More sobs. “Not now,” she said. “I have to go now. Next week! I’m the kind of person who needs some advance warning.”
“But still, I thought you wanted—”
“Oh, Dinnie, you’re always arguing with me. No one understands! No one listens to me!” and she raced down the hall, throwing her books aside as she ran.
Guthrie came around the corner. “What was all that about?” he asked. When I told him, he stared at me a minute and then said, “Well? Aren’t you going to beg me to talk her out of it?”
“Oh. Sure. Talk her out of it.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic about that,” Guthrie said.
“Well, doesn’t it seem like she gets an awful lot of attention throwing these tantrums?”
“Dinnie?” he said. “I never heard you say anything mean before.”
I was embarrassed. “Was that mean? It was just an observation.”
He zipped his jacket and took my arm, pulling me along. “One of the coolest things about you, Dinnie, is that you let everybody be the way they are. You’re not always making judgements about people. But I don’t know—this new observation thing of yours—I don’t know—”
“Are you telling me I shouldn’t make any observations?” I said.
“Is that what it sounded like, that I was telling you not to make any observations? Non é vero! Seems like a person ought to make some observations now and then.”
I had a weird sensation, as if the wall of my bubble was so thin, that the outside was coming in and the inside was going out. It made me sort of woozy.
“I’ve got a great idea!” Guthrie said. “Let’s all go to the Dolomites this weekend—there’s a ski trip—probably the last one of the season. We can all go—you and me and Belen and Keisuke and Mari and Fadi and Lila, too. We’ll make it a farewell party for Lila. What do you think? Isn’t it a brilliant idea?”
“Fantastico,” I said. I didn’t mean it, though. I was feeling very jealous of Lila.
“And this time,” Guthrie said, “you’re going to the top of the mountain!”
No, I’m not, I thought. I had yet to get to the top of a mountain, either skiing or hiking. Everyone else had been up to the top of the mountains in St. Moritz and Andermatt and even to the top of Mt. San Salvatore, right there in Lugano, but I hadn’t. I was afraid to go, and up to that minute I hadn’t been sure why. But as I stood there with Guthrie, I had an odd thought. If I got to the top, I’d be able to see over the other side, and what if there was nothing there?
As if he could read my mind, he pointed to the top of Mt. San Salvatore and said, “And the next weekend, I’m taking you up there. You won’t believe it! You really won’t! It’s so so so fantastico, meraviglioso, and splendido!”
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I couldn’t reach the wall of my bubble. It had stretched so far away. I was floating in the air near Mt. San Salvatore where the light at the top had turned into a candle and people were having a party and my bubble was going to bump into the candle and pop. It floated closer and closer to the candle, but I don’t know if it popped, because I woke up.
33
The Visitor
At ten o’clock that night, Lila, who was supposed to be in her dorm, banged on our door, demanding to see Uncle Max. She brushed past me and caught him sitting at the kitchen table eating pie with Aunt Sandy.
“This is mega-important,” she said, “and don’t tell me I’ve got to be in my dorm. I’m not going.” Heavy sobbing followed.
In a thin voice, Aunt Sandy said, “Dinnie, I believe there’s something we have to attend to urgently in the—downstairs—in—your room.” Once she’d shut my door, Aunt Sandy said, “Grrr. Don’t listen to me, Dinnie. I know she’s your friend but she makes my blood boil over. I want to strangle her sometimes. I know she’s got all those problems at home, but—”
“Problems?” I said. “You mean her mother moving back to the States?”
“That’s the least of that girl’s problems! That family has more problems than a barrel full of—” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oops.”
“What problems?” I said. “Tell me.”
“I can’t, Dinnie. I’m sorry. That wasn’t supposed to come out.”
“But what sort of problems?” I thought back over all the conversations I’d had with Lila, and I realized that she’d only ever complained about school. She’d never talked about her family, and I hadn’t told her about mine, either. “Can’t you tell me anything?” I asked Aunt Sandy.
“Dinnie, it wouldn’t be right,” she said, but she was wavering. I could tell by the sound of her voice, and the way she trailed off and munched on her lip, that she was debating whether to tell me or not.
“I wouldn’t tell,” I said. “I never tell anybody anything. Have you ever heard me repeat anything I hear in this house? Did I ever tell anybody about the affair Mr. Leyland was having or about the night Miss Fletcher came here drunk or when—”
She hugged me. “Dinnie, this house is like the set of a soap opera sometimes, isn’t it? People barging in day and night to complain or weep or yell or demand—it’s a zoo. You’ve been very good about ignoring all that, and I’m just sorry you have to hear it. If I were Max, I’d be a basket case. In fact, I am a basket case, and I don’t have to deal with what he has to deal with!”
“So will you tell me about Lila?”
Aunt Sandy opened my door slightly and listened. Lila was shouting at Uncle Max. Aunt Sandy closed the door again and said, “Dinnie, I can’t. If Lila wanted you to know her problems, she would have told you. Maybe she needs to have someone around who doesn’t know her problems, who thinks she’s a normal person with a normal family.” She leaned close to me. “But then who knows what normal is, right? I sure don’t, not anymore!”
Uncle Max tapped on my door. “I’m taking Lila back to the dorm,” he said wearily. “Would you come along?” he asked Aunt Sandy.
“Be right there,” Aunt Sandy said. To me, she said, “Dinnie, I tell you what. After Lila goes back to the States, then I’ll tell you her problems, okay? But only if you keep them to yourself, okay?”
I lay on my bed and tried to imagine Lila’s problems. I thought of really, really horrible things. I imagined more and more, so that after a while, Lila was beginning to resemble a victim of every disaster we’d learned about in Global Awareness Month. I was regretting my observation to Guthrie about her tantrums, and I was glad he’d thought about the farewell party idea. I vowed that I’d be really really nice to her.
It’s easier, though, to make such a vow than keep it.
34
The Dolomites
Signora Palermo and Mr. Bonner were our chaperones on the Dolomites trip. We left just before dawn in one of the school vans, in eerie blue-black light. Lugano’s snow had melted, but Guthrie said he’d listened to the ski reports and the Dolomites had gotten twelve inches of new snow overnight.
Mr. Bonner made a great show of passing out transceivers, which the school had just acquired. They were yellow, and looked like small portable radios. You fastened them to your belt, Mr. Bonner said, “and then when an avalanche gets you and buries you, this sends out a little signal.”
“Avalanche?” I said. “Are we expecting an avalanche?”
“No, no, no,” Signora Palermo said. “Is protection, we try them!”
“So what exactly would a rescuer find?” Mari asked. “A dead body? I mean if you’re already dead, what’s the point?”
“You can stay alive,” Guthrie said, “even if you get buried. What you do is this—” and he went on to describe how you could create an air space around you, but I wasn’t listening, because I’d wrapped my lucky red scarf around me and let the blue-black light and the rocking of the van put me to sleep.
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I was standing on a mountain aiming a transceiver at the sun. It made a little click-clicking sound. The sun sent back a b
right, warm ray onto my forehead. I felt blessed.
I think we went south from Lugano and crossed the Italian border at Chiasso. I remember little of the trip, just the rocking of the van, and occasionally waking to catch sight of a lake, a valley, a castle perched above a gorge. I caught odd fragments of people talking. Guthrie was telling Keisuke that dolomites were limestone rocks. I heard Mr. Bonner say we’d be passing near Verona and Padua, where Romeo and Juliet had lived, and I heard him mention something about a thinking question and Belen said, “No thinking! No thinking allowed today!”
Lila, in her bright-pink ski jacket, huddled by herself in the seat in front of me. She seemed preoccupied, staring out the window, not talking to anyone. I felt I should talk with her, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open, couldn’t get my brain to think of anything to say. Later, I thought. When I wake up, I’ll talk to her and I’ll be especially nice.
We all tumbled out of the van at the ski resort, everyone groaning and stretching, untangling skis and poles, sorting out goggles and gloves, and fiddling with the bright-yellow transceivers.
“Calling Mars,” Keisuke said, tapping his transceiver. “Calling Mars. Anyone there?”
After we’d gotten our passes, we gathered outside near the chair lift. “Okay!” Guthrie said. “Now listen, this is Lila’s day!”
Lila pressed her lips together and tucked her chin into her jacket. She seemed embarrassed, but pleased. I saw Belen nudge Keisuke. I don’t think Belen was too excited about it being Lila’s day.
“And so I think we should all ski together, and Lila can lead, and we’ll follow her anywhere she wants to go!” Guthrie said.
My heart started thump-thumping, but I couldn’t speak. Fortunately, Mr. Bonner spoke for me. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I can’t ski all that well, and isn’t Dinnie a beginner, too? Maybe Dinnie and I should stay on these lower slopes.”
“Oh, come on,” Guthrie urged. “It’s not that much harder up there.”
We all stared up the mountain. The first chair lift stopped about a quarter of the way up; the second one picked up beyond that and went up and up and up the mountain. It was very bright. All you could see was gleaming white, the whitest white there is, and the dark cables and chairs stringing up the side of the mountain, and the red and yellow and black jackets of skiers swishing down the mountain.
“At least ride up there,” Guthrie insisted. “Ride to the top, and then if you don’t think you can ski down, just get back on the chair lift and ride down. How about it?”
“Dinnie?” Mr. Bonner said. “What do you think?”
“Oh, Dinnie,” Lila said. “Don’t be such a chicken.”
That pretty much did it. I did not like having Lila call me a chicken.
35
Loud Snow
As we rode up the first lift, I had to remind myself to breathe, because every instinct told me to stay rigid and not move, not breathe, just hold on tight. Mari, who was next to me on the lift, said, “Dinnie, the trick is to relax. Keep telling yourself, ‘Relax. Relax. Breathe in. Breathe out.’”
Relax, I ordered my body. Relax, I ordered my brain. Breathe, I ordered. Breathe in, breathe out. You’re having an opportunity, I reminded myself.
We got off the first lift and skied the short distance to where the second and higher lift began. At the second lift, Guthrie grabbed my arm. “Come on, ride with me,” he said. He pulled me into line with him, and before I knew it, we were standing in place, waiting for the next chair. It scooped us up, and Guthrie swung the safety bar down over our heads.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll hold your poles. Just hang on to the bar. Don’t look down, just look up.”
But to me it was scarier to look up, because all you saw was a steep wall of white. I wanted off, I wanted to jump, I wanted to escape.
“Are you scared, Dinnie?” Guthrie said. “Don’t be scared! Look at this! Don’t you feel so—so—free up here? It’s like we’re floating. And look at all that fresh powder! Such the best!”
He turned around to wave at Lila and Mari, who were behind us. “Hey, Lila!” he shouted. “Get ready to take us down the mountain!”
As we neared the top, I could see a short, narrow plateau on which to exit the lift, and then an immediate, steep drop-off of forty or fifty feet.
“I’m staying on,” I said to Guthrie. “The only way I’d get down this mountain is on my butt.”
He started to protest, but we’d reached the exit point. He flung the bar up, shoved my poles back into my hands, whipped the safety bar back down, and said, “We’ll meet you down there—at the hut between the lifts!”
I turned and saw the others getting off the lift, staring at me, gesturing, obviously confused or surprised that I’d not gotten off. And then I saw that Mr. Bonner also stayed on the lift. He was three chairs behind me, following me down.
When I got off at the bottom, my legs were trembling. I was so mad at myself: mad that I hadn’t gotten off at the top, mad that I hadn’t followed the others, mad that I couldn’t ski the way I could in my dreams. Mr. Bonner fell getting off the lift, and rolled to the side. “Oy, Dinnie!” he said. “I’m so glad you didn’t get off up there. They think I’m coming to keep you company, but the truth is, I’m scared witless!”
We both stared down at the supposedly gentler slopes below, where the beginners were skiing. Even that looked steeper than anything I’d tried before.
“Tell you what, Dinnie,” Mr. Bonner said. “I think we need some hot chocolate before we attempt that, don’t you?”
We both managed to ski over to the hut without downfelling and were quite proud of ourselves. We took off our skis and stared up at the mountain, trying to spot the rest of our group. Lila’s pink jacket made them easy to find. She was leading, and the others followed her single file.
“Why is she going way over there?” Mr. Bonner said.
Lila had swerved away from the other packs of skiers, and was leading our group way off to the right, where there was clean, untrammeled snow. As we watched, she turned to look back at the others and then lost her balance, falling and rolling in the snow. As the others came up behind her, she waved them on. Only Guthrie stopped and waited for her to get up and adjust her skis. She was waving farther off to the right, as if she wanted to ski over there, and Guthrie was pointing to where the others in our group had gone. It looked like he was trying to tell her that they should follow the others.
But Lila seemed to be set on going where she wanted, and she took off across the clean stretch of snow. Guthrie followed her, waving at her, apparently shouting something.
And then we heard it. It was an odd sound, a deep rumble, like muffled drums far off. There was a movement above Lila and Guthrie, subtle, shifting. At first I thought it was the light, the sun bouncing off the peak.
We saw Guthrie swoop below Lila and cut her off, grabbing at her jacket and waving his pole at the snow above. Lila swerved behind and then in front of him and veered sharply across the mountain, back toward the lift.
“Guardate!” someone near us shouted.
And then it looked as if the whole top of the mountain’s snow came loose. With a thundering yet graceful slide, sending up clouds of lighter snow, a huge mass of snow broke free. As it tumbled, it pushed a wall of snow in front of it. It looked as if the whole mountain were going down over the gorge to our right.
My eyes were glued on Guthrie and Lila. I was tugging at my red scarf and praying aloud. “Faster, hurry, move!”
“Ohhh,” Mr. Bonner wailed. “Ohhh, please—”
Lila was in front. They seemed as if they might be outside of the path of the avalanche, but as more snow rushed and gathered, it widened its path, surging behind them.
It all happened in a few minutes, probably, but it seemed as if we were frozen there for hours, praying, staring, our brains unwilling to accept what our eyes were seeing. I could not move my eyes from Guthrie and Lila. I couldn’t look anywhere else. I could tell from the yelli
ng above that skiers were rushing down the mountain, aware of the avalanche on the far side, but I could only see Lila and Guthrie, the only two near enough to the path of the avalanche to be in immediate danger.
And then Lila went down, tripping, falling, rolling. Guthrie’s speed had carried him just past her, but he swerved and stopped, and waited. It was those few seconds of stopping that caught them. The snow hurled down the mountain, spraying clouds of white all around, and they were covered and they were gone.
36
Signals
There was a brief deadly silence following the avalanche, when the absence of the rumble and thundering left a hollow emptiness, as if the roar of the falling snow had sucked all the noise from the air.
Later, Mr. Bonner told me that I was already shouting Rescue! Help! in both English and Italian and that I ordered Mr. Bonner to get help, and that even after the rest of our group, white-faced and stricken, joined us, I was still shouting Rescue! Aiuto! Presto! I don’t remember shouting. All I remember is standing there like a stone, frozen to the spot, my eyes fastened on the place where Lila and Guthrie had gone down. I was feverishly fingering the ends of my scarf, as if it alone had the power to save them.
Almost instantly, a team of red-coated rescuers had assembled at the top, towing sleds and rescue equipment.
“Radio,” Keisuke kept saying, “they have radios, yes? They have signals!”
“The transceivers, you mean?” Mari said. She reached down and touched her own, fastened to her belt. “Oh, blessed mother Mary, yes, they have the transceivers!”
Signora Palermo and Mr. Bonner were conferring with a policeman. Mr. Bonner was waving furiously toward the area where Lila and Guthrie had fallen. A rescuer appeared, carrying a walkie-talkie.