Are We There Yet? Page 14
A little closer, Danny spots Elijah's friend—no doubt the one who dropped him off. This time, she's wearing a chauffeur's cap and jacket, the cap tilted at a Dietrich angle.
Elijah hasn't seen her yet.
“Hey, isn't that your girlfriend?” Danny asks.
Elijah takes a look and beams. Cal sees him and beams in return.
“She's not my girlfriend,” he tells his brother.
“Well, maybe she should be,” his brother advises.
Elijah doesn't know what to say to that. Because now Cal is jumping the queue, running over and giving him the most fabulous hug.
“Speak Italian to me!” she cries. “Welcome home!”
“What are you wearing?” Elijah asks gleefully.
“You will not believe how many seventy-year-old men I had to hit up before I could get me one of these. I should go return it. I'll be right back.”
With that, she jets off again. Danny's gaze follows her— sure enough, she is handing the cap and jacket back to a shirtsleeved older man.
Elijah keeps hearing Danny's words—Well, maybe she should be. He wonders if it could really be that simple. If something so obvious could actually be right.
“Elijah! Danny!” Their mother is calling them now. She, too, is beaming.
“C'mon,” Danny says. Elijah picks up his bag and continues down the arrival pathway.
After the hellos, the thank yous begin. The word “trickery” does not come up. Danny doesn't even think it anymore.
When Mrs. Silver asks her sons what their favorite part of the trip was, they overlap and finish each other's sentences.
“Oh, it had to be—”
“The Pantheon was the most incredible—”
“—thing I've—”
“—we've—”
“—ever seen. You wouldn't—”
“You wouldn't believe it.”
Mrs. Silver and Mr. Silver share a knowing look.
Elijah and Danny continue on—the telling makes them realize what a good time they've had. Danny talks about gondoliers and Joseph and meeting Ari again, while Elijah tells them about the balcony over St. Mark's Square, the floors and the ceilings, and the woman on the plane ride over who once met Billy Corgan. Julia is not mentioned—she is, momentarily, forgotten.
Mr. Silver asks if all the hotels were okay. Mrs. Silver asks if they had a chance to see the synagogues.
Elijah and Cal walk arm in arm as they all head to the garage. The conversation falls back onto the usual post-vacation topics—what the weather was like here, what the weather was like there, what's been on the news. Cal clearly has other news to tell Elijah, but it will have to wait for the car ride home.
Danny overhears her telling Elijah that Ivan and Meg had a falling-out in the middle of ballroom dance, and the implications are huge.
Finally, they reach the point where Cal's car is one direction and the Silvers' is the other.
Mr. and Mrs. Silver's desire to have Cal and Elijah over for dinner is overruled by their desire to have them drive home before sundown. Plus, Elijah has to be at work early the next day. (“Early” being ten o'clock.)
Elijah says thank you again and again. He hugs his mother and father…as does Cal. Then he comes over to Danny, and the two of them shake hands.
“Give me a break,” Cal moans.
“Tell me about it,” Mrs. Silver puts in.
Elijah and Danny laugh and go for a hug. They hold on longer than either would have expected. When they let go, they thank each other and smile.
“Good luck.”
“You, too.”
Then, with a wave, Cal and Elijah walk away.
Danny watches them go—arm in arm, fading into the garage.
As Elijah walks back into the land of the student, with its late-night coffee conversations and application anxieties, and as Danny returns to his voice-mail, e-mail, direct-deposit, pulsedriven existence, Danny wonders when he'll next see his brother. And what it will be like.
There is the distance of miles, and the distance of brothers, to overcome. He can feel the world coming between them again. But the world is so much smaller than it used to be.
david levithan
è l'autore di Boy Meets Boy e The Realm of Possibility. Attualmente egli vive nel New Jersey e viaggia spesso al di fuori dei suoi confini. David non parla Italiano, e se voi non capite questo paragrafo, anche voi non parlate Italiano.
To find out more about him, check: www.davidlevithan.com.
David Levithan is the author of Boy Meets Boy and The Realm of Possibility. He currently lives in New Jersey and travels outside of it often. He does not speak Italian, and if you don't understand this, you don't speak Italian, either.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by David Levithan
All rights reserved.
KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levithan, David.
Are we there yet? / by David Levithan.
p. cm.
SUMMARY: Tricked by their parents into taking a trip to Italy together, two brothers—one
in high school and the other recently graduated from college—reflect on the directions of
their own lives and on the distance that has grown between them.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48157-3
[1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.
4. Vacations—Fiction. 5. Italy—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L5798Ar 2005
[Fic]—dc22
2004061546
v3.0