18. Lepidoptera in my stomach

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

See what doing crosswords can do to you? How else would I have known the Latin word for butterflies, which incidentally, with over 180,000 known species and 127 families, are, after the bugs (Coleoptera), the second largest order of insects. Amazing, isn't it?

Not that those were the thoughts that occupied me when I got up the next morning, though. Oh no. I didn't care how big the family of some insect was or how many annoying relatives it had.

When would I see him again? How would he react? What would happen? Where would we go? What would he do? Would he ever kiss me again?

Those were the questions that kept whirling around in my head – particularly the last one. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring into the glass and not seeing anything, I touched my lips, very carefully, with the tips of my fingers. When I closed my eyes and let myself drift, I almost could still feel his full lips softly pressing against mine. But I didn't want the memory. I wanted him. Again and again – and then again. And then some more. And perhaps a bit longer than that...

“Imp!”

Someone, I didn't particularly care who, was hammering against the locked bathroom door.

“What the heck are you doing in there?! Hurry up! Mark is taking me to school, and if I keep him waiting because of you, I'll strangle you with my bare hands, understood?”

“Hmm.”

“What was that? What did you say?!”

“I... I'll be out in a minute. Won't take long, I promise.”

What should I do when I left the... where was I again? Oh yes, the bathroom. What should I do? Run to the shelter? Dinner wouldn't be be served for another twelve hours, but he might be there anyway. No, wait, wasn't there something I had to do first?

“That was a minute and a half! Imp, I have go get to school! Get out of there!”

School! That was it. Yes, school usually came before the evening. But was that really important? I mean, I knew the most important thing anyway: Giacomo and I had kissed. And the most important thing I didn't yet know, namely whether it would happen again, I wasn't likely to learn in math class.

“Mom? Mom, come here and help me! Angela won't get out the bathroom!”

Oops. A black cloud momentarily covered my bright sky of happiness. My mother... my mother couldn't know there was anything wrong with me. Well not wrong. Right. Righter. The rightest! Things had never, ever been so fantastic. And my mother could never know – because she was sure to have a slightly different opinion on the whole me-kissing-an-eighteen-year-old-derelict-thing.

Time to return to planet earth. I blinked down at the toothbrush in my hand. I was sure that I had been about to do do something with it... Yes, brush my teeth, that had been it! Well, too late now. Cathy was ready to contemplate the use of a battering ram, and I could hear my mother coming up the stairs. So I stuffed the unused toothbrush back into the bathroom cabinet and then unlocked and opened the door, just as my mother had reached my sister's side.

“No need to make such a fuss,” I said, and couldn't keep the bright smile off my face. I just couldn't. I was so insanely happy. “I'm finished.”

“You are, if Mark's upset with me,” Cathy spat. I just grinned up at her.

“I love you too, sis. Bye.” And with that, I ran off. I could practically feel Cathy staring after me. When I'd reached the stairs, I heard her ask: “Mom? Do you keep drugs in the bathroom cabinet? Because if you do, I think you should check if some are missing...”

I was so lucky that I had such a loving big sister.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

When I wanted to take my seat in the cable car, Enrique grasped me by the arm and said in a curious tone: “Angela? Is everything all right?”

I turned back. He was holding out his hand to me. On his palm lay the passage money I had just handed him.

“Oh! I'm so sorry.” Quickly, I snatched the coins back up and stuffed them into my pocket. “I'm a little distracted, that's all.”

“You know,” he grunted, “you actually don't have to apologize for wanting to pay for a change. It's actually quite normal.”

“For me?”

He considered this. “No, you're right. For you, it isn't. What's up with you? Do you have a fever?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well... you are kind of... glowing.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. But I don't have a fever. At least, not the bad kind.”

Do you know the good thing about Enrique? He has absolutely no curiosity whatsoever. In that regard, he is my complete opposite. And, considering the fact that he is a fifty-year-old fat Hispanic cable car driver with a big mustache, and I'm a fourteen-year-old school girl with blond locks, a perky nose and dancing-ambitions, probably in every other regard, too. Is it surprising that we get along famously?

Enrique didn't ask me a single question. Instead, he just nodded, turned around, and started to drive.

I sat in my seat, staring out of the window. Again, I wasn't seeing what was really there. I was seeing a face. A tanned face with the brightest smile in the world, a beautiful face framed by a long mane of brown locks. It seemed so real that I thought I could reach out and touch it, touch him. But when I stretched out my fingers, all they met with was cold, hard glass.

I ached to have him hold me, to be pressed against him, to run my fingers through his hair and inhale his intoxicating scent. Things I hadn't really gotten to yesterday evening. I guess a public entrance hall hadn't been the best venue to choose for our first kiss – but it hadn't exactly been planned beforehand.

We had hardly had a few seconds before one of the doors had opened and Giacomo had swept me up into his arms and pushed me into the niche where I'd first seen him, reading the Chronicle. I wouldn't have noticed. I mean I did notice the sweeping up in his arms thing all right, something like that a girl just can't miss. I just wouldn't have noticed the opening door.

The sweeping up thing was actually kind of nice. Kind of very nice. In the niche, he'd held a hand over my mouth while I'd tried to get it off to get to his lips again. In the end, I had just given up and started kissing his palm, the tips of his fingers, every inch of him I could reach. Which, unfortunately, hadn't been very much.

There was the sound of a door closing.

“Angela, will you stop?” Giacomo hissed and tried to pull his hand away from my mouth.

“Why?” I wanted to know. “He's gone now.”

“Yes, but...what if somebody else comes?”

I stared up at him dreamily. “Then you just lift me up and run away with me. You seem to be rather good at that.”

Mia Angela...” he shook his head, his expression torn between desperation and amusement. “Don't you ever think two minutes ahead?”

“Not if I can avoid it.”

“Angela...”

“Besides,” I added, shoving his hand away and lacing my arms behind his neck, “I don't want to think ahead. I like what's happening right now. Very much.”

His lips twitched, and his strong arms enfolded me. I could feel the massive bands of muscles through his leather jacket. “So do I,” he whispered, “believe me. Which is why you have to go home. Your parents will be worried.”

“Let them be.”

“And then, they will come looking for you.”

Oh no. The image popped instantly into my head: my mother staring at me in the arms of an eighteen-year-old guy with a three-day-beard and clothes that looked like they'd come from a yard sale – probably because they actually had. Her shrieks would be heard all the way to New York.

“Angela...” Giacomo swallowed, as if the words were difficult to get out. It was strange – he always seemed so self-assured. But now he looked strangely young and vulnerable. “I'd very much like to see you again. And if your parents see us together, or anyone else here for that matter...”

He didn't need to finish the sentence.

“Then let's just go somewhere else,” I urged. “Somewhere where no one will find us.”

“We can't do that either. What do you think will happen if you just disappear and turn up at home, say, an hour after midnight?”

I could answer that question all right.

“My parents won't let me out of the flat for months on end,” was my gloomy response.

“Exactly.”

“But I can't leave yet! I won't.” I wasn't ready for this evening to end. I wanted it to go on and on and on... and on and on... and on... and on even longer... and did I mention that that a bit longer than that would be nice...?

“You have to.” He sat me down, loosening his grip on me. Damn! And as if that wasn't bad enough, at that precise moment, another door opened and steps came towards us.

“Go,” he whispered, shoving me out of the niche in the direction of the exit. I looked back and saw him pick up a paper from the small table beside the chair in the niche. He sat down with his face hidden behind the newspaper – just like he had been the first time I'd seen him. The only difference was that now he was holding the paper upside down.

All I could think while I ran out was: 'I haven't even gotten to kiss him goodbye.' Every step I took farther away from him felt like a step farther away from my own heart and soul.

But I had dutifully returned home. I would see him again. He would be there tomorrow. He simply had to be. If not... no. That was a place where my thoughts shouldn't dwell. He would be at the shelter. We would find each other. And then...

“ANGELA!”

Abruptly ripped from my daydream, I jerked my head around and stared and Enrique.

“Y-yes?”

The driver's thick eyebrows were knitted.“Girl, you're even more crazy today than usual. I've called your name three times already.”

“Sorry. I was thinking.”

“Must have been a pretty engrossing subject.”

“Yea, it was. So what's the matter?”

“What's the matter?” Enrique pointed out the window, where the two white towers of my school were visible. “Well, if you don't want to go to school at the harbor or the Golden Gate Bridge, I suggest you get off.”

“Oh, right. Thanks, Enrique.”

I gave him a peck on the cheek, and he, in return, gave me a startled look. “Have you lost your mind?” He shouted after me, as I jumped from the cable car.

“Probably,” I yelled back. “But I'll find it again sooner or later. I've got somebody to help me search!”

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

I got to school. That's about all I can tell you.

I'm sure that the teachers, considering their profession, must have been teaching something that day, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. Something which, I have to say, doesn't usually happen. Hey, I know my grades suck, okay? But normally, I at least remember what subject the teacher had been talking about, even if I don't remember anything of the actual subject matter. This time, however – nothing. Zero. Zilch.

What should have been even more frightening: I didn't even remember having chatted with my friends during class. Everybody knows that what the teacher talks about isn't really the important part of school. It's the chit-chat with friends, the surreptitious exchange of scribbled messages, or the texting for those lucky mortals who possessed a cellphone. Did I do any of these things that day? Honestly, I couldn't say.

I mostly sat in the back row and stared out of the window, without actually seeing much of the beautiful view of San Franciso it afforded. Had Jen been there, she'd kicked me after five minutes and demanded to know what was the matter with me. As it was, I think Sandra did inquire a few times. But without the kick on the shins, it just didn't penetrate the haze of happiness that surrounded me. And Anastasia... well, she was staring out of the window too. But she always did that, and probably would have continued even if someone had given her a kick.

And then, school was over, and I was running. Sandra called after me, but I just waved goodbye to her and ran on. I didn't have time. Not just now. It didn't take me long to reach the payphones outside the school. My eyes fell on the one with the big red heart painted on the side. A smile spread across my face and I headed straight towards it.

Dialing took endlessly long. I'd never noticed before how many digits our home phone number had. Couldn't we've gotten a shorter one? And then, there was the time my mother took to reach the phone. Five Seconds. Ten Seconds.

“Come on, mom,” I sighed, clutching the receiver tightly.

Finally, she picked up.

“Mary MacAllen spea-”

“Mom? It's Ange!”

“Oh, Angela, I wish you wouldn't call yourself that. You've got such a beautiful name and...”

“Yea, mom, okay. Listen, I wondered whether I could possibly head down to the shelter right away? They, em... are getting a new load of pastries today, and they could use my help looking them over.”

Not exactly a lie. They would be getting a new load of pastries today – as they did every day. But I figured my mother didn't need to know the last part.

“But you'll miss dinner again,” my mother said in a disappointed voice. Since her success with the pasta, she somehow had gotten the idea into her head that I appreciated her cooking. That's what being nice can do to you.

“So I'll be looking forward to Sunday all the more,” I lied brightly. That was the kind of lie I'd been using for years. The nice kind. The kind I didn't feel guilty about in the least.

“Oh, my Angel... that's so sweet of you.”

“So can I go?”

“Of course. Have fun.”

At that I almost burst out laughing. “Thanks, mom. Bye.”

I hung up. Then I smiled at the receiver and added: “But you'd better be a bit more careful what you wish for in the future.”

My gaze drifted to the red graffiti heart, and my smile widened. In a flash, I was out of the phone booth and running towards the bus stop.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

As I neared the shelter, my heart began beating faster and faster as the fear returned.

Why was I feeling fear, you might ask, when I was so happy? I couldn't explain it myself. It was irrational. But then, so was what I was feeling for Giacomo. I mean, a fourteen-year-old school girl and an eighteen-year-old derelict?

Yeah, not the most logical combination. And it was more than that. It was all the things about Giacomo that didn't fit together. He was smart and sophisticated, I was sure, for all his show of scruffiness. He was patient and kind – yet I had always been able to sense that beyond that, there was another part of him, a part I couldn't quite reach. And that part could sometimes get angry. Very angry.

And after all, what did I really know about him? His name and the color of his jacket. That was about it. Not very much to build a relationship on.

Except that that wasn't quite true. I knew at least that much: yesterday we had kissed, and it had been the best moment of my life.

That was why I fought the fear, why I didn't give into it. Because entangled with the fear was this other, stronger emotion, that drew me inexorably towards Giacomo. Something I had never felt before in my life. Something which, now that I knew it, I couldn't go without.

The bus stopped a few blocks away from the shelter. I got out and walked, walked, not ran, down the street. My heart felt like it was trying to jump out of my chest – a rather inconvenient thing for a heart to do. When I reached the shelter, there weren't too many people about. A few passers-by, and two old men who were arguing about the best way to protect society from hooliganism. The suggestions went from penal servitude to capital punishment. As I looked around, my heart stopped hammering, and started to sink. Not surprising, really. Hammers are pretty heavy.

He was nowhere in sight. I had been so sure he would be here, waiting for me! But, after all, he might not have attached the same significance to what happened yesterday as I had. He'd probably kissed and been kissed many times before. I hadn't. But now that I knew what it felt like... no, what it felt like with him...

I sighed. Obviously, he wasn't here yet. When would he come? Or, a horrible thought struck me, would he come at all? Had he meant what he'd said yesterday, or was he just what people in my favorite books called a 'player'? I'd always liked those characters. They seemed so strong, charming and irresistible. Now, I suddenly didn't see them in quite the same light any more.

“Psst!”

Would he come? Would he come or would my life end today, here, in front of these dreary old brick buildings. Because that's what it would be. My life, I mean. Over. Without him, it wouldn't make sense anymore.

“PSSSST!”

I folded my arms, leaned against the brick wall beside the entrance to an alleyway, closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply. He would come. He simply had to come. If not, I would die! I wasn't being melodramatic, I really would. Remembering his soft, sonorous voice, his gentle, firm touch, the light in his brown eyes, I didn't know how I had been able to get through the day without him next to me. Probably I had only been able to do it because I knew I would see him soon. If that turned out to be a false hope, a lie, a figment of my imagination, then... then I would die. 'Please,' I thought, 'let him come. Please let him come. Please-'

“Pssst! Hey!”

What was that noise?

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my arm. My eyes flew open, but before I could do anything, the hand had pulled me sideways and into the dark alley. I was so startled I didn't even think of screaming, and nobody would have heard me anyway. There were no passers-by passing by by now, and the old men had taken their conversation to a more comfortable venue. So I was being dragged back into the darkness by a strong hand without being able to do anything about it. A strong hand that felt oddly familiar...

And then I heard the voice. The voice that spoke only two words, and I knew it immediately. Knew him.

Mia Angela!”  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hasn't Angela got a great big sister? ;) Sorry I don't have time for a long author's note, ideas are flowing too rapidly and I have to continue writing books ;)

Bye for now

Rob

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net