Starry eyed

Chapter 1: A letter

Dear Mom,

I'll make this quick. Im being watched.

I miss you. It is nice here, don't get me wrong, but I would rather be back in Italy with you. The sunny, peaceful days sitting on the grass with you. God, that sun. That warmth that could seep into your soul on your worse days and hide that darkness for a little bit. Those rare times where the squirrels and birds wouldn't have anywhere to go and sat still enough to draw. Beautiful goldfinches or simple Mallards. Or, your favorite, the Pink-footed goose. I especially miss when you would smile at me with all the love in the word as we walk through the town. I miss our friendly neighbors waving at us while we pass. How they would sneak me some fruit when no one else was looking, not wanting to upset the other kids around.

Locals in New York arent bad, but they all are a little shady. I met one of them, he ran one of those stands, but they sold corn dogs instead of fruit. Corn dogs aren't as good as Bartholomeo's peaches, or Mrs Abelle's fresh Zeppole.

And turns out (I wasn't very surprised) that he was selling drugs along with the corndogs!! I knew it didn't make any sense why a food vender drove a 2019 Jaguar with Italian leather (another good thing about Italy, the fantastic quality of everything) and wore very real looking jewels. So yeah, shady was a word to describe most of them.

I wish dad didn't bring me here and away from you.

Dad (should I still call him that?) died, as you most definitely know. A little while ago, too. Like a year. Four hundred and seven days, or something. Turns out he had a brother living in New York, my uncle. His name is Matteo, not a bad guy, but he does take the saying 'eye for an eye' a little too seriously. Uncle Matteo lost his finger in a fight, and told me he cut off the other man's finger once he hunted him down. He even showed me a picture!! It was all bloody and splotchy.

So, he died and I moved in with Matteo. I applied into school, a pretty nice pupils school with a lot of kids. School costs money, and that's how I started a makeshift business. It began when I helped fixed Mrs Timms across the hall with her broken radiator. She gave me twenty bucks (I really tried having her not pay me but she practically/literally forced me to put the money in my hoodie pocket). Mrs Timms then told Mr Eisen, who needed someone to teach him how to, well, pretty much use the internet in general. And it's not just senior citizens of technology!! The principal of my school called me down for help when the school internet crashed. I fixed it, and got twenty extra minutes of gym/time to take walks!! Then on my free time, I'll tutor some of the local kids around my age who go to a different school, but then go hang out with them after. These are the things making it bearable to live here.

Also, it's pretty nice I have a little extra money to spend when Uncle Matteo is at work. He's a firefighter. One of the customers, her name is Tali (cool name) she just turned twenty. Her dad is a pretty odd guy. Whenever I came over to play video games or help Tali with her essays and assignments, I could hear him muttering about an organization called 'Shield' not taking care of their duties as cleaning up the city. Tali's dad is a construction worker, and looks like the stereotype, too.

I got curious, and I looked up the organization. There was nothing except for a couple mentions of those superheroes you would only hear about in Italy.

So I couldn't help myself. I know, I know! You would be dragging me down to the cops by my ear if you were with me. I hacked into their organisation.

It's not my fault they were so easy to get into, but it was my fault I left a trail behind. I forgot about the 'don't cause trouble but if you do, don't get caught' talk you would always remind me of.

So that's why I was kidnaped by Shield. Turns out they can't find any information on me (i'll ask you about that later) and they dont think theyll be able to keep me (after I escaped by using those graceful and quick ballerina skills you ingrained into me and kicking an agent unconscious, then using his weapons to defeat others) so now i'm being shipped off to be babysat by a bunch of superheroes.

Ah, one of them is talking to me now. Big, blond, and aggressively serious.

Sorry if this was messy, rushed, and a little insane sounding.

Love you more than anything,

Your Andrea aka Andrew aka Andy

(p.s i'll try to write more soon)

(p.p.s Alessandro please try to emphasize the words correctly when you read it to her. She cant see it for herself or hear my voice so you have to do it right, i'll know)