Alberto didn't want to be cheerful and polite for his second supper with the Gennari family. He wanted to sulk. Sometimes he just needed to sit and be miserable and when he did, Massimo always seemed to understand, even leaving dinner outside Alberto's door so he wouldn't have to sit at the table. The Gennaris obviously weren't going to do that, and Alberto wouldn't have wanted them to – he did't want them seeing that side of him. So he made himself smile and say, "looks tasty!" as they sat down to a meal of penne alla Genovese with friarelli, even though he had no appetite whatsoever.
Luca, who knew very well that Alberto was neither happy nor hungry, gave him a pained look.
Alberto looked away. The Gennaris were the only people in Napoli that Alberto was sure liked him. He couldn't risk that, especially when he and Luca were expected to live at their house for the next thirteen days. He would just eat his food, even if it made him sick, and talk about the people he'd met that day. There were no shortage of them: Lucrezia with her advice and whispered secrets, Andrea who kept pestering Luca with questions, maybe even the mysterious Flavia. He would just ignore the bad parts.
Unfortunately, he did not get the opportunity. The first thing Mike said to him after they began eating was, "Alberto... you don't have to go see your Dad tomorrow if you don't want to."
Alberto gritted his teeth and shut his eyes, resisting the urge to groan. Carlotta must have told him what had happened. "I already promised we would," he said.
"We could tell him we already had plans to go somewhere else, and you forgot," Mike suggested.
"Somewhere from my book!" Luca agreed eagerly. "Could we go see the ruins at Pompei?"
"Of course we could," said Mike. "I don't have any classes tomorrow. I can cancel my office hours, and we'll take a quick trip over there on the train. We can stop at the Cremeria Gioelia before we head home."
"I'll tell Sofia to pass on your apologies," Carlotta said with a nod.
It seemed so easy, and Alberto very nearly just said yes... but then he wondered what would happen if Giancarlo tried to ask him again. What if he were even louder and more embarrassing about it? Or maybe even worse, what if the rest of the family thought it meant Alberto didn't keep his promises, just like his father? Little as he liked the idea of spending a day with Giancarlo, Alberto liked those possible scenarios even less. He shook his head.
"No, thank you," he said firmly.
Luca gave a disappointed sigh.
"That's all right, Luca," said Carlotta. "You'll have plenty of chances to see the sights. We could take you somewhere tomorrow, perhaps?"
That idea was a shock, and for a moment Alberto held his breath. If he were goign to have to do this without Luca, that might be enough to make him change his mind.
"No, thanks," said Luca. "I'll go with Alberto. At school we visited some places around Genova to see what the people working there do. Maybe where Alberto's father works will be interesting."
Alberto tried not to look too relieved, but he did mouth the words thank you, the way he'd seen Luca do when Alberto or Giulia helped make excuses for him being late home. Luca's presence probably wouldn't stop tomorrow from being horrible, but at least he'd have company.
It seemed Alberto wasn't the only one at the table who wanted to talk about something else, because that was when Celia spoke up. "When are you gonna teach me how to Change?" she asked.
"Celia," said Mike.
"I need to learn!" she protested.
"Okay!" Alberto pushed his plate away and stood up. "I'll teach you right now!"
"Oh, dear," sighed Carlotta.
"Uh... Alberto?" Luca began.
"She asked!" said Alberto. This would distract everybody so they would stop talking about tomorrow, and maybe they wouldn't notice he hadn't really eaten anything. He opened a cupboard he'd seen Carlotta taking cooking utensils out of earlier, and found a large pasta pot, which he plunked in the sink to fill it with water.
"Okay, Celia," he said. "One of the things I did when I was teaching myself to do it was I stood in a bucket of water" – she didn't need to know it had been because he'd had blistered feet from trying to walk halfway across Catalogna – "and pushed the Change up and down! That's way easier than doing the whole thing at one go."
With the pot full, he dragged it back out and set it on the kitchen floor. He stuck a hand into it to transform, and then silently commanded his lower arm to do the same. Purple scales appeared, and the fin on the back grew in as smoothly and naturally as they did in the water. "See? Or I can do it the other way." Alberto Changed his hand back, and then flicked water at Celia, who giggled. "Now, you try."
"Try not to spill it, Guppy," said Mike.
Celia delightedly hopped down from her chair and thrust her arm into the pot of water. It transformed, and she furrowed her brow in concentration, trying to duplicate what Alberto had just showed her.
"Feel the difference where it switches," said Alberto, "and make that happen."
She gritted her teeth and made a small sound. "I can't do it."
"Sure you can," said Alberto. "If I can do it, so can you."
Luca was watching, intrigued now. "He taught me to..." he had to stop and swallow as his voice cracked again. "He taught me to walk, remember? He can teach you to do this."
"Exactly," Alberto nodded.
Celia scowled and tried again, this time putting both hands into the water. She put her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and hummed in concentration, barely breathing – then finally exhaled in disappointment. "I can't do it."
"I couldn't do it the first few times, either," said Alberto.
"And it's all right if you can't," Carlotta said quickly. "Remember, none of us can except Alberto, and we get along just fine."
But tears were rising in Celia's eyes. She thrust her arms further into the pot, and then pulled them out, dried them on her skirt, and tried to step into the water instead
"Oh, no..." Carlotta began, reaching for her.
But it was too late. Celia had lost her balance. She wobbled and then fell, and the bucket went with her, spilling water all over Alberto and all over the kitchen floor. Carlotta quickly lifted her feet from the floor so her stockings wouldn't get wet. Luca jumped up and ran to right the fallen pot.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Now, what did I tell you?" asked Mike. He came and lifted Celia up, while Luca pulled Alberto to his feet.
Carlotta pulled her stockings off so they wouldn't have to stretch when her feet got wet, and went to get a mop. Celia, meanwhile, threw her arms around her father's neck and bawled.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she wailed.
"Next time, we'll try this outside," Carlotta said, returning with the mop. "Alberto, Luca, out of the way, please."
Alberto stepped back and looked down at his hands – the left one still looked human, while the right had reverted to sea monster – and then quickly shook dry. Celia, who was also dripping and half-transformed, was still crying and apologizing, her tail wrapped twice around her father's wrist. With a feeling like getting sucked down into a whirlpool, Alberto realized he'd ruined everything, again. For a moment he wanted to say something, then he realized there was nothing he could say. So he turned around and, without a word, went back upstairs to the bedroom.
Once there, he shut the door and sat down at the foot of the bed and hugged his knees to his chest. One day. One day. He'd been here one day, he'd done his best to be good like Luca, and still he'd made a mess of things. Everybody in the Scorfano family would just associate him with his father making a scene at the picnic, and now the Gennaris were going to be angry with him for spilling water all over the floor. He never should have come here! He should have stayed in Portorosso where at least Massimo understood him.
Somebody knocked on the door.
"Go away!" said Alberto.
"It's just me," Luca told him. "Can I come in?"
"Whatever. I don't care," Alberto lied.
The door opened, and Luca peeked inside. "Carlotta wants to know if you're going to finish your supper."
Alberto snorted. "She wants me to come downstairs so she can shout at me." Would they be asked to leave? Where would they go? Nonna Sofia had said she had a house on Procida, but Giancarlo lived there, too.
"No, she doesn't. It was an accident. She's not mad at you." Luca came and sat down next to him. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." It was a lie, and Luca would know it was a lie, so Alberto wasn't sure why he bothered saying it. "I just... didn't want everybody here knowing what a screw-up I am. Now everybody knows."
"None of it was your fault," Luca reassured him. "They know that."
Alberto shook his head.
"They do!" his friend insisted. "At the picnic after, they were all talking about how your father shouldn't have done that. I heard Nonna Sofia tell one of the Aunt Bettinas that it wasn't fair of him to put you on the spot."
"You did?" Alberto looked up a bit.
"Yeah. Weren't you listening?"
Alberto hadn't been listening. He'd been too busy feeling sorry for himself and dreading what was going to happen tomorrow. "I really don't wanna go," he admitted, "but I know if I get out of it, he's just gonna make it worse."
"Families are like that sometimes," Luca told him. "Sometimes you gotta do things you don't wanna do. I hate being in the spring pageants because it's the same thing every year, but Mom's always so proud of me so I do it anyway." He offered a hand. "Come on downstairs, I promise they're not mad."
Alberto hesitated... but Luca wouldn't lie to him. He took the hand and got up, and the two of them headed back down to the kitchen. The Gennaris were waiting there, Celia now wearing a different dress but still clinging to her father's hand and looking terrified, as if she expected Luca and Alberto to bite her. When they arrived in the doorway, she looked up at Carlotta, who nodded to her.
Celia took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I got your clothes all wet," she said to Alberto.
"It's not the first time," Alberto replied.
"And I'm sorry I kept bothering you to teach me to Change," she added. "I won't ask anymore." She gulped hard, suppressing a sob, and Alberto wondered if she thought she'd lost her chance entirely, that there was no way he'd teach her now. He didn't want her to think that.
"It's okay," he said. "I'm sure if you keep trying you'll figure it out."
She sniffled and held out a hand.
Alberto took it and, not sure what else to do with it, went through the family handshake. "Piacere! Girolamo Trombetta."
Celia giggled softly.
"There we go," said Mike, patting Celia's head. "I told you he wouldn't be angry."
"Let's finish our supper," Carlotta agreed. "Alberto, do you want the rest of yours?"
Alberto was, if anything, even less hungry than he'd been an hour ago, but he still didn't want to insult her. "I'll eat," he said.
They sat down again, and Alberto did eat, although he couldn't remember later what the dinner had tasted like. He didn't really remember what they talked about, either, but at least there was no more discussion of his appointment with his father tomorrow or how to get out of that. By the time the boys went to bed that evening, Alberto was feeling a little better but not very much. The Gennari family might have given him a second chance, but that just made it all the more important that he not screw up again – and there was still tomorrow to get through.
The next morning they swam out to Procida, where Sofia had her little house. In her letters she had explained to Alberto that it was a place where the whole family could keep belongings and pursue hobbies that couldn't go in the water, and also meet human friends, but had warned that it was also where Alberto's father was staying. Even though it was still early when they arrived, there were already people visiting. One of the Aunt Bettinas was sitting on a submerged log chatting with a friend, while closer to shore a group of sea monster children were playing in the surf, tossing a beach ball back and forth. They waved hello as Carlotta led Luca and Alberto past, and the boy called Andrea broke off from the group to follow them into the shallows.
"You're going to see Uncle Giancarlo today?" he asked.
"Yep," said Alberto, without enthusiasm.
"Right here," Carlotta told the boys, showing them where a flight of stairs had been cut into a rocky cliff, right down into the water. She surfaced there and started climbing up. Alberto and Luca followed her, and Andrea brought up the rear.
"What about dark?" asked Andrea.
"Huh?" Luca looked back at him, puzzled.
Andrea combed his hands through his damp fins, drying them out to turn into short, curly golden-brown hair much like Alberto's. "Dark! You said light is made of something like atoms. What about dark?"
"I don't think so," Luca said. "I think dark is just where there isn't any light."
They reached the top of the steps, where there was a wooden fence with a gate. Carlotta opened this, and showed them into a little garden that sloped up towards a house painted white and yellow, with bright blue shutters on the windows. It was built on several levels, to follow the land as it continued to climb towards the centre of the island.
"How about fire?" Andrea insisted. "Is fire made of atoms? It's mostly light, so is it made out of the other things? How about hot? Is hot made out of atoms?"
While he continued to fire off questions, rarely waiting for Luca to actually answer them, Carlotta opened the door without knocking and looked inside. "Aunt Sofia!" she called out.
"She's upstairs, yelling at Uncle Giancarlo!" came a muffled reply.
Alberto wasn't sure if he were happy to hear that response or not. The voice was Lucrezia's.
Carlotta waved the boys into the house's small kitchen, then peeked into the little powder room that opened from it. Lucrezia was in there, looking critically at her reflection in the mirror. Her human form had wavy dark hair cut in a bob, and she was wearing a black dress with pastel polka-dots. Frowning, she held up a tube of lipstick, trying to assess how it matched her clothes.
"Yelling at him?" Carlotta asked.
"Well, you know... telling him what he is and isn't allowed to do today. That sort of thing," said Lucrezia. She held up a second lipstick to compare.
"The darker pink with that dress," said Carlotta, pointing to the lipstick in Lucrezia's left hand. "Thank you." She left the door ajar, and climbed the stairs to find Sofia.
Lucrezia examined the lipstick skeptically, then set it down and began applying the one in her right hand. "So," she said to Alberto and Luca. "You're really gonna do it, huh?"
"Of course," said Alberto. "When I say I'm gonna do something, I do it." Although sometimes he forgot by accident. Sometimes he even forgot on purpose, when it was something he really didn't want to do, like scraping the barnacles off the bottom of Massimo's boat. He was really bad at this not lying or bragging thing, wasn't he?
"Well, keep an eye on Uncle Giancarlo," Lucrezia said. She pressed her lips together, then made a kissy face at the mirror. "Nonna Sofia's probably gonna want a full report. She's just itching for an excuse to get rid of him." Satisfied with her appearance, she put the lipsticks back in a drawer and headed out into the kitchen.
"Get rid of him?" asked Luca.
"Yeah." Lucrezia took a pastry out of a dish on the table and bit into it. "When she dragged him home from Spagna she told him he could live here in this house, but only as long as he kept a job and didn't gamble or drink or smoke... there were a bunch of other rules, too. So she'll wanna know if he's behaving himself." She was quiet a moment while chewing another mouthful. "I know Mom and Dad both think he's a terrible influence. They can't wait until she throws him out."
"Oh," said Alberto, taking a seat at the table. He hadn't realized his father's situation here was so precarious. "Where are you going today?"
"Some friends and I are going to the cinema." Lucrezia stuffed the rest of the pastry in her mouth and turned to study her reflection again, this time in the glass door of one of the cupboards. "That's better. Never take advice about your appearance from Signora Gennari."
"Why not?" Alberto asked.
"Well, she clearly doesn't know what looks good – she married a human," Lucrezia said. "Ew."
Luca glanced at the pastries in the dish, looking very tempting with the sparkling sugar dusted over them, but then he put his hands behind his back, not wanting to help himself without permission. "You think humans are ugly?" he asked.
Alberto was somewhat startled by this statement, too. It would never have occurred to him to pass a judgment on human appearance in general. Individual ones could be fat or thin, or tall or short, or whatever, but as a whole that was just what they looked like. He knew Luca sometimes found them kind of weird, but he seemed to have accepted that things like hair and toenails were totally normal above the surface.
"You don't? They've got these giant noses." Lucrezia pinched her bridge, then tugged on an earlobe, "and I don't even know what these are supposed to be for. That's why nobody could ever really be happy being married to one. I mean," she pointed at Alberto, "your parents weren't happy, were they?"
"I dunno," Alberto said. His father had always made it sound as if Giancarlo and Maria had loved each other very much, at least until Alberto himself came along to ruin everything. But maybe he was just remembering the good parts and forgetting the bad. People tended to do that.
"The Gennaris seem happy enough to me," Luca said.
Lucrezia snorted. "The oyster's shell doesn't tell you about the pearls."
"You don't think they're happy?" Alberto asked.
"Of course they're not! Not when..." but Lucrezia had to cut herself off then, as Carlotta came back down the stairs with Sofia and Giancarlo behind her. Whatever secret she'd been about to tell, it would have to remain mysterious for now.
"Buongiorno!" said Giancarlo cheerfully. Yesterday had been the first time Alberto had ever seen his father dressed in woven seagrass like the other sea monsters. Today he was wearing human clothes again, with a plaid shirt, a brown bomber jacket, and a pageboy cap.
"Good morning, Sir," Luca replied respectfully.
"Aw, you can call me Zio Gianni. It's Luca, right?"
"Luca Paguro." Luca gave Alberto a wary glance. He knew better than to call Giancarlo uncle anything.
"Stop fussing, Lucrezia, you look lovely," Sofia said, patting her granddaughter on the back. "Your Uncle Leonardo told me you didn't introduce him to Alberto yesterday."
"Oh! Accidente!" Lucrezia said, shaking her head. "I knew I forgot somebody." She scooped up her purse and headed for the door. "Too many people!" she said, throwing her hands in the air on the way out.
Sofia sighed as she watched her go.
"I can take them to meet him and his family after we're done," Giancarlo suggested.
"Would you?" Sofia said. "I'm sure they'd appreciate it. You don't mind, do you, boys?"
Luca and Alberto exchanged a glance. Lucrezia omitting to introduce Uncle Leonardo's family had been anything but an accident. What was going on here?
"We don't mind," Alberto said.
"Not at all, Madame," Luca agreed.
Giancarlo brought his hands together. "All right, ragazzi," he said. "You ready to see the Palazzo del Corallo?"
"Yes, Sir!" Luca stood up. Alberto hauled himself to his feet with deliberate, theatrical reluctance.
Sofia patted Alberto's shoulder. "Here," she said, offering him a couple of coins. "In case you need to use the telephone... or if you and Luca want some cocco." She winked.
She, too, was offering Alberto a way out. That was reassuring. "Grazie, Nonna Sofia," he replied, mindful of his manners.
"I'm proud of you, Alberto," said Sofia with a gentle smile. "Forgiving people can be a terribly difficult thing to do."
Alberto winced. So few people in his life had ever told him they were proud of him. He was starting to learn how to tell when Massimo was thinking it, but the fisherman still rarely said. Giancarlo certainly never had. Hearing it now should have made him happy, but he hadn't forgiven his father. He'd only agreed to this so the picnic wouldn't be ruined.
He couldn't say so, though, because then Sofia would be disappointed. So Alberto just nodded.
"All right, follow me!" With a grand gesture, Giancarlo opened the front door to reveal the vehicle he had parked in the street outside. This was a motorcycle with a sidecar, painted a rather dull shade of green. "Our chariot!" he declared.
"Wow!" said Luca, but then saw the expression on Alberto's face and quickly forced his own into a less excited expression. Alberto did think the motorcycle was neat, but he wasn't going to show that. It was an ugly colour, he decided, and it didn't have the graceful shapes of a proper Vespa. It was just an imitation, like the little moped Giancarlo had stolen in Spagna.
"This was your grandfather's, Alberto," Giancarlo said. "He found it at the bottom of the gulf after the war, and fixed it up so it'd run. He loved machines." He ran affectionate fingers over the handlebars. "When I was little he used to bring things home and take them apart, clocks and radios and bicycles. He wanted to see all the parts and figure out how they worked."
"Alberto likes things like that, too," Luca volunteered. He looked at Alberto, seeking acknowledgement of this family connection, but Alberto just scowled and looked away. "We built some stuff together on the Island, and he got the gramophone working again after he... after it fell out of the tower."
"A polyp off the same reef!" said Giancarlo happily, clapping Alberto on the shoulder.
Maybe Alberto should have been happy, too... he couldn't tell anymore. What he did know was that if his father had wanted to share such things with him, he'd had years and years in which to do it. Instead, he'd spent that time running off and playing cards or whatever it was he did. Alberto wasn't going to give him another chance now.
Giancarlo lifted a cardboard box out of the sidecar and offered it to the boys. "You'll have to hang on to this on the way. It's not heavy. Hop in!"
It was a squash, but Luca and Alberto were both able to climb into the little sidecar, and held the box in their laps. Alberto decided he didn't care about the contents, but Luca opened the top for a peek, and found it contained crumpled-up newspaper, in which were nestled several large carnelian conch shells and a few pieces of red coral, all of it carefully cleaned.
"I sell these to the Fratelli Rossi jewelry company," Giancarlo said, climbing onto the motorcycle. He put a helmet on, and fastened the strap under his chin. "They carve cameos out of the shells. You know those little portraits that's usually a pretty girl on a pink background?"
"Yeah," said Alberto, who had never seen one.
"Signora Bianchi at school has one on a necklace," said Luca.
"When we get there you can watch the guys who make them," Giancarlo promised. "I told the owners I might bring my son by this week, and they said you were welcome."
He couldn't have done that yesterday, Alberto thought. He wouldn't have had time. He must have gotten permission a while ago, maybe even as soon as he'd heard that Alberto was coming to visit. He'd been planning on interrupting the picnic the entire time. Had he counted on Alberto being too embarrassed to say no to him? What would he have done if Alberto said no?
The engine on the motorcycle coughed and grumbled to life, and Alberto's thoughts evaporated as a cold knot of panic appeared in his stomach again. He was on a motorcycle with his father... just like last fall. He hadn't thought of that. What if... what if they weren't actually going to this Palazzo del Corallo? What if Giancarlo was planning to kidnap him and Luca both, and take them away somewhere? The idea made Alberto feel like he was suffocating. He had to get out of here. He had to get Luca out of here...
But it was too late. Giancarlo drove off down the street, a grin on his face, and headed out onto the main road that would take them to the ferry terminal. All Alberto could do was hang on and remind himself that both Massimo and Nonna Sofia had given him money. If anything bad happened all he had to do was find a telephone. He knew how to use them now. He would be fine.
"By the way!" Giancarlo said, shouting to be heard over the engine. "Everybody there thinks my name is Gianni Trombetta! So keep that in mind, will you?"
"Yes, Sir!" said Luca.
Alberto sniggered to himself, thinking that he wouldn't have expected his father to be so superstitious. Then he stopped himself, confused. Giancarlo wasn't superstitious, at least not about telling his name to humans. Signor D'Auvergne in Lione had known it. So had Theresa in Badalona, and the three men he'd robbed the bank with. All of them had called him Scorfano.
So had the people at the prison.
That was why he now used a fake name, Alberto realized with a shiver. It had nothing to do with superstitions about humans, it was because if people found out he was Giancarlo Scorfano the bank robber, he'd be sent back to prison in Spagna. If Alberto slipped up and called him the wrong thing, that was it. Everything was ruined. Again.
Or... or was it?
Lucrezia said everybody was eager to get rid of Giancarlo. Sofia was watching him like a gannet ready to dive, and Lucrezia's parents thought he was a bad influence. They might be glad if he went back to prison.
There was no way Alberto could do that, though. He hadn't seen much of the prison, but that had been enough to tell him it was an absolutely terrible place and even worse, had no access to the ocean. Sea monsters could stay out of the water indefinitely if they wanted to, but that didn't mean they liked it, and if he did transform in prison no good could come of it. Even Romero the guard had agreed with that.
As Alberto had said yesterday, he didn't like his father but he definitely didn't hate him, not nearly enough to wish that on him. But knowing that he could, that at any moment he could just spit it out and ruin everything on purpose, was both terrifying and weirdly thrilling. It felt a lot like the moment Alberto had realized that his control over the Change meant he could just walk away and leave his father trapped inside by the rain. He had the power to destroy Giancarlo's entire life with a name.
He wouldn't, because that would be mean and Giancarlo clearly trusted him not to – if he didn't, he wouldn't even have suggested this trip. But knowing he could made a big difference to Alberto's confidence. If Giancarlo did try anything shady, Alberto had a way to fight back.
