And Sofia, armed in bulletproof popularity, moves again, and again, into every new friendship and obsession she can find. And while it is true that people find Sofia Colicchio a little unpredictable （this from her layered and coiffed hallway best friends; this from boys she deigned to go out with, from teachers in whose classes she didn’t live up to her potential）， it is also true that she possesses the same addictive magic her father does, so that people cannot help but want to be around her. And while she is not exactly conscious of the fact, it is true that her rotating cast of friends becomes the stuff of clockwork and legend—a regular shuffling, a rhythmic cycle of heartbreak and infatuation. She picks up and falls in love with girl after girl, and drops each of them down just as suddenly. And they line up to be friends with her anyway, because to spend two weeks, or four, or nine, as the object of Sofia’s attention is worth it: to exchange sideways smiles with her, to bask in the laser focus of her sharp dark eyes. Despite the pervasive rumors about her family. Despite the danger that snaps like static in the air around her. Despite the cruelty of Sofia’s wandering affections, the quick way she moves on, the sunlight of her attention slipping under the horizon. To be friends with her is worth it. Oh, it’s worth it.
Of course, it’s worth considering whether it is love or love and the truth is that this has never occurred to Sofia: that for some particularly consuming friendships between teenage girls the line is blurred anyway. And it is fair to say that Sofia in particular falls in and out of love and love with these girls, but she does not name it.
And so Sofia moves again and again, and each time she leaves someone behind she feels a little more like herself. I’m not like that, I’m not like that, I’m not that either. I am made of something else. Always possessed of an inimitable electricity, Sofia begins to wield her power. To test its limits.
Eventually, Antonia mentions to Sofia that she is going to Mass every week, alone. She mentions this offhand, and it is clear she does not care what Sofia thinks the way she used to. Sofia does not ask her why she goes. Antonia hears a rumor that Sofia has let Lucas Fellini, the most boring boy in school, put a hand under her blouse, but dares not confirm it with her, dares not ask her what it was like. Was his hand cold? she wonders. Were you wearing the one with the buttons that stick?
Sofia and Antonia begin to fill the space between themselves with stories about the future. Antonia decides during her first year of high school that she will go to college. She has realized that reading, which has always been an escape from her immediate surroundings, could be an escape from her entire life. She will leave Brooklyn, she will leave the Family forever—not the way her mother did, by retreating into her own skin, but by bursting forth, by achieving something altogether new. And then, Antonia decides, she will meet someone who has never heard of the Family. Her children will never know about it. They will never feel isolated at school; their father will never disappear one day, never to be seen again. Antonia the arctic explorer, the knight on horseback, the safari adventurer, will rescue herself and her future family from the untamed landscape she has been marooned in since Carlo died.
In Antonia’s daydreams, she buys a house with a wraparound porch. She fills it with children and a husband and Lina comes for holidays and Sofia visits on weekends. No one goes to work. No one talks about the past.
Sofia can sense the sea change that must, must, must be on its way: she will end up on an unpredictable adventure. She will have a life that hasn’t been dreamed yet. She will throw off the constraints of womanhood she can already feel tightening around her future.
It isn’t lost on Sofia that, like Rosa, she is using those same constraints to her advantage, when she can. Sofia learns a lowered eyelid, an imperturbable stare. She lets Lucas Fellini take her out, but of course, the rumor about her unbuttoned blouse, his clammy hand, is untrue.
Sofia does learn, this year, to run her hands over her own body. She stands alone in front of her bedroom mirror and finds a softened place at the center of herself. This must be the thing Rosa tells her to protect. This must be the fragile heart, the thing that makes her breakable. This the cause of wars, the source of life.
It is almost enough.
* * *
—
Antonia and Sofia wave to one another when they pass in the hallways; they sit close together and say oh how are you with detached warmth at Sunday dinner. It is as if their friendship has been put on hold, frozen, and when they are together they both have to time travel to a place where they can speak the same language. They always have to leave something of their present selves behind. Antonia’s plain face reflects the ways Sofia is faking. With her new friends, Sofia never wonders if she needs the new sweater, the perfumed neck. Antonia, with her studiousness and her sensible shoes, makes Sofia feel like a fraud. And where once being with Sofia had made Antonia feel stronger, she now feels gawky and uncomfortable in the edges of Sofia’s light, even, if she is honest, faintly judgmental of Sofia’s new affect. How destabilizing, to question the motives of someone who has always been your compass. How isolating, to wonder if despite your family ties and the friendship promises and oaths of trust you swore, you are alone after all.