Sorry?” You don’t quite understand.

“Where’s the,” he gestures vaguely to the wall with his right hand. “Hunting stuff.”

You crack an awkward smile. Well, at least he’s been here before. “Oh, we don’t do that anymore, actually.”

He looks at you with wide, disbelieving eyes -- green -- but his eyebrows remain furrowed.

“It was three years ago this day, actually!” you continue, pressing onward, happy to share the good news with anyone who asks. “See, we’ve actually come into contact with monstri marini, and, as it turns out, they aren’t monstri at all.” By the look on his face, you’re annoying him, but you cannot stop an infomercial halfway. “You can find some of them here in Portorosso, living out their daily lives just as everyone else. And before you ask: No, there’ve been no accidents, no upsets, no--”

The man grunts and turns away to glance into the piazza again. Taking the opportunity but not daring to tear his eye off of the man, Luca slips off of his barstool and moves quickly around to your side.

He takes your hand. “Giulia, let’s go.”

You stand your ground, his out-of-the-blue fear not deterring enough for you. Besides, you’ve seen him jump at a squirrel before. “Il mio amico, Luca, here, actually has--”

“Giulia--!”

“What, boy?” the man growls, turned back around.

Luca freezes pin straight. He shakes his head.

The man hums, and begins to take a sip out of a bottle of Prosecco from his left hand. 

Suddenly, Luca’s discomfort makes more sense, but you’re not one to go running off to your dad to help you deal with troublesome customers. One day, you’re going to have to manage your own business, probably, and there’s no better time to start practice than now. 

“Uh, signor, my papà really doesn’t want people drinking wine in his shop, so if you don’t mind--”

He finishes his drink with his head tilted back, turning a deaf ear to your complaints.

You press your lips together. “Oh…kay…”

And before you know it, you’re being yanked backwards, Luca’s grip far stronger on you now than it had been before -- than it had ever been before.

“Woah, what’re you--”

“Come on!” Luca hisses at you. He’s pulling you into your father’s work room, a space cluttered with harpoons, barrels, nets, and the staircase leading upstairs.

“Sorry, signor!” you strain your voice to call. “We’ll be right back!”

Luca slams shut the door behind you.

“Luca, what the hell?” You’re angry. “We can’t just leave customers like that--”

“That guy!” he combats. His eyes are wild like a feral animals. If he was wet, they’d be infinitesimal slits. “He smells!”

“You smell!” you retort. Is he, of all people, seriously judging on appearance? 

“Listen to me!” he commands. “This is sea monster shit, and I’m telling you that he smells like--”

“You guys fighting?”

You twist to see behind you: your brother standing at the doorway, empty buckets in hand, a worried and highly confused expression across his face.

Luca’s anger drops in an instant. His voice raises, sweet, but clearly rushes. You can feel his heartbeat through his palms and fingers, still iron cuffs around to your arm. “N-no!” He shakes his head. “Alberto--” 

“It looks like you’re fighting from where I’m standing,” your brother shrugs.

“Luca’s being an idiot over a customer,” you sigh.

“I’m not!” he retorts. “She’s just not letting me speak!” 

“Aspetta,” your brother puts his hands up to silence you both. “You just left a customer out there? Did you even close the pescheria door?”

Luca blushes, and his grip slips. “No, but--”

Alberto gives him a look, and then moves the buckets to his right hand as his left moves to the doorknob.

“Wait!” Luca calls. “Alberto, don’t--!”

He pushes the door open.

Every single drop of blood drains from his face. His buckets, empty, clatter to the ground.

What’s wrong?

He takes one step backward, eyes as wide as saucers. Another step back, his mouth slack-jawed. He presses his back against the wall until he feels the rail. 

You see a foot -- bare, wrinkled, dirt-wrought, skinny -- come into frame through the doorway, and the next thing you know, the world is a blur of clamoring and noise. Your brother passes you up the stairs, falling over his own two feet as he races upwards, but it’s not a game. It’s not a race. It’s the dead sprint in the dark after the light flickers off, terrified out of your rational of the beast lurking in the shadows, tearing its your way to you, but the beast is very real. It’s yelling. It’s following you, you can hear its grunting and staggering footsteps. It’s cursing you through broken teeth at the bottom of the stairs, yelling, yelling, yelling nonsense. Just noise.

You make it into the kitchen, Alberto first, and then you and Luca at once. Luca closes the door behind you, pressing it back with the weight of his body -- just in case. You don’t know what’s going on.

Your brother is already at your father’s side.

“Massimo, he’s here.” A half-whisper. Swaying from side to side, leaning on the counter, having trouble balancing himself.

Your father puts out his hand, telling him to wait. Water with pasta boils on the stove. A radio plays near by a soprano aria from Gianni Schicchi.

“No,” Alberto shakes his head. “He is here.”

“Just a moment,” your father says, his slight surprise evident in his voice, as if Alberto had never said ‘ No’ to him before.

He says it again, insisting. “No! He is here, and you have to make him leave!” his voice cracks. 

Yelling from downstairs. Your father turns to the noise, disturbed. Alberto flinches terribly.

Your brother pulls on him. “Massimo, make him leave. You have to make him leave.” His words growing quieter but quicker by the second.

Your father turns off the stove and moves the pot onto a different burner. “Calmati, what’s wrong?”

Barking from downstairs, a clear “Hey!”

“It’s him, papà, make him stop.”

Your father’s eyes widen with recognition.

Your brother doesn’t see his change of expression, so he continues to beg through ragged breaths. You’ve never seen him beg. “ Papá, please—  please, make him go away.”

“I’ll handle it.” Your father nods, rubbing him on his shoulder -- a small comfort. He turns to you and Luca. “Go to the bedroom, all of you. Lock the door.”

Luca nods, crosses the room to grab Alberto, and you -- still so utterly confused and suffering whiplash -- by the hand, leading the three of you into your joint bedroom. Your father takes a harpoon off of the wall before he leaves.

In the bedroom, you lock the door behind you. Luca guides Alberto to the bed. “Let’s just sit down, okay?” he says, but you barely hear his soft, gentle voice over your brother’s panting. You check the door to make sure it’s stuck, and when you’re sure its secured, you turn around.

Alberto is sitting on his bed, his back to the wall. Luca is leaning in front of him, as if praying at the altar. Luca is speaking to him softly, reassuring him, telling him that your father is handling it, but Alberto isn’t hearing a word. He shakes his head, but its more of a twitch. His eyes screw shut beneath furrowed brow, teeth bared and gritted, his hands locked around the hem of his tank, pulling it off of his neck. He’s breathing, panting like a dog, but it’s so fast that you don’t think he’s actually catching an air.

“He’s gonna kill me, he’s gonna kill me, he’s gonna kill me,” your brother repeats, words slurred muddily together. You hear movement, arguing, from downstairs.

“No, he’s not. Massimo wouldn’t let that happen,” Luca tries to comfort him.

Alberto just shakes his head and recoils. Luca looks at you pleadingly -- Do something! Do anything, but don’t just stand there!

But you’re frozen. Still, you make yourself step forward, but you don’t know what to do beyond there.

You try to think of what others would do when you’re upset. You’d go to your mother and complain to her. She’d go through solutions with you, but if none work out, or if a solution isn’t needed or feasible, then she’d just put on a movie and find the two of you something to do together, to get your mind off of it. But then you take a look at your brother, and you realize that this is different. That this is worse than anything you’ve ever seen out of anyone.

Luca returns his focus back to your brother. You’ve never seen anyone this upset before.

His hands, trembling, are at his neck now, his fingers, disoriented, scratching at the shorter curls at his nape. He’s pulled back, trying to make himself into a shadow upon the bed, in the corner. He’s trying to hide his face, screwed in pain, dotted with purple scales from sweat. 

You’ve never seen anyone this scared before.

“Alberto, try to remember-- Silenzio Bruno,” Luca reminds him. He tries to lay a hand on his forearm.

It’s knocked off. Through it all, you catch your brother’s nose scrunching as if in anger, or disgust, before he curls in on himself more. His hands dig into his scalp with white-tinted knuckles, the panting subsides. You don’t think he’s breathing.

Again, Luca looks to you, but this time he mouths: What do I do?

And you realize, the first time, he was asking for your assistance, but he was also asking for your instruction.

Luca, and Alberto, may have been posing as humans for a couple of years by now, but you’ve been a human all your life. Every day, there’s something new you discovered that Luca doesn’t know about. Something that you think, by now, is mundane and trivial and as easy as muscle memory, because you had the head start. Because you’re the one with the information. You’re the one who always knows how things work.

You’re supposed to know what to do, but you don’t, you don’t, you don’t. You don’t know what to do, and Luca, trying and trying again, is only making things worse.

Downstairs, you hear yelling. The loud, violent roll of thunder -- you cannot remember the last time you’ve heard it. Then, the retaliating crack of lightning.

Alberto flinches again, wincing. No noise is coming out of him. The only movement -- the tremor in his hands, locked around himself, or the twitch in his brow, the only part of his face not buried in his arms. Luca’s moved out of his kneel, whispering to him, mumbling things you cannot hear --  reassurances, but you don’t think that they’re doing anything.

And you’re still frozen. 

You’re still frozen, and you still don’t know what to do. Luca still is making things worse. But now your silent, so benevolent, father is yelling, and your perfect, prince-of-portorosso, sunshine brother is completely out of his mind.

And then the noise from downstairs lessens, barely a whisper through the walls. But it’s not through the walls anymore. You wrench yourself out of the ice freezing you in place, and move past Luca to the window.

First, you see your father stomping the man away from his shop. You then see the confusion of the tourists, but you also see the angered, rageful faces of fellow Portorossans. Teenagers pull their younger siblings out from the waters, keeping them away. Women holding their children closer, one of them barking, “You’re not welcome here!” and a loud agreeance meeting them. The men either step in front of their wives or draw closer to back up your father. One of them runs to the town cop, Sra. Maggiore.

All of their eyes are lit with disgust. All of their mouths are pulled into tight frowns or snarls. Your father hasn’t said a word, several others are speaking for him, as he corners the man closer and closer to the edge.

And you realize something: gossip spreads like wildfire in small towns like these. All of them — all of them — know something about your brother that you don’t. That you’re becoming more and more aware of with each passing second.

Your father leads the man down the stairs to the beach where swimmers were lined up not even five hours prior. He jabs, and the man falls backward, into the waters.

Your breath catches in your throat.

Scales.

Violet scales.

Violet, iridescent scales coating his back with a white to pinkish underbelly. Purple fins that billow like cumulus clouds upon his head and a long, pronounced snout that’s almost dog-like and brimming with sharp, yellowed canines. Spiked fins along his arms, legs, back, and tail, protruding like a sailfish’s and wavering from purple to blue in the sunlight.

You feel sick.

“Alberto, per favore, tell me what you want me to do. How can I help you?” Luca pleads. 

And suddenly, you know exactly what to do.

You know your brother. You know how he reacts to your questions, your prodding. You’ve seen him straight out of nightmares. How he navigates difficult, touchy conversations. You know he likes physical touch. You know he likes the way Luca talks to him. But you know he hates pity. You know that sometimes, letting things go, letting things settle, rather than facing them head-on, is much better.

You place your hand on Luca’s shoulder, nudging him away from Alberto. “Ragazzo, get off of him. Give him some space.”

Luca steps back.

You can feel your heart racing in your chest, but you see the strain in Alberto’s knuckles subside. How his muscles grow a little less taut, just from that alone.

You turn your focus back to Luca, speaking loud enough that Alberto can hear. “My papà’s got him pretty far away . It’s safe enough that we can unlock and the door if we want.” 

Luca furrows his brow, looking at you confused, but Alberto’s lifted his head off of his arms enough to show his eyes. His eyes are yellow and green, and you can see splotches of violet, but he’s looking out the window, out to the ocean.

Luca notices this. He goes to the door, unlocks it, opens it a little, and returns to you.

You continue like this. You make conversation with Luca, pointing things out happening. You don’t talk about the man yelling and cursing your father, but you talk about him retreating into the ocean. Astonished, you talk about the number of people helping, about signora Maggiore’s presence. Almost humored, you talk about her actually taking real notes for once, instead of just filling out a word-search. You talk about the amount of defense, the amount of love, this town must have. How safe he is here, how everything is going to be alright.

When your father comes, Alberto still hasn’t spoken a word, but he’s unraveled himself. He’s letting a leg dangle off of the side, leaning forward. Luca brushes a hand against his shoulder, on the side of his head, and he doesn’t flinch or draw back.

Your father pulls open the door, and you and Luca get out of his way. He nods you both to leave, to let him be with Alberto on his own. You don’t worry, you know he’s, most likely, far better at handling him than you and Luca are, so you move out of his way.

Before you close the door, you see your father sit beside Alberto, half-hugging him, allowing him to lean into his side and continue to cry. You had never seen your brother cry before.

In the kitchen, you and Luca linger, unsure of what to do.

“You think he’ll be okay?” Luca asks at just a whisper.

You nod, passing a glance to the abandoned pasta, cold, still sitting on the stove. “My papà’s got him, now.”

Luca heaves a sigh. “I think I’m gonna go home.”

You look at him incredulously. “You did just see that guy go into the water, right?”

“I saw Sra. Pinnucia and Sra. Concetta outside,” he explains, his voice drained of every ounce of energy. “I was gonna go ask them to escort me home.”

“Oh.” You try not to sound to disappointed.

“I’m sorry, Giulia,” he winces. “I just--”

“No, no, I get.” You shake your head. “You go home before it gets too dark. I’ll lock up the pescheria.”

Luca thanks you, and makes his exit. While taking in boxes from the front, you watch him approach the two elderly women. They agree excessively, understanding completely, and you can tell that they’re happy to help even through their permanent frowns and grumpy dispositions. But this doesn’t surprise you -- your brother calls them his nonne. 

When you’ve swept the tiles, wiped clean the counters, and tucked all produce away, your father and your brother are still talking in your bedroom. Dinner still remains untouched, but the sun hasn’t dipped below the horizon just yet.

You pull out a step stool from underneath your father’s bed, open it up, use it to reach a small piece of yarn and hook from the ceiling, step down, and pull. The ladder to the third floor opens up, and you climb, rung by rung.

The third floor is only a single room: an entryway to the roof. But you don’t go on the roof, you just stand, halfway through the window, watching the bright, orange sun go down and wondering if it’s leftovers for tonight.

Night

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

You turn over on your pillow, adjusting the fabric of your bonnet to be over your ears.

“You weren’t…supposed to see me like that,” your brother croaks from below you. Moonlight filters through the shades.

“It’s okay,” you whisper back.

He doesn’t give anything from there. You would like to say that you’re surprised you’re both still awake at this hour, but you’re not. He didn’t sleep well yesterday, and neither did you. 

“Alberto, was…” your voice trails off. You’re surprised at how easy it is to be so loud. “Was that your dad?”

“No, it was my great aunt Loretta-- Who the fuck do you think it was?” he snaps at you.

You don’t give a response.

You can hear his regret. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Wet and crackly, like a stream or small waterfall over rocks. “I didn’t mean--”

“It’s alright,” you assure. “You’re okay.”

You don’t know what else to say, and you don’t think he does, either. You know you need to apologize to Luca for not listening to him fast enough. Alberto, too, for hounding him with questions, but you think an apology just might make things worse. You have so many questions, but you dont think you have the right to know. But you still want to help.

But thinking back to when help was needed, you were frozen. You were in shock at how quickly your brother, Alberto, had changed. One minute, he was your older brother, the next he was a child, drowning in his own river. One, he was laughing and making jokes, next he was horrified. Hysteric.

“Are you okay?”

Rustling. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Makes sense,” you nod. “I’m…sorry that happened, by the way. I didn’t know it was him.” You take a breath. “Luca knew, but I didn’t listen to him quick enough.”

“Giulia, are you kidding?” You can hear his attempt at a lightened tone. “Honestly, I would’ve flipped out either way. I mean, I guess not seeing him could’ve helped a bit, but I still would’ve known he was there,” he reasons. It would be a lie to say that it wasn’t making you feel better, but realizing that only makes you feel worse. He shouldn’t be the one comforting -- you should. “Besides, Luca was fucking awful.”

You raise your eyebrows. You thought you were going to die before he ever spoke a bad word about the other boy.

“Like don’t get me wrong, I love him with every ounce of my being and I get that he was doing the best he knew how, but mamma mia.” You hear him turn over onto his back. “That’s why I’m so grateful you’re just so…chill about all this. I know its a lot.”

“It’s okay.” There’s a weird tone in his voice, the same tone people adopt when they start telling dark humor. It’s happy, but its eerie and uncomfortable. There’s something underneath it, stifled by by a forced numbness, covered with a playful attitude. The air feels thinner. You don’t know what’s coming next.

“No, really. I really, really hate it when people make such a big deal about all this shit.”

“Mhm.” You don’t know what to say.

“People just need to stop making a spectacle out of it all, and he just needs to stay the hell away from me.” Your brother’s composure wavers. “I mean, how hard can it be? He’s been doing a gold-starred job at it for the past-- four-five-something fucking years, so it can’t be that hard.”

Your mouth hangs open. “I…”

He sighs. Recoils. “Sorry. Too much. I know.”

“No, no. It’s okay.” You need to say something. Anything. He’s trying to talk, and if you don’t talk now, then you won’t ever. You can feel it. So, biting back your worry, all of your hesitance, you say something: “So today sucked.”

“Obviously.”

“But there’s still tomorrow.” 

He hums. “Can I be honest?”

“Of course.” Please, you want to say. Do it. Be honest. Be open, for once.

“I’m terrified.” A pause. “About tomorrow.” More rustling. “I know we usually do a super jam-packed fun ‘last day of summer’ or whatever, and you and Luca can do that, but I think I’m just…I think I just want to stay home.”

“Oh.” You try not to let your disappointment reach your throat. “Why?”

“I’m worried that he’s still…out there. Hanging around,” he admits. “I don’t get why he would, cause from what I remember, he absolutely fucking despises me, but it’s just-- there’s always the possibility, you know?”

You draw in a shaky breath of air. “Well, you know what?” You inch closer to the edge of your bed, lifting your head off of the pillow and resting it on your hand, so your voice can reach farther. “We’ve spent almost every single day outside this summer. I think a day inside could be really cool and new.”

“You sure?” He sounds unsure. “I don’t want to hold you back just cause I’m still wigging out about my bio-dad, still.”

“Trust me. It’ll be cool.” You sit up. “And Alberto, are you really listening to me or are you half-asleep, cause I want you to really hear this.”

“I’m listening.”

“Alright.” You swallow. “Whatever happened before-- you don’t ever have to tell me, if you don’t ever want to. But I promise: whatever happened won’t ever happen again. It’s like you said. It’s all in the past, now.”

He’s silent for a moment, letting the noises of the night creep in. The small songs of crickets, a distant murmur of stray cats walking along the pavement. The waves at high tides, rolling violently upon the beach. You worry that you had done something wrong, until you hear it: The reason he hasn’t spoken up.

You crawl out of your covers and descend the ladder. He lets you lay down next to him, and he lets you take him into your arms. You lay down your head on his pillow, and you don’t mention the fact that it’s wet.

He apologizes again, turning his face away to stop the moonlight from reflecting. The little flickers of white, and arctic, and lavender in the pitch blackness of midnight. 

You ignore it. “Is this okay?” you whisper, no need for raising your voice now.

“Yeah,” he answers when he’s able. “Yeah, it’s okay.”