Chapter 22: Perché

Willa's POV

The community center smelled like floor wax and burnt coffee.

Room 4 had twelve folding chairs, a whiteboard and a poster of the Colosseum with one corner curling.

I took the seat in the front row on purpose.

Luca slid into the last row, with a spiral notebook on his knee and his coat still on.

I had told him one rule on the phone that afternoon.

"You don't help me," I'd said. "You don't whisper. You don't correct. You sit there and you're quiet."

"I'm very good at quiet," Luca said, and I hung up laughing.

The teacher was a retired high school woman in a mustard cardigan, with a big laugh.

She wrote ciao on the board.

"Everyone says it once, together," she said. "Nobody is shy in this room."

We said it.

Eleven strangers and I said it out loud in a bad chorus, and the sound went up to the water-stained ceiling.

I felt my face go hot, and then I felt something else.

It was the first time in my life I'd said an Italian word in front of people without anyone laughing.

"Now each of you will tell me your name," the teacher said. "Mi chiamo. My name is. Then your name."

She went around the room.

A man in a Red Sox cap went first, and a girl with a nose ring after him.

Then the teacher looked at me.

My mouth had gone dry.

I looked at the whiteboard, and I did not look at the back row.

"Mi chiamo Willa," I said.

"Bene!" the teacher said. "And where do you come from?"

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