I fully believe that Luca and Alberto are thrill-seekers through and through. Like they’ve done it all - zip-lining, parachuting, tombstoning, bungee-jumping, water-skiing, rapid-rafting — literally anything, they’ve done it. And I also believe that they give Giulia (and their parents) a proper heart attack and a half recounting stories.
Of course, everything they do is all very well and legal, but it does push the boundaries of smart. like if Luca suggests jumping off the cliff backwards, Alberto’s doing that and doing it headfirst.
Alberto’s father wears a thick, gold human ring on his thumb.
There’s a black stone inlaid on its surface, where a gold letter ‘M’ is engraved in sweeping, elegant, alien curves. It's out of place beneath the surface, among the seaweed and roughly hewn stone, a world that grows at the beckoning of nature. There’s nothing natural about the ring, or the other human artifacts his father leaves scattered in their cave, and for that reason they fascinate Alberto to no end.
Most of of what his father finds is already broken: metal spindles on strange dials that shriek when forced to turn, bottles and cups that are as clear as water or dark as the deepest depths, smooth and cool to the touch but with jagged edges that cut his fingers and palms if he’s not careful. There are smaller things, metal things, with shapes that curve and point, but their names are unknown to him because as his father likes to remind him, he isn’t Alberto’s teacher.
Their home is far from other sea folk, almost a two hour swim in any direction if he wants to see a familiar face. Alberto was young when they moved and his memories of before are vague, but he recalls the other kids that lived near him and how they played games in the coral fields. But the solitude is good too. Alberto knows he’s learning to become self-sufficient, like his father, and he wants to become like his father more than anything.
There’s an alcove in the wall of their home where his father leaves his favorite human trinkets. Small chains of gold and silver, plates pure white as dead coral but cool and utterly smooth to the touch. When his father returns from his long absences with treasures and (if Alberto’s lucky) a fresh catch in tow, he always drops his gold ring onto the smallest plate, one more intricate than the rest with unfamiliar landscapes and writhing vines painted in the most delicate blue.
The ring is there when Alberto returns from an afternoon hunt.
Other sea folk aren’t the only thing scarce out here—most days, it’s an effort to bring home dinner, swimming out to the reef to find the schools of fish and scuttling crabs that hide there. He learned their migrating habits the hard way after a two-hour journey greeted him with an empty expanse, the fish having moved overnight to the entirely opposite end of the reef. He was so hungry when he got home that he scraped the barnacles off the sides of the cave and gnawed on them, shell and all, chipping a few of his teeth in the process.
His father doesn’t tell him not to touch his favorite treasures, at least not in so many words. It’s understood that Alberto can play with the broken things he scatters around the cave, but the perfect, shiny, intact ones? Those are just for his father.
And yet, when Alberto arrives, clutching a rough woven net with three fish and an eel inside, he finds their home silent despite evidence of his father’s presence. He often talks aloud, more than he ever talks directly to Alberto, about how good the humans must have it, how he wished they took better care of their belongings. But it’s quiet now.
Alberto passes hesitantly through the opening to their home, scanning the corners and peeking into his and his father’s shared room. Again, he’s met with silence, and not even a glimpse of his father’s purple scales.
He’s stalling as he sets their dinner down on the table, fashioned out of the wooden hull of a sunken human ship. He traces the whorls and grooves of the aged wood, picking at the algae growing there, wondering at the human hands that must have crafted it. But Alberto is impatient to a fault and he gives into his curiosity within seconds, dashing over to his father’s alcove.
The ring is still there, still shining and still mysterious, and he picks it up carefully. It’s not that he’s worried about breaking it, exactly. He's learned that human things are made to last, even the broken ones. But he’s only ever looked at the ring from afar, and a small stupid part of him is certain that it’ll dissolve into seafoam if he exerts too much pressure.
The ring catches the light just so, sparkling like the spray of sunlight across the ocean surface, and Alberto finds himself entranced at once. Up close, the ring is not nearly as perfect as he imagined it to be. There are small scratches etched on its surface, pale white and numerous, and he couldn’t count them all if he tried.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Alberto almost drops the ring. He does drop it in fact, but he claps his hands together to catch it before it can fall more than a few centimeters. He looks up, cold dread sinking into his gut with the strength of a riptide.
His father stares back from the shadowed entrance. His eyes, the ones Alberto inherited, shine out of the dark and his lean, barracuda-thin body is still.
His head tilts to the side—he asked Alberto a question after all.
“Oh, uh, y-yes, sir. Sorry, I was just looking at it.”
He hums. “Didn’t realize you needed to grab something in order to look at it.” His father swims closer, holds out his hand. Alberto drops the ring into his palm at once.
“It’s-it’s cool, is all,” Alberto tries. “Human stuff. I can never find anything that isn’t already broken.”
His father slips the ring back onto his thumb, expression thoughtful. He curls his hand into a fist. “Hm. I haven't taken you to the surface yet, have I?”
He knows he hasn’t. Alberto has been told so many, many times never to follow his father under any circumstance, but he must’ve just been waiting until Alberto was ready . The weight of dread floats off of him like bubbles to the surface, bursting into shocked joy.
“N-no, sir! Not yet,” Alberto says, grinning.
His father smiles back. “Would you like to see it?”
Their vespa can’t move faster than a human can walk. What Alberto had mistaken for artistic license, Giulia informs him are large splotches of rust that deteriorate the metal and flake off under his hands like sharp-edged grains of sand that leave a tang of iron on his fingers. The handlebars are loose, the frame shakes and rattles under him and Luca worse than their homemade vespa did, and within five minutes the engine casing turns blisteringly hot to the touch.
It’s perfect .
But even Alberto is smart enough to realize that he and Luca won’t be going anywhere on this vespa, not further than Portorosso’s winding streets and certainly not around the world.
Luca and Giulia run upstairs to go look at a book of all things, leaving him with the setting sun and encroaching neighbors. But the prickling sea urchin of jealousy that’s clung to his ribcage for weeks barely twinges. Giulia isn’t trying to take Luca away from him, he knows that now. It doesn’t change the fact that Alberto is still going to lose him when this is all over, at least for a little while.
He should probably ask Giulia how long school lasts.
Parking the vespa by the Marcovaldos’ back door, Alberto takes a moment to just grip the handlebars extra tight, feeling the aged leather creak against his palm. This isn’t like one of his father’s forbidden treasures–the vespa is Alberto’s to do with as he chooses, and he chooses to return it. Alberto still doesn’t completely understand humans, but he does know that Luca will need soldi to board the train and Alberto doesn’t need a vespa if Luca isn’t here to ride it with him.
The Marcovaldos’ yard is bustling with neighbors and more food than he’s ever seen in one place. There’s pasta in all shapes, only some he recognizes from Giulia’s training regime for the eating competition he never got to win. Tables are brought over from nearby homes and they spill out onto the street in a delightfully chaotic train, each weighed down with bottles of wine, platters of cheese and olives marinated with pimientos, trays of focaccia and steaming chive garlic bread. Plates are filled and what little space remains is immediately filled with music, chatter, and gesticulating hands.
The storm that pelted Portorosso during the race has passed and brilliant golden sunlight breaks through the lingering clouds. Drizzle falls intermittently, glittering like coins, and Alberto’s tan skin bursts into patches of indigo scales wherever the raindrops land. But the fear of discovery, of fishermen and their harpoons, is gone, washed away by the trust in Giulia’s smile and the reassurance of her arm around his shoulders as they crossed the finish line. The fear was dashed by the brazen presence of Concetta and Pinuccia Aragosta, le Donne Gatto, once hiding in plain sight but hiding no longer.
The fear surged, brief but paralyzing, when they stood before Massimo, who loomed larger than the tallest wave of the most fearsome storm.
Every omission, the terrible truth of Alberto’s existence, was laid bare and he couldn’t look Massimo in the eye. He’d thought of all their fishing trips, the comforting sway of the boat and Massimo’s sure hand teaching him how to haul up the nets. The human’s expressions were often difficult to determine beneath the bushy brows and mustache, but Alberto had been so sure that those keen, hidden eyes had looked back at him with approval a few times, maybe even warmth.
He couldn’t bear to see them filled with hate.
When Massimo instead grabbed Alberto by the wrist and raised him over the crowd, declaring them the winners, he might as well have raised Alberto to the top of the world.
“Al-Alberto!”
A pair of unfamiliar voices call him, almost identical in their stutter like they’re unsure of his name. Alberto startles ungracefully, nearly knocking over their vespa. He’s quick to catch it, not willing to risk any additional dents or scratches that could put his refund at risk.
It gives the owners of the voices enough time to crowd in close to him, smiles too wide and webbed hands fluttering.
Alberto smiles uncertainly, reluctantly letting go of the vespa. “Uh, hi, Signore e Signora Paguro.”
After so many months on the surface, it’s almost strange to see the faces of other sea folk. He’s not exactly accustomed to humans, but he expects to see them up here, where the air is light and the sun is blazing. And anyway, for a long time his father was the only sea folk he spoke to, when he was still around.
While Alberto might’ve seen Luca’s parents at the finish line, they hadn’t exactly met. They were too busy clamoring over Luca, hugging their runaway son, stroking and kissing his cheeks. They’d missed him, both of them had , and obviously came to the surface looking for him despite Alberto’s blind insistence to the contrary. He hopes Luca knows how lucky he is to have that.
Staring at them now, face to face, it’s funny how Alberto can recognize Luca’s features in both of theirs. Or the other way around, he guesses. Luca takes more after his mother in looks, though the green tint to his scales is definitely his dad’s.
Alberto knows he looks identical to his own father, down to the seaweed green of their eyes and the yellow tint of their sclera. When he was very, very small, so young it feels like a dream, his father used to call him ‘Mini-Me.’
“Alberto,” Signora Paguro repeats effusively, like she’s eager to say it again now that she knows she got his name right the first time. “You’re Luca’s friend! The Alberto.”
He rubs the back of his neck, his usual veneer of cool skittering out of his reach. “Uh, yeah? That’s me.”
“Luca’s told us so much about you,” Signora Paguro starts to say, before reluctantly amending. “Well, no, that’s not true. We don’t know anything about you.”
“We knew you existed!” Signore Paguro offers helpfully.
Signora Paguro takes Alberto’s hands in her own, her teal scales matching well with the purple of his. Not like the humans’ strange, fleshy shades of brown and pink. These are sea folk like him. He should probably feel reassured by their similarities. Instead, he feels only panic, ratcheting up his spine with every word out of Signora Paguro’s mouth.
“Alberto what?” she asks, her expression open and gentle, though her tone is insistent. “Who are your people? Your parents must be worried sick if you’ve been out here for as long as Luca has!”
“I, um,” Alberto replies intelligently.
What can he say? That there’s no one? He’s not like Luca with a mom and dad and a grandmother. He can’t even imagine a home with so many people in it. All his life, it was just him and his father, and he got sick of Alberto before long.
For a few weeks, he thought it could be him and Luca. Now, it’s just him. Again.
He tries to answer without lying. “You’re not gonna…find anyone. My dad and I…we lived pretty far away. Like, really far away. Farther than you’ve ever been, probably.”
Signora Paguro’s smile falls. “Oh, no, sweetheart. Can we help you find him?”
Alberto almost laughs in her face. As if he hasn’t tried. As if he hadn’t spent the first three of the last thirteen months swimming further than he’s ever swam, up and down the coast, out into open ocean where the depths were endless and black beneath his feet, until his limbs ached and his eyes burned and his stomach ate itself.
At the start, Alberto asked the sea folk he encountered in the rare villages by the shore. Have you seen someone who looks like me? But grown-up? He’d gone cave to cave, home to home, like a stupid kid who’s lost his goatfish. After all, what kind of idioti loses a whole parent?
He’d watched their faces turn from confusion to pity too many times and he felt pathetic, abandoned all over again. His father had left him to flounder and humiliate himself in his loneliness.
Signora Paguro is still waiting for an answer, so Alberto chokes down the sea urchins lodged in his throat. He doesn’t want to lie.
Massimo calls him from the back of the pescheria before he can open his mouth and conjure more half-truths for Luca’s mother.
“Alberto,” he says, and nothing else. But Alberto has spent weeks bustling about a fishing boat with this human, and he recognizes the intent behind this particular summoning: Alberto, I need your help with something.
Desperate for escape, Alberto starts backing away before even making his excuses. “Sorry, signora, I’ll be right back. Or, uh, Luca will be right back. I just gotta, y’know. Massimo’s calling me.”
Signora Paguro watches him go with a bewildered expression. “O-okay, honey.”
Alberto flees to Massimo’s shadow, away from the bustle of too many bodies and too loud voices. Bulwarked by his solid silence, Alberto’s finally able to breathe after shedding what feels like the entire weight of the midnight zone from his shoulders.
“Yeah?” He hops from foot to foot. In the shade of the awning and out of the drizzle, Alberto can feel his scales start to dry and the tingle of phantom tail behind him.
Massimo is still looking over his head at Signora Paguro, who’s pushing Signore Paguro toward a pair of empty seats. Nonna Paguro is already sitting down, chatting with one of le Donne Gatto. Under the gentle rain, they’re a rainbow of scales and tails.
The reminder that their secret’s out is jarring. Even though Massimo abandoned his harpoon at their feet, raising them up as the winners of the race, part of Alberto is still waiting for the other shell to drop. For Massimo to change his mind, see him for the monster that he is and throw him out onto the street. Or worse, that he won’t care about the sea monster part and just doesn’t like Alberto .
When Massimo tilts his head toward him, his mustache ticks up in a smile.
“Time for dinner, ragazzo.”
Beneath the awning of the pescheria, slightly tucked away from the hubbub of the party, there’s a table set with places for four. Plates of trenette al pesto lie steaming, waiting for them, just as they did on his and Luca’s first night in Portorosso. The familiar sight pulls something up from Alberto’s belly, spreading bubbly and warm through his body like sips of wine. He doesn’t know what to do with the feeling other than to smile about it, his grin big and ridiculous.
“Great, cuz I’m starving,” he announces, rather than give voice to the sensation of overwhelm. He bounds over to claim his usual chair, at least when they’re having dinner upstairs. Massimo takes a moment to join him, guiding the Paguros to their nice little cloth-covered table like a good host.
Alberto grabs his forchetta, but knows better than to start eating right away. The table manners of surface folk were at the top of Guilia’s lesson plan, whether she knew it or not, and Alberto had been her reluctant student. He doesn’t care much about offending strangers but, against his better judgment, he wants Massimo’s approval and he figured early on that he wasn’t gonna get that if he was slurping up his meals like a half-starved seal.
Besides, winning Massimo’s approval is nothing like trying to earn his father’s.
Alberto’s dad liked to talk. Not to Alberto, but at him. Barbed observations about Alberto’s skills, or lack thereof. How lazy and stupid he was. They hadn’t lived in a colony since Alberto was seven and it’s been so long since then that he’s forgotten most of the elders’ lessons on maths and letters. And no matter how hard he tried, his father would rather mock than instruct, so he was left to practice alone until he got too frustrated with himself and gave up.
After all, when Alberto’s father was his age, he was never dumb enough to wander into blue shark feeding grounds while searching for dinner. Alberto’s father was never so weak at his age. His father was a better swimmer, hunter, forager, you name it. Nothing Alberto did was ever good enough.
By contrast, Massimo almost doesn’t talk enough . He chooses his words judiciously, like a nonna scrutinizing fruit at market day, and opts for none of them more often than not. But his silence isn’t a warning sign like Alberto’s father’s, the stillness of the sea before a storm. He’s simply a man of few words, a foreign concept to Alberto’s mind, having only known big words that mask small, cruel actions.
I haven't taken you to the surface yet, have I?
And yeah, sometimes the silence unnerves him out of learned instinct, has him second-guessing if Massimo even wants him around, but Alberto’s never been afraid of him. Even at the start, facing down the biggest human he’d ever seen, mustache impressive as a walrus’s and single arm thick enough to put a tiger shark in a chokehold, Alberto was in awe of Massimo. All of his talk about hunting sea monsters had been…concerning, but in an abstract way. It was tough to reconcile the mountain of a man who happily made them pane, burro e marmellata in the mornings while singing along to the radio with the lethal pescatore with sailfish-quick reflexes and a harpoon always within easy reach, the sort of dangerous land monster they’d been warned against all their lives.
It gave Alberto and Luca that much more incentive to keep their secret.
But Massimo himself is kind and gruff, while humans like Ercole singled them out again and again with words and fists. It didn’t even occur to Alberto to be afraid of Massimo until he stood before the monster hunter in the rain, scaled and sharp-toothed, every inch the monster Massimo claimed to hate. Even then, it wasn’t even the threat of the harpoon in Massimo’s hand that frightened him. His father had batted him around enough times to teach him to expect violence from those bigger than him. No, it was the thought of the approving light in Massimo’s eyes dying, the suggestion of a smile turning hateful.
Rejection. That’s what Alberto was afraid of.
Only it never came.
Now he can’t help but wonder, as he watches Massimo shoo Machiavelli off his chair, what happens next? Once he sends Luca out into the wide world that’s out there waiting for him, what’s left for Alberto once he’s all alone again?
Massimo remains standing over his own place setting, not taking a seat yet. He looks across at Albero and raises a single, inquisitive brow.
“Giulia e Luca?” he asks.
Alberto rolls his eyes without any of the vitriol he might’ve felt a few days ago. Well, maybe just a little. They are keeping him from dinner, after all. “Upstairs. With a book. ”
Massimo turns toward the stairs leading up to the second landing, their home above the pescheria. “Giulietta,” he calls, at the same volume as his usual speaking voice. “È ora di cena.”
The window to Giulia’s room bursts open and she sticks her head out. “Two minutes, Papà!”
“It will get cold,” he chides but doesn’t argue. There’s a lightness to him that Alberto hadn’t noticed until this moment, a looseness in the breadth of his shoulders, a slight curve to his mouth that the mustache can’t completely disguise. He nods at Alberto, and the small smile becomes more pronounced. “Mah, we know better than to let good pasta go to waste, don’t we? Mangiare!”
He doesn’t need to tell Alberto twice.
After his overnight sulk in the tower and terror-turned-elation of the race, he’s so hungry he could eat a sea cow. The last few weeks of regular meals have made him soft, he’s just now realizing. Time was, he could go a couple days on scavenged shellfish alone; he’d learned the hard way not to grab and eat the random vegetation that grows on the surface. But the pasta was filling, the pesto rich, and man had he missed Massimo’s cooking. And it had only been two days! That didn’t bode well for his plans going forward but. Oh well.
He blinks back to focus when Massimo raps on the table with two knuckles, right by his water glass. “Eh, slow down, ragazzo. Dinner isn’t jumping overboard, either.” He speaks in a cajoling tone not that different to the one he uses with Giulia.
Alberto swallows his current mouthful and fights embarrassment when he looks at the dent he’s already made in his plate. Massimo’s eaten maybe half of what he has from his own dinner. “S-sorry. Just a…little hungry I guess.”
Massimo jerks his chin at Alberto’s plate. “Don’t apologize for being a growing boy. You need to eat. But I don’t want you making yourself sick.”
Alberto starts eating again, but at a normal pace this time, not like he’s being timed by an impatient Giulia. “Thanks,” he mumbles, not really sure what he’s thanking him for. Not treating him any differently than before? For caring?
When he glances back up, Massimo isn’t eating. He’s watching Alberto instead, his smile replaced by a frown. “When did you last eat, Alberto?”
“Uh…” he almost wipes his mouth on the back of his hand but catches himself just in time and grabs the cloth napkin beside his plate. Alberto kind of wishes he could hide behind it. “Not that long ago,” he hedges. He thinks it was the sandwiches Massimo made for lunch the day he ran away.
He casts about for a distraction. It’s almost like it’s been a point of pride for Massimo to feed him and Luca delicious new surface foods, so hearing that Alberto sat alone in his cold, dark tower for the last two nights feeling sorry for himself, too pathetic to think of eating anything, probably wouldn’t go over well.
“The race!” he blurts. “Y’know, all that-that running and almost dying really tired me out. It’s been a while since humans tried to harpoon me, y’know? I’m a little out of practice.”
Massimo chokes on his wine, making Alberto jump. His expression is stricken when he lowers the glass.
If Alberto was hoping to get Massimo’s attention off him, he’d failed miserably.
“I’m fine, though, obviously,” he tries to excuse at the same time Massimo says, “I am sorry.”
Alberto’s mouth hangs open, ready to keep rambling, but no sound comes out. Does he have water stuck in his ears? Because he could’ve sworn he heard Massimo say–
“I am sorry, Alberto.”
There! He said it again.
“Huh?” he manages.
Massimo’s heavy brows furrow in consternation, and his hand on the tablecloth clenches into a fist. Dinner sits between them, growing cold just like Massimo warned.
“You did not deserve to be hunted or attacked, now or ever. We were wrong, and I apologize for the part I played in harming you.”
He glances down at Alberto’s left arm, and his fist tightens until Alberto can count each bleached knuckle. For the first time since Alberto has known him, he looks at a loss for words, not just silent. He looks…afraid. But what the heck could Massimo be afraid of?
“That scar on your arm. You said it was…land monsters who gave it to you.”
Alberto follows Massimo’s line of sight, momentarily confused. He’d almost forgotten about his souvenir from the surface; the old scar is pale in his human form, a faint white line against his tan skin. It hadn’t bled too bad when he got it, and it wasn’t deep enough to even leave a cool scar.
“Yeah?”
Across from him, Massimo inhales deeply. His fist trembles faintly in a way Alberto has never seen it do before, even while winching up a fishing net heaving with fresh catch. “I have gone on many hunts,” Massimo intones gravely. “And struck at what I believed to be monstri marini many times. Did I…? Was that…my doing?”
It takes Alberto way too long to put two and two together. Some genius he is; it’s a good thing Luca’s the one going to school. When things do click, he gasps so loud that he makes Massimo jump this time, and he might’ve laughed if only Massimo didn’t look so gutted.
“What? No! No, this wasn’t you. It was-it was night, but the boat was different from yours.” Night or no, he would’ve recognized Massimo’s silhouette too. He’s still the biggest human Alberto’s ever seen.
Massimo looks him in the eye. “You are sure?”
Does he suspect Alberto’s lying to spare his feelings? It’s weird to think that Massimo might feel bad about maybe hurting him in the past, but nice to know he cares. At least a little. And giving it some thought, yeah, Alberto probably would lie, if only to spare Massimo needless guilt.
“I’m sure.” Completely the truth this time. Nice.
Massimo stares him down for another couple seconds, probably just to make double sure. After a few weeks on the boat together, Alberto’s gotten better at withstanding that stare, even with its raised eyebrow. At least when he’s in the right.
Massimo leans back, the pinched look to his face smoothing out. “It will not happen again.”
Alberto blinks, caught off guard by the end of the staredown. “Huh?”
He nods at Alberto’s arm. “You and your people will be safe on our shores. Not everyone will be kind, but they will all think twice before trying to harm you.”
Alberto’s father used to talk a big game. Called himself an explorer when all he did was pick up humans’ lost junk, a better fisherman (but only when Alberto lost track of the spawning grounds or the fish were few), and always threatened to steal one of the human’s boats and raid one of their villages.
But Massimo speaks so little that when he does talk, Alberto believes it. He isn’t a pathetic loner like Alberto’s father; everyone in town knows and respects him. At the end of the race, he got rid of the fishermen (and their harpoons) crowding around him and Luca with a glance . He invited all of them, le Donne Gatto included, to his house for a party, to show all of Portorosso that he’s on their side.
Alberto grins, and pretends there aren’t tears in his eyes. It’ll be nice, he thinks, to still be able to visit even when Luca’s away at school with Giulia. “Thanks, Signore Marcovaldo.”
Massimo ducks his head, tapping on the table between them again.
“Eat,” he grunts, artfully twirling a forkful of pasta single handedly. “Your food will get cold.”
Alberto laughs under his breath and applies himself to his dinner without needing to be told twice.
As he eats, he looks out over half the neighborhood that’s gathered in the yard. Most everyone’s still eating and chatting, but someone brought out a record player and there’s a little circle of kids dancing. Quite a few people catch his eye, smile and wave and call out greetings, and Alberto waves back hesitantly. Even the Paguros wave from the nice little table Massimo set up for them in the rain, movements awkward in a way Alberto recognizes in himself and Luca, sea folk uncertain if they’re doing a good job copying the humans’ mannerisms.
Even if they don’t agree with Alberto’s plan, he knows things will be okay between them and Luca now. They came all the way to the surface to find him. Alberto’s father brought him to the surface to leave him behind. He may not know what makes a good parent, but he knows what a bad one looks like, and the Paguros are far from that. They might even be good enough to let Luca go.
There’s a clatter from upstairs–Luca and Giulia are finally coming down for dinner. And Alberto’s running out of time to work out the details of his plan.
“But, but, hey!” he stammers ungracefully. “Random thought. The, uh, the prize money. The soldi. That we used on the vespa. Hypothetically, could I get it back and use it instead for, I dunno, a train ticket?”
Oh man it sounds so stupid coming out of his mouth. Is that how “soldi” works? Can it be returned? Anxiety latches onto his brain like an ocean parasite as one of Massimo’s brows ticks up incrementally. He peers down at Alberto from beneath it.
“Hypothetically,” Massimo rumbles, “that would depend on where the train is going. Like Rome. Or Genova, for example.”
Alberto freezes, staring hard at his water glass as Massimo reaches over to brush Machiavelli off Giulia’s chair. The cat just jumps onto Massimo’s shoulder, which he doesn’t seem to mind.
“If the shopkeep gives you a full refund–and knowing Mattia, he would–you will have just enough for one ticket to Genova. But only one.”
Massimo sounds a little sad at the end, but it’s just what Alberto needed to hear. The specifics of the humans’ barter system continues to elude him but he’ll figure it out in the end. Maybe Giulia will help him out.
Speaking of which: she and Luca come stampeding down the stairs like a horde of elephant seals, yelling about who got to the table first (Massimo keeps everyone’s plates from getting thrown to the floor in the chaos).
He doesn’t even have time to start feeling left out before Luca looks at him, grinning and breathless, and Alberto’s heart skips a beat. Santa ricotta. He’s gonna miss him. His first friend.
“I think Luca won,” Alberto chimes in, and tries not to laugh when Giulia squawks in outrage.
Like gravity, Alberto’s plans usually lead to a quick, painful fall.
Following his father up to the surface and getting himself stranded is one such example.
Eating some weird surface plant that had him dry heaving all day and through the night is another.
Wanting to ride a vespa around the world almost got him harpooned a couple times. Plus, it turns out vespas need to eat something called benzina to turn on and move. And (according to know-it-all Giulia) the world is way too big to travel by vespa, much less Italy.
But this plan, Get Luca a Train Ticket So He Can Go to School and Make Something of Himself, has gone off without a hitch.
Step 1: Corner the Paguros at le Donne Gatto’s house where they’re staying until Giulia (and Luca) leave for school in two days. Apparently the old couple are Nonna Paguro’s poker buddies? Who would’ve thought.
Massimo goes with him. Apparently his “hypothetical” questioning wasn’t as subtle as he’d hoped. But Massimo sits back with his lap covered in cats and shares a bottle of wine with le Donne Gatto and only speaks up when the Paguros have a practical question, like where Luca will live if he goes to school in Genova, which yeah, Alberto hadn’t thought about that. Whoops.
“I have already spoken to Giulia’s mother,” Massimo says, which is news to him.
Besides, Alberto has a different job.
It takes the better part of an hour to explain to them how smart Luca is, how much he wants this, needs this, deserves this. Alberto’s spent too long putting Luca down, and now this is his chance to pay him back for all of it.
And somehow, in the end, it works. He convinces them. Signora Paguro hugs him, which is weird, with tears in her eyes. “You’re a good friend, Alberto,” she tells him. “I’m-I’m glad Luca met you.”
And Alberto doesn’t know what to say to that (cause he’s not, not really. Luca’s the good one; he’s the screwup), so he laughs and salutes super awkwardly before practically diving out the door.
Step 2: Return the vespa in exchange for soldi to buy a train ticket.
After leaving the cozy home of le Donne Gatto, he goes straight to the vespa shop. Alone this time. But it’s night time, and the shop is dark, so Alberto camps out on a nearby set of steps until morning, the vespa propped against the side of the building. He can’t risk going back to Massimo’s and having Luca find out about his plan. And the more he sees Luca, the harder it will be to say goodbye.
In another rare stroke of luck, it isn’t that cold out on the steps and he’s able to sleep in fits and starts until the sun rises. Then he’s up and pounding on the door until the half-awake shop owner unlocks it and lets him in, already rambling about how he needs to return this vespa for money, signore, please and thank you.
“Ah, si.” The old man covers a yawn with his hand. “Massimo warned me you were coming. Let’s see now—si, leave that rusty thing outside. Come, come, I have your refund here.”
Money in hand, Alberto makes his way to the train station to buy Luca’s ticket. Giulia helpfully wrote down the number of the train she’ll be taking and the time it leaves.
A113 Genova via Portorosso at 2 p.m.
Step 3: Spend one last great day with Luca.
He’s under no illusions. Once Luca goes to school, with all its people and telescopes and books, he’ll forget all about Alberto. But that’s fine. He’s used to it. Maybe he’ll see Luca next summer, when he and Giulia come down to visit their family.
In the meantime, he’ll cherish the golden memories of building their ramshackle vespa together, the glitter of seaspray on his face as they ducked and rolled with the waves, their first taste of gelato.
Today, they ride bikes through puddles and play pallone in the square, and when it rains they laugh when they change into their true forms instead of running for cover. Giulia slaps her hands over their eyes when they start another staring contest with the sun and even that’s okay. Alberto wants her to promise to take care of Luca, but he has a feeling she already will. She’s a better friend than him that way.
All the while, Luca’s train ticket burns a hole in his pocket.
Step 4: Figure out what he’s going to do for the rest of his life.
That last one is, admittedly, turning out to be a little bit trickier.
He can go back to the island and keep doing what he did before he met Luca. Survive, look for cool treasure, scare hapless sea folk with his deep sea diver suit. Only now he can apparently pop into Portorosso whenever he feels like. It’s better than what he had going on before. A thousand times better.
So why is Alberto frozen on the shore, unable to move any deeper?
The night was black as squid ink when he made his way down to the beach– the beach, the little spit of sand thick with boulders where he revealed his true face to Giulia to prove Luca wrong, where he was singled out, where he was betrayed. Not that he’s applying any sort of special significance to this place. That would just be…sad.
This beach happens to be where he left from last time. Nice and out of the way, with a quick, deep dropoff, perfect for a quick getaway.
Not that Alberto’s gone anywhere yet.
The horizon line is paling with the faint blue light of predawn. And he still hasn’t swam back to the island.
Eventually, though, he does get tired of standing.
Sitting in the surf, the tide lapping at him every ten seconds, his entire lower half becomes blue and scaly. His tail curls comfortingly around his waist, a secret sort of hug he rarely allows for himself, especially with him being human almost 24/7 these days.
He can sorta see the outline of the island in the distance, mocking him with its nearness.
“Leaving again without saying goodbye?”
Holy–!
Alberto whirls around so fast he falls sideways into the surf. Water splashes on his face, revealing a riot of scales, and his instincts scream at him to hide before his brain catches up with him.
Massimo watches, silent and shadowed, with a softly glowing golden lantern held aloft in his hand.
Alberto quickly affects a casual pose, propping his chin up on a fist. The tide keeps breaking over him, and he knows his fingers must be webbed now, pupils sharp and inhuman, curly brown hair exchanged for purple frill. He pretends not to notice. “H-hey! How…uh, how long have you been standing there? And who said anything about leaving?”
He hasn’t seen Massimo since breakfast, when he slunk in through the front door after returning from the train station. Giulia and Luca were already up and eating Massimo pinned Alberto with one of those inscrutable looks of his and pushed a plate of biscuits and a tazzina di espresso in his direction.
Massimo plants himself on a nearby boulder, setting the lantern down beside him out of reach of the sea spray. Clearly, he’s not planning on leaving anytime soon. Great.
“I was downstairs mending the nets when I saw you leave. It is not safe to be out alone this late.”
Nerves jangling, Alberto resists the urge to roll his eyes. “What, afraid I’ll drown? Not to brag, but I think I’m a better swimmer than anyone in town.”
Massimo raises one of his eyebrows but even that silent warning isn’t enough to get Alberto to back down. He feels…jittery, exposed, like there’s a big spotlight on him even though it’s probably too dark for Massimo to even see him well without his lantern.
He doesn’t understand why Massimo is still here .
“Alberto, what’s wrong?” he asks, so softly Alberto can barely hear him over the crash and pull of the waves.
And that’s just…what do the humans call it? The last straw?
“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong!” Alberto struggles, splashing to his feet. His tail lashes against the water and his eyes must be glowing, reflecting the lamplight, like a monster . “Why would you think something’s wrong? Cause I’m helping my best friend leave forever?”
Massimo frowns. “He won’t be gone forever, anymore than my Giulia will be. They will have vacations from school, summer, and you can travel to Genova to visit—”
He’s never raised his voice to Massimo before, or any adult, really. Definitely not to his father. But Massimo keeps being all calm and reasonable, as if Alberto hasn’t been lying to him, as if Alberto isn’t the monster the parents of Portorosso warn their children about at night. As if Alberto isn’t painfully, irrevocably alone.
“How!” he demands. “I don’t have help, not like Luca or Giulia. It's just me. It’s just been me for…”
Massimo keeps being calm. Keeps being reasonable. He asked about Alberto’s father, a week and a dozen fishing trips ago; Alberto had sort of lied then.
“For how long, Alberto?” he asks now.
383 days. Until he stopped keeping track.
“A…a while.”
Not a total lie.
An understatement? Definitely.
“Where were you living, all that time?” Massimo sounds determined, but also like he’s a little afraid to know the answer.
Alberto wonders how long he’s been holding back all these questions. Massimo’s not exactly a chatty guy, after all. But Alberto sat at his table, ate his food, and slept in the treehouse he built for his daughter. At this point, he probably owes him some honesty.
“Over there.” He points at his island, still a hazy shape against the lightening sky.
Massimo doesn’t gape, but it’s a near thing. He stands up, boots crunching on the sand, and his eyebrows go really high up on his face. “Isola del Mare? But after the war, it was rumored to be…haunted.”
Alberto shrugs a little sheepishly. “So maybe I messed with some of the boats that came by. I didn’t want anyone discovering my hideout!”
He didn’t set out to scare the humans at first; he was just trying to steal food. But he learned how superstitious they could be and he couldn’t not take advantage, especially when they had so many shiny and new and unbroken things.
But Massimo just smiles at his admission. “Clever. So what is your plan now, ragazzo?”
Alberto blinks. “Whadaya mean?”
Plan: Get Luca a Train Ticket So He Can Go to School and Make Something of Himself is basically finito. He left Luca’s train ticket with Giulia, who’d taken it grudgingly. She thinks he should say goodbye to Luca in person.
Massimo steps forward slowly, like Alberto’s a goatfish he doesn’t want to spook. He kneels and takes Alberto’s shoulder, his palm broad and callused but gentle in spite of it. “Luca and Giulia are leaving for Genova tomorrow. The Paguros will return home. What would you like to do?”
“What can I do?”
He’s never had a choice before. Or at least, he’s never had anyone tell him he does. Anxiety crawls under Alberto’s skin like a hundred tiny ants. He wants to shrug off Massimo’s hand but at the same time he wants to clutch his wrist, half afraid that he’ll fall apart and dissolve into sea foam if Massimo lets him go.
Massimo clears his throat once, squeezes Alberto’s shoulder.
“You could stay. Here. With me. I wasn’t joking when I said I’ll be needing help with the pescheria.”
Alberto’s certain he has water in his ears again. There’s no way Massimo just said—
“Stay?” he repeats shakily, not daring to answer one way or the other, as if Massimo will rip the kind words away and laugh in his face for hoping. But Massimo isn’t his father. He says Alberto’s strong. Massimo asks questions because he wants to know more about him, not because he wants to trap him in a lie. He followed Alberto to the beach when he could’ve just looked the other way.
“But I’m…” He looks down at himself, still purple, scales shining dimly in the gray dawn. There’s no way Massimo can look past what he is. Can he?
“You are Alberto,” Massimo says, firmly as stone. Water is wet, the moon isn’t a fish, you are Alberto. “That is all that matters.”
Massimo’s hand has been on his shoulder this whole time. His blue and purple scaley shoulder.
“Okay.” Alberto grins, and if his face had started to dry then his stubborn tears are ruining it by cutting twin blue trails down his cheeks.
Massimo ducks his head a little, meets Alberto’s tear stained eyes. “Okay?” he repeats. A question this time.
Alberto laughs, scrubbing away the tears. “Okay. I’m gonna be the best employee you’ve ever had.”
That makes Massimo chuckle too, which maybe shouldn’t be much of an achievement, but it is to him. Even if Massimo’s only his boss, he’s still nothing like his father.
“Well then, we had better return home. My best employee will need rest if he wants to continue being the best.”
Home. That sounds…too good to be true, to be honest.
Massimo shakes him a little with the hand still on his shoulder before standing back up. Alberto moves first, grabbing the lantern to lead them back to the pescheria. Even with the change, his eyesight is still better than any human’s, and it’ll be darker the further they get from the beach. Besides, there’s no harm in living up to his self-appointed title as best employee as soon as possible.
On their walk back, they’re allowed glimpses of Portorosso waking up around them.
The air is still cool, a chill lingering from the past days of rain that the sun isn’t strong enough to burn away yet. The gentle strains of piano drift down from an open second story window. Fruit vendors load their carts with crates lowered from heaving truck beds. An old man sipping coffee on his balcony waves to Massimo, who returns the gesture. Padre Eugenio is opening the huge wooden doors of the church, while il maggiore makes the first of her rounds through the plaza.
These sights and sounds are becoming familiar to Alberto, more than his father’s quiet cave in the middle of an empty seabed. More than the island, with its lone building of crumbling stone and only the waves and the calls of seabirds for company. But soon he’ll only have Massimo to share these bustling mornings with.
Alberto stops in the courtyard. Above them, he can hear Giulia and Luca laughing, the clatter of plates. They’re probably waiting to surprise them with breakfast.
If he had swam back to the island, would Luca have come looking for him before he left? He did once before, so maybe…yes?
Yes.
He feels Massimo’s eyes on him. It wrenches the truth out of Alberto once more, choking and sharp, like he’s swallowed sea urchins. “I’m gonna miss him. Like, really gonna miss him.”
Massimo sighs heavily, a great gust of wind against a broad sail. His father never would’ve let Alberto see his eyes get shiny with tears, or hear his voice tremble. He would’ve called it weakness. In Massimo, it looks like strength.
“Of course you will. We always miss the people we love. I love and will miss my Giulietta. You love and will miss your Luca.”
He peers up at Massimo. “And that’s…okay?
With a hand on his shoulder, Massimo guides him to the stairs. And breakfast. And home.
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