Paolo Giordano - The Solitude of Prime Numbers

"No blow jobs. Not even if he asks you, understand?" advised Giada Savarino. "The first time the max you can do is a hand job."

Alice laughed nervously and couldn't work out whether Giada was being serious.

"Now, you go back in there and start talking to him," explained Viola, who had a plan in mind and a very clear one. "Then you come up with an excuse to take him to my room, okay?"

"And what excuse am I supposed to come up with?"

"How do I know? Anything. Tell him you're fed up with the music and you want some peace and quiet."

"What about his friend? He's always glued to him," Alice said.

"We'll take care of him," said Viola with her most ruthless smile.

She climbed onto her sister's bed, trampling the light green cover with her shoes. Alice thought of her father, who wouldn't even let her walk on the carpet with her shoes on. For a second she wondered what he would have said if he had seen her there, but then she swallowed back the thought.

Viola opened a drawer in the cupboard above the bed. She rummaged around, not tall enough to see inside, and took out a little box covered with red fabric, adorned with gilded Chinese characters.

"Take this," she said. She held her hand out toward Alice. In the middle of her palm was a bright blue pill, square and with rounded corners. Carved in the center was a butterfly. For a second Alice saw the filthy fruit gumdrop she had accepted from that very same hand and felt it trapped in her throat again.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Take it. You'll have more fun."

Viola winked. Alice thought for a moment. They were all looking at her. She thought this must be another test. She took the pill from Viola's hand and placed it on her tongue.

"You're ready," Viola said with satisfaction. "Let's go."

The girls left the room single file, all looking down and with wicked smiles on their faces. Federica pleaded with Viola, please, let me have one too. And Viola brusquely told her wait your turn.

Alice was the last to leave. When all their backs were turned, she brought a hand to her mouth and spat out the pill. She put it in her pocket and turned out the light.

Like four beasts of prey, Viola, Giada, Federica, and Giulia surrounded Denis.

"Will you come with us?" Viola asked.

"Why?"

"We'll explain why later," Viola cackled.

Denis froze. He sought Mattia's help, but Mattia was still absorbed in the quivering Coca-Cola. The loud music that filled the room made the surface jerk with each beat of the bass drum. Mattia waited with strange trepidation for the moment when it would spill over the rim.

"I'd rather stay here," said Denis.

"God, how boring you are," Viola said, losing her patience. "You're coming with us and that's that."

She pulled him by the arm. Denis resisted feebly. Then Giada started pulling as well and he gave in. As they were pushing him into the kitchen, he looked once more at his friend, who was still motionless.

Mattia became aware of Alice's presence when she rested a hand on the table: the tension broke and a thin layer of liquid spilled over the rim and settled around the base in a dark ring.

He instinctively looked up and met her gaze.

"How's it going?" she asked.

Mattia nodded. "Fine," he said.

"Do you like the party?"

"Mmm."

"Music this loud gives me a headache."

Alice waited for Mattia to say something. She looked at him and it seemed to her that he wasn't breathing. His eyes were meek and pain-stricken. Like the first time, she suddenly wanted to draw those eyes toward her, to take Mattia's head in her hands and tell him everything would be okay.

"Will you come into the other room with me?" she ventured.

Mattia looked at the floor, as if he had been waiting for those very words.

"Okay," he said.

Alice headed down the hall and he followed a short distance behind. Mattia, as always, kept his head down and looked in front of him. He noticed that Alice's right leg bent gracefully at the knee, like every other leg in the world, and her foot brushed the floor without a sound. Her left leg, on the other hand, remained stiff. To push it forward she had to make it do a little arc outward. For a fraction of a second her pelvis was unbalanced, as if she were about to topple sideways. At last her left foot touched the ground as well, heavily, like a crutch.

Mattia concentrated on that gyroscopic rhythm, and without realizing it he synchronized his steps with hers.

When they got to Viola's room, Alice sidled up next to him and, with a daring that startled even her, closed the door. They were standing, he on the rug and she just off it.

Why doesn't he say anything? Alice wondered.

For a moment she wanted to drop the whole thing, to open the door again and leave, to breathe normally.

But what would I tell Viola? she thought.

"It's better in here, isn't it?" she said.

"Yeah," Mattia agreed, nodding. His arms dangled at his sides like a ventriloquist's dummy. With his right index finger he was folding a short, hard bit of skin that stuck out from beside his thumbnail. It was almost like piercing himself with a needle and the sting distracted him for a moment from the charged air in the room.

Alice sat on Viola's bed, balancing on the edge. The mattress didn't dip beneath her weight. She looked around, searching for something.

"Why don't you sit down here?" she asked Mattia at last.

He obeyed, sitting down carefully, about a foot away from her. The music in the living room sounded like the heavy, panting breath of the walls. Alice noticed Mattia's hands, clenched into fists.

"Is your hand better?" she asked.

"Nearly," he said.

"How did you do it?"

"I cut myself. In the biology lab. By accident."

"Can I see?"

Mattia tightened his fists still further. Then he slowly opened his left hand. A furrow, light in shade and perfectly straight, cut it diagonally. Around it, Alice made out scars that were shorter and paler, almost white. They filled the whole of his palm, intersecting like the branches of a leafless tree seen against the light.

"I've got one too, you know," she said.

Mattia clenched his fist again and trapped his hand between his legs, as if to hide it. Alice stood up, lifted her sweatshirt slightly, and unbuttoned her jeans. He was seized by panic. He turned his eyes to the floor, but still managed to see Alice's hands folding back the edge of her trousers, revealing a piece of white gauze framed by Scotch tape and, just below it, the top of a pair of pale gray underpants.

Alice lowered the elastic band a couple of inches and Mattia held his breath.

"Look," she said.

A long scar ran along her protruding pelvis bone. It was thick and in relief, and wider than Mattia's. The marks from the stitches, which intersected it perpendicularly and at regular intervals, made it look like the kind of scar children draw on their faces when they dress up as pirates.

Mattia couldn't think what to say. Alice buttoned up her jeans and tucked her undershirt inside them. Then she sat down again, a little closer to him.

The silence was almost unbearable for both of them, the empty space between their faces overflowing with expectation and embarrassment.

"Do you like your new school?" Alice asked, for the sake of saying something.

"Yes."

"They say you're a genius."

Mattia sucked in his cheeks and bit into them till he felt the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth.

"Do you really like studying?"

Mattia nodded.

"Why?"

"It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing.