CHAPTER THREE

 

Adjusting to life in a foreign country was getting easier for all of them as they stayed busy with renovating the beach house they'd found in Luna Beach, Florida.  They had moved from hotels, to a condo, then to makeshift quarters in the living room as they remodeled their brand new house.  Massimo really liked the way his new bedroom turned out.  The house was too new and modern to try and recreate his former bedroom in Italy.  Instead, it was completely different, a fresh start. 

He placed a new rug in front of the tub, exited the bathroom and looked around his very own space.  It felt good to be moved in, at last.  His suite had a sitting area with a fold out couch and loveseat, a TV, stereo and a top of the line video game system.  An office area branched off around a corner, where there were built-in shelves and a desk with slide-out surfaces large enough to spread a map.  Reference books, globes, a telescope, a projector; he had everything he would need to start a successful year at a new school. 

The screensaver on his laptop ran a continuous banner, "Massimo Belice - Rock Star!"  The drum set in the corner proved he wanted to be a musician but the screensaver was really to remind him of his new last name. Fortunata, Gino, and Massimo had taken on the last name, “Belice” during the time they would live in hiding; an uncomfortable adjustment but a necessary one.

Beside the drum set, were French doors that opened accordion style, swiveled, and laid flat against the wall to separate the sleeping and dressing room from the common sitting area.  The designers mentioned something about beach houses and rental value, so there was even a kitchen.  His mother said he was never allowed to cook until he learned how, but Gino had already come up and cooked with him a few times.  It was fun, like the brothers were having a sleep over. 

The newly dubbed Fortunata Belice tapped on the banister and ascended the stairs, "knock, knock. You ready for dinner? We're starving!"  She stood and surveyed the completed project.  "Ah Marco, er Tony…I mean, Massimo!" She laughed at herself, "Ah, my boys, you all look so much alike…so handsome."  Her face looked sad for a moment and Massimo knew she missed his brothers as much as he did.

She smiled and looked around the room.  "You've done a great job in here, it looks amazing!"  She turned to go downstairs but stopped a moment and looked closely at her son. "Si, you all look so similar…and yet, there's something so different about each of you."  She reached out and ran her thumb over the scar above his right eyebrow from the time Antonio had dropped Massimo as a toddler and he had to get stitches.

"It's so funny," she chuckled, "Gino has the same type of scar, in the same spot."  Gino's scar was also brother related from when Marco hit him with the butt end of a toy gun.  "Come down now, ok?  And don't forget, to feed the cat."

  Massimo went to the window where little Luce napped in the sun.  He tickled the kitten's nose with her own tail.  She woke up, attacked her tail, and fell off the cat perch that had been attached to the sill.  Massimo returned her to the perch, looked out the window and saw a bright yellow and orange surfboard walking out to the water.  It was somewhat far away and Massimo couldn't see the guy riding it, so he went over to his telescope and refocused it from the stars to the waves.  A surfer was a real novelty in comparison to Luna Beach's dominant population of families with small children and senior citizens.  The Crystal Heights neighborhood was gated and there was no nearby public beach access.  This was a good sign to Massimo, somewhere in the neighborhood lived at least one surfer.  Maybe he'd be someone cool for Massimo and Gino to hang out with. 

"There he is!"  The board and its rider caught a wave and ripped toward the shore.  

He pulled away from the telescope and looked out the window to the beach. 

"No way!"  He squinched his eye back to the telescope and looked again. 

"Where'd she go?"  He saw her again as she paddled back out to catch another wave.

Gino's voice bellowed from downstairs, "Massimo!  Dinner!  Now!"

He grinned and picked up the kitten, "Luce…looky Luce, a surfer girl.  Finally, signs of life in Luna Beach."

 

"This dune makes a perfect goal until we get you a soccer net, Maz." 

Gino drew a line in the sand with his foot in front of the dunes that separated their house from the shoreline and ocean. 

"This area is my box.  We don't have posts to bounce off, so just practice your low target strikes for now.  Ready?"

The brothers were deeply tanned from weeks of playing in the ocean with boogie boards, running along the beach nearly every morning, and swimming in their pool to rinse off the salty Atlantic.  For weeks, Massimo looked for the surfer girl, but hadn't seen her again.  She must have been a renter or she had been visiting a resident.  He’d given up on meeting what he thought was probably a cool girl, but he hadn't stop scanning the beach on a regular basis, just in case.

After practicing soccer strikes and foot maneuvers for over an hour, Massimo grew bored.  He kicked the ball so hard, it hit Gino's bare stomach with force and stung his slightly burnt skin.  He laughed when he saw his older brother grimace.

"Good one, huh G.?"

"Yeah, that's a point."

Gino threw the ball hard back to Massimo, aiming for his head. He reached the target, and smacked Massimo in the ear; practice was over.  The brothers began wrestling in the sand until Massimo squelched in pain. 

After a dip in the ocean to rinse off, they sat on their towels looking out at the waves.  Massimo felt a deep longing for his own waves back home.  Gino obviously felt the same way.

"Not quite the Mediterranean Sea, is it?"

Massimo shook his head no.  "Have you talked to Papa lately?" 

When Gino said he hadn't, Massimo asked if he'd spoken to his fiancée, Maria.  He saw Gino swallow hard at the name of his love.

"Not since that trip we took over to Orlando last month.  I bought a prepaid cell phone and threw it away after I called her."  Gino fiddled with some pieces of driftwood and twigs absentmindedly, but Massimo could see a pattern emerging.

"G, what are you making with those sticks?  It looks like you're about to weave a basket or something."

Gino placed his craft in the sand, stood up and added a few more sticks.  "See?  It's kind of like an arrow but you wouldn't notice it if you didn't know to look for it."

Massimo got up and looked down at the sticks.  He was right.  When surrounded by other grass and sticks, what Gino had made wouldn't look like anything at all.  But knowing it was there made it stand out.  Massimo looked away from it and looked back, he could still see it. 

"That is so cool!  It's like one of those color blind eye tests or something when you can't help but see the number in the dots."  Massimo shook his head amazed, "Gino!  You've invented a camouflaged, secret signal!  That is so awesome!" 

Gino laughed at his little brother, "I'm glad I can amuse you so easily lil' bro."

Massimo's eyes brightened, "G, let's make this our own signal…it'll be something just between us that no one else will know about.  We'll call it the "Belice Arrow."

Gino agreed but thought their secret sign should be the "Vetrano Brothers Sign," or VBS for short.  "When we go home, we won't want to be the Belice brothers anymore."

Massimo wove his own VBS and the brothers took turns hiding the signals from one another.  They timed each other to see who could find the other's VBS the quickest. Over and over again, the signal would blend in at first, then Massimo's peripheral vision would spot the arrow if he passed by it.  They each began to kick and destroy one another's VBS when they found them.  Next, they competed to see who could weave a new one the fastest. Finally, the game grew old but the notion of their secret was still fun. 

A thought occurred to Massimo and he grew excited, "When we get home you could point it to where Antonio hides so I could win the game…" Gino looked disapprovingly at Massimo. "Aww, just once, G!  I want to win just once!"

Gino laughed, "Ok Maz, our celebration on getting back to the family will be that you win the game…and if you need my help with the VBS in order to win, you've got it!"

Massimo hugged his brother, grateful at the notion of winning the game and excited about the thought of going home.  Gino hugged him back and mentioned it was probably time for dinner.  Massimo's appetite agreed.

He picked up his beach towel, held it high and let the wind shake out the sand.  It snapped and flapped in front of his face, flickering the shoreline for miles ahead like a Nickelodeon movie player.  Far down the beach, past the Crystal Heights neighborhood residents, a lone figure stood at the boardwalk of a condominium building looking out at the ocean, scanning the shoreline left and right. Ice snaked its way through Massimo's blood.

He tackled his brother, shoving Gino toward the dune that had served as their makeshift goal.  He'd caught him so off guard that Gino went down easily.

"Massimo!  What the f…"

Massimo put his hand over Gino’s mouth, but he hadn’t needed to; the look on Massimo's face shut him up.  Massimo put a finger to his own lips, turned away from Gino, then inched over on his belly to peek over the top of the dune. He was right, it wasn’t an illusion.

Despite Massimo’s tan skin, his face was pale as he looked back to his brother and whispered,"Vincenzo."