“How did you know I didn’t speak Italian?” I asked.

“Because you would yell ‘damn it!’ every time you could not get that bracelet on,” Valerio said. God, his eyes were cute. Bluish green.

I turned red.

“Aren’t you going to ask my name?” he asked.

“Umm,” I said, taking a big sip of my drink.

“Valerio.”

“Amir,” I said. Behind him, Giovanni was ordering a drink at the bar. He winked at me.

“So . . . you sell drink tickets?” I asked Valerio.

“Yes, but my shift is over.”

“I don’t see anyone else manning the ticket table,” I said. “Does that mean the drinks are free now?”

“For me, I hope so. God knows I cannot afford them,” Valerio said.

“With a job like that, I’d assume you were loaded.”

Valerio nudged me with his elbow. “I work four jobs like that, at other bars and restaurants in Testaccio, and I am still not, as you say, ‘loaded.’”

It turned out Valerio was a student at Sapienza University in Rome. He had just finished his freshman year, and he was studying the very lucrative field of Latin.

“So you’re a nerd,” I said.

“I am actually very dumb.”

“I bet if I looked up this school right now, it’s probably the best college in Italy.”

Valerio scratched the back of his head, and I immediately pulled out my phone. He tried to take it away from me, but I managed to pull up the Wikipedia page.

“See!” I yelled, twisting my body to keep him away from my phone. “It says right here, ‘one of the most prestigious Italian universities, commonly ranking first’—”

“Okay, okay,” Valerio said, giggling. I looked back and saw Jahan and the others watching our little tug-of-phone.

After the bar shut down, Valerio suggested we continue our conversation over on a couch in the corner. Where our hips touched. And then our legs became intertwined. The dance floor was sparse, and it was at least five in the morning.

“I should get going,” Valerio said. “But I like you. You are funny. Let me get your number.”

I gave it to him. We didn’t kiss, although that might have been my fault, because I got sidetracked when I saw that my friends were retreating downstairs.

I said goodbye to Valerio and ran down the stairs, into the room of Italian antiques, where they had taken refuge on a couch in the very back of the center room—it felt like a ship cabin, with high ceilings, curved, just extremely deep. Neil was popping a bottle of prosecco and Jahan was going through a record collection in a dusty cabinet to the side of the couches.

“Whitney Houston!” Jahan yelped.

“Madonna!” Neil cheered as he uncorked the bottle.

He poured the prosecco into a line of flutes for us, and we toasted to the night.

Interrogation Room 38

Soraya

I NEEDED TO know where Amir had gone. I had already messed everything up by telling my mom and dad. Amir must have blocked us or something, because after a few days of nonstop calls—nonstop yelling—he stopped picking up our calls. They stopped going through. They would just go straight to voicemail.