Handsome, sweet, and a prodigy. Figures.

I’m itchy with nerves as I feel the warmth still flowing from my hand into the plant. I can’t help but hear my mother in my head warning me that someone is watching, my father telling me to take deep breaths and hide it.

But when Michael glances at the plant curling around my fingers, his eyes light with wonder.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Just adjusting the stem so it will have better sunlight in the morning.”

“Ada, look at the vine. It was practically dead a few moments ago. Now it looks one sunny day away from pollinating.”

“I’ve always been good with plants,” I say. It’s true, but that’s not all this is. This is me using the abilities that make me different. The abnormality that, if I play my cards right, could get me the invite I’ve been sent across the globe for. The curse that, until recently, I was convinced no one must know about but now may finally prove useful for something.

Michael’s eyes are rapidly roving over me, but not in a suggestive way; it’s more… clinical.

“Do you heal easily?” he asks.

Alarm ignites in my gut. This line of questioning practically confirms my hunch. The answer to his question is “yes.” Though I’ve injured myself many times, it’s never been serious. Like the first time I went snowboarding and crashed into a tree but was completely fine, or when I cut halfway through my finger with pruning shears and didn’t need stitches.

When I don’t answer, he presses on. “Does your hair grow fast?”

Yes again. My wavy brown hair, and my nails too, no matter how often I cut them, constantly seem to grow, grow, grow. I have always suspected that these traits are symptoms of what makes me different, but the only way Michael could guess these things is if this rendezvous was less of a coincidence than I thought.

I still haven’t responded, but he senses the affirmative in my gaze.

“Eureka,” he says in a quiet voice. His playfulness has been replaced with seriousness, and now he looks older. More his age. “I’ve been coming to this place every night this week to recruit a pianist when I should’ve been looking for you all along.”

I should be excited by this; instead, my stomach is heavy with disappointment. I just wanted to go on a date with a cute boy.

Not a boy, I remind myself. A man.

And over the course of our flirtatious banter, I have learned almost nothing about him. I don’t know where he’s from or what he’s really doing here in Italy.

Which probably has to do with why I was sent to Italy.