All Roads Lead to Rome

One

Rome is sweltering as it waits patiently for the sun to set over the Spanish Steps. It’s the kind of vapid heat that makes me wonder how the lions had the energy to leave their cages, let alone maul anyone.

I’m in John Keats’s bedroom, the room he died in, overlooking the sprawling steps below. Horses sweat in the middle of Piazza di Spagna as they wait to give carriage rides, immovable in the small throng of late-­May tourists. Most of the passersby don’t even know this was Keats’s house, despite the enormous crimson plaque on the side of it. They come here for selfies on the famous steps and never give John’s shrine more than a careless glance. For me, the Keats-­Shelley House is the best part of the neighborhood. I wonder if he stood exactly here, watching the people outside the way I do.

Anna Maria comes and stands beside me. “It’s closing time, Story,” she says in Italian. “No more people-­watching today.”

“Mmmm.”

She follows my gaze to a cluster of kids my age, dressed like conspicuous American teenagers. They’ve stopped at the bottom of the steps. A group of tourists in matching red T-­shirts flows around them like a school of minnows sliced apart.

“Wait,” she says, “is that the infamous Dip Squad?”

I purse my lips and nod. They’re all there: Kelsey, Guin, Alicia, and the twins, Patrick and Jack. We’re the kids of the American diplomatic corps stationed in Rome, but I’ve called them the Dip Squad since last fall when they welcomed me with one prank after another to show me how things work here. They thought I was stuck-­up because I keep to myself so much. The worst was when they convinced me a stray cat near the embassy belonged to a cute Marine assigned to guard duty. They told me the cat had been lost for days, so I brought it to him. He thinks I made the whole thing up to hit on him. He still smirks every time I visit my mom at work.

“Which one is the dark-­haired boy?”

“That’s Jack.”

“But Patrick is the mean one, sì?”

“Sì.”

“Jack is pretty cute.” She elbows me.

I scrunch my nose, and she laughs.

“You should stand up to them. They don’t seem worth being miserable over.”

“They’re not. But I’ll be out of here soon. Jack is the only one I’ll ever have to see again.”

“He’s the one going to Princeton with you?”

“Sì.”

“Story, don’t let other people keep you from living the life you want,” she says, poking my arm. “Come on, I have to get home. I have an exam tomorrow.” Anna Maria is in her second year at Università di Roma. She works two afternoons a week at the Keats-­Shelley House, where I spend more time than is normal for a seventeen-­year-­old girl, even one as nerdy as me.

We say ciao as she locks the door, and she heads to the metro. The Dip Squad has, blessedly, disappeared. I’ve promised my mom I’d go to the Gucci store on Via Condotti to buy a ridiculously overpriced necklace the ambassador wants to give to a visiting dignitary. I don’t understand why people flock to designer stores to buy ugly things for thousands of dollars when they could find vintage treasures on the Via del Governo Vecchio for a few euros, but I don’t get most things about people.

When we moved here last August, I found my way around by using a copy of Fodor’s Italy in 1951 that I bought in a used bookstore. “Never out of date” it says on the cover, which makes me laugh, but the Eternal City is pretty eternal. There’s something obscenely unromantic about a smartphone map.

As I reach the edge of the piazza, I spot Patrick’s blond buzz cut leading the Dips back in my direction. I duck into a gelateria.

“Buonasera,” says the middle-­aged man behind the counter.

“Buonasera.”

He looks at me expectantly, because most people come into an ice cream shop to actually get ice cream. My mom will have takeout waiting at home, but I might as well have dessert now, since I need to give the Dips time to go past. I look over my choices.

“Un gelato alla stracciatella vegana, per favore.”

People burst through the door, and I turn my head, thinking it must be the Dips coming to harass me. But it’s a guy and girl about my age, both of them looking like wealthy tourists. The girl looks a lot like the American singer Jasmine. But celebrities and celebrity look-­alikes are as common as good pizza in this part of Rome. She has her dark hair in a ponytail like me, and we both have on yellow, though I’m wearing a vintage summer dress that Audrey Hepburn might have worn, and she’s wearing a romper some stylist probably thought was retro chic.

The man behind the counter asks me in Italian what size gelato and whether I want a cone or cup, but he’s watching her.

“Una piccola coppetta, per favore.”

“Sì, signorina.”

The girl’s voice is almost hysterical. “Do you think they saw us?”

Maybe they’re hiding out from the Dip Squad, too. The bad part about being a loner is there’s no one to share your jokes with.

“I’m sure they didn’t.” The boy has a Scottish accent. He cranes his neck to look over her head without getting too close to the window.

“They can’t see me with you.”

“They won’t, keep the heid,” he replies, but then he changes course. “Ah no, I think they’re coming.”

I’m paying the man while they make this exchange, and he’s listening intently.

“You are Jasmine, no?” he asks her in heavily accented ­English.

“Yes! Is there a back way I could go out?”

The man nods, and Jasmine slips behind the counter. He ushers her to the back as if he suddenly thinks he’s working for the CIA. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel,” she calls to the boy while she slips the gelateria guy a fistful of euros.

I walk past the Scot and step outside. A quick scan for the Dips only shows me a group of people with cameras rushing toward the shop, ready to run me over. My gelato is already sweating, so I take a bite. The boy comes out of the gelateria, and they snap his photo.

“Where’s Jasmine?” they all yell at him as if he isn’t close enough to hear them. The flashes are so bright, I squint even though their lenses aren’t pointed at me.

“Who?” the boy says.

“We all saw you go in with her!” one shouts as the rest clamor about where Jasmine is and click their cameras.

“Where is she, Luca? Where’s Jasmine?”

“You’re mistaken,” this Luca kid says as the whir of cameras almost drowns him out. He steps toward me and grabs my elbow as if it’s a beer mug. Melting gelato flies off my spoon. “This is the girl you saw.”

And that’s the moment I envision going down in history with the Dip Squad if they ever saw these photos: my mouth open, filled with stracciatella, surrounded by paparazzi blinding me with flashes as I’m held up like a prize marlin by some guy named Luca while he covers for the reigning Queen of Pop, whose music I don’t even like.

?

The paparazzi seem to be thrown. Several of them lower their cameras to examine me.

“I could have sworn it was Jasmine!”

“She has a ponytail! And she’s wearing yellow.”

“You said it was Jasmine,” one says in Italian. The rest are using English but with accents from all over Europe.

“Damn, I thought it was!”

“Who’s this girl?”

“Nobody!”

While I’m perfectly aware of my nobody status, this seems pretty harsh, and the Scot hasn’t even given me so much as a “please play along” look. It’s like he just assumes I’d be thrilled to have these people insult me just so I could be in a photo with him.

“Well, this nobody is going to head out now.” I say it in the language of Rome, because there’s something about Italian that makes it sound a lot more serious than saying it in English.

“Who are you?”

“Who is she, Luca?”

“Is this your latest, Luca?”

“Where’d you find her? She doesn’t seem like your type.”

I stare at this Luca kid to let go of my arm, but he doesn’t. He’s looking between them and me, clearly calculating how much risk to benefit there is in throwing me to the lions. I shake my head at him.

“She’s a tour guide,” he says. “Obviously.”

I just look at him. I don’t think I look like a tour guide. I also don’t think my Italian is fooling anyone that I’m a native, including him. Maybe it’s the quickest way to get these people away from me, though. Luca is clearly somebody they consider worth taking pictures of. If I’m nothing more than a tour guide, then there’s no chance those open-­mouthed-­bass pictures of me are getting published in any of the celebrity magazines Guin and Kelsey love.

“Sì, sì,” I say, and stop speaking Italian before they realize I’m not actually a local. I do my best to impersonate Anna ­Maria’s accent when she speaks English. “I was hired for the day, that is all.” This is nothing like Roman Holiday.

“You lot need to back off,” Luca says. “She isn’t used to this kind of attention. She’s just a local girl my butler hired to show me the sights.”

His butler? Hoo boy, as my grandfather from Maine says. I nod at them, and I don’t even need to pretend I’m annoyed. But it’s still better than getting into any of these online magazines.

“See, nobody!” I say in my Italian-­accented English. “Now, please let us alone, as I want to bring my client to Fontana di Trevi before the after-­dinner crowds! Vieni!”