Free Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde

surely as you do in real life. And if she hadn't wanted to talk to me when she'd been gathering flowers or dancing, she certainly wouldn't welcome being awakened in the dead of night.
    Yet I kept coming back to the thought: the Rasmussem group hadn't brought me back when I'd knocked myself out, so they must consider a reset to be a waste of time.
    The stars shone in the sky above, and reflected in the lake before me. I went to the water to dip my hands in, to cool my cheeks, not daring to put my fingers anywhere near my throbbing forehead.
    The gondola was bobbing at the end of its tether, and despite the darkness, I could make out the shape of the gondolier standing in the bow—Prow? Which is the back?—patiently waiting to offer rides.
    He was the only one here who had been nice to me.
    I stood, still weaving a bit, and made my way down the dock, my footsteps thudding against the wooden slats sounding like a herd of crazed wildebeests.
    " Buona notte, " the gondolier greeted me. " Le piacerebbe fare un giro in gondola? "
    Before I could tell him to please speak more softly, and that no, I did not want a ride in his stinking gondola, he took note of my bruised, bumped, and abraded forehead. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and made a sympathetic face as he brought his fingers to his own forehead and said in a kindly—if overly loud—voice, " Che cosa è successo? "
    Our language differences didn't leave us too much common ground, but there was something I knew he understood. “Emily,” I said.
    “Emily,” he said, once again kissing his fingertips to show his approval.
    I tugged on his sleeve. “Emily,” I repeated. “She's in trouble.”
    Well, she was.
    I pointed back to the house.
    “Emily. She needs help.” I indicated my head, as though what had happened to me might—without his intervention—happen to her, too. “Emily. Help.”
    Whatever he made of my words, he understood my frantic tone. Nimbly, he leaped onto the dock and strode toward the house.
    I followed as quickly as my pounding head permitted.
    He'd already tried the French doors by the time I got there. He knocked, very loudly—oh, my aching head—very, very loudly. He pounded the flat of his palm against the wood, shaking the door in its frame, and called in that deep, serious voice guys can do: “Signorina Emily!”
    " Andiamo, " I told him, the word rising to the surface of my brain from who-knows-where—probably some movie or song or Italian restaurant or something. I was fairly certain it meant something along the lines of “Let's get going” or “Hurry up.” I repeated it more urgently: “Andiamo! Andiamo! Emily!”
    He put his shoulder to the door and tried to crash through it the way cops do in the movies. But whatever Emily's doors and windows were made of, the door didn't break, and he bounced off the surface as surely as that rock I'd thrown.
    Leaping off the porch, he stood on the lawn and bellowed up at the second floor, “Signorina Emily!” over and over, until finally my sister opened the wooden shutters of her room and stepped out onto the balcony.
    She was wearing a floaty white nightgown that made her look simultaneously romantic and little-girlish.
    I wanted to tell her, “Emily, I'm here to rescue you. I've brought reinforcements.” But I didn't know if that was the right thing to say, so I didn't say anything. Besides, I was intentionally standing close to the huge flowering cherry tree, kind of hoping that she wouldn't notice me, since my presence seemed to irk her.
    In a voice that belied her sweet, vulnerable appearance, Emily shouted at the gondolier, “Go away!” She saw me there, too, despite the tree. She added, “Go away, both of you!” and stomped back into her room, slamming the shutters closed.
    Angry, but undeterred, I thought at her: Well, this is what you get for not letting your guys speak English. To the gondolier, I said, “Emily!” and pointed up to where she'd been, then pointed