‘Hey, guess what?’ He drops on to the bench beside me, smelling faintly of sawdust and turpentine. Most of his changes will happen live at the parade, so after sketching his plan yesterday, he’s spent today helping everyone else with the practical stuff, alongside Jacopo.
‘I’ve been looking at flights,’ he says, out of the blue. ‘There are loads of options. When you’re back in Scotland, I’ll come over all the time. And I’ll visit you wherever you end up studying art, too.’
My toes curl in my boots. He’s really thought about this. About me.
Then reality edges back in. ‘Study art? Yeah – in a parallel universe or something.’
He covers his ears. ‘Not listening.’
I pull his hands away and swat his chest. ‘What about you? Will you keep going with the Ballarin Institute?’
‘After today?’ His eyes stray to where Alessandra is raising her panel so her portrait looks as if it’s wearing the paper-lace dress she’s fitted beneath it. ‘Maybe not.’
My shoulders tense and he kneads them gently. ‘I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t even know if I want to be an artist at all. At least, not as my main job.’
My mouth gapes. ‘What? But you totally could be!’
‘Only because it’s what I’ve been trained for. What I’ve been told I’ll be all my life. I haven’t even let myself think of other options. I love art. I love street art that’s just out there, where people can see it without a ticket. But apart from that … I don’t know.’
I groan. ‘God, this is my fault, isn’t it? If I hadn’t come here—’
‘No!’ Leo tugs me on to his lap and presses his forehead to mine. ‘All this has been a long time coming. For you too. It’s like we had to meet in person to find the courage to be ourselves. Like I already said … it was meant to be.’
I know he means us too. Not just the art. Not just the risk.
‘Ehi, ragazzi,’ Jacopo calls across the room. ‘Save itfor the gondola.’
Laughter ripples through the studio, and just like that, the moment is gone – or maybe only paused.
We’re all still making tiny tweaks when the workers show up. They’re nothing like the clumsy movers Veronica was imagining. They’re efficient and careful and know exactly what they’re doing. Jacopo jokes with them in bursts of dialect I have no chance of understanding and gets teased back. When the boats are set up and ready to move, we trail them to the meeting point at Rio di Cannaregio.
I glance nervously at Leo. ‘Won’t your parents spot the floats before it starts?’
He opens the map on his phone and zooms in. ‘No. Look. We set off from thisfondamentahere. The sponsors, with Silvia and my parents, will be waiting there, at the end of the route.’ He points to a bridge around a bend from where we are now. ‘By the time they see us, we’ll already be in the water.’
I breathe out and force myself to relax.
Then Fulvio turns up.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Just circles the floats, eyes flicking from the spray cans stacked beneath Leo’s portrait to the cables running along mine.
His lip curls. ‘Didn’t come to your senses then?’
When neither of us answers, his gaze slides to me. ‘I don’t know why you’ve let someone like her influence you. You know she’s only here so the school could get the funding.’
‘Don’t talk about her like that,’ Leo snaps. ‘Evie’s here on her own merit. Not sure you can say the same.’
‘Yeah, well … we’ll see about that.’ He stalks off towards his own float, but his words sting, if only for a moment. Because, yes, my route here wasn’t like theirs. Mylifeisn’t like theirs. But even if I do end up trudging down the science path – if they’ll still have me without a single InterSTEAM credential – I know I won’t go back to hiding my art. Not again. Even without my certificate, I won’t be leaving with nothing.
That thought buoys me as the floats line up and the workers step back, everything poised to move.
Then the sharp click of heels on stone makes me turn. Veronica’s there, red hair blazing, phone clutched in one hand.
‘Fulvio just rang about an emergency. Can someone tell me what’s going on?’
For one wild second, I think Veronica won’t notice anything different about the floats. They’re moored tight together and the light is draining out of the sky, leaving behind a grey-blue dusk. Mostly, though, it’s because she’s looking at us, not the boats, checking we’re still all in one piece.
I step squarely into her eyeline, blocking her view as casually as I can.
