After heartfelt goodbyes—full hugs to go with our air kisses—and promises to meet again soon, Dr. Constantini sends West and me on our way. I’m practically skipping with delight as we leave the office corridor and reenter the public side of the museum, with a short list of half a dozen names folded up in one pocket and a whole virtual catalog of potential clues in the other.
Later, when I’m alone with my computer, I plan to scour every picture I took and hopefully assemble a vast collection of possible leads to look deeper into. But I have too much energy and optimism buzzing through my veins to not give myself a sneak peek.
I make a beeline toward the first bench I spot, swinging my backpack onto my lap and extracting the small notebook where I’ve been keeping all my information. I turn to the page where I’ve listed every pair of initials that gets a mention in Alex’s journal. Pulling my knees up toward my chest in a casualway of hiding my work from West’s prying eyes, I unfold the paper Dr. Constantini gave me and flatten it against the notebook page so the two lists are side by side.
Carefully, methodically, I run my finger down each line, my eyes darting back and forth to cross-reference the data sets. I don’t look at West when he sits next to me, but I feel his stare burning holes in the side of my face.
“What are you—” he starts, but I cut him off with ashhhbefore my focus can be broken.
“I’m putting the names in my notebook in case I lose this paper,” I lie easily.
I’m not sure if he believes that answer, but his only response is a weary sigh as he turns to rest against the wall at our backs. I know I still have his attention, though, so I smother the gasp that wants to escape when I spot a match.
Hands shaking, I circle the initials on Mom’s side—P.B.—followed by a name from Dr. Constantini’s—Paolo Bianchi.
We’ve got ourselves a lead.
Chapter Six
West
I knew I should havestayed in my room this morning. I didn’t sleep well after the drama at dinner, and I had this feeling when I woke up, like from the moment I got out of bed and agreed to face the day, I was about to walk into a bigger mess.
I should have listened to that feeling. I shouldn’t have gone down to breakfast out of some sense of obligation to hang out with Dad before his workday got started. Definitely shouldn’t have let that same impulse take me down to the dig site, just because he was excited to show me around. That’s where the trouble found me.
The trouble, in this case, being Camilla Lovett. I wasn’t lying when I said that if anything happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. That’s a fun little game my anxious brain has liked to play for as long as I can remember, though it got much worse in my early teens. It pretends that I have somenonexistent power to help friends or family members or—I don’t know, whatever Cammie and I are to each other now. To protect them from any and all bad things that could happen. Then once I’m out in the world, getting into some less-than-comfortable situations to try to help, I’m too anxious to do anything but shake and sweat and spiral internally.
The past few years in therapy, I’ve worked through my tendency to catastrophize. I can recognize the signs and usually talk myself down before I let the fears consume me. And at home or at school, in the quiet, secure corners of the world I’ve settled into, I don’t really get into anxiety-inducing situations. I think I’d convinced myself that my capacity for leaving my comfort zone, for having new, exciting experiences, was like a battery. And that all these years of keeping my life so contained and controlled were charging the battery up for a future when I’d put myself back out there.
Now that I’m taking a few careful steps toward that future, I’m beginning to wonder if my adventure battery just corroded from disuse.
The internal doom spiral started up around the same time we boarded the train, especially once I realized we weren’t going to Pompeii. If anything happened to Cammie and me, how long would it take for our parents to find out? The carriage was too hot. There were too many people crowded in around me. It’s not like any one of them seemed especially threatening, but being in crowds in big cities and unknown places, my unease is instant and inescapable. I’m constantly waiting for some Big Bad to occur.
A part of me is almost grateful for Cammie’s antics, as they’ve been a good distraction from my own mind. I felt better while we were in the museum, not just because there was cool stuff to see—it was also less crowded than out on the street or on the train. I was able to breathe more easily, felt the security of the familiar, calming environment of the exhibits and galleries. Dr. Constantini had been impossible not to like.
But then she went all Mission Possible But Still Inadvisable, digging through the professor’s stuff without permission and giving me no choice but to be her accomplice, when she won’t even tell me what she’s up to.
Now we’re back out in the city and my discomfort is ramping up. I’ve been very patient, all things considered. I lick around the entirety of my cone of pistachio gelato, doing whatever I can to try to salvage my semiclean hands. It’s so hot outside that this gelato-eating experience is much more about drip management than enjoyment. A race against time and the sun itself to try to finish our desserts before they melt entirely.
The sun is usually winning.
So we haven’t done a whole lot of talking since Cammie and I got our frozen treats from a vendor in a piazza near the Museo Archeologico. Aside from my unease with our environment, I feel this massive cloud of all those unspoken things looming over us. Cammie doesn’t seem bothered, however. In fact, she’s giddier than I’ve seen her so far. An extra bounce in her stride ever since we left Dr. Constantini’s office, but especially after that break to—very suspiciously—“write the names down” in her little mystery notebook.
I’ve seen the wheels turning in her head, can tell she’s off somewhere far from here mentally. Far from me and my desire to understand what’s going on, to know anything about her life and her secrets in the present day. When I take the last bite of my gelato cone and see her do the same with her strawberry version, I decide to revisit the issue.
“So…” I begin cautiously. “Your big secret is that you’re, what, planning to surprise your mom with some old friends she isn’t expecting at the anniversary party?”
Cammie blinks and turns my way, looking disoriented, as if she’s seeing me for the first time—wondering how I got here, sitting across from her at a sun-drenched bistro table in the middle of Naples.
“What?” she asks.
“The reason you snuck off to Naples but told your mom you were going to Pompeii, and pried into Dr. Constantini’s old files behind his back—all of it is to create a bonus guest list?”
“Oh,” she says, and it sounds likeI didn’t think I had to spell this out for you. She shakes her head. “Right, yeah. That’s the plan. So if you could try to keep it to yourself, I’d appreciate it.”
Where there used to be the sweet aroma of freshly made waffle cones, I now smell only bullshit. I narrow my eyes at the enigmatic girl across from me while she pretends to be laser-focused on folding her cone’s wrapper into a paper football.
“I’m not buying it,” I state plainly.
