CRAVING U (The Rook Café) Read Online Free

competition with him, and this revelation
was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
     
    ***
     
    The summer passed
sleepily, and without any further incident within the group.  Matteo was often
at home studying and complaining about having to follow his mother’s orders and
bring his grades up to a C average in farmland appraisal.  He was studying
agricultural surveying at the vocational high school, though it would be better
to say simply that he attended the school... his soccer responsibilities kept
him from doing any real studying.  All he wanted was to pass, and he had pulled
it off in most of his classes, though what he invented during his exams on
agrarian biotechnology was a mystery!  But this one course on appraisal was
killing him; all the teacher’s fault, or so he claimed.
    Lucrezia had returned from a beachside
resort with a long list of boys she had flirted – and sometimes done more – with,
while Marika and Carlotta had spent a couple of weeks together with their
families in Jesolo – ten miles of golden beaches and an endless array of shops and
clubs on the Gulf of Venice – breathing in the salt air and strolling the
pedestrian areas, examining their images reflected in the shop windows and
fantasizing about their “ currently non-existent ” love affairs, hopeful
words thrown into the gusts of sea winds.
    Marcello, Valerio, and Dario had spent
every last cent of their monthly paychecks (and some extra from their parents)
on a vacation in Ibiza – that island of wild bacchanalian nights and
destination number one for young European partiers – wandering from one club to
the next, dancing ‘til dawn, and  attending an infinite series of foam
parties.  While Valerio claimed to have picked up a different foreign girl
every night, it seems that Dario lived the life of a monk, as if he was waiting
for that special someone .
    The only real news worth mentioning was
the creation of a new couple: Sandra and Giacomo, a benchwarmer on the Brenta
Soccer Club who she had met during Marika’s birthday party.  An ideal
couple.  They were perfect for one another: both of them thought of nothing
other than school and church.  In Carlotta’s words, a total buzzkill!
    At the same time as the beginning of the
school year, there was the semifinal match of the summer eight-man soccer
tournament.  Halfway between five-on-a-side and real soccer, eight-man was
played on the threadbare astroturf field at the sports center of the Orgiano
Parish Church.  The guys from The Rook had split up into two teams:
Matteo was the captain of the Palladio , who were sponsored by a local
bakery, while Marcello was at the head of the Bramante team funded by
the town nursery.  Whenever possible, they tried to avoid each other.
    The rules of eight-man soccer are almost
identical to its more famous version.  The match lasts for two 25-minute
halves, divided by a 5-minute break.
    Marika didn’t want to be a minute late for
the crucial semifinal between the two rival teams, and so she had to drive like
a madwoman through the streets of Berici on her faithful steed: a metallic
black Scarabeo scooter with a retro-style helmet case that doubled as a
backrest for her poor cousin during the more hazardous curves.
    Her dance lesson with Mr. Maller had run
long.  The sinewy African-American choreographer from Harlem had chosen that
very evening to lengthen the lesson by 45 minutes as a way to combat the loss
of muscle tone during those lazy days of summer: 40 minutes of warmup; 20
minutes for complex exercises to improve their spinning, jumping, dynamism, and
interpretation; 30 minutes of choreography based on the various workshops he
had recorded from A Chorus Line; and 15 minutes of stretching to
lengthen their muscles.
    They made it safe and sound to the field –
except for Marika’s hair, that is, which the whipping wind had turned into some
form of dreadlocks – and were unsurprised to find so many people sitting in the
stands: