Serwa got a job with Barclays in London. She’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks.
“Are you excited?” I say, sitting on her bed and watching her pack her books into boxes.
“Very,” she says.
She’s looking better than I’ve seen in months. The antibiotics cleared out the infection in her lungs, and she’s barely been coughing with the new medications. Papa says she could even get a lung transplant in another year or two. She’ll never entirely be cured, but a transplant could add decades onto her life.
Serwa is so much smaller than the rest of us—as petite and delicate as an American Girl doll. It’s almost like her illness is a curse, preserving her in time. She doesn’t look any older than me, though there’s ten years between us.
I’m so used to seeing her in her a housecoat lately that it’s a thrill just to see her in a dress. It’s a pretty yellow sundress, made of eyelet lace.
“I’m going to miss you,” she says.
“I might be in London, too,” I remind her.
She cocks her head to the side, examining me with her wide-set eyes. “Really?” she says. “I thought you might stay in Chicago.”
I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks.
“Why did you think that?”
“Oh, because of whoever you’ve been sneaking out to see.”
I blush even harder.
“I’m not—”
Serwa shakes her head at me. “You’re a terrible liar, Simone. I’ve seen you smiling, texting on your phone. And when did you ever want to go shopping five times in a week?”
“Well . . .”
“Is it the thief?”
My mouth goes dry.
“What makes you say that?”
“I saw the picture in the Tribune. Not many guests at the masquerade ball are ‘unknown.’ Not to mention he was the size of a house. I think I remember you saying that the man who stole our car was big . . .”
“You can’t tell Tata,” I beg her.
“Of course not,” Serwa says. Her expression is serious. “But I don’t know how you think you can keep this a secret. And a criminal, Simone? It was funny to talk about after he took the car. But you can’t seriously be dating him.”
“He’s not what you think,” I snap.
I don’t mean to have such a harsh tone, but I can’t stand Serwa calling Dante a ‘criminal.’ I know what she’s picturing. Dante’s not like that.
“You don’t have much experience with men,” Serwa says. “You’re trusting, Simone, and you’re sheltered. You don’t know what’s out there in the rest of the world.”
That’s ironic, coming from my sister, who’s spent months at a time locked up in our house. She hasn’t seen much more of the world than I have.
“I know Dante,” I tell her.
“Is he a criminal or not?”
“He’s . . . he’s not . . . it’s different. He’s from an Italian family . . .”
“Mafia?” Serwa says with a horrified expression.
“You don’t know him,” I say lamely.
My stomach is churning.
“This isn’t what you want for yourself,” Serwa says.
I’ve always listened to my sister. Unlike my parents, she supported my dreams. She told me I should apply to Parsons. To have her turn on me now is upsetting. It makes me question my judgment.
I feel like I’m going to throw up.
“Dante and I have a connection,” I whisper. “The way I feel about him . . . I can’t even explain it to you, Serwa. Do you know how you meet people, people who are beautiful, or charming, or funny, and you like them? But there are dozens of people like that, they don’t mean anything to you, not really. Then, every once in a while, you meet someone who has a kind of glow. It pulls you in . . . and you get a crush. You want to be around them. You think about them when you’re alone.”
“Yes,” Serwa says. “I’ve had a crush or two.”
“What I feel about Dante . . . a crush is candlelight. And Dante’s like the sun, right inside my chest. It burns so bright and so brilliant that I can barely stand it. It could burn and burn for a million years and not go out.”
Serwa is staring at me, mouth open. This is not what she expected.
“What are you saying . . .” she asks me.
“I love him,” I tell her.
“Love him! But, Simone—”
“I know what you’re going to say. You think I don’t even know what that means yet. But I do, Serwa. I love him.”
Serwa slowly shakes her head. She doesn’t know how to convince me. How furious our parents will be. How crazy it is to fall in love with the first boy you’ve ever kissed . . .
“Do you have a picture of him?” she says at last.
I open the hidden folder on my phone where I keep the one and only picture I have of Dante.
It’s a shot I took the night we went to the speakeasy. He was sitting across from me at the table, listening to the music.
I lifted my phone to snap a picture of him and he turned his head right at that moment, looking directly at me. Stern and unsmiling.
It was so dim in the speakeasy that the photo looks almost black and white, robbed of all saturation. Dante’s hair melts into the shadows around his face, and his skin looks paler than it actually is. His eyes are like onyx under the heavy slashes of his brows. His jaw is so darkly shadowed with stubble that it almost looks like a bruise.
Serwa presses her lips together tightly.
I know what she sees: a gangster. A thug.
She doesn’t know that Dante is so much more than that.
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-one.”
“He looks older.”
“I know.”
She hands my phone back. Her eyes are worried.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Simone.”
I don’t. Not at all. Not even a little bit.
I walk back to my own room. I’m supposed to be going out to see Dante in an hour. I told Mama I was meeting Emily at a restaurant.
My stomach is still rolling from my conversation with Serwa. I hate conflict. I hate disapproval. When it’s from the people I love most, it’s unbearable.
I run to my en suite bathroom and throw up in the sink. Then I rinse my mouth out with water and glance at my face in the mirror.
My eyes look just as worried as Serwa’s.
