The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (2 page)

Beyond that, it's a Girls' Declamation (formerly known as “Oral”) Week at Willing, which means we have to memorize scarily long poems and recite them in front of our class. Declamation has this bizarre and overblown importance at Willing. Like all our future success depends on being able to remember that love is like a red, red rose. The week's subject was Robert Frost. Meaning the school has been overrun for the last few days with nervous girls reciting “The Road Not Taken.” It's the poem of choice for the Phillites and Bee Girls. They've been coaching each other all week, filling the halls and bathrooms with bouncy rhythms and rhymes that I don't think Frost intended, even though he wrote them.

During Dec Weeks, we at Willing live a life that's something like a cross between a Broadway musical and Christian hip-hop. Everyone walks around mouthing unfamiliar, old-fashioned words. The halls become littered with increasingly dog-eared printouts of poems. We skip a little as we walk, like ponies in iambic quadrameter: bah-
dum
, bah-
dum
, bah-
dum,
bah-
dum
. Endless blonde ponytails swishing down the halls.

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I—

I took the one less traveled by . . .”

Bah-
dum
, bah-
dum
, bah-
dum,
bah-
dum . . .

So I used a quiet bathroom. Coming out, eyes on the scuffed toes of my Chucks, I saw the book. It was tented near Cornelius's feet, a few papers loose under the bent pages. I leaned over and picked it up. And that, as Robert Frost would say, made all the difference.

From Table 12, I had a fairly good view of Table 2. Alex always sits there (Table 1 is for Phillite
seniors
only) usually in the same seat, back to the room, facing the window. It's a cool guy's seat. It says,

• I know you won't throw things at the back of my head because you wouldn't dare.
  
• Ditto making faces or rude hand gestures.
  
• I'm not worried about missing anything that might go on in the rest of the room.
  
• I don't care if you notice what I'm wearing, or that my hair is perfect today.
  
• Nothing inside is more interesting that what's outside, away from school.
  

Except, of course, Amanda Alstead, but she always sits half next to Alex and half on him, so he could see her just fine.

Today, she was sitting sideways in her chair, as usual. She could see part of the room (the Table 1 part, actually); most of the room could see her outfit (all shades of white, very cute, I wouldn't dare), her cameo profile, and the fact that she had her legs slung over Alex's lap. What I could see of him was the perfect triangle of his back in a green Lacoste and the pale edge at his hairline, the divider between the last of his summer tan and his October haircut.

“Hey, Alex.”
I composed the words in my head.
“I have your book . . .”

D'oh. I would be standing there, holding his book.

“Alex. Thought you might want to have this back.”

Nope. Sounded like I'd taken it, which would be bizarre, or that he'd given it to me, which would be ludicrous.

“Hey. This was on the floor in the upstairs hall, and I figured you probably didn't know where it was.”

Truth is always good.

He would look blank for a sec (he probably had no idea he'd dropped it; European history was first period), then smile gratefully, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, that mouth turning up in that unbelievably cute way.

“Wow. Thanks, Ella! I didn't even know I'd dropped it.”

See?

And I would hand it over—if our fingers brushed, no complaints—and say,
“I saw the stuff inside. It's really . . .”

“El.
Ella
.” Sadie bumped me with her button again. “Coming?”

“Hmm?”

“Where were you? Oh, yeah . . .” She followed my slightly unfocused gaze and nodded. On her other side, Frankie snorted. She elbowed him. No button on the other sleeve. “Wanna practice before class? I mean, I know you don't have to; it's imprinted on your brain. But there's that line at the end I just can't get right. El?”

As I watched, Amanda swung her legs off of Alex and stood up. My legs felt a little rubbery as I did the same. “See you in class,” I said quickly, leaving Sadie to remember that, in “Mending Wall,” the line is:
We keep the wall between us as we go.
It's my favorite Frost poem. No pony rhythm, no rhyme. About walls.

I wove my way between the tables, pulling my hair forward over my shoulders as I went. Alex was still sitting when I reached him.

“Hey. This was on the floor in the upstairs hall . . .”

I stood behind his chair. Completely frozen.

I might have stood there for a very long time if he hadn't pushed himself away from the table to get up. The chair thumped me in the stomach first, then in the knees. I think I made a noise. I dropped his book.

“Oh. Oh, crap. I'm really sorry!” Alex jerked the chair out of the way and bent down a little. He had to, to see my face. “You okay?”

I did manage to nod.

“Seriously. I must have really pounded you there. You sure you're all right?”

“Yes, fine,” I whispered.

Across the table, Chase Vere laughed. “Dude, she was, like, standing right behind you.”

Alex ignored him. He stared at me for a long second, then bent down to pick up my book. Only, of course . . .

“This is my book.”

I nodded again. “Um, yeah. I found it. Upstairs—”

“Oh, right. I was running to trig. It must've fallen out of my bag. Thanks.” He was already turning away, already forgetting the moment. “It's Freddy, right?”

It kinda felt like the chair, again, in my stomach. Usually the name doesn't bother me. When I'm prepared for it, anyway. But this time, I wasn't. I let more of my hair fall forward. “Um, no,” I said softly. “Ella. It's Ella.”

He faced me again, looked confused for a second. Then he shrugged. “Huh. Okay. Ella. Well, thanks.”

I heard the muffled giggle. Or maybe it wasn't muffled, just quick and quiet. I didn't want to turn around. I would much rather have crawled under the table, only I'm not quite that pitiful.

I turned.

Amanda hadn't really left. She'd gone to get a bottle of water. Another Willing perk: all the Poland Spring we can drink, and handy recycling bins to keep it Green. She was standing three feet away, flanked by her inner posse, Hannah and Anna. The Hannandas, we call them. Not that they look alike. Amanda is what guys picture when they hear the words
Swedish Massage
. Anna is dark, like me. Hannah has the gold-brown hair and awshucks look of a Kansas farm girl. But they are alike. Perfect features, the right shoes, luminescent lip gloss, and the instincts of barracudas.

Amanda bared her teeth. It wasn't really a smile. “Let's go,” she said to Alex.

He went.

I could have counted.
On three
.
One . . . two . . .
The whisper came, followed by the whinny. I'm not noble enough to call it a laugh. Not from the Hannandas. Skirts and ponytails twitching behind them as they went. Bah-
dum
, bah-
dum
, bah-
dum,
bah-
dum
.

“. . . Freddy . . . Don't you remember . . . tries to hide it . . .”

I followed, at a distance, as we all left the room. We keep the walls between us as we go.

3

THE DECLAMATION

“. . . I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

 

“Thank you, Hannah. That was very nice. Now . . . ah . . . Fiorella Marino. All the way up front, please, Fiorella. Okay. Whenever you're ready . . . ?”

“Ella.”

“Sorry? I didn't catch that.”

“It's just Ella, Mr. Stone.”

“Oh, is that something new and hip that you're trying out?”

“Not really.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't hear that, either. Quiet, people, please. Miss Marino is speaking.”

“It's always been Ella, Mr. Stone. Since before I came here.”

“Oh. Ha. Well. Okay, then. Carry on. Ella. Everyone else,
quiet
. Now!”

“‘Mending Wall,' by Robert Frost.

‘Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends . . . um . . . that sends . . .

. . .'”

“That's okay. Ella. You can try again next week. Have a seat. Now. let's see. Who wants to have a go? Amanda Alstead. Good, great. Carry on, Amanda . . .”

4

THE SCAR

To his credit, Alex obviously didn't remember why people call me Freddy.

It's after Freddy Krueger.

I'm not scary. I'm nothing like a nightmare movie monster. Objectively, I know I'm not even ugly. It's the scar.

Most of the time, you can't see it. If I wear sleeves, even short ones, and my neckline isn't too low, all you can see is the section on my neck. Turtlenecks hide it almost completely, but Philadelphia is too warm for turtlenecks half the year. So I wear my hair down all the time, and try to keep it in front of my shoulders.

It's what's known as a hypertrophic, hyperpigmented scar. Meaning it's raised and it's darker than my natural skin. In my case, it's red and looks a little like a web, over all of my right shoulder, about four inches down my right breast, and about five inches up my neck. It was a hot-water burn. I was seven. Ironically, maybe, it didn't happen in the kitchen at Marino's, or in our—the Marinos'—kitchen, where there's often a big pot of soup or pasta water boiling on the stove. Nope. This was the doing of an electric tea urn in the church basement. Sacred Heart does bingo every other Friday. Bingo players drink a lot of tea and coffee. Mrs. Agnelli bumped the folding table, which folded. The urn tipped over. Dad tried to pull me out of the way, but he wasn't quite fast enough. He got burned, too, over his hand and wrist, but it was only first degree. “Nuthin',” he says sadly whenever he talks about it. “Nuthin' I don't get every week at the stove.”

It was bad—the ambulance and the hospital and all the stuff that followed. It was scary. So was the screaming. Sometimes Mom at Dad (Why hadn't he moved faster, for Chrissakes?), sometimes Dad at the insurance company (What did they mean it doesn't merit extensive cosmetic treatment—isn't
covered
, for Chrissakes?), sometimes me (It hurt.).

In the end, it stopped hurting, although it's still sensitive to the touch. Nonna stopped praying about it, and Mom and Dad stopped yelling about it. There was no extensive cosmetic treatment. Extensive means expensive, and it's ten thousand dollars no one has. I think Dad had a meeting with some of the more important Sacred Heart people. He never talked about it after. All these years later, I can imagine why he went and what was said.
“We understand that your daughter's injury would be upsetting to you, Ronnie.”
They would have called him Ronnie, not Mr. Marino.
“But as neither the urn nor the table belonged to the church . . . Lawsuit? Well, you are aware we have seventeen attorneys on retainer . . .”

Father Sanchez and Mrs. Agnelli came a lot, always with cookies. Mrs. Agnelli offered to sell her 1986 Cadillac and give us the money. Father Sanchez is still trying to find someone to do laser treatment for free. I think that's why Dad still goes to Mass. But only on the holidays. I don't go very often, either, but that has more to do with things the Church doesn't want me to do than with the scalding. Nonna still goes every day. And my sister, Sienna, is having her wedding there in December.

Life goes on. Even for a timid kid who got more timid after she got burned. In another story, the plucky heroine would have filled her wardrobe with halter tops and organized loose change collections for the Children's Hospital burn ward. But this was me. I put T-shirts on over my swimsuit when we went to the Shore. I stopped wearing sundresses. I tried to be charitable about the Freddy Krueger stuff. After all, the scar was pretty horrendous and huge then. I've grown; it hasn't. I thought Freddy would be left behind when I got my Willing scholarship and got out of Sacred Heart.

Of course it wasn't.

I have my theories about how the name followed me. The nicest one is that Philly, for all its big-bad-city rep, is really not all that large. For those of us who live pretty much in the middle of it, it's a village.

Since freshman year, when everyone at Willing had to try it out, I don't hear it as much. I don't expect it. And I really, really don't like surprises. Which made going home at the end of the unexpectedly catastrophic day okay. There are exactly no surprises to be found there.

I stopped at the restaurant first. Marino's takes up the first two floors of the building; there are three apartments above that. My dad and uncle Ricky grew up in one. When they got married, they each moved into one of the other two. My grandmother stayed, even after Poppa died and the crazy old lady next door died, and Mom made sure to get the listing so she and Dad could buy the house. Nonna finally moved in with us four years ago. My brother, Leo, moved into her place. Ricky and his wife moved down the block, and my sister took their apartment. Uncle Ricky stays in the closet-size attic studio when Tina kicks him out of their house.

My family doesn't believe in long-distance anything. Or quiet, either.

The noise hit me before I even had the back door into the kitchen all the way open.

“So I'm sitting there at my own table, trying to have a quiet bowl of cornflakes,” Uncle Ricky was yelling to no one in particular over the chugging of the industrial dishwasher, “and she's tearing into me about my friggin' socks . . .”

“. . . six cases of the plum tomatoes, and two pounds of dried oregano . . .” my dad shouted into the phone. He and Ricky look a lot alike—short, solid, with serious Roman noses—but Ricky still has all his hair. Stress, Dad says. “. . . okay, okay, throw one of those in, too, but make sure it's good . . .”

Leo shoved through the serving doors, glowering in a way his last girlfriend told him makes him look like Johnny Depp. “Mr. Donato wants more
pepperoncini
in his antipasto.” Leo hates waiting tables, especially when Sienna is hosting. He is planning on running Marino's when Dad retires. She has been planning her wedding for a year and isn't above showing bouquets and garter samples to the customers to get their opinion. “And there's some pickled asshole from Society Hill saying the mozzarell's off.”

“
Taci, Leonardo!
Watch your mouth!” Nonna swatted at him with a wooden spoon. She was standing on a milk crate in front of the big stove, like she does whenever she makes sauce. Leo grinned and dodged just enough so the spoon grazed him instead of smacking into his bicep. If she'd missed completely, Nonna would have climbed off the crate to try again, and lively as she is, she really shouldn't be hopping on and off boxes. “Take Salvatore his
pepperoncini
and the other gentleman an
insalata mista
on the house.” She swatted again at his departing butt and got back to stirring.

Technically, Dad owns Marino's. Nonna knows that; she sold it to him. She just likes to ignore that fact. I don't think he minds. He's happiest when the customer is happy. Ricky has no interest whatsoever in running a fifteen-table family restaurant in South Philly. He's always had big plans, most recently involving
Top Chef
—for which he auditions every season—and a move to New York. Nonna likes to stand in the kitchen and tell everyone what to do. The system works.

“Eh, Rinaldo, you need to put more anchovy in that puttanesca!
Ancora!
” Nonna clanged her ladle against one of the big stainless colanders hanging over the workstation for emphasis, sending it into a wobbly arc.

“Sure, Ma.” Phone wedged between ear and shoulder, Dad dropped a fistful of fresh fettuccine into a waiting pot, stopped the colander midswing, and plated a slab of codfish. Fred Astaire in a red-stained apron. “Leo!” While Nonna wasn't looking, he slid the anchovy container a few inches closer to the stove. Consider them added.
“Leo!”

“. . . so I tell her, when I get to New York, Padma Lakshmi's not gonna be hassling me about my friggin' Fruit of the Looms . . .”

“A little service here!” Dad yelled. “No, not you, hon. My son who puts the word
wait
in
waiter
. Now, you promise me those eggs are gonna be fresh? Keeps me up at night, thinking about E. coli
 . . .”

I thought about slipping silently back out. But that would have defeated the purpose, which was to be seen. Otherwise, someone would come over to the house looking for me, and probably want to chat. I needed to make an appearance, so I could go home to unwillingly and helplessly relive the dismal day over and over in peace. I braced myself and stepped onto the honeycomb floor mat.

They saw me.

“Hey, Ell-
a
!” Uncle Ricky lunged with a spoon. I tasted garlic and strawberry. “Mmm,” I managed.

“It's my new sauce. The producers will love it.”

Maybe. I grabbed a slice of bread from a basket.

“That's no good!” Dad scolded. “No, not you, hon. My shrimp of a daughter. Thinks she can make a meal out of bread. Harvard girls eat dinner!” I saw him reach for a pan. Knowing he would be stuffing me soon with something expensive and unappealing, and probably fishy, I headed him off by filling a mug from the
zuppa di giorno
pot. Then I did the rounds, kissing him, Uncle Ricky, and Nonna, who pinched my cheek, hard, like always, and started my escape. Through the porthole windows between the kitchen and dining room, I could see Sienna bouncing toward us. I wanted to get out before—

“Get the lead out, youse!” She banged through the doors like a force of nature, masses of curly hair and eyelashes and J.Lo booty squeezed into a tight black skirt. She's the hostess on Tuesdays and Sundays, and on nights like these, when Uncle Ricky and Aunt Tina are fighting and Tina refuses to come to work. “We're all turning gray out here!” Someone in the dining room must have said something funny, because there was a ripple of laughter.

“You're a pup, Mr. Donato,” Sienna called back over her shoulder, then slipped in for a lipstick-and-VPL check. She gave me a quick once-over and rolled her eyes. “Would it kill you to put on a little mascara? You could be such a hottie if you just tried . . . Okay, okay,” she muttered when Dad, Ricky, and Nonna gave her looks I pretended not to see. “I'm just saying.”

They all have their own ways of trying to fix me. Dad's usually involves food. Mom's is a continuing stream of rhinestone-embellished tops that would cure my Willing invisibility in decisive and unfortunate ways. Sienna goes for vague threats of makeovers.

“Hey, don't you go sneaking off on me,” she commanded as I edged toward the back door. “I got pictures of shoes to go with the bridesmaids' dresses. You just gotta tell me which you like best.”

Fortunately, when there are options, Sienna circles her preference in pink Sharpie. It makes my participation much simpler.

Leo came back in with the plate of “off” mozzarella salad. “Look at that. Ass—” Nonna hissed. “Jerk eats most of it, then sends it back. I
hate
these guys. Yo, Insania, there are people waiting to be seated.”

“So they'll wait.” Sienna carried a bowl of minestrone to the office in back. I could see our mother, magenta suit jacket and matching pumps off, frowning at a stack of papers on the desk in front of her. Generally, she's at work from eight to late, showing houses to people who, for the most part, don't buy them. Lately, she's around more, studying the books and trying to convince Dad that shrimp and steak for a hundred and fifty wedding guests is not excessive. I watched as Sienna traded the soup for a shiny catalogue. Whatever she said, probably something about shoes, got her a big smile. They're most alike, Mom and Sienna, but we're not exactly a wildly exotic family.

I'm like the period at the finish of a sentence, the end of the line. We all have the Marino dark hair and eyes, even Mom, who was born a Palladinetti and has aspirations of being a redhead. We're all short, although Leo swears he's five ten, and kind of curvy. Even Leo and Dad. We burp when we eat celery, have decent singing voices, and have never had our names on a single plaque. There are a thousand families just like us within twenty blocks.

“Ella,” Mom called from the office, “did you wear those ratty jeans to school again? No wonder you haven't got . . . Oh, fine, Sienna. I get it already. Ella? Come in. You gotta look at these shoes. Absolutely to die!”

I didn't think I could face pictures of purple diamante pumps just then. Mug in hand, I crept out.

“Stay, stay!” Dad called. “Salmon. It's brain food!”

“Anchovy!” Nonna banged again. I closed the door behind me.

I stepped from the restaurant's four-car lot into our backyard, skirting the rock bed and empty koi pond Mom insisted on when Zen was all the rage. Personally, I miss the scrubby lawn and cracked cement patio. It was good for sprinkler jumping in the summer. From the front, the house is pretty much like every other one on the block: narrow, three stories, brick at the bottom and white vinyl siding at the top. Dad nixed Mom's idea of replacing the porch supports with plaster Greek pillars. But on theme, she stuck a trio of fat, faux-stone planters complete with cavorting nymphs on the front porch. She never remembers to water the stuff she plants, so there's usually an assortment of browning weeds in front of the thriving rosemary that Nonna snuck in. Inside, it's beige and cabbage roses, the toile throw pillows that were all the rage three years ago, and the occasional bright blue Madonna statue that, yeah, Nonna snuck in.

My room was pink, typical ruffly princess pink, until I started at Willing and had my first art class with Ms. Evers. She took one look at the watercolor I did of the rose she'd given us and laughed. In a really good way. Then she gave me a pad of the whitest, thickest paper I'd ever seen, a box of charcoal pencils, and sent me off to roam the halls.

“Think bold,” she said.

Now my room is black and white.
“Sfortuna!”
Nonna mutters whenever she looks through the door. “No good fortune in this room.”

But she likes my drawings, which replaced the pink floral wallpaper, and she's partial to black, herself. She hasn't worn anything else since arriving from Calabria fifty years ago (“Oh, this city. So dirty!”).