Page 12 of The Singing Trees
Oh crap,Annalisa thought. She was busted.
“Annalisa?” Thomas said. “I thought your name was Alice.”
Emma nearly snorted with laughter. “Ha ha. Looks like you must have made a great first impression.” She turned back to Annalisa. “He’s not used to being turned down.”
Annalisa jumped to the ground. “I guess there’s a first for everything.”
Waving from a few feet away, she said, “Emma, good to meet you. So how can I convince your brother that he’s not my type?”
“Why not?” Thomas asked, standing and going her way. “Give me that, and I’ll let you go.”
She’d better end this for good, or he might show up at her doorstep one day. “For one, I’m not allowed to fraternize with non-Italian men. My grandmother would kill me. And she’d kill you too.”
He inched toward her. “How do you know I’m not Italian?”
“I bet you’re not even Catholic.”
His voice shot up an octave. “You can bet your sweet bippy I am.”
Annalisa turned back to Emma, who was finding all this very funny. “Is he telling the truth?”
“I can’t say.” His sister grinned ear to ear, a complete transformation from the girl earlier.
Back to Thomas, she said, “Say a Hail Mary.”
“Right now?” He was suddenly standing a foot from her.
Annalisa gave an if-you-think-I’m-worth-it shrug.
“Hail Mary,” he started, “full of mace, the gourd is in me...” He trailed off. “Okay, I’m not Catholic. I might not be Italian, either, but I love pasta.” He said the last part as if it was a question.
A laugh—nearly a cackle—escaped without her permission, and she started backing away.
Just as she opened her mouth to say goodbye, a burly guy about Thomas’s age, with a shaved head, approached. He said in a gravellyvoice, “There you are, Emma. I went all the way out to the parking lot looking for you. You all right?” He assumed the same seat Annalisa had taken on the picnic table and put his arm around the young girl. “We not cool enough for you?”
“Alice, this is Mitch Gaskins,” Thomas said. She wasn’t sure if he meant to introduce her with the wrong name, and it niggled at her. “Despite being a pretty good mechanic,” he said, “Mitch is the dumbest guy you’ll ever meet. As you can see by his ugly scalp, he enlisted and just got back from basic training. He can’t get to Vietnam fast enough.”
Mitch shrugged. “It’s in my blood. What do I do? Good to meet you, Alice.”
“It’s actually Annalisa,” she corrected, feeling the weight of the war as she imagined this Mitch on his way to fight for his country. And he’d enlisted, so by choice.
Thomas slapped his head with gusto. “That’s right.Annalisa.” Then he gave her a grin, showing that he was messing with her.
She made a face back at him. He was too sly for his own good.
Turning to the visitors’ stands, where Nino was probably wondering where she’d gone, she said, “I need to go find my friends. Goodbye, Emma. Goodbye, Mitch.”
“What about me?” Thomas asked with a charming puppy-faced grin.
“Bye-bye, boy who loves pasta,” she said.
Boys could be so tempting at times, and Thomas was charming—but slick. The perfect example of how a girl could get reeled in and then hurt.
Chapter 4
COLDRIVER
On Halloween night a week later, Annalisa slipped out of bed already dressed. She picked up her boots and purse, wrapped her red scarf around her neck, and slipped out of the room. As much as she wanted to rush, she took her time passing through the hallway, tiptoeing with such exaggeration as to feel like a cartoon character. Entering the living room, she breathed a sigh of relief. Part of her was surprised her grandmother hadn’t been waiting with a wooden spoon, with which she would have smacked Annalisa on the rump—or more harshly on the shoulder—and spat:You think you can fool me,ragazza!If Nonna had noticed that Annalisa wasn’t wearing a bra, being in trouble for sneaking out would be the least of her worries. Annalisa didn’t care, though. No one wore bras anymore.
