Zommunist Invasion by Picott, Camille (ebook reader ink TXT) 📗

his voice, she bolted back into their bedroom and buried herself underneath the covers.

She couldn’t sleep. Luca’s voice echoed like gunfire in her mind.

Does it look like I’m reading, Valé? I said, go back to bed!

She stared into the dark, seeing Luca’s face. The painted red lips. The eyes lined with kohl. The bright pink cheeks.

None of it matched the boy who had once used her as a human shield against snowballs.

She heard the sound of water in the splashing in the kitchen. A few minutes later, Luca came back into their bedroom.

She sat up. “Luca—”

“You didn’t see anything, Valé. Understand? You didn’t see anything.”

Eyes wide, she shook her head. It wasn’t the severity of his tone that scared her. It was the fear she saw in his eyes. Even in the muffled darkness of their bedroom, she saw the naked terror in them.

“I didn’t see anything,” she whispered.

His shoulders sagged with relief. Up until that moment, she hadn’t detected the tension. He sat next to her on the bed and took her hand.

“I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“It’s okay.” She snuggled up next to him, desperate for reassurance.

He put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. She pressed her face into his side.

“I had a nightmare. I dreamed the Nazis were chasing me.”

He stroked her back. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

What really scared her even more than the nightmare was the memory of the boy with the painted face. It had been like looking at a stranger. It wasn’t the Luca she knew. Valentina gripped his shirt and hung on for dear life.

“Valé.” Luca placed a hand under her chin and forced her to look up.

His face had been scrubbed clean. The boy she knew and adored looked back at her.

But did she really know him? She searched his eyes. His eye lashes were still wet. Beyond those long, dark lashes, she saw the scared boy she’d seen in the living room. The boy with the painted face.

“Valé, you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

The question sat between them like a monster. It terrified her.

Valentina shook her head. “I won’t tell, Luca.”

Bother and sister clung to each other in the cold darkness.

“I’m not like other boys in the village, Valé.”

She didn’t ask him to elaborate. There was no need. She was pretty sure other boys in the village didn’t get into their mother’s rouge and paint their faces in the middle of the night. Boys didn’t paint their faces.

Even though he spoke no words, she could feel the turmoil roiling off his body. She squeezed him, searching for something comforting to say.

“I don’t care if you’re like the other boys. I love you no matter what, Luca.”

A loud exhale rattled through his body. “I’ve always known I was different,” he whispered. “I—I think God put me into the wrong body when I was born. I think I was supposed to be born a girl.”

Her mouth went dry. Her brain struggled to digest this.

God didn’t make mistakes. Everyone knew that. How could Luca have been born in the wrong body? What did he mean when he said he was supposed to have been born a girl?

“I’ve never felt like myself,” he said. “I don’t feel right in a man’s body. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

She had no idea what he was trying to say, but she responded to the desperation in his voice. “Yes, Luca.”

“I knew you’d understand.” His hug crushed the breath out of her. “I knew my Valé would understand. You don’t know what it’s like to be like me. It’s so lonely. I’m lonely, Valé.”

She responded to the naked pain in his voice. “You’re not alone, Luca. You have me. You always have me.”

“I know.” He kissed her head. “God may have messed up when he put me in this body, but he didn’t mess up when he made you my sister.”

“I don’t think God can make mistakes.” This truth had been drilled into her.

Luca’s laugh was hollow. “If I’m not a mistake, then God truly is a bastard. I could forgive a mistake. I can’t forgive a cruel joke.”

He thought his life was a cruel joke? Valentina searched frantically for a response, but she was so confused. Why did Luca think he’d been born into the wrong body? How could God make a mistake?

“What—what are you going to do?” It was the only thing she could think to say. Did he plan to wear women’s rouge in the middle the night for the rest of his life? What would happen when he got married?

“I turn eighteen in six months,” he said. “I’m going to join the partisans.”

“No.” She jerked away from him, staring at him in horror. “Luca, no. Il Duce and his Nazis—”

Luca shook his head. “I need to figure out how to be a man, Valé. I don’t feel like a man.”

But he was a man. Or almost a man, at any rate. “You could have any of the village girls. Adelina or Daniella or Francesca or—”

“I know. But I don’t want any of them.” Luca sighed loudly, scrubbing a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t know what I want. That’s why I’m going to join the partisans and fight for Italy.” He gave her a sad smile. “Maybe fighting Il Duce and his Nazi bastards will make a man out of me.”

Nonna lay wide awake in her bed, staring up at the pattern of the whorls and knotholes on the wooden bunk above her. It was like trying to see through the impenetrable snow of her youth. Tears leaked, slowly and silently and steadily, out of her eyes.

She missed Luca every day of her life.

She feared for Dal, Lena, and Amanda. She feared they’d been swallowed up by the world, much like Luca had been swallowed.

One minute he’d been beside her; the next, all that remained of him were bloody footprints.

32

Shoes

Stephenson couldn’t sleep. Mental pictures plagued him. He kept seeing Amanda getting her