Then she shut her eyes and started to tremble, but not just because of the cold. A thousand emotions swept over her, and suddenly she realized. She was the one who was about to need rescue.
* * *
“Babi, Babi.” She suddenly heard someone calling her name and shaking her hard, so she opened her eyes. Right in front of her was Daniela. “What’s wrong, didn’t you hear the alarm clock? Come on, get moving or we’ll be late. Papà is almost ready.”
Her sister left the bedroom. Babi turned over in her bed. She thought back to the night before and sneaking out with Step, riding on his motorcycle, and swimming in the pool with Pallina and the others. Getting drunk. Being in the water with Step. His hand.
Maybe she’d just dreamed the whole thing. She touched her hair. It was perfectly dry. Too bad, it really had been a dream after all, a beautiful one, but still nothing but a dream.
From under the covers, she stuck out her hand and fumbled for the radio. She found it and turned it on. Propelled by a happy old song by Simply Red, she got out of bed. She still felt slightly sleepy, and the strangest thing was that she had a bit of a headache.
She walked over to her chair to get dressed. Her school uniform was lying there, but she hadn’t laid out the rest of her things. How odd, she thought. I must have forgotten. That’s never happened before. My folks must be right. I really am changing. I’ll wind up being just like Pallina. She’s so messy and out of control that she forgets everything. Well, I guess that means we’ll be better friends.
She opened her top drawer and pulled out a bra. Then, as she was rummaging through her underwear, searching for a pair of panties that looked good on her, she found a sweet surprise. Hidden at the bottom of the drawer, in a little plastic bag, was a wet bra and panties. A faint scent of chlorine rose around them. So it hadn’t been a dream after all.
She smiled. Then she suddenly remembered being in Step’s arms. It’s true, she’d changed. A lot.
She started getting dressed. She put on the uniform and then, last of all, as she was putting on her shoes, she made a decision. She would never again allow him to go past a certain point.
Finally at ease, she looked in the mirror. She was not having a good hair day, but her eyes were the same eyes that she’d made up lightly a few days ago. Even her mouth was the same.
She brushed her hair, smiling, set down the hairbrush, and left her bedroom in a hurry to eat breakfast. Little did she suspect that she’d change even more very soon. So much that she’d be able to walk by that mirror and not even recognize herself anymore.
Chapter 27
Signora Giacci walked downstairs to the conference room. She greeted a number of mothers that she knew and then went to the far end of the room. A young man in a dark jacket with a pair of sunglasses was sitting in a rather informal pose in an armchair there. He had one leg sprawled over the armrest, and as if that weren’t bad enough, he was also taking a drag on a cigarette in a devil-may-care fashion. His head was tilted back, and every so often he let plumes of smoke rise toward the ceiling.
Signora Giacci came to a halt. “Excuse me?” The young man pretended he hadn’t heard her, so Signora Giacci raised her voice: “Excuse me?”
Step finally looked up at her. “Yes?”
“Don’t you know how to read?” she asked him, pointing to a highly visible NO SMOKING sign on the wall.
“Where?”
Signora Giacci decided to abandon that line of argument. “There’s no smoking in here.”
“Ah, I really hadn’t noticed.” Step dropped the cigarette butt onto the floor and crushed it out with a sharp rap of his heel.
Signora Giacci was starting to lose her temper. “What are you doing here, young man?”
“I’m waiting to talk to a teacher, Signora Giacci.”
“That’s me. And to what do I owe this visit?”
“Ah, so you’re the teacher. I apologize for the cigarette.” Step sat up straighter in the armchair. For a moment, he seemed sincerely contrite.
“Forget about that. Just tell me what you want.”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about Babi Gervasi. You really shouldn’t treat her the way you have been lately. You see, teacher, that young woman is quite sensitive. Plus, her parents are real pains in the ass, you understand. So if you go at her like this, then they ground her, and the one who loses out is me because then I can’t take her out, and that’s really not okay with me, teacher. You understand my position, don’t you?”
Signora Giacci was really starting to see red. How dare this young hoodlum come in here and address her like this? “No, I absolutely do not understand, and most important of all, I can’t figure out what you’re even doing here.”
Suddenly the teacher remembered where she’d seen him before. She’d had a feeling he might be familiar from the very first, but she hadn’t been able to pin down when she’d seen him. At last it became clear to her. She’d seen him from the window. This was the young man who’d ridden away from the school with Babi. She and the girl’s mother had discussed this matter at some length, the poor woman. And this was a dangerous fellow.
“You aren’t authorized to be here. Please leave, or I’ll have to call the police.”
Step got up and brushed past her with a smile. “I only came in to talk it over. I wanted to come to an understanding with you, try to find common ground, but I can see that that’s going to be impossible. There’s just no reasoning with you, signora.”
Signora Giacci stared at him with a superior attitude. She wasn’t one bit afraid of this guy. He might have all the muscles imaginable, but he was still just a boy, a small insignificant mind.
Step leaned forward as if he wanted to share a confidential matter with her. “Let’s see if you understand this word, teacher. Listen carefully, eh? Pepito.”
Signora Giacci turned pale. She didn’t want to believe her ears.
Step walked away. “I see that you’ve grasped the concept. So, now, I’d like to see if you can behave yourself, teacher. If so, you’ll see that we won’t have any problems. In life, it’s all just a matter of finding the right words, isn’t it?”
He left her there, in the middle of the room, looking older than she was, with a single shred of hope. That maybe none of this was true. Signora Giacci went to the principal’s office, asked for permission to leave the school, hurried home, and when she got there was almost afraid to go in.
She opened the door. Not a sound. Nothing. She went through all the rooms, shouting, calling her dog by name, and then she collapsed into a chair. Even more weary and lonely than she already felt every day of her life.
The doorman appeared in the doorway. “Signora Giacci, how are you? You look so pale. Listen, two young men came at your instructions today to take Pepito out for a walk. I let them in. That was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?”
Signora Giacci stared at him as if she were looking right through him. Then, without hatred, resigned, full of sadness and melancholy, she shook her head. How could he have guessed? Young people were wicked and cruel.
Signora Giacci watched the doorman walk away, and then she struggled to get up from her chair and went to shut the door. Ahead of her lay days of loneliness without Pepito’s cheerful barking.