The Photographer (Ignazio Boschetto Fanfiction)

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

          I could barely sleep all night, just thinking about seeing the boys and Barbara and Michele again. I kept laying down and getting back up, pacing and thinking and reading Ignazio’s letters again and again, laughing quietly and feeling the racing of my heart. I kept relighting the candle, unwilling to let its flickering dance come to an end.

          When the stars retreated and the sun returned, bringing back its brilliant orange glow, I finally left the hut and went to find Monica. She was having breakfast alone in her hut, and I went in and sat next to her on the floor and told her everything.

          She was very supportive, telling me that it was my decision and I should do what I thought was best for me. She had only needed me for a short time for her project, and it wasn’t as if I’d be setting her back with my leaving. She had been concerned about my melancholy mood in the evenings, and she was happy that I knew what I was going to do.

          “Last night when you asked me about dreams I figured you might leave. From everything you’ve told me, it sounds like you’ve done well with Il Volo… So, Tamzin,” she said, smiling, “You’re going to be with Il Volo again.”

          “I want to!” I said pleadingly. “But Monica, I don’t even know if I can! I’ve been gone for a whole month! Maybe they have a new photographer! Maybe they’ve decided they don’t need one after all! Maybe they’ve gotten used to life without me, and they don’t want to return to what it used to be like now that I’ve left! But Ignazio sent me here so I could know what’s right, and now I do!”

          “How are you going to reach them?” Monica asked, getting to her feet and reaching down to pull me up. “You don’t have your phone anymore, right?”

          “Oh, no! That’s right! I lost it in Mozambique! It didn’t matter so much then because I didn’t have service anyway, but all the numbers were in that phone! Oh, no, Monica!”

          I clenched my fists at the realization and looked up fearfully at her.

          “Calm down. Can you email them when you get back to D.C.?”

          “I guess I can, but Michele and Barbara get dozens of emails a day! It takes forever to sift through them all, and it’d be a while before they got back to me! And the boys don’t check their emails!”

          “Um…okay…how about…”

          “The tour schedule!”

          “What?”

          “I kept the tour schedule in my suitcase!”

          I turned and burst out of the hut, sprinting as fast as I could to my own hut. I ran through the village, dodging people going out to work and raced into my own hut, throwing myself to my knees beside the open suitcase. I went frantically through it, throwing things on the bed with reckless abandon.

          “Yes!” I cried, snatching it up and leaping to my feet.

          “You found it? What does it say?” Monica asked, appearing in the doorway.

          “They’ll be in Los Angeles when I return to Washington D.C., but they’ll be there only for that night and the next, and then they’re off to Latin America, and I didn’t get all the specifics written down for those concerts before I left!”

          “Okay, okay, maybe National Geographic has Ignazio’s number filed, since you said he’s been calling them. If not, you’ll just have to go to Los Angeles and find them. You have the theatre and the concert time written down, don’t you?”