"I did." She kept her eyes on the gra.s.s. "But I believed Sean."

Jessa's stomach churned. "What do you mean?"

Natalie fiddled again with her tank-top strap. Jessa tried to keep her eyes from the swollen chest straining in the tank, the lacy edge of bra cup also struggling. Her b.o.o.bs really were alarmingly huge. How could she just grow them in one summer? Just one summer? Natalie finally said, "That you two were over. That it was over. That's what he told me."

"We weren't."

"Yeah, I kind of know that now. Why do you think I broke it off? But you know what, Jessa? You haven't been very nice to me. I mean, Popsicle-stick castle or not, it's not like I used Miracle-Gro or had an operation or something. The same thing happened to my grandma." Her large eyes pooled.

A wind chilled Jessa's bare arms. She grabbed her Williams Peak sweatshirt from her bag, pulled it quickly on. She pushed her sungla.s.ses to the top of her head, stared until the other girl met her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Natalie."

"Me too," Natalie whispered.

Jessa nodded, said again, louder this time, "I'm so sorry."

The spirits settled beneath them.

Reason #17: The Dream about Nothing Sean Does Not Support Your Dreams!

Remember our dream. From when we were twelve and used to sleep in the tent in your yard during summer break after we dug all the fairy holes for Maisy for when the fairies came. The dream where we both woke up and couldn't remember anything at all. Couldn't remember if it had been about the fair or about the waterslide you might get for your birthday or about Tim, the older boy across the street who was so cute and worked on his truck and who sometimes bought us ice cream from the scary ice-cream-truck driver and ate them with us in the driveway. It was just blurry, like fog. And we used to say, "Let's make up a dream to stick where we had the dream about nothing." Remember. Can we do that now? Can we make up a dream?

Instruction: What will you stick into your dream about nothing?

Jessa wrote three things at the top of her journal page: Dream, Fairy Holes, Love.

Giacomo waited for her at the entrance to the Villa San Michele. He seemed perfectly in place, leaning against an arch covered in vines, as if perhaps Odysseus had given in to Capri after all, surrendered to the siren call, threw on some designer denim and a tight black T-shirt and waited for Jessa all those years under a flowering archway.

Light slanted across his face, and he smiled when he saw her. "Buongiorno, bella."

She flushed with sudden sunburn. The Capri sun had nothing on that smile. "Hey, stranger." She was sure she sounded five, all high and hiccupy. "Where've you been?"

He frowned, drawing the stray storm clouds into his face. "My mother and I...had a disagreement."

"I saw you." She brushed a piece of windblown hair from her eyes, shaded them as she studied his face.

He squinted down at her, his eyes growing dark like his mother's.

"Last night. On the balcony. I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

"Because I know what it feels like to be that angry." She licked her lips, let her eyes take in the sea. When he didn't say anything, just let his dark eyes wash the landscape, she added, "Besides, we've all been wanting to work over that frog since we got here. You have no idea how liberating that was watching you smash it to pieces." She glanced up at him, attempted a smile.

His face broke back into light. "You are a funny girl. Yes, it did feel good in the moment. Not today though. She will not give me what I've asked for."

"Which is what?"

He gazed out over the sprawling grounds of the villa, didn't meet her eyes. "Look at Capri. What do you see?"

"Another world," she said, her eyes falling on spots of red and white, all the flowers amid the green of the landscape.

"It's a special place here," Giacomo said, tucking his hands in his jean pockets. "A siren call for artists, bohemians, seeking beauty, a different life, with no rules-no idea of what is the right way to live life, to love."

Jessa wanted to ask him what he meant, who they were, these artists who were Siren called to Capri, but Ms. Jackson whistled at the group to meet under a flowering arch.

"Giacomo?"

"Yes?"

"After you, uh, left last night, I helped your mom pick up the pieces of the frog. I found this." She handed him the thin, silver key. His eyes widened. "Could you give this to her for me? She's been a little busy." Jessa nodded to where Francesca flipped through a folder, talking rapidly into a cell phone.

"This was in the frog?" Giacomo's voice was a ghost whisper.

Jessa frowned. "You know it?"

Giacomo clasped the key in his fist, his eyes full. He glanced at his mother, his face collaged with emotion, then his eyes rested back on Jessa, who was quite sure this was what it felt like to be caught in a tractor beam. "Thank you. You have no idea what you've just given me."

Before she could reply, Ms. Jackson's voice cut into their stare. "Jessa!"

Giacomo dropped his gaze, and Jessa hurried over to where Francesca stood, looking a bit naked without her frog.

No one mentioned him, that frog they'd followed through the streets of Rome, through Florence, through Venice, but who was suddenly, noticeably gone. Francesca's phantom limb. Actually, Jessa missed him a little, bobbing along on his stick, his bulging black plastic eyes staring, telling them which way to go.

Jessa's eyes strayed to Sean. Her grandmother told her once, when she was seven and they were sitting in front of a frog exhibit at the San Diego Zoo, that she'd have to kiss a lot of frogs before she found a prince. She had stared through the gla.s.s at an odd little waxy tree frog and secretly hoped she'd never have to kiss any frogs. She'd been seven and not really grasping the whole frog-prince metaphor, but now, here, staring at her frog across the gauzy air of Capri, she realized that maybe the whole kiss-a-frog thing wasn't just about finding a prince. Maybe you had to follow your own fair share of frogs on a stick through busy streets without really knowing where you were going. And maybe sometimes, you needed them smashed on the cement so you could find your own way.

"The Villa San Michele," Francesca was saying, her voice tired but still floating across them in that now-familiar lilt, drawing them into the place she was about to share. "The original owner was Axel Munthe, a Swedish physician who built the villa out of remains of Roman ruins."

Jessa followed her cla.s.s through the grounds, watching as Giacomo fell to the back of the group, checked his phone, texted something. A trance seemed to be taking over her limbs, the world here seeming a thousand years old, all green and varied, white buildings, fountains, the sea a breathless vastness. Running water from the fountains mixed with the sea crash filled her ears with a noise that sounded mostly like silence, like hours stretched out and made into taffy, sweet, with no sense of time or distance.

All around her, beauty from ruins-beauty from ruins.

She found a railing with a straight view of the sea, a blooming vine nearby smelled of apple candy. The edge of the island fell away beneath her. She could be at the end of the earth. She hadn't felt this kind of ease, this kind of melting simplicity since the way the costume barn used to make her feel. Before-B.C.B.

What would happen if she didn't go home?

She could get a job in one of the shops in the square, finish high school with distance learning, live in a small studio with a view of the sea. She could write things, or paint things. She could read every book she had wanted to read but couldn't because there was always school, where they made her read other books, the ones not on her shelves. She would stack them all around the small room, spines out, use the stacks as tables, as places to rest her coffee cup, her pictures of home, the ones in the etched silver frames that had been her grandmother's.

"Careful," said a voice behind her. "Those Siren songs get in, fill you up. You'll never want to leave." Mr. Campbell joined her at the railing, his eyes shadowed by his Giants cap.

"Too late."

He chuckled, taking in a deep breath of sea air. "You ever finish Portrait?"

"Last night." Her stomach hummed with the memory of the incoming storm as she finished Joyce on the hotel balcony, the flickering light of the candle. "Mr. Campbell?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm screwed, right?"

"What?"

A seabird found a hollow in the sky that stopped its flight, just drifted out there on the air in front of them. Jessa closed her eyes, imagined trading places with that bird, to dip and sail, glide, pa.s.sing time in sunbeams, in gusts of sea air-floating, a slave only to migration, knowing to come or go. Birds were so lucky.

"That guy at the end says to Stephen. 'You poor poet, you.' He pities him."

Mr. Campbell leaned on his elbows. "Yes. He does say that."

"I'm screwed. That's the point of the novel."

"I'm not sure Joyce would agree with you."

"Now that I've figured out that I see the world a certain way, that I might not want that big, big future I had so steadily been planning, so blindly. Now I'm destined to wander the world always feeling too much, noticing too much. Crying and hurting and in despair while other people just live normally, happier. Not wondering so much, feeling so much."

Mr. Campbell adjusted his hat and leaned on the railing. "OK, I can see how you'd get that, but, listen, you're not giving up anything. You're just figuring out how you see things. And those people-I don't know if they're happier, Jess. Maybe they just seem that way to you. But sure, having an artistic sense about you can make things difficult sometimes, feelings can be more extreme, like all of our nerves are always open to the elements. But that's the secret."

"What is?"

"We get to feel those things. Some people-they get comfort and ease, maybe. We get complexity and really messy feelings that make people uncomfortable. It's a trade-off. There are people who don't get to look at this sea and wonder what you're wondering."

She pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, felt the sun warm her forearms. "You mean that I could live here forever and read and write and never need to be part of the real world. Practical people don't wonder that, huh?"

"Practicality can be its own prison." He pulled off his hat, ran his fingers through his messy hair. He had dark stains beneath his eyes. The trip had been long, too much drama.

The kiss on the bridge in Florence felt like years ago, another life. What an idiotic maneuver that had been.

She shivered a bit. "You know how in the novel Stephen has to choose? Between the life he thought he was supposed to live and the one he discovers, his artistic path?"

"Yeah."

"How does he know he makes the right choice?"

Mr. Campbell frowned, his eyes searching the horizon. "He doesn't. But he vows to himself to live life on his terms, to not serve that which he no longer believes in. I think the vow itself is what matters. It will inform each choice he makes in the future."

"But Joyce didn't write that part of the book, right? The part where we see how it informs him."

Mr. Campbell laughed. "No. No, that's the thing about books. We don't get to see the fallout after the happily ever after-true."

"Mr. Campbell?" Devon, Tim, and Sean had come up behind them, a little army of drama boys. Devon watched her with interest, his eyes slipping back and forth between her and Mr. Campbell. Lovely-one more rumor to cart home from Italy. "Ms. Jackson says it's time to start rounding up the troops," Devon told them. "There are many roads to Rome." He cracked himself up.

"How long you been waiting to say that?" Mr. Campbell pushed himself away from the railing and followed Tim and Devon back toward the entrance.

Sean lingered behind.

"I'm warning you," Jessa told him. "I'm contemplative and emotional and I didn't sleep well last night. Approach at your own risk."

He risked it, leaning next to her on the rail, staring out at that huge sprawl of water. "What I told Natalie was that we were pretty much over. That's what I told her."

"I guess a lie is as good as the truth if you can get someone to believe you." Jessa pulled her sleeves down again, tucked her hands inside the cuffs. A wind had come up suddenly, the air chilly and full of salt.

"I didn't think I was lying."

"You didn't tell me you thought we were pretty much over. You didn't tell me a lot of things."

"I guess I forgot to make an appointment." He jammed his hands in his shorts pockets, hopped a bit up and down to keep warm.

"Whatever, Sean. That's not fair. I'm a busy girl. No get-out-of-jail-free card for you because I'm ambitious. You know I have a lot on my plate. It doesn't give you an excuse to kiss Carissa or Natalie or anyone else."

His eyebrows shot up, but he didn't deny it or try to explain it. "I just hope you get something for all of your busy, Jess. All that you put yourself through." He set his hands on the railing, squinted out over the ocean. Clouds were starting to gather again. It would be a rocky boat ride back. He smelled like cinnamon and sea air. His face had gotten tan on the trip. Looking down at her, he said, "I do love you, though. I know I sort of have the world's c.r.a.ppiest way of showing it, but I do. For what it's worth, I think a lot of people will love you. And maybe you'll love one of them back."

His words spattered her body with microscopic pin p.r.i.c.ks. "I loved you."

He stood very close to her now, his body long and solid next to her, and maybe it was just because it would be warmer to hold him, or maybe she just wanted to share this feeling with someone, even him, or maybe she wanted something to stick into her dream about nothing. Whatever the reason, she reached out and grabbed his shoulder, pulled him in to kiss her, the wind cold against her cheeks and his arms warm as they wrapped around her back.

#18: frodo.

Giacomo was gone. Not on the boat back and not on the bus now. She debated telling Francesca about the key, but maybe she'd already caused a problem. No need to draw attention to it. She fiddled with Wicked playing on her iPod, kept skipping songs before they finished. Restless, annoyed, she chewed a Frutella candy and folded the wrapper into tiny squares. She offered one to Kevin, who was sitting next to her. He shook his head, his eyes on the spy novel in his lap.

No more buses. No more buses. She never wanted to see the inside of a bus again. Next time she came to Italy, she would ride a bicycle along the Italian roads with the wind in her hair. She barely looked at the world outside as they hurtled down the highway toward Rome, tired even of the view out the square bus window.

Sean thought she didn't love him. But she did. She did. She just couldn't be one of those girlfriends who built their whole world around their boyfriends. That was too dangerous, too stupid. She had her life to think about, the life stretching out before her like a highway. No, not like a highway. Something more twisty, with bends she couldn't see around and fallen trees and no center divider. Her future road was more like that. But she had loved him with every cell in her body, so much so that at night falling asleep, she would hold one of his shirts to her face and breathe him into her. If he couldn't see that, couldn't see how he had made her feel then he wasn't paying attention and the last thing she needed was a boyfriend with some sort of emotional ADD.

"Switch me," Dylan Thomas said, motioning for Kevin to move. Kevin barely peeled his eyes from his novel as he slid into the empty seat across the aisle. Dylan Thomas reached over and pulled her earbuds out. "You kissed Sean?"

Jessa wound the cords of the earbuds around her hand, the way a boxer must tape up his hands before a fight. "Who told you that?"

"He's telling people."

"Like he's taken out an official announcement?"

"Um, he told Devon and Tim. And Kevin." Dylan Thomas hooked a finger at Kevin.

"That's true. He did tell me," Kevin mumbled, still not looking up. Must be a good book.

"It was nothing." As she said the words, she knew them instantly to be true. Nothing left there. Just a view and an island known for false promises, for escape. An attempt to conjure a love back out of a bottle that had been too tightly capped.

Dylan Thomas held her eyes. He unwrapped a stick of gum, popped it in his mouth. Chewed. "You sure?"