Defending Irene Read Online Free Page A

Impossible
    Giulia. Friend and teammate? Neither friend nor teammate? Even a potential enemy? These thoughts worried me as I walked to the school on Via Roma. Emi had seemed nice enough, but what if this was some double-edged prank designed to get both me and his sister? What might Giulia be expecting of the Americana ? Someone straight from MTV? If so, she would be disappointed by my soccer camp uniform.
    My stomach had an uncertain, empty feeling as I walked down the chestnut-lined street toward the middle school. The buildings I passed all told me that I wasn’t in Missouri anymore. A hundred-year-old Liberty-style building sat next door to a modern five-story apartment house with a distinctly Italian air in its flowers and balconies. Next came a miniature castle complete with towers, an enormous, solid-looking door, and the red and white shutters that meant the building had once belonged to the minor Tyrolean aristocracy. Maybe it still did. Curious, I peered through the wrought-iron fence at the twining ivy, ancient pine trees, and massive rhododendrons.
    Procrastinating. I was procrastinating. I checked my watch: 1:55 p.m. Five minutes and a few hundred meters separated me from my meeting with Giulia.
    Why was I so worried? Giulia had seemed very happy to hear from me, just as Emi had promised. But we hadn’t had time to talk much.
    Minutes later, only the long shiny leaves of a laurel hedge hid the grounds of the middle school from my view. My steps slowed. I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, and then picked up my pace as I turned the corner. I had to look confident even if I wasn’t.
    I saw movement under the shadows of an enormous tree. A small dark figure with the unmistakable bounce of an athlete darted down the steps and stepped into the light. A barrette held thick, black hair away from her face. The rest of it fell six inches below her shoulders.
    â€œIrene? You’re here! Ciao! I’m Giulia. A pleasure to meet you! Emi described you to me. Come and sit down. It’s much cooler on the steps.”
    I blinked at the rapid flood of words and Giulia’s keen interest. Maybe I looked confused, because she continued more slowly, “You understand me? Was I talking too fast?”
    â€œNo. I understood you perfectly. A pleasure to meet you,” I echoed. I followed her to the steps. The gray stone was cool and welcoming.
    Giulia sat down cross-legged and rested her elbows on her knees. “How do you speak Italian so well? And with such a good accent? Did you study it in school?”
    I shook my head. “My papá is Italian. From Milan. He met my mother at the university in America.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œHe was a graduate student studying materials sciences, but they asked him to teach a few Italian classes. My mother was teaching German literature. One day in the office, they started complaining about their first-year students and that was it.”
    â€œAh. How romantic. And why do you live here now?”
    I explained how my dad was doing some work for the Italian branch of his company and my mom was taking a year off of teaching high school German to live among German-speakers and study the local dialect.
    Giulia immediately pounced with another question—a whole series of them, actually. How old was I? What class would I frequent? Who was my favorite music group? Had I heard of Eros Rammazzotti? Did I really have every single one of his CDs? What did I think of the mister , of Emi, of Luigi, of Matteo?
    Our conversation finally stopped sounding like a magazine interview when Giulia began slipping a few facts about herself into the stream of talk. We exchanged our favorite soccer stories about last-second goals, blind referees, unreasonable coaches, difficult opponents, and even more difficult teammates. I learned, for example, that when they started soccer seven years ago, Matteo had been the last kid on the team to learn how to tie his