Free A Semester Abroad by Ariella Papa

Stay.”
    She walked away from us. I looked at Michelle, but Michelle betrayed nothing, she looked like any other pretty fucked-up foreign girl. So Michelle and I began to dance again.
    “We are leaving,” said Mauro to Michelle. It was half a question. I started to translate for Michelle, but she understood him.
    “We aren’t leaving,” said Michelle in hesitant Italian. Mauro, the spokesperson, turned to Gennaro to confer. They were confused. Michelle said her next sentence in English but slowly loudly, using her hands. “We are not going. We dance. Janine and Roberto go away to fight and…” Here, she shrugged her shoulders, making us laugh.
    “We stay, too,” said Gennaro, suddenly confident in his language skills. He grabbed my hands and led me back onto the dance floor. “We dance.”
    And we danced to the electronic music peppered with dirty English phrases. We danced and smelled the sweet sweat of everyone in the club, and even though we saw our numbers going by again, we didn’t bother to check the letters. Our minds were heavy from the hash, and we could only concentrate on dancing. It was wonderful to be this far from my thoughts. I could have done this every day. I was dancing in the purple smoke, and everything fit together.

    When the lights came on in the club, my feet were killing me and my mouth was dry. I begged the 
barista
 for a glass of water. I shared it with Michelle like it was some great dance prize. I hadn’t really thought through how we could get home. I just believed that Michelle was certain of the bus. It was not like me to take someone else’s word for it. I only agreed to get away from Janine.
    “So how are we going to get home?” I asked. “Is there really a bus?”
    “There was. I don’t know how late it runs,” Michelle said. I didn’t think my feet could handle the walk home to Siena. I had no idea where we were, just that it took us twenty minutes in a car. I wondered if I could find one of the couches and pass out until morning.
    Gennaro and Mauro brought another guy over to meet us. He was dressed formally in a suit and tie, his face was sweaty and he kept wiping it with a handkerchief.
    “I am Sandrino.” He shook both of our hands and kissed us on both cheeks. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood to be charming.
    “Sandrino will port us home in 
macchina
,” said Mauro in his broken English. It was all going to work out. Sandrino had a car, God love him. Michelle and I smiled and said, 
grazie
. I tried to show my appreciation by working the e in the word as I had heard the Italians do all month.
    In the car, Gennaro and Mauro insisted that they resume positions with us on their laps, even though there was enough room in this car not to. We maintained our pairing by name. This satisfied everyone. Gennaro and I sat up front with Sandrino. I rolled down the window, stuck my hand out into the sky. I slipped off my shoes, and Gennaro called me 
americana
 and said something to Sandrino that I couldn’t understand.
    I heard Michelle and Mauro in the backseat; heard Mauro enjoying whatever was happening. Sounds of zippers and elastic. Michelle would puke this all up later. Another finger in another hole.
    But I would be fine if I kept my face to the window, turned into the blackness of the night. Then I wouldn’t have to see what they were doing. I wouldn’t have minded kissing Gennaro, he was sweet enough, but then I would have had to turn my face. Besides, I liked the way it was, his hand tightening and releasing on the space above my hip, fingers close to my breast. He whispered in my ear, against my neck, soothing the ring from the club’s loud music. I was 
bella
 and the song was 
bella
, no? That was what he said. And I believed him for a minute that everything was beautiful.
    The last time I smoked hash back at school it was a dirty brown ball in a pipe. It was not cut with any tobacco. I could not move then. Kaitlin propped me against a wall and I