The Demon Catchers of Milan (4 page)

Some Italian guy started singing to techno music in Emilio’s pocket and he jumped up, pulling out his cell phone.

“Excuse me,” he said, and headed outside, leaving his grandfather and the rest of us to stare at one another and wonder how we were supposed to talk without him to translate. Giuliano pointed after his grandson with his chopsticks, waggling his eyebrows and opening his mouth a couple of times.

“Curlfrond,” he announced gravely at last. “Alba.”

We waited politely.

“Oh!” said Gina. “Girlfriend! His girlfriend, Alba.”

“
Sì
, curlfrond,” agreed Giuliano, grinning at Gina. He launched into a complicated game of charades, mysterious English and Italian, and while we tried to follow it, I noticed a tiny, sad feeling in my chest. It couldn’t be because Emilio had a girlfriend, right? I mean, of course he had a girlfriend; he was so gorgeous.

Emilio and Giuliano went back to the hotel they were staying at (Gina and I had been moved to the guest room because we were both too scared to go back into our own room). We went home, and Mom and Dad started the argument I could tell they were going to have. “Calandra,” Dad began. He never uses Mom’s name unless he knows she’s going to disagree with him.

I knew I wasn’t allowed to stay for the argument, and I didn’t really want to. I walked back out onto the porch and looked at our yard.

We didn’t take very good care of it. My dad has spent the last four years saying he’s going to get rid of the rusty swing set we grew out of long ago. There was a dead lawn mower crowned with morning glories, and a plastic car, its red hood bleached pink by the sun, half buried in the weeds nearby. There were two plastic chairs for sitting in while you were minding the barbecue. There was a chain-link fence, one of the low kind, covered in more morning glories and dividing our yard from our neighbors, most of whom did not do much better than we did. In our neighborhood, yards are for putting the kids and the dogs out in, and they look like it and smell like it, too. We don’t have a tree in our yard, but the D’Antonis next door do, a big, neglected crab apple that’s good for climbing and shares its shade with us.

It was a Saturday in September, hot and muggy, still summer even though school had started. One day soon, we would wake up to find the temperature had dropped overnight, leaving the air clear and cold, and we would know it was autumn. I wondered whether I would be allowed to go to Italy, or whether the law said I had to stay in school here. What would I do there? How long would I have to stay?

Terrifyingly none of the adults seemed to know the answers. Part of me thought,
Thank heavens, no more essays on the beauty of poetry for Mrs. Beaumont
.

This is how I realized I had already made up my mind, not by considering the good and bad things about going or staying, but by noticing that I was already trying to work out what it would be like.

I remember everything about that moment, the sweat dripping down my neck and under the collar of my T-shirt, the way my cutoff jean shorts felt a little tight after another summer of growing, the radio blasting from the D’Antonis’ driveway (their son, Tommaso, was working on his car again), the smell of cut grass and barbecue and a hint of dog poop.

I heard my sister come out on the creaky porch behind me. She had worn the same pair of flip-flops all summer, and I could hear them flapping on the wood. I turned around.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she said.

We sat down on the porch steps.

“Maybe you could come with me,” I said.

“Maybe I could, later. We don’t have money for more than one ticket.”

We sat for a while, picking at the grass that grew in the cracks on the steps.

“I knew you had decided,” she said. “I knew you would go.”

I thought about not having her around to read my mind.

“Are you mad? Or maybe jealous?” I asked.

She thought about this, then shook her head.

“Yeah, I mean, I would love to go to Italy and everything,” she answered. “But I saw what you were like.”

She paused, pulling at a particularly tough piece of grass as if that were all that mattered. “It was terrifying. I don’t know what it was like for you. I mean, I couldn’t really tell whether you were there or not? Don’t take this the wrong way.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I understand.”

“Anyway, it scared the crap out of me, and I think what you’ll have to do over there will be scary, too. It’s going to be hard work, and I think it’s going to take you to the edge, know what I mean?”

When Gina raised her face to me, the joking light gone out of it, that’s when I really got frightened.

“Wow,” I said finally.

“Yeah, wow. I guess we’re all kind of still in shock. You too, I bet.”

“Yeah.”

I threw a clump of grass; it seemed to fall slowly in the evening heat.

“Gina …” I had remembered something. “I’m sorry about anything I did to you.”

She closed a hand over mine, and her touch started my tears. They fell on my knees, one little splash, another little splash, another. When I finally looked up, she said, “It’s okay. It’s okay, because now I can see you really are back.”

I cried even harder, letting her put her arms around me and hug me tight until I was finished.

“I still don’t believe it, right?” I said. “But I have to. Things happened that I can’t explain, Gina. But I’m starting to understand that I have to go with them. That is,” I added, “when hell freezes over and Dad lets me.”

Gina snorted.

“He has to let you go,” she said. “We all do,” she added, and I heard tears in her throat. Then she braced herself and went on,
“He knows it’s the only way, and he doesn’t like it. That’s why he’s shouting.”

I stared at her.

“How come you always know this stuff, and I can never figure it out until long afterward? It always takes me, like, a year. I’m the older one, right? I’m supposed to be the one who figures everything out.” I sighed and pulled up some more grass.

She shrugged and looked out over the yard. After a while she said, “I know you think I’m the smart one. But you know these things. And you know other things. You sell yourself short, Mia. You always have. Maybe it’s
because
you’re the older one, and they expect so much of you. I don’t know.”

It’s always seemed strange to me that I’m the big sister. Gina is so smart, so pretty, so together—all the things I am not. Sometimes people think she’s the older one, even though she’s two years younger. It’s like my parents got it right on the second try. Or maybe the first kid gets all the worry, and the younger one can relax more.

I turned my thoughts back to leaving and Italy.

“How soon do you think?” I began.

“As soon as possible.” She grinned, poking my shoulder. “No, but really. I think you should go as soon as you can. We don’t know when
it’s
going to come back.”

FOUR

The Journey East

T
he next morning, as I was waking up, I tried to see through the walls, but they were blunt and closed. I rolled out of bed, wondering if the world would ever make sense again. At least breakfast felt real and normal: orange juice, toast, bickering parents, my sister running late. I wondered if anyone would ask after me at school. Probably not.

I looked at myself in the mirror after breakfast. (My mom always teases me about that.
When you were a kid, you hardly knew mirrors existed. Now you’re a teenager … making up for lost time, I guess
.) I was as pale as a Goth chick, with huge, dark circles under my eyes. At least I had lost a little weight; nobody in my family is chunky or anything, but I always feel kind of flabby next to my willowy sister. I saw the same old features:
huge, oversize mouth, eyes too close together, nose straight but too long, eyebrows that would be perfect if they weren’t so thick, and mousy, thin hair that makes people assume I’m not actually related to my sister and my parents, all of whom have lustrous, thick, black hair. Sometimes I’ve suspected this myself. But my cheekbones, which would be interesting if I were thinner, clearly come from my dad. My sister has them, too, and I guess she must be thinner (she will never tell me how much she weighs), because they sure are interesting on her.

“I look like shit,” I told the mirror. “I mean, more like shit than normal.”

I knew my mom was out so I wouldn’t have to put money in the swear box. I started to cry.

I suppose we must have done stuff to help get me ready to go. I remember Dad being glad my passport was still good, the one we had gotten for a trip to Jamaica ages ago. I don’t know what they told the school, just that I didn’t have to go. Gina and I shared the foldout couch in the living room, because I kept waking up screaming in the guest room. Gina wouldn’t let me sleep alone; she watched me fall asleep every night and woke up before I did. I didn’t think about it until later, but I guess she must have wondered what would wake up. If she was afraid, she never told me.

Finally my bags were packed with everything I thought I’d need, plus everything Dad and Gina thought I’d need, minus the things Mom took out after we realized there were too many suitcases.

On the way to the airport, we had one of those lovely family drives where everybody is silent for the first hour. Finally my sister cracked a joke, and things got a little easier. But my dad still glowered, and my mom touched her eyes from time to time. Emilio and Giuliano followed in their rental car, giving us a last few minutes alone.

The airport seemed unbearably loud to me. There were too many people whipping past. I almost thought I could hear each thought, almost see through the thick cement walls.

I tried to pick up my bags, but I was still too weak. Gina carried them, snatching them up in a way that dared anybody to try to take them from her.

“I love you, sweetie,” said my mom.

“E-mail me when you get in,” said my sister.

“Be good,” said my dad.

They all meant the same thing. They embraced Giuliano and Emilio, and my father said, in a fierce man-to-man voice, “Take care of her,” to which Giuliano replied in Italian. They seemed to understand each other. Gina hugged me one last time and whispered in my ear, “Find out anything you can about Grandpa, too.” I squeezed her back to show I’d heard.

Then we went through security and boarded, waiting while everyone else got on and wrestled their bags and pointed out that someone was sitting in their seat. I had been on a plane a few times before: to Disney World in Florida, that one time to Jamaica, and stuff we had to do with my mother’s family—funerals, weddings, reunions. But I had never been on a plane
so big, designed to cross oceans, carrying so many hundreds of people.

Since we had bought my ticket separately, I was going to have to sit alone, but Emilio showed a streak of kindness and worked out that the elderly man sitting next to him would much rather sit in my seat, next to his daughter and grandchildren. He and Giuliano gave me the window seat, “Because you have never seen Italy before.”

He didn’t mention that first we would have to look at hours of ocean. It spread to the horizon in every direction, and I could clearly imagine being swallowed, thrown by the buffeting winds as the plane spun out of control. My palms sweated as I gripped the seat, and I shut my eyes and looked away. It occurred to me that I had felt exactly the same way when the demon had gripped me. I hadn’t really known it until that moment over the sea, I think. I had been too numb to remember.

“Book?” said Emilio beside me. I turned around and stared, not comprehending him. It took me a second to realize he was holding out a novel.

I smiled, showing too many teeth, and said, “No, thanks. I’m fine,” and then groaned inside. I had already decided that I always sounded like an idiot around him. He shrugged and tucked it in the seat pocket.

“It’s called
The King’s Last Song
. I just finished it,” he said conversationally. “It’s very good: very beautiful. It’s set in Cambodia, but it’s kind of a combination of Italo Calvino and Salman Rushdie—have you read anything by them?”

I really didn’t want to talk. “I haven’t even heard of them,” I said. “We don’t exactly study them in school.”

He smiled. “Ah, yes, you study the American greats. But what do you like to read in your spare time? I expect you’re a little old for Harry Potter?”

I was not going to admit that the last Harry Potter book was sitting in my backpack at my feet. My sister and I had exchanged copies before I left, so I had her copy with her name written in her careful, round handwriting:
Gina Laura Delatorri
.

“Oh, yeah,” I lied. What I wanted more than anything at that moment was to take out that book and run my finger over her name on the flyleaf.

“Well, anyway, I’ll leave it right here. This is a very long flight, Mia, and—Mia?”

Something else had said my name. I dragged my eyes to the window. At first I thought it was riding on the wing. Without knowing how, I recognized what I saw: a misshapen body, and a face too long for a human one, grinding its jaw and looking at me from under half-closed eyelids. It was naked, and too obviously male. I could see the airplane wing through it. Then it was gone.

I didn’t know how strong Emilio was until I felt his fingers closing on my wrist, his grip so tight it hurt. I was standing in front of the exit door, reaching for the handle. Why was I there? Everybody was staring at me.

“Mia, look at me.”

I couldn’t. I looked at Giuliano, standing behind him, who
had closed his eyes and was murmuring a prayer that didn’t sound like the words he had said before. It seemed to have a different rhythm, and the words had a different angle to them. He was doing something with his hands, too.

“Mia.”

I raised my eyes to Emilio’s.

“What did you see?”

I couldn’t speak.

“Stay here, Mia.”

Not again, not again
, I thought.
Not here, on the plane, not in this closed space with the stale air, not here … Stay away, stay away!