Then Jennifer did a really terrible thing. Suddenly, just as I was about to get off her, she reached up and put her arms around my neck and pretended to be all serious and pulled my face close to hers so that I was practically lying on top of her and she said, “Now you have me what do you want to do, big boy?” The way she said it was serious but it was really an even worse kind of teasing than calling me batty because I had no idea what to do.

I pulled away and stood up very fast. Jennifer sat up on the sand and laughed at me and said, “You should have seen the expression on his poor little face, my dear,” as if she was talking to someone else about me at tea in the pensione later that day. I felt my face get red because I thought that was exactly what she would say later to someone. Suddenly I felt that Jennifer wasn’t my friend anymore and at the same time I wanted to be with her every minute of the day and hoped she’d go snorkeling with me.

Chapter 21

MOM AND DAD’S SECOND HONEYMOON didn’t seem to be working out that well. Mom, Janet, Rachael, and I were all at our dining table on the terrace in front of the Hotel Nazionale waiting to be served our dinner but Dad had not come down from his room. Mom asked Rachael to go and ask him if we should wait for him or not.

When Rachael came back she said, “He says go on and eat. He’s not coming down to dinner.”

Mom asked her what he was doing. “He’s sitting in the room staring out the window,” Rachael answered.

So then Mom asked Janet to go up and see if Dad wanted dinner sent up.

Janet came back and said, “He says no, please don’t send anything up. And if you do send up any dinner he says he’ll throw it out the window into the square.”

Mom looked at us and said, “We should stop a minute and bring this to the Lord.”

And before I could ask her not to, she bowed her head and prayed for so long that the soup that was served to us while she prayed was completely cold by the time she was done.