August 22nd, 1960
It begins with a simple nocturnal exchange.
Giulia, Alberto and I are reclining in a cliff-side treehouse, eating watermelons and arguing over which of us is the smartest, when Giulia reaches her hands up and over her head. She stretches out intently enough to produce a cracking sound.
"Well, I'd better get going. I have to be in bed by 10.30."
Alberto and I go ramrod straight.
"Before 10.30? Are you feeling sick?" I ask.
Normally, it's at least another two hours before Giulia stops hiding her yawns and starts slumping her head down. Besides, tonight is as fine a night as any I've experienced in Portorosso. The sky's as clear as the freckles on my nose, a cool breeze is blowing in our faces, and fireworks are painting the sky red, yellow and white. It's even more heavenly than Portorosso summers normally are.
"No, but Papà wants me to get used to the school schedule again." Giulia shrugs helplessly.
"Oh right." I intone. "School. We're going back in a week."
I'd completely forgotten that, unlike heaven, summer doesn't last forever.
Wait, why did I think that like I was getting ready for a day of herding goatfish? Shouldn't I be crying with joy, like I did on my first train ride to Genoa?
Why do I feel numb?
Is it possible that I'm feeling sick?
***
The next morning, I visit the village doctor. But he finds nothing wrong with me. Neither does my colony's healer. When I raise the topic at lunch, Massimo hums disapprovingly and encourages me to pick up better sleeping habits, while Alberto and Giulia diagnose a case of severe academic anxiety.
I follow Massimo's advice. It does help me come down to earth. I wake up at seven thirty the next day. Memories of hurrying into clothes and downing my first espresso of the day come flooding back, and within half an hour I'm ready for school. I feel like a student again. But not the kind of student I am: the kind that wears the class dunce hat so often they've adjusted the colour to their liking, that scrambles to finish their homework on the way to first period, and who counts down the days until graduation.
I decide to take matters more into my own hands, with the help of some intense soul-searching.
And within three days, I have a realisation.
It doesn't happen as I gradually turn to shreds the scratching post Massimo set up for me in Alberto's room.
It doesn't happen as I toss and turn into the early hours of the morning on the treehouse's floorboard.
It doesn't happen as I tumble down Mount Portorosso like a stone, the cardboard slide that should have delivered me to the bottom accidentally discarded far behind.
It happens after Giulia and I have a swimming race from Isola del Mare to a nearby canoe. Before I can politely rub my victory in her face, she raises the possibility of my joining our school's swimming team, seeing as she's set aside enough money to buy a wetsuit. As she rows back to land, breathlessly drawing plans for making me the most popular kid in school and taking my self-confidence to the next level, the truth hits me like a bolt of lightning.
Giulia -
is -
too much.
She can't talk like a normal person. Ninety-percent of the time, she acts like a theatre performer, or like she's going to war.
