Presentation Day
“WhenIopenedMrs.Rogers’s email and looked at my partner’s name, I confess, I had no idea who she was. Then again, since I was new to the school, I really didn’t know who anyone was. What I did know was what I wanted her to be. I wanted her to be someone that could help me make a fresh start. What I wanted was someone that would guide me through this new school, this new year, this new beginning. I was convinced that my partner was going to be the one that could give me it all. No pressure, right?
“Isabella Bianco. I must have said the name five times without realizing just how much I expected out of someone I hadn’t even met. As it turns out, Isabella and I lived in completely different worlds. For example, I live in a wing of my house that is basically a four-bedroom apartment. Isabella… she sleeps on a couch in her living room. I have four cars to choose from to drive to school… Isabella, she has a bus pass. I…. Well, you get the picture.
“When we first started working on this assignment, I told Isabella that in my world, everything had a cost. At the time, I really thought I was talking about a price tag. Turns out, though, rich people don’t actually consider the price tag. If I want a new shirt, I go buy a new shirt. It never occurred to me that some people actually can’t afford to do that.
“That’s not really the point, though. I get distracted a lot. My point is, when I met Isabella, I started to see that we pay for the cost of things in different ways. For example, to get a smile out of Isabella, all it costs is trying to say something in Italian and getting it completely wrong. I do it now on purpose because I’m more than willing to pay that cost.
“What Isabella taught me is how one action has a cost. Some actions can cost us nothing and yet mean the world to someone else. Or it could mean the end of the world to someone else. It’s all about perspective, and if there is one thing that I have learned from Mrs. Rogers’s project, it’s that it’s important to see the perspective of others to keep track of the cost of our actions.
“Because I know now that as terrible as I thought it must be to have to sleep on a couch every night, to Isabella, it’s a small price to pay. That couch, in her tiny apartment, well, it’s under the roof of the most loving family I have ever met. And, from someone that sleeps alone in a wing of a house in a king-size bed, I assure you, the couch is worth a million times more. I would trade pretty much anything I have for what comes along with that couch.
“I had high expectations for my history partner and Isabella didn’t fail me. She is kind, beautiful, loving. Isabella has a light inside her that can never be dimmed. To know her is a gift. So, here it goes. Hold on to your hearts, hold on to your friends, and hold on to the spark you all have inside you—because I’m about to tell you the story of who Isabella is, and I promise, by the end of it, you’ll realize that some things… some things are priceless.”
Chapter 1
Assignmentday
Isabella
My father likes to say our family is blessed. Or more precisely,la nostra famiglia è benedetta. He always says it in Italian. And Papa, he truly believes we are. He is the best father, and I adore him. Yet, sometimes, on nights like tonight, I don’t feel like we are blessed. I feel like we are crazy. And cramped. And extremely annoying.
My family is exactly like the stereotypical Italian families you see in movies. We are loud, passionate, talk with our hands, and never shut up. For instance, I am one of six children. My father is one of eight. My mother is one of seven. And we all live within five miles of each other. Between my mother’s and father’s siblings, I have twenty-six first cousins.
Also, like those movie families, everyone knows everything that is going on with you. Whether you shared things or not. We all have keys to each other’s homes, and we all take shifts running the Italian restaurant we own down the street. There has not been one member of the family that hasn’t worked there at some point. And no matter what, trying to find even five minutes of blissful silence is completely impossible.
“So, Izzy, I heard about Mrs. Rogers pulling a fast one on you all today. Guess you won’t be able to copy my brilliant presentation about James Gandolfini.”
My older brother picked a piece of pepperoni off my pizza and plopped into the seat next to me. I don’t know how he still had any appetite for pizza after working at the restaurant for the past four hours.
“I still don’t know how she let you get away with considering James Gandolfini a historic figure.”
Giovanni laughed and decided to just eat my dinner for me.
“You know Mrs. Rogers can’t resist my Italian charms.”
I rolled my eyes. Giovanni was only one year older than me. He was my favorite sibling. Not that I would ever admit it, but everyone knows anyway. He has this brilliant smile and simply oozes charm. It was hard not to like him, even when he teased me.
“So, who did you get?”
Every year, Mrs. Rogers gave her junior students this ridiculous assignment for the first three months of class. An in-depth view of the life of a historical figure. Not just the basic normal stuff, but you really needed to learn rare gems of information that were not easy to come by. Right before our Thanksgiving break, all her classes would gather in the auditorium and make a fifteen-minute presentation about their subject. Some people really went all out. It was nearly half your grade, and an F in your junior year could ruin college.
Except, of course, this year, the year I was a junior, she decided to do something different. This year, she decided our reports needed to be about our fellow students. It was the same nonsense about how high school was too cliquey and we had to learn about people we wouldn’t normally hang with. Mrs. Rogers thought the school needed to be more unified. She had some fairy tale idea that it would start to bring us all together.
“I’m not telling you.”
“She got Liam Covington.”
This is exactly what I meant.
“Rosalina! Shouldn’t you be heading home now?”
Rosalina was one of the cousins I was talking about. She was also in school with me and was the first to gossip about anything. I mean, she’s family, and I love her, but sometimes she was a lot to handle.
“What? He would have found out anyway. I mean, the dude can’t figure out who you are without meeting this crazy family. Poor thing.”
She wasn’t lying. My brother frowned.
