Page 14 of Renata Vitali (The Five Syndicates)
The De Luca syndicate reminded me of the Sentinelese. After Ludovico De Luca killed his son, the Vitali and other syndicates wrote them off as crazy. Since then, they’ve lived isolated in their small territory of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. No outside deals. No cross-territory agreements.
Hell, they’re the only syndicate to never fight a war—and not because they aren’t interested. No, because no one considers them worth it. And so, isolation bred distrust, and distrust turned into hostility and violence when it came to the Romano; Andretti; Rossi; Camerino; and most of all, the governing Vitali.
So, I wasn’t surprised when I spent the first month of school without a single textbook. I squeezed by fine based on past knowledge, but it got exceedingly difficult the more assignments my teachers gave out of textbooks. In fact, I suspected some of them began giving book assignments to spite me.
Because like the Sentinelese, they treated me with hostility merely because I was a foreigner. They didn’t trust me, and they certainly didn’t trust the Vitali, which Damian outright admitted before he said he couldn’t be seen with me.
So, I suffered. Assignment after assignment. Grade after grade. The library had magically run out of stock of every textbook I needed, I knew no one would lend me theirs, and I had no way of purchasing textbooks without access to the internet.
About a week after Damian told me we couldn’t be seen together in person, I opened my locker to six brand new textbooks. One for each class I was taking. I stared at them, traced my finger along their spines, and wondered what the catch was. I’d move it, and a trip wire would cause a cascade of pig’s blood to gush onto my head, à la Carrie. Or maybe I’d open one of them, and a horde of spiders would crawl out and attack me.
Either way, I didn’t dare move them. At least not until the bell rung for first period, and the hallway cleared. The students scattered like ashes in the wind until only I remained in the hallway.
I reached into my pocket and pulled a pen out. Angling myself sideways in case something shot out of me, I stuck the pen in the locker and poked one of the books.
Nothing.
Another poke.
Still nothing.
“What are you doing?” The amusement in Damian’s voice tickled my stomach when it should have put me on edge.
Wow, I was so bad at this grudge thing. Then again, a grudge implied I cared enough to hold one. Plus, Damian was awfully nonchalant for someone I had been avoiding for the past week.
I turned to face him, racked my brain for an explanation, and came up short, so I went with the truth. “There are new textbooks in my locker. I don’t know who put them there, so I’m checking to see if they’re boobytrapped.”
He leaned against the row of lockers parallel to mine and crossed his arms. “Boobytrapped? This isn’t Home Alone. We’re not children fending off goons.”
“I don’t trust you guys.” I trusted no one, except maybe my mom.
“They’re just textbooks, Princess.”
“How would you know that?”
He closed the distance between us and leaned against the locker next to mine. His breath fanned across my face as he inched forward, closing the gap between us. “Because I put them there.” In one swift move, he swiped up the books and placed them in my hands with a raised brow. After giving me a two fingered salute, he turned and left.
I looked down at the textbooks, a little stunned. Calculus. Macroeconomics. Literature. Spanish. Environmental Science. Computer Science. My classes. He really made it hard to hate him. What was his end game?
Before he reached the door, he turned back to me. “And Princess?”
“What?”
“See you in the library tonight.”
That.
That was his end game.
Maybe he needed me to chase away his loneliness as much as I wanted him to chase away mine. But damned if either of us would admit it.
Loving someone is giving them the power to break your heart but trusting them not to.
Julianne Moore
A light switch has multiple components. A hot wire. A 120-volt AC current. A neutral white wire. Two terminals. Power running from the fuse box. It isn’t just a switch. It isn’t just turning something on or off.
Nothing is that simple.
