I intercept a shared look between Anya and Mari. They know something is up. My emotions have always played out all over my face. Even Nico is casting worried looksin my direction. I throw my sweatshirt over my face and lean my head against the window so their view is blocked, and they will be forced to stop trying to figure out what’s wrong with me.
The train to Pompeii is close to forty minutes, which is long enough that it’s not reasonable to pretend to nap but short enough that I cannot be cornered into a full-on interrogation. I hate that my heart leaps every time my phone screen lights up. I hate it. Because it’s never him. And it only reminds me that I’msucha fool.
The train crawls to a stop at our destination. I glance at my phone one last time when it vibrates, but of course it’s a spam text about some flash sale. I fumble to turn my phone on airplane mode. I will not let this be ruined because Wes is up to his old tricks. I will not allow it. I’m taking control. Of the situation, of the day, and my life.
CHAPTER 15
Nico bumps against my shoulderas we stand in the admissions line. “Irritabile?”
I snort. “Gee, what gave it away?”
“Well, you haven’t argued with me once all day. Or called me a murderer. I’d say that’s cause for concern.”
I turn away from him, annoyed, but he’s grinning.
“That, and you get a wrinkle between your eyebrows when you’re angry.”
“I donot,” I protest, but it’s there when I feel for it.
Nico shrugs. “My father used to say to feel your feelings, let them work themselves out of your body. This is a good place for that, I think.” And then his hand is on my upper back, gentle and concerned, before he leaves me to go talk to Anya, like I am supposed to be normal about any of that.
After purchasing our tickets for fifteen euro apiece, we walk into the preserved excavation area of Pompeii. I’m not sure why I was expecting it to be smaller—it was a real-life city, a bustling coastal metropolis, and it strikes me that this was a place where people lived out their livesfor centuries before it was blanketed in ash. And now it’s all gone.
We opted to forgo the formal tour, but we had downloaded a guided app with audio narration, and Nico studies Roman history, so he adds in his commentary as we move from one landmark to the next.
“These are the remains of the gladiator barracks,” he tells us as we approach a grid of prison-like cells that were used to house the gladiators that fought in the nearby arena. We’re packed in with a crowd of tourists who push and scramble to read the posted plaques and catch glimpses of the inscriptions on the walls. The rooms are small, damp, and dark, looking out onto an open green where Nico tells us they once trained.
We inch along, jostled by the current of the crowd, and are carried by it to the Casa dei Casti Amanti—the House of the Lovers.
“Look, there,” Nico reads off a wall. “The first person writes, ‘Amantes, ut apes, vitam mellitam exigent’—lovers, like bees, lead a honey-sweet life. Then someone else comes along and rebuts him: ‘I wish!’?” He looks at us excitedly. “History repeats itself, no? How many have said the same things to one another over wine and aperitivo? Maybe even here, among us, friends are having the very same conversation that Pompeiians did so long ago.”
He’s right. I’d known it before, I suppose, from the textbooks with photos of the mummified bodies, preserved forever in their contorted positions, but I hadn’tknown ituntil I’d come: Mount Vesuvius erupted on a day like today. It had been a beautiful morning just like this one until the ash came raining down. I wonder how many of them had come here on vacation or were hanging out with friends. How many of them were washing their faces or brushing their hair or had gone out for breakfast? How many of them were madly in love—and on the other end of the spectrum, how many were being treated poorly by shitbag dudes?
And me? If I’d been here, I wouldn’t have been savoring my last moments on earth, enjoying the bright summer sun or the cool ocean breeze or the company of my friends. I would have been moping after the same guy who had played me for a fool before, so absorbed in it—in him—that I may not have even noticed anything was wrong until far too late. And then my last thoughts wouldn’t even have been about anything meaningful.
“I need a minute,” I say suddenly. “I’m going to explore a little on my own, okay?”
“Okay, Sora,” Mari says, her eyes wide with concern.
“I’ll catch up with you in a bit,” I assure them before slipping away from the crowd.
I wander through the streets. My audio track tells me about things I pass along the way—bars, bathhouses, brothels. The amphitheater, which could hold five hundred more people than Madison Square Garden in New York. I pause for a minute in front of the remains of a courthouse, staring up at its large pillars, which stretchto the sky like trees. In the background, across the Bay of Naples, looms the ominous peak of Mount Vesuvius, an eternal reminder of what had happened here.
My wandering takes me to a thermopolium—a fast-food restaurant—and my stomach growls. I regret not eating the lemon crème cookies. Mari had been right; theyaremy favorite. And then, as if on cue, the tinny voice of the audio guide is telling me about these two guys, Gaius and Aulus, who carved their names, and a celebration of their friendship, onto the entranceway.
Okay, okay, I get it.
I retrace my steps to the Casa dei Casti Amanti, but Anya and Mari are nowhere to be found. Nico, though, is waiting on a bench outside. I take a seat next to him, pull a granola bar out of my backpack, and take a bite. With a full mouth, I extend it to him, and he takes me up on the offer. We people-watch together—so many people from all different countries, every walk of life, have congregated. It’s a little like fate has brought everyone together to this spot, Nico and me included.
We’re just sitting in silence until Nico asks, “So, what do you make of it here?”
“Here, Pompeii? Or here, Italy?”
“Both.”
For a moment, I consider lying to keep things light. It’s all I’ve been doing for months now, from my parents to my friends, because I haven’t wanted to burden them with my angst, haven’t wanted them to feel sorry for me. Butthere’s something about Nico—the honesty in his eyes, like he genuinely wants to know, like he wouldn’t care that I’m messy and sad and trying too hard. And anyways, I rationalize, he won’t even know me after these next couple weeks. It won’t matter what he knows, because I can’t let him down.
“Being here is… big, I guess. The ruins of what used to be people’s lives. I keep imagining being a girl my age, upset about something stupid like a guy or a dress or something one day and then the next… this. And in an instant, it didn’t matter anymore. It makes everything that came before feel so small and insignificant.”
