Sofia rolls her eyes toward the ceiling and says, “That wasn’t what I meant,” and suddenly they are stuck in a sludgy moment with no words and unbidden hostility and they do not know how to get out.
How did we get here? wonders Sofia. She misses Antonia, who is staring glumly into her lap, and who seems not to care for Sofia at all anymore. And to whom Sofia is a total ice queen in response.
“Sorry,” Sofia says. “I didn’t mean—I just—sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Antonia says. She gets up and walks to look out the window and misses Sofia. “I hear you went out with Lucas Fellini,” she says, finally.
Sofia laughs. “I did, unfortunately.”
Antonia is suddenly more curious than irritated. “What happened?”
Sofia wants to tell Antonia everything, but she doesn’t want to seem too eager. “Can you handle it?”
“Gross,” says Antonia. “Probably not.” She feels herself quickening toward Sofia, an old instinct. A relief.
“Well,” says Sofia, “I didn’t . . . handle it . . . either. Much to his disappointment.”
Antonia grimaces, but there is a little thread of fear running through her. Would Sofia consider that?
Sofia smirks, and pats the bed next to her, and Antonia sits down. “He took me to dinner and he couldn’t think of anything to say. And I felt sorry for him, at first, because you know, he has his shirt tucked in too tightly and you can just tell his mother did his hair for him and his father gave him a lecture about behaving like a gentleman, but he didn’t ask me one question and he ordered plain noodles with butter and we just sat there in silence for half the meal!” Antonia is grinning now, picturing luminous Sofia trying to fit into a wooden bench on a trattoria patio, ordering Coca-Cola with a straw. Sofia and Lucas Fellini: the most boring boy in school. Sofia covers Antonia’s hand with her own. She leans forward conspiratorially. “And then after? It was like he thought it had gone really well—or something—and he walked me the long way back—you know, past the park outside school”—and here Antonia gasps, because the park outside the high school is notorious for being a spot where couples meet, and because at least two girls had ended up pregnant after trysts there last year—“I know,” continues Sofia, “and he sort of looked at me like alright, here we go, and I could only look back and think here you go by yourself, maybe”—at which Antonia says, “Sofia, honestly,” and Sofia waves a hand—“I know, but tell me you don’t think he did when he got home! Anyway, he couldn’t even bring himself to lean toward me or ask for a kiss and finally he just turned and walked me home!” Sofia stops to catch her breath. “Oh, Tonia, you should have seen him. Standing there looking at me like a kicked dog. As if that would get me going!” The two of them look at each other for a second and a half of held breath and then collapse laughing on the bed. “He was so boring!” wailed Sofia. “I thought it might be contagious!”
“Imagine catching Fellini’s dullness!” cries Antonia. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes and her stomach hurts. “D’you think you could get it just from kissing him or would you have to . . . ?”
“I didn’t even want to breathe the air near him, much less kiss him!” gasps Sofia. “Much less . . . ugh! And I’m sure he’s told all his friends we did that and more, and God I almost don’t care as long as I don’t have to talk to him anymore!” Sofia almost tells Antonia there was a moment where she looked at him and thought, what if I just did it? What if I undid my buttons and just did it, just like that, what would happen then? and that she was stopped not by a sense that it was wrong, or that she had to protect herself, but by a powerful surge of sadness, the idea that Lucas Fellini would be the one to divide her life into before and after, the idea that if she was changed he would be a part of it. Instead, she had turned to him and told him to walk her home, and she had gone to bed still shaking with the thinness of the boundary between saying yes and saying no. But she would feel naked if she told Antonia, who she is sure never has to wrestle with breaking rules the way Sofia does.
Antonia’s stomach hurts from laughing—with relief, with love, with horror at the things Sofia is tempted to do. Sofia rests her head on her stretched-out arm so she can look sideways at Antonia.
“I’m sorry, you know?” says Sofia.
Antonia is tempted to ask about what but she knows it would be one of those choices that makes her smaller, that Sofia would roll her eyes and say you know, and Antonia does know. So she says, “Me too,” and they lie together and listen to the adults in the living room. Occasional coughing; a man’s laughter.