Steal You Away (10 page)

‘Just think how furious the head and the deputy head and all the others will be,’ parroted Ronca.

‘So what do you say?’ Pierini asked.

Pietro didn’t know what to reply.

He didn’t like the idea at all. He wanted to go to school. He was ready for the oral presentation and he wanted to show Miss Rovi the poster.

And imagine what’ll happen if you’re caught … If these guys
want you to go along, there must be a catch somewhere
.

‘Well, will you come with us?’ Pierini pulled out his packet of cigarettes and offered him one.

Pietro shook his head. ‘I can’t, I’m sorry.’

‘Why not?’

‘My father … he’s … expecting me.’ Then he plucked up courage and asked: ‘But why do you want me to come with you?’

‘No special reason. Since it’s such a cool idea … I thought we could do it together. It’d be easier with four of us.’

It all sounded so fishy.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to go home. I can’t, really.’

‘It won’t take long. And think about tomorrow, think what the others will say about us.’

‘Really … I can’t.’

‘What’s up? Shitting yourself, as usual? Are you scared? Have you got to run home to Papa to eat your rusks and pee in your potty?’ interposed Ronca with that voice as irritating as the drone of a blowfly.

Here we go, first they’ll jeer at you and then they’ll beat you
up. That’s how it always ends
.

Pierini glared at Ronca. ‘Shut your mouth! He’s not scared! It’s just that he’s got to go home. I’ve got to be home early too.’ And accommodatingly: ‘Otherwise my grandmother will be furious.’

‘But what can he have to do at home that’s so important?’ Ronca persisted obtusely.

‘What business is that of yours? He’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.’

‘Typical of you, Ronca, always sticking your nose into other people’s affairs,’ Bacci backed him up.

‘Quiet. Let him decide in his own time …’

The situation was this: Pierini was offering him two possibili ties.

Quite frankly, he much preferred all those ‘ors’ to being beaten up on the spot.

Pierini’s affable persona was fading. ‘Well?’ he asked him more harshly.

‘All right, let’s go. As long as we’re quick about it.’

‘Quick as a flash,’ the other replied.

Pierini was feeling pleased. Very pleased.

Dickhead had fallen for it. He was following them.

He swallowed it
.

He must be a complete idiot to think they really needed a jerk like him.

It was easy. I had him eating out of my hand. Go on, come
with us. We’ll be heroes. Heroes my arse
.

Silly little twat!

He’d kick him all the way to the gate and force him to put the chain on. He sniggered to himself. Hey, what if Italo spotted Dickhead while he was fiddling with the gate!

It would be worth a week’s suspension, maybe even two.

Maybe he could let out a yell so loud the old fool would fall out of bed. Except that then the whole plan would go down the tubes.

That pea-brain Bacci had drawn up alongside him and was coughing at him knowingly.

Pierini glared at him to keep quiet.

What if he refuses to go and put it on?

He smirked.

I only hope he does. Please God, make him refuse. Then we’ll
really have some fun
.

He moved closer to Dickhead. ‘It’ll be a piece of cake.’

And Dickhead nodded with that dick-like head of his.

How he despised him.

For the weedy way he bent his head.

It gave him strange, violent urges. He wanted to hurt him, grab his little head and smash it on something sharp.

Besides, the guy would put up with anything.

If you told him his mother was a whore and let truck-drivers bugger her day and night, he would just nod his head.
It’s true
.
It’s perfectly true. My mother peddles her arse
. Nothing made any difference to him. He didn’t react. He was worse than those two clowns Pierini hung around with. At least that fat slob Bacci didn’t let anyone push him around and Ronca, now and then, made him laugh (and Pierini was not renowned for his sense of humour).

It was the smug little bastard’s faint air of superiority that gave him itchy hands.

Moroni’s the kind of guy who never talks in class, never plays
with the other kids during PE, walks around with his nose in the
air but is in fact a total nonentity. You’re nobody, you’re trash,
do you understand, pal?

Only a prick-teaser like Gloria Celani, little miss I’m-the-only-girl-who’s-got-one, could have wanted that wimpish creature as her

(
boyfriend?
)

friend. Those two tried their best not to show it, but Pierini had twigged that they were lovers, or something of the sort, anyway that they spent a lot of time together and maybe were even screwing.

The story of little miss I’m-the-only-girl-who’s-got-one had lodged like a thorn in his gullet.

Sometimes he awoke in the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for thinking about the little bitch. It was an obsession that was slowly driving him mad and if he really went mad he might do something he’d regret.

A few months ago that skuzz Caterina Marrese, from 3A, had organised a birthday party at her house one Saturday afternoon. Neither Pierini nor Bacci had been invited, let alone Ronca (or even Pietro, come to that).

But our fine friends never let the lack of an invitation get in the way of their attending a party.

They’d been joined on that occasion by Flame, a sixteen-year-old airhead with the character and IQ of an inbred pitbull. A pathetic misfit who unloaded crates at the Co-op in Orbano and cackled like a lunatic when he fired his pistol at sheep or at any living organism that was unlucky enough to cross his path. One night he had entered the Moroni’s farm and shot the donkey in the forehead because the day before he’d seen
Schindler’s List
on TV and been much taken with the blond Nazi.

To excuse themselves for coming to the party uninvited they’d brought along a gift.

A dead cat. A big fat tabby they’d found squashed flat on the Aurelia.

‘Pity, if it didn’t smell so bad Caterina could make herself a fur coat out of it. It would suit her. Come to think of it, she can use it anyway – the smell of the cat will mingle with her smell to create a whole new stink,’ Rocca had remarked, examining the carcass closely.

On entering, they had found an atmosphere that was to say the
least dullsville. Dimmed lights. Chairs against the walls. Pansy music. And couples dancing and smooching.

First Flame had changed the music and put on a cassette of Vasco Rossi. Then he had started dancing on his own in the middle of the living room, which might have been acceptable if he hadn’t started whirling the cat around like a mace, hitting anyone within range.

Not content with that, he had gone and cuffed all the boys round the head while Bacci and Ronca wolfed down crisps, mini-pizzas and soft drinks.

Pierini sat aloof in an armchair, smoking and watching with approval the entertainment his pals were laying on.

‘Congratulations, you’ve brought the whole gang of louts.’

Pierini had turned. Sitting on the arm of the chair was Gloria. Dressed not in her usual jeans and T-shirt but in a short red dress which suited her incredibly well.

‘Can’t go anywhere on your own, can you?’

Pierini had gaped like an idiot. ‘Of course I can …’

‘Bollocks.’ She looked at him with a tarty little smirk that set his guts churning. ‘You feel lost if you don’t have your goons tagging along.’

Pierini didn’t know what to say.

‘Can you dance, at least?’

‘No. I don’t like dancing,’ he had said, taking a can of beer out of the pocket of his leather jacket. ‘Want some?’

‘Thanks,’ she had said.

Pierini knew that Gloria was a tough one. She wasn’t like all the other little bimbos who fled like a herd of deer as soon as he approached. She knew how to drink a beer. Looked you straight in the eye. But she was also the shittiest rich kid in the whole area. And he hated rich kids. He’d passed her the beer.

Gloria had made a face. ‘Ugh, it’s warm …’ and then asked him: ‘Do you want to dance?’

That was why he liked her.

She wasn’t shy. A girl asking you to dance was unheard of in Ischiano Scalo. ‘I told you I don’t like it …’ Actually he wouldn’t at all have minded doing a slow dance with that little girl and
smooching a bit. But he hadn’t been lying, he was a lousy dancer and he didn’t want to look stupid.

So it was out of the question. Period.

‘What’s the matter, are you scared?’ she had persisted, remorselessly. ‘Scared they’ll take the piss out of you because you’re dancing?’

Pierini had glanced around.

Flame was upstairs and Bacci and Ronca were in a corner laughing amongst themselves and it was dark and that beautiful song,
Clear
Dawn
, was playing – just right for dancing cheek to cheek.

He had put the cigarette in his mouth, stood up and, as if it were something he had always done, slipped one hand round her waist and the other in his jeans pocket and started dancing, swaying his hips. He had held her close and smelled her sweet scent. A scent of cleanliness, of bath foam.

Shit, did he like dancing with Gloria.

‘You see you can do it?’ she had whispered in his ear, making the hairs on his neck bristle. He hadn’t replied. His heart was thumping.

‘Do you like this song?’

‘Yeah.’ He must go out with her, he had told himself. She was made for him.

‘It’s about a little girl who’s always alone …’

‘I know,’ Pierini had mumbled and all at once she had started rubbing her nose on his neck and he had almost fainted. A painful erection had risen in his jeans and with it an irresistible desire to kiss her.

And he would have done so if the lights hadn’t come on.

The police!

Flame had set about Caterina’s father with the dead cat, so they’d had to run for it. He’d left her there and fled, without even saying goodbye, see you, nothing.

Afterwards, in the bar, he had fumed with rage. He could have killed that lunkhead Flame for ruining everything. He had gone home and shut himself in his room to turn the memory of that dance over and over in his mind like a precious stone.

Next day, outside school, he had walked decisively up to Gloria and asked her: ‘Do you want to go out with me?’

And she had first looked at him as if she’d never seen him before, then burst out laughing. ‘Are you crazy? I’d rather go out with Alatri (he was the priest who taught religion). Stick to your cronies.’

He had grabbed her roughly by the arm (
why did you want to
dance with me then?
), but she had wriggled free. ‘Don’t you dare touch me, okay?’

And Pierini had stood there, unable even to slap her face.

That’s why he couldn’t stand Moroni, the bosom pal of little miss I’m-the-only-girl-who’s-got-one.

What the hell did a girl who was so

so what?

… beautiful (how beautiful she was! He dreamed of her at night. He imagined taking off that little red dress, then her knickers, and at last being able to see her naked. And he would touch her all over as if she were a doll. He’d never tire of looking at her, of inspecting her all over because, he was certain, she was perfect. In every part of her body.
Those small tits and those nipples that
you can glimpse behind her T-shirt and her navel and those few
blond hairs underneath her armpits and her long legs and her
sparsely haired pussy with untidy curls as fair and soft as rabbit’s
fur … Stop!
) see in a little nerd like that?

He couldn’t stop thinking about her, and couldn’t think about her without getting cramp in his stomach, without wanting to punch her in the face for the way she’d treated him: like shit.

And that little tart liked a boy who didn’t say anything when you punched him, didn’t complain, didn’t ask for mercy and didn’t cry, like all the others, but stood there motionless, and looked at you with those eyes … those poor-little-puppydog, Jesus-of-Nazareth eyes, odious eyes that reproached you.

One of those people who believe that crap the priests put around: if anybody hits you, turn the other cheek.

Try hitting me and I’ll ram your nose back through your face
.

The blood rose to his head when he saw him sitting good as gold at his desk drawing shitty little pictures while everyone else in the class was yelling and bombarding each other with the blackboard-rubber.

How he wished he could turn into a bloodhound so that he could pursue him across valleys, rivers and mountains and flush him out like a hare and watch him grovelling and floundering in the mud. Oh yeah, then he would kick him and break his ribs and see if he didn’t ask for mercy and forgiveness and finally become like any other kid, not some kind of fucking extraterrestrial.

Once, in the summer, little Pierini had found a large tortoise in the vegetable patch. It was eating the lettuce and carrots quite calmly, as if it were in its own home. He’d picked it up and taken it into the garage, where his father’s working table was. He’d clamped it in the vice. He’d waited patiently till the animal put out its legs and head and started waving them about and then, with the hammer, the big one that was used for breaking bricks, he had hit it right in the middle of its shell.

Stok
.

It had been like breaking an Easter egg, but much, much harder. A long crack had opened between the plates of the carapace. And a damp reddish pulp had oozed out. But the tortoise didn’t seem to have noticed, it kept wiggling its legs and head and hanging there mute between the jaws of the vice.