CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (14 page)

CORSAIRS

The beginning of
school after the Christmas holidays usually meant a deluge of tests and quizzes
that left most students K.O., their brains still on vacation. This year was no
exception.

“Psst, Marika!”

“Huh?” she mumbled, feeling the tip of a
pen jab her between her shoulder blades.

“What’s the answer to number 2?”

Without a sound, Marika carefully slid her
test to the edge of her desk so that Gloria, seated behind her, could copy the
correct mathematical formulas.

It was the third period on a Thursday.
 After math, the bell would ring for break.

Brrriiiiiiing
!!!!

“Time’s up!” the teacher, old Mr.
Bottazzi, a lifer at Pellico High, said. “Come on, kids, pens down!”

“How did it go for you?” Gloria asked,
passing quickly through the desks on her way to the bathroom, a Tampax hidden
in her hand. “Thanks for giving me the answers to number 2, 3, maybe number 5...”
she continued, chuckling.

Marika smiled, nodding acknowledgment, as
she hunted for a snack inside her backpack.

“You going to watch
Brenta
play
this weekend?” Two seconds, and Livia was already sitting at the desk next to
her.

“Yeah,” she said, without thinking too
hard.

“I was sure of it,” she said in that
know-it-all way of hers. “Lucrezia told me everything about the party at Dario’s
house, about how you practically rubbed yourself up against
him
.”

“What?  That’s not exactly how I would
have put it.” Marika now gave Livia her full attention, scrutinizing her.
 “We were just goofing off.” And thinking herself safe, she made a joke
about it: “And anyway, we’re talking about more than a month ago. Careful, this
case of envy might be catching!” She had seen Matteo so infrequently in that
period that she could count the times on one hand; he was constantly busy with
soccer practice, and when he wasn’t at practice, he was running up and down the
hills of Berici, determined to be in top form in order to impress the scouts.

And so
they
were in a state of
limbo, stalled, as if time had stopped on Christmas Eve. But the attraction was
as strong as ever: it was enough to see his eyes come alive and his smile widen
every time she was near. Touching each other, breathing in the same air,
feeling each other’s presence had become a kind of unconditional need, driven
by a basic desire.

Livia watched her carefully, ignoring the
comment. “I don’t want to get involved...”
As IF!
“... but do you like
Matteo?”

Marika could do nothing about the blush
that rose involuntarily to her cheeks. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, don’t play dumb! Everyone’s
noticed.”

“
Everyone’s noticed?”
The words
ricocheted about in her mind. “
That’s impossible, absurd, it can’t be true!
”
She did everything she could to keep the panic at bay and find a way out. 
Until things between her and Matteo got cleared up, gossip like this could only
complicate matters, making her look like some kind of awkward and inexperienced
girl obsessed by her first love.

“Yeah, right!” she lied, calming her nerves. “Who wouldn’t love to
spend all day watching his beautiful blue eyes glued to the TV... the games,
the replays, the commentary, the interviews, the highlights?? I’ve got no
interest being in a threesome with him and his soccer ball. He’s all yours!” 
The muscles of her stomach contracted painfully as she said these words, but
the last thing she needed at this delicate moment was to have those two witches
getting in the way.

“If you say so!” Quick as a whip, Livia slipped from the edge of the
desk, landing nimbly on her high heels and turning away, abandoning her
broomstick for the day.

Friday, second period. “Oral quizzes today,” Mr. Crispi intoned from
in front of the class, striking fear in his pupils’ faces as his pen ran slowly
down the list of names in his gradebook.

“No!” the entire class called out in unison. “You said you were
going to lecture to us today.”

“Don’t try that one on me! I’ve been telling you for two weeks that
I would be quizzing you today,” he stated, amused by his students’ boundless
faith in his incompetence. “Any volunteers?” he asked, half-heartedly. “Obviously
not.”

In the silence that followed, all you could hear was the sound of
the teacher’s red pen dragging up and down the list of names, in search of a
sacrificial lamb. Everyone’s noses were buried deep into their books, knowing
full well that one false move, one accidental glance at the teacher would be
fatal. Some pretended to read, others were taking notes, and some leaned over
to blow noses that had no need of blowing.

“Let’s seeeeee. First up...” the teacher said slowly, enjoying
himself and letting the tension build. The pen settled on a name. “Baldato! To
my desk please.”

Giulio Baldato walked penitently toward the chalkboard, the look of
a condemned man on his face, while the rest of the class raised their heads and
breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let’s see now... last week we started with unit 3: property law.” The
teacher arranged his glasses and opened the book of civil law. “Let’s talk for
a minute about the idea of ownership and the different types of property.
 You can start directly from the article.”

In the end, an hour of oral quizzes wasn’t so bad, so long as you
never got called on. Some of the students played with their phones underneath
the desks, those sitting in the front row had fun trying to suggest answers to
the unfortunate classmate being questioned, and Marika stared out of the
window, assaulted by thousands of teenage concerns.

The afternoon sped by, a whirlwind of Latin and of Mr. Maller’s
dance class. The dance recital for the end of the year was going to be a medley
of some of the most famous Broadway musicals of all time: from
Cats
to
Hair
, from
Chicago
to
Mamma Mia
; the advanced class, which
was the one Marika was in, was going to perform a piece that Deven was
personally choreographing, inspired by
A Chorus Line
and
Fame
.

Mr. Maller, using a wooden stick
to beat time, fell perfectly into the part of Lydia Grant from the
High School for the Performing Arts, the role
made
famous by Debbie Allen: “
You’ve got big dreams, you want fame. Well, fame
costs. And right here is where you start paying, in sweat!
”

Fifth period on Saturday finally arrived,
marking the end of the school week.  Riding home with her father, Marika told
Carlotta about the conversation she had had with Livia.  “I don’t want anyone
to know anything about us.”  She was clearly worried about the consequences.

“Don’t worry, you did a good job getting
out of it.  I’m sure that nosy bitch has already forgotten all about it.”  Her
cousin hid her own concerns well enough to sound convincing.  “See you at the
stadium at 4?”

“Uh-huh,” was the only reply she got.

At home, alone, Marika wolfed down her
grandmother’s stew without chewing; she had to finish a mountain of homework
that Mr. Bottazzi had assigned for Monday before the start of the soccer game. 
Her desire to see Matteo was stronger than the fear of looking vulnerable in
front of her crew.  She arrived at the stadium well before the beginning of the
match between
Brenta
and
Cambrai
, the team that currently held
first place in their division, though only by three points.  She sat in her
usual spot in the center of the stands , wrapped up in a heavy, shiny blue
winter coat, where she waited for twenty minutes, listening to Tricky the Voice
do the sound check, before her friends showed up.

“Hey there!”  Carlotta snuggled up next to
her in the cold, asking, “Is Dario here yet?”

“I haven’t seen him,” she said, smiling.  “If
you
don’t know where he is
....
”

“Anyway,” she said, “I left out a few
crucial details about how we got together on New Year’s Eve, and
....
”  Here she went again.

“No Carlotta, please, I’m begging you!”
Marika complained.  “It’s the tenth time you tell me about it.”

“Hold on a minute and listen.”  There was
no stopping her.  “I was dancing with Sandra and Giacomo when Dario came over
and joined us.  I was pretty surprised, since I’d never seen him take two
coordinated steps on the dance floor before.”  She hadn’t totally lost her
habit of making fun of him.  “I was still so angry about the argument with
Valerio the day after Christmas that I wouldn’t even look at him.  That was
when he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the VIP room,” she sighed dreamily. 
“It was like he was on fire!  He confessed that he had been in love with me
ever since  elementary school; he looked at me so intensely, telling me all of
the things he loved about me, that I literally got chills down my spine.  Then
he wrapped his arms around me, pulled me toward him, and began to kiss me
passionately.”

“
Bleah
!”  The vivid details of the
scene made Marika’s stomach turn.

“I know, I know.  Up to that very day, I
said I was in
love with Val, and now
I’m together with Dario,” she said, “but trust me, it was soooo
exciting!”

“I bet!”  Her nausea was not going away.  “I’m
almost envious of you.”  She put her hands in her pockets to warm them up.  “If
you take away all of your big talk and your passion for teen magazines, your
experience with boys is the same as mine –
zero
! – but you speak about
men and their abilities as if you were a great expert.  So I’ve got just one
question for you
....
”  She
looked at her from the corner of her eyes, chomping on some lemon-flavored
candy.  “What drugs are you taking and how can I get some?”

Carlotta rolled her eyes.

“All kidding aside, you know that you are
my best friend and that I love you, but Dario is a friend too, and he’s a
genuinely good guy...” she paused to let the second half sink in, “so don’t
make him suffer.”  She turned and looked Carlotta straight in the face.  “Do
you
really
like him?”

“I do.  Really.”  Her indifference was
just an act.  “I was never really in love with Valerio:  he’s cute, and all the
girls like him.  But with Dario it’s different.  He makes me happy.  I feel
good when I’m with him.”

“Hashtag:
#HeWhoLaughsLast
”

“Damn straight!” she agreed, before
noticing that the teams were finally taking the field.

At the end of the players’ tunnel, Matteo
was looking for Marika in the stands, and nodded his head toward her, silently
asking her to come down.

“He’s waiting for me!” she cooed.  “I’ll
be right back, cuz.”  She bumped into Dario while walking down the steps, and
pointed out where Carlotta was seated before rushing the rest of the way.

In spite of the frigid late January
temperatures, the
Brenta
playmaker was wearing the team’s short-sleeved
summer uniform, and Marika couldn’t help but take a long look at the perfect
lines of his biceps.  She swallowed hard, simultaneously thanking and cursing
the new synthetic materials that clung so tightly to his body.  She had never
thought so much and so hard about the form of the male body as she had in these
last months.

“Someone broke into the locker rooms on
Tuesday,” Matteo was saying disinterestedly.  “Can I leave my watch and
cellphone with you?” he asked, passing the objects in question through the
chain-link fence.

“
Hello... Marika, wake up
!” her
brain told her.  “Of course.”  She reached her hand out, brushing against his
fingers, which were as hot as if he had just come out from a steam bath.

“Brrr, you’re frozen!” he told her.  “You’re
sure you aren’t trying to be too much of a Cullen, are you?”

“Ha ha, very funny!” she snapped back.  “
Cold
hands, warm heart, moron!!”
she said to herself, offended.

Being liked by a boy inevitably means
becoming the favorite target for all of his stupid jokes.  It’s impossible to
not notice this; it comes oozing out of every one of his pores.  Usually,
though, girls have trouble accepting the truth... perhaps because they don’t
like him and would risk ruining their friendship with him, or perhaps, far from
uninterested, because the situation seems too good to be true.

Marika took a deep breath.  “We’re all
going to
Jungle Jim’s
for pizza tonight.  You want to come along?” She
was desperately hoping for a
Yes
; she hadn’t spent any time with him in
weeks.

“Coach asked us to all stick around after
the game
....
”  His eyes were
scanning the positions of his teammates.  “I can’t make it tonight.”  His face
became a grimace of frustration.  “Sorry.”  He was mortified about having to
bail out on her yet again.  “Maybe I can catch up with you after dinner.”

She nodded enthusiastically, hanging on
his every word.