"I'm sorry."
"Wait!"
Strangers, forever surrounding themselves with impracticality, with irony and desolation. Strangers that can only be happy when they've pushed themselves so far, to the breaking point, because at least there, on the line not-yet-crossed but fully realized, at least there they have an option. Strangers.
Lovino sat with his elbow on his knee and his face upon his hand looking, rather distastefully, upon the closed door just beyond the archway that led into the kitchen. She wasn't always bad, he decided silently, rolling the fallen pencil eraser between two fingers as he mulled over his thoughts; no, she wasn't. Yesterday was good. The way that she cooked dinner, the way that her and Pa had smiled at each other, his younger brother's long tangents about absolutely-nothing going without harassment, it had all been good. Today, not-so-much. Feliciano and he had come home, thrust into the front row, as the new addition to their parents' armature drama aired.
"So much yelling, so little plot," he groaned to himself. Throwing his attention back to his responsibilities—a lengthy essay on the Italian Civil war—he squinted through the darkness. His only light source tonight would be the dying embers in their soot filled hearth. He didn't mind, but the squinting hurt his eyes after a while.
His pencil hesitated, lead garnishing the page. He hadn't spelt that right. For sure that was wrong. He stared at the word for a long moment, much longer than he had meant to, before fixing his eyes closed and stifling a groan. His teacher's advice rang through his head, telling him that mistakes were okay, that a perfectionist is no good because they never get anything done—and what's the point of something perfectly incomplete? Slowly counting to ten, calming down his nerves that had suddenly spiked and tensed into something he was starting to recognize as anxiety, Lovino opened his eyes again. He still had the rest of the week before the paper was due—three days. He didn't have to worry about little things tonight.
Taking a breath, he nodded to himself, lips set, determined, as he skipped over his little mistake and continued writing. He would have gone to search for his dictionary, but he knew that Feliciano was likely already asleep in their room, and really could not deal with the kid's midnight-chats. Still, he couldn't help but stop more-often-than-not to reread what he had written. He found himself revising what he had a multitude of times, his paper growing thin from all the erasing.
The house echoed eerily. It was new—well, new to them—and they had yet to unpack. Lovino knew the drill. Move in, unpack, pack up, move again. Whether it was because his mother's paranoia or his father's inability to keep a job longer than six months, Lovino wasn't sure. Whatever it was had transferred Lovino to a brand-new school during midterms. Lovino had been shuffled into pretty much the same class as his last school—year eight really didn't change much school-to-school—so it was easy to adapt, but the teacher he had been stuck with insisted that he write a paper instead of taking the actual midterm test. Lovino had been offended. "I can pass! I'll probably blow the rest of these idiots out of the water!" But, she had insisted, saying something or another about wanting to get a feel for his voice.
Whatever that meant.
Lovino had recently been reading Claudio Pavone's works on the Italian Civil War and women's rights, so he had decided to write about that. A stolen copy of A History of the Italian Resistance propped itself against the step of the fireplace, an easy enough access point so that Lovino could flip through it.
He thought Pavone's arguments were interesting. The three wars raging simultaneously in Italy being the Civil, the Class, and the Patriarchy; instead of them all being grouped into one. It talked about the Italians fighting for the second World War, the loss of hope in the fighters, and the sacrifices they took to take a stand. An expert that truly hit Lovino, to which he read again, was:
The Italian soldier will fight no more under the orders of Mussolini, either for Hitler or against Hitler, not even for Italy. The Italian soldier will fold his arms and let himself be killed by the enemy in front or by the rifles of the Blackshirts watching over him from behind.
Lovino could feel a subtle pang in his heart. Inspiration. He often dreamed of soldiers and rioters, thinking them noble in their causes. They were doing something meaningful, he decided. To die so imperiously for armistice, the end of the war, put their lives on a sort of pedestal. It spoke volumes.
After a while longer of writing, Lovino packed up his stuff and went to bed. He and his younger brother shared a room. It was littered with boxes, clothes that they had torn from said boxes, a single full-sized mattress, and a bed box leaning against a desolate dresser they continued to lug house-to-house, despite never really using. Lovino wondered quietly how long they would be here. Six months? Eight? Would they make it a year before the landlord decided his mother was rude, before his father got fired, before his mother become paranoid about something and demanded that they relocate? The longest they had been anywhere was two years, but it didn't seem like that trend was going to keep at it. The last place they lived only lasted three months—hence why they were now struggling through midterms in a brand-new school.
Sighing he laid down, pulling his blanket from beneath his brother with a grumble. "Move your fat ass."
Feliciano grumbled something, pushing outward, catching Lovino in the nose and pushing him close to falling off the mattress. "Oi!" Lovino growled, pushing away the outstretched palms. "Your fucking side!"
Feliciano was four years younger than him. Whether Lovino was the mistake, or Feliciano, or perhaps both, was irrelevant, because they were both here. Feliciano took on his mother's features with brighter hair and eyes and slim features—or, at least they would have been slim if their mother wasn't always filling him with meaningless carbs. It was her way to coddle her baby. Lovino wondered how long it would be before the nine-year-old would either be too fat to properly function or finally start listening to Lovino and stop eating everything he's given. It wasn't really a question who took up more of the bed, but Lovino still insisted that they split it evenly or Feliciano sleep on the floor.
Pushing his brother towards the wall, hating how fast a sleeper the kid was, Lovino growled a few more profanities before finally being able to settle. Shoving his face in his pillow, he drifted, words from his essay, and words that could become his essay, Pavone's passages and opinions, and even more words that started a debate with himself to try and better understand the Resistance and the Fascists, clouded his head. They were all so jumbled and interesting that, though his body was calm, and though his arm had already started with needles and pins under his head, he just couldn't fall asleep. Civil Wars became so much more. At times they became too real. At other times they were something of a poem he wished he had enough energy to get up and write down. Whatever it became, it was distracting and wouldn't let him go.
The morning was groggy. It was just like every other morning Lovino had been too excited about the ideas in his head during the night—which seemed to be most nights, as, unless he was tired enough to fall asleep doing something, he didn't seem to get very good sleep at all—with his brother's voice sounding just that much more annoying, his mother's absence being just that much more apparent, and his father's footsteps or snores being just that much more alarming. It was dreadful. He wished that he could smile like Feliciano on mornings like these. Instead, his core felt empty and his body wanted nothing more but to collapse.
Nevertheless, he gathered his supplies and readied himself for another day.
The town they had relocated to was small, country. Their house leaned and swayed, large windows and clicking wood, ancient. A huge yard surrounded it, but very little grew in it. Grass patches and gravel, mostly. There was a vast willow tree standing beside the house, doubling its size with waterfalling branches and leaves. As Lovino and Feliciano exited the house on the way to school, its branches shuffled across the ground.
The elementary and middle school were only a few blocks away from their house. The elementary school was first; a squat grey building, sitting at one-story with shrouded windows. Feliciano grabbed for Lovino's hand.
"Stop," Lovino demanded.
The kid's cheeks meditated another piece of toast. "I don't want to go to school today," he sniffled. "I don't like my teacher or my new classmates."
"I thought you did? You were saying that your teacher was very nice."
"He is, but I liked my old teacher better!" A car passed them as they climbed the hill to the school. Lovino walked close to a fence, running his hands across the thin metal bars and over the vining flowers that grew around them. The house that the fence belonged had much greener grass than his, though the lot was smaller. An old woman sat outside her door, talking sweetly to a younger woman who stood on the doorstep with a shrugged bag and tousled hair. As they walked past it Lovino stared. There was a doghouse, but no dog; a set of gardening tools shrewd by a small, white shed that's door was propped open; a good many trees that offered both shade and blooming flowers. Lovino wondered what fruit would be growing so late in the year.
The fence continued onto the next house, dusted, rusted grey metal. It stretched all the way to the middle school parking lot. All the way vined yellow flowers, that smelt of honey, and shrubs and trees that bent over the top, tickling Lovino's forehead and neck as he walked beneath them. "You have to get over it, Feliciano; we're here now." For however long it lasted. "Just do what you usually do to make friends. Fuck, stop eating that." He snatched the bread away, dropping it on the ground and wiping the crumbs on his pants. Feliciano whined at him. Lovino cut him off. "Four pieces of toast is too many."
They carefully walked down the small hill that landed them on the pavement of the elementary school. "Mama said that I didn't have to go," Feliciano protested quietly.
"That's because she's a dumbass, Feli. Just," he groaned, "just listen to me, okay? We'll talk about it after school?"
Feliciano agreed, but an overlying dissatisfaction was ostensible. Lovino sighed, too tired to deal with his brother's pouting. The two split ways. Feliciano went into the building, Lovino beside it. Pressed against the fence he quickly walked past the elementary's playground, kicking up dust on the dirt track that surrounded a spotted football field.
He ignored the feeling that settled in his gut. It happened the moment he saw a group of kids sitting outside the front, under a canopy where buses would pull up to. It made him stare forward, uncomfortably conscious of his hands, and think up a million excuses for—well, he wasn't sure. All the way to his classroom he felt it, and even there, as he set his stuff down and took a place at his desk, he felt displaced. He hadn't sat in the wrong desk, he wasn't late—the lack of other students sitting made him question his decision—and even though he was fully prepared he ran through a list of everything he could have forgotten.
He didn't know how many students were in his class; not exactly. He was aware that there was an odd number when everyone was present, and he knew that they reached more than twenty. He had caught a few names, applied them to faces, but hadn't really talked to anyone. No reason to, he would be moving soon again, anyway. There was a boy that continuously tried to talk to him, but Lovino quickly chalked him up to be the weird kid.
When the day finally began, Lovino was able to relax. Italian Literature, Maths, Biology, English…these were his friends. They didn't change from location, and never were they dull, never expected an answer. They existed in the purest forms. Lovino could appreciate that.
"Wow, I can't believe you knew that!" the weird kid gushed. Lovino offered him a tight-lipped smile, the dimples in his cheeks straining. "Math has never been my strong suit. Do you think you could teach me?"
To answer or not to answer—it was a question Lovino dueled over in situations like these. He could brush this kid off with silence. It would make him look petty, a little bitch, but it would also keep interactions like these at bay.
"I don't need to," he gave. "The teacher ran through it well. Just follow her directions."
"But I don't get it!"
Obviously. Lovino had seen the kid's page before he had turned it in. Completing the Square, a simple mathematical process somehow twisted with what Lovino could only imagine to be the most pristine of miscalculations. Lovino clicked his tongue and looked away. He had answered enough for today, he decided.
"You could come over to my place later and teach me!" the boy continued, either persistent or oblivious. Their classmates dotted around them, some talking in pairs or groups, others trying to finish their homework before class was out. There was a buzz for the upcoming break that made everyone forget that they should be studying for next week's test. Lovino wasn't taking it, so he sat with his essay and A History of the Italian Resistance.
"No, I'm busy," he dismissed, leafing through his dictionary. When he didn't know what to write he would skip to a random page and choose a word to incorporate. The constant distraction had killed his concentration. He flipped until he came upon the Os.
Between the constant chatting, he couldn't brush away the feeling that he was being watched. He ignored it. Or, his version of ignoring it—thinking about it until it drew him thin, mad. At the brink of irritation, he shot his gaze upwards. A group of girls stood in the direction he pointed his glare at, one quickly looked away.
Laura seemed to stumble her way back into the girls' conversation. Lovino gave her a once over. She wasn't much, common. Short brown curls held back with a ribbon and a plain set of features. Lovino's gaze settled on her for longer than he meant it to.
His irritation had boiled into curiosity. The thought of being thought of made him wonder whether he should be thinking of her.
The rest of the day he couldn't get her out of his head. Her green eyes went from something dull to something intriguing. He could feel a knotting in his stomach when he caught her staring, and had even found himself looking away sheepishly, now. He should have kept his cool, but somewhere he had grown nervous. Of what? He had no intentions of approaching her. He knew this, internalized it with painful distraction, but somehow the anxiety this girl set upon him sparked and flared the more he debated against it. An impractical emotion—if emotion was the correct term.
That night his father had come home early from work. Lovino knew that he had come home early because his moped was in the drive. Grabbing Feliciano's wrist Lovino pulled them to the backyard. Under the protection of the willow they sat.
Feliciano talked about his day. He focused on the aspects he did every day—the art, the food, the teacher. Never once did he mention his classmates outside of them doing something independently, as if the boy had somehow isolated himself from his classmates.
"What did you learn?" Lovino asked. Feliciano started on another rant about graphite—to which he had already been through—and Lovino cut him off. "No, what practical knowledge did you learn?" he demanded with a sigh. "Maths or Italian."
"Well, I," Feliciano started cheerfully. Suddenly his face dropped. "I haven't learned anything about those things," he insisted. "I don't think we talked about those at all."
"What do you mean you didn't talk about those at all?" Lovino glanced up from the stick he had been digging at with his nail.
Feliciano shrugged, happy again. "We just didn't talk about it. Oh, did I tell you about the kid in my class that keeps vandalizing the desks?"
Lovino stared disbelieving. Feliciano must have taken this as an active audience because he perked, telling the story more animatedly, drawing figures in the dirt to demonstrate what the kid had been drawing. Penises, of course. Feliciano laughed harder the more he talked, causing Lovino to sigh and simply let him be, throwing in his own joke or sarcastic comment every now and then, taking pride when Feliciano was rendered to a laughing ball against the willow's base.
"Where have you two been?" their mother demanded when they finally decided to go inside. Lovino brushed gravel and sticks from his trousers, dropping his bag by the front.
"Just out back playing." Lovino excused, steering Feliciano towards their room by the shoulder.
"Is dinner ready?" Feliciano asked, resisting his older brother's insistence.
Lovino could hear the chatting from the other room. He wondered banefully what group of lowlifes were gathered today.
"Dinner will be ready in a bit," she said.
"We're not feeding everyone, right?" Lovino asked pointedly. According to his father's aggressive screaming they were falling short financially already. They were always falling short, it was no surprise; Lovino agreed with his father when it came to money. They should be careful with it, put them first—but their mother wasn't of a survival mindset. She was too social, always inviting people over, offering them all she had, claiming them as brothers and sisters and friends. The only way to get her out of bed most days was to have someone come over. Friends came first, family came whenever the hell it was convenient.
"Don't talk to me with that tone," his mother scorned, a mean demeanor fixing around her features.
"We don't have enough," Lovino argued. "If you clean out the pantry now we're going to be out of food before the end of the month!"
"Don't talk about what you don't understand," she dismissed. "You're just a child."
"And you're just acting like a child!"
"Lovino," her tone told him to shut up, her rising hand enforced it. Biting his tongue, he cast his glare to the floor, attempting to dismiss the tears that had started at his eyes.
Leaving Feliciano behind, Lovino picked up his bag and found his way to his room. Passing the living area, he observed four different people. His father wasn't there, he must have retired to his office. Each one of their voices flamed his irritation, the fact that none of them even paid him any attention—this was his house, he deserved respect in it—caused only a stronger vexation to grow.
Slamming his door, he threw his bag against one of the boxes. He was unreasonably angry—this happened all the time. Still, he couldn't help himself. His shoulders tensed, his breath lapsed, and his eyes watered and wanted to spill his ego. The room was too small to pace through, but he found a way, traipsing across the bed and back to the door, cursing out a box when it caught on his pant leg, making him almost trip.
He hated everything. He wanted to stop moving, he wanted to be able to have an evening without people coming over to party, he wanted his father to be happy and his mother to stop being such a witch. He wanted so much but he couldn't have it because he was just a child. He didn't feel like a child. He had opinions fully established, he was top of every class he attended, he knew how to balance finances and not be an idiot! So why was he stuck here, under the protection of an abusive drunk and a partying bipolar?
Palming his eyes and shoving his face in his pillow, he cried angrily to himself. "Well, if she's going to feed those bastards then I wont eat." The decliration sounded so good he went on. "I won't eat anything until they can get their shit together!" His father was just as much to blame! Always storming off after attempting to scream or beat his lesson into her without ever making any real difference. All he did was fuel her with gossip for the next day's gathering.
He broke his food strike, unable to keep himself from eating that night, as his stomach rumbled and the more he ignored it, the more he thought about it. He did eat with an attitude.
Friday came and Lovino reread his essay. Ten papers, some crumpled, others thin, but all of them beautiful. Looking at them, finished and ready, filled Lovino with a sense of accomplishment. He had stopped editing last night, deciding that if the teacher wanted something readable she would have given him longer than a week to write it.
Hurrying Feliciano to the elementary school, Lovino was determined to turn his paper in before the day started.
"Here you go," he said, a bit winded from his quick pace. He had slowed when other kids started to look at him, but ultimately remembered his mission before darting forward again.
His teacher, a beautiful young woman with what Lovino deemed to be gorgeous brown eyes, the shade of oakwood on an autumn day, he thought poetically, looked down at his paper without taking it. "Please be sure to turn that in stabled with a cover page," she said.
A great sense of shame overwhelmed Lovino. He hadn't thought about how unprofessional it looked. The smeared pencil and crumbled edges now looked ugly to him. "Yeah," he muttered quietly.
His teacher smiled at him. "Just be sure to turn it in by the end of the day."
During the moments when the class was studying or going over easy material, Lovino rewrote the whole essay on clean paper. All he had needed to do was make a cover page and staple it, but the more he thought about it the angrier he became. This was his work, it should represent him—or, at least what he wanted to be him.
Catching Laura during a short break, Lovino introduced himself. It wrought his nerves and made his palms sweat excessively, but he promised himself he would on Friday. Today was Friday. He would turn in his paper and talk to Laura.
Laura giggled at him. At first, Lovino feared that it was a mean type of giggle, and when she pushed his arm he royally flipped out inside, but when he turned to fall back to his desk—his safety—she continued the conversation. They talked until break was over. Lovino couldn't help but smile into his palm the rest of the day.
Finally, the time came to turn in his essay. His anxiety was at ease as he told the weird kid to fuck off (nicely, he was in a good mood) and walked up to the teacher. He slid the newly written pages onto the desk.
"Very good," she commended. "What did you write on?"
"The history between the Fascists and the Resistance in Italy."
"Is it persuasive?"
"No, it's just factual."
"Just?"
"Well, yeah. You said to write about something."
His teacher nodded. "You're right, but I was hoping to hear your opinions."
"Well," he said, getting a bit perturbed by her telling him that he had done it wrong. "I think the Germans and Fascists were fuckers that don't have any right to this country and that the resistance was fucking admirable."
"Language, Mr. Vargas," she sighed.
"What? I'm speaking Italian." She set him with a type of stare Lovino hated. He didn't know why he hated it, but he knew that he did. That was enough for him. "You ask me for ten pages for my voice, and yet face to face you shut me up?"
"Did you curse in your essay?"
"Give me about five minutes and I'm sure I could fit some color in."
She replied with a dignified sigh, something Lovino had grown accustomed to when he spoke outwardly to adults. It told him exactly where his place was. Balling his fist around his bag strap, Lovino straightened, puffing out his chest.
"See you on Monday," he said quaintly. He was not going to blow up and act like a child. If his essay was wrong because it was factual, then fuck her, and fuck everyone else. He was proud of it. No matter what his gut told him.
Coming out of the building, refusing to look at anyone, Lovino set his way towards home. The weird kid intercepted him.
"Hey, so you are coming over to my place tonight?" he asked.
"No, I'm busy," Lovino said, plagiarizing himself for the seventh time.
"Well, I'm sure you'll enjoy it! I a block away from that coffee place by the bridge. It's really nice, and the barista is a beaut'. We could hang out over the weekend! My sister just got her license, and I bet we could even convince her to—"
"Listen," Lovino drawled, "I'm really busy."
"With what? I'm sure we could find a way around it!"
He couldn't say studying, the kid knew he wasn't taking the midterms, and he wouldn't be able to blame it on his essay anymore. Family matters? Maybe someone was getting hitched this weekend.
He was promptly cut off as he started his lie. Laura came up to them, grabbing at her side and breathing heavily. "Lovino," she said. Lovino flushed at his name, brightening slightly.
"Yeah?"
"You have a brother, don't you?"
Lovino tightened his lips. "Yeah?"
"Fourth year?"
His response was getting redundant.
"Well," she hurried, looking over her shoulder towards the elementary school's playground. "I think he might be in trouble."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. I can't write contemporary to save my life. I thought about just starting with the next chapter, but ultimately decided against it. I think establishing Lovino's character early on is important. So, I suffered, you're welcome.
HISTORICAL NOTES
The text that I continuously referenced throughout this chapter is called A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance by Claudio Pavone. It's a textbook that would NOT have been written in the timeline of this fic, as this is set in the 70s-80s, while the book was written in 2013. So, I apologize for that, but I don't speak Italian and couldn't find any Italian textbooks from the 70s that were translated into English.
The expert that was included was written in 1940s by a group of British and Italian resistance. It was published by Penguin; Pentad The Remaking of Italy.
COMMENT; FOLLOW; WRITE
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Until we meet again.
