Home > Our Italian Summer(6)

Our Italian Summer(6)
Author: Jennifer Probst

   “Yep, been writing since I was young. Just nobody interesting enough to share my shit with.”

   Connor snorted. “We’re right here. Are you trying to insult us?”

   She rolled her eyes. “You two don’t count.” Suddenly, she swung her head around and pointed at me. “Hey, why don’t you come with us? Then I won’t be stuck alone with two stinky men in an RV.”

   My eyes widened in surprise. I barely knew them, yet they were inviting me on a summer road trip. Trying to act cool before the guys rejected me, I shrugged. “Thanks, but I’m sure it’d be too many people.”

   David narrowed his gaze. “There’s enough room. If you want to come.”

   “I don’t mind,” Connor said. “The more the merrier.”

   “See? Come on, what else you gonna do this summer? Get a crappy job? Study? Hang out at the country club?” Freda asked. “This may be your only opportunity to see what’s out there on your own terms. Unless you think your mom would freak and not let you.”

   I was going to be eighteen this summer—heading into my senior year—and I had no fucking clue who I was. I didn’t know what college I wanted to go to, what I wanted to be, or even what would make me happy. Sure, I had good grades and a solid SAT score, and with my mom’s connections, I’d have a decent pick of colleges. But just because I was smart didn’t mean I knew what I wanted to study. I wished I felt free to make my own choices without pressure.

   The only thing I truly loved was cooking. I loved creating new dishes and learning about how the ingredients in a dish worked together. Nonni had taught me how to make fresh pasta, bread, and gravy from scratch, but every time I brought up the idea of pursuing cooking as a career, Mom freaked out. She’d wrinkle her nose and tell me I had no idea what I was talking about. She thought the industry was below me and I was meant for great things. Like being the CEO of my own business, locked in an office, making money to keep myself trapped by buying more things.

   She expected me to attend some top-notch college and fall in line. The thought of being on my own this summer zinged through my blood like a burst of fizzy soda. I’d always done everything my mother had asked. In June, I’d be eighteen and legally an adult. Could she really stop me? My thoughts whirled and I suddenly knew I’d do it. For the first time, I was going to do what I wanted.

   I felt more comfortable with this group than I had in a long time. With my friends, I felt pressured to be someone else to fit in with the crowd. With my mom, I felt ignored, caught up in some weird ideal she imagined me to be. Maybe it was finally time I made my own decisions.

   “Sure, why not?”

   Freda gave a whoop. “Well, I think it’s time we kicked this party up a notch,” Connor announced, slapping his hands together. “Is it still in the same place?”

   David nodded. Suddenly, he turned to me. “Do you smoke weed?”

   I’d only done it a handful of times, always scared if I smoked too much it’d wig me out, but the idea of not thinking was too tempting. My mind was always jumping around, worrying about stuff, and I wanted to chill for a while. Most of my friends’ moms took Xanax or Valium, and Bonnie and Claire stole the meds on a regular basis and got giggly or sleepy or buzzed. Their parents were hypocritical—screaming how their kids shouldn’t do drugs when they couldn’t start a day without the power of a little white pill.

   “I’ve done it a few times,” I admitted.

   David’s gaze held mine. “You don’t have to smoke if you don’t want to.”

   Something in my chest relaxed. My own friends liked to pressure me, either to cheat on a test or give Ryan Thomas a blow job because it was no big deal, but here I was with people who didn’t care what I chose to do or not do.

   I smiled at him. “I want to.”

   “You’re okay with blowing off the rest of the day?”

   I had track practice after school. I had a quiz in English fifth period. My mom would freak if the school called, and my friends would be pissed because I’d screw my team and anger my coach, but I didn’t care. A thrill coursed through me, as if I felt more alive. I’d promised Nonni I’d go over for dinner, but I’d make sure I had plenty of time to come down off any high. “Yeah, I’m good.”

   Freda gave me a thumbs-up sign, and Connor came back with the bong and a sandwich bag full of weed and set them on the beat-up ottoman. Freda started talking about the places we’d go and the things we’d do this summer, and David put on some music, and for a while, everything was really, really good.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE


   Sophia


   One hand pressed to my stomach, I tried not to wince at the achy, bloated bubble of pain hidden there. It had been growing worse, enough that the antacids and bland food weren’t helping any longer. I figured it was a bladder infection, but the sulfur pills hadn’t worked either. I thought of my doctor and how she’d schedule a multitude of tests, both to be sure and to get the extra fees. She’d already mentioned an endoscopy as the next step. I’d lived my whole life in relatively good health, and with each decade, the breakdown of flesh and bones and blood became more apparent. My habits of denial and my drive to believe I was still young had finally shattered under not only the consistent, nagging pain, but also the gut instinct that I was really sick, which I tried to bury even deeper.

   How sick, I didn’t know yet. Maybe I didn’t want to. At seventy-five, I could still choose treatment options, or I might be reverting to my dramatic ways and it was only an ulcer. I wondered if other older women felt this way—trapped in an aging body yet stuck with a mind still full of possibilities. It was a bitter contradiction. But what really made me grieve was the lack of people with whom I could truly discuss this phenomenon.

   Most of my friends didn’t like lapsing into philosophical discussions of death—of either the body or the mind or the younger self. They were content with chatting about ailments and medicine and faith-inspired images of heaven, sort of like the Rainbow Bridge for animals. And though I personally couldn’t wait to greet my beagle, Bagel, or my husband, whom I missed with every breath, I wasn’t ready to test the theory.

   No, I liked Earth here just fine.

   Especially with the work that still had to be done.

   I glanced at my iPhone, still wishing for the old-fashioned phones with real buttons to press and the inability to text a few words to anyone in the world, who could make any inference they wished because they couldn’t hear the inflection in your voice. The warm April weather was a gift in a season when Mother Nature usually had PMS and couldn’t decide whether to whack us with snow, rain, or an eighty-degree day. I needed to think about things and figure out what I was going to do. Best to go to the garden, where I could do useful work at the same time.

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