"Once Italy gets in..." she started.

"It never leaves," he finished, nodding. "Good trip." With a tired smile, he wheeled his bag away from her through the gla.s.s doors to where a bus idled outside.

Jessa scanned the airport, desperately wanting a Starbucks before she climbed on another bus. Maybe a little caffeine would pop her out of her funk.

She blinked. Did Sacramento have a problem with mirages? Was she just that tired that she was imagining beautiful Italian men standing by the Cinnabon shop? She probably rubbed her eyes, because people in movies rubbed their eyes when they thought they were seeing things that couldn't, under any circ.u.mstance, be standing right in front of them. Of course in the movies, the thing in question was always there.

"Is that Giacomo?" Tyler rolled his suitcase up next to her.

They couldn't both be having the same hallucination. Could they?

Her stomach back flipped.

Giacomo saw her. His face lighting, he strolled over. "I knew that your flight was coming in. I flew in last night, left Capri, and headed out. Thanks to you." He nodded at Tyler, who studied him with some skepticism but nodded back.

Jessa's mouth felt stuck together with paste, cemented. What was he talking about?

Giacomo held an envelope in his hand. "You are missing one, no?"

#20.

The mouth paste turned to sand. Jessa nodded, took the envelope in trembling fingers, stared at it, turning it over and over in her hands.

"It's sort of random that you're here, dude." Tyler raised his eyebrows, waited for an answer.

Jessa's heart was suddenly like one of the neon smoothie machines from the airport food court, all swirls and churning. "Why do you have this?"

"I found it on the boat leaving Capri. I almost threw it out, but I wanted you to have all twenty. If you are still opening them?" He squinted his dark, liquid eyes at her, c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "You did something for me. Now I do something for you."

"So you came all the way to California? To give me this letter? Just in case?" All the airport sounds, the voice in the speakers, the beeping of carts, the whirl and whine of weary travelers, all of it heightened, pounded Jessa's ears like it was being pumped into her head through earphones.

Giacomo's eyebrows jumped. "Oh, what? Oh, no. I should have explained..." Then he laughed-hard. Held a hand over his belly, even wiped a tear from his eye.

Tyler cleared his throat. "You can see where she might get that idea. Since you are standing here in the Sacramento airport holding an envelope. Since you are standing right here."

Jessa could kiss Tyler.

Giacomo got himself under control. "I flew here yesterday. Because of Aaron."

"Who?" Jessa and Tyler asked at the same time.

On cue, a tall, blonde boy of maybe nineteen joined them, a bag slung over his shoulder. He had face dimples and eyes like the ice capped sky they had just flown over.

Giacomo put an arm around him. "This is Aaron. He attends UC Davis. For art. He is..." he paused, his eyes locking on Jessa's. "He is the reason I left. To come here. Like we talked about."

"Ohhhhhh." Jessa could just imagine the light bulb blinking on above her head right about now. Narrow minds, he had said. Narrow minds. He had to leave. His whole cryptic discussion of love in Capri. She held out her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Aaron."

"Nice to meet you," he said, shaking her hand and then Tyler's.

"That key was to my...What do you call them?" Giacomo was all ease around Aaron, his smile without its edge of sadness.

"Safety deposit box. Where his pa.s.sport was," he explained. "Thanks, by the way." And if it was at all possible, his smile might have out.w.a.tted Giacomo's. Jessa let herself take a little bath in it for a second.

"Jessa! Tyler!" Ms. Jackson stood several feet away, her own suitcase behind her, watching them curiously. "The bus is here."

"You have my email," Jessa said quickly to Giacomo, giving him a hug. "Congratulations," she whispered into his ear.

His strong arms engulfed her.

Waving to him over her shoulder, she followed Tyler through the sliding doors of the airport.

Another bus.

As they pulled out onto the highway toward home, she studied the bulky northern California landscape-beige.

Had it only been ten days?

Tyler sat next to her, polishing off his last bag of gummy bears.

She studied the envelope in her lap. #20. The last one. She peeled it open.

Empty.

"He's kind of stealing my thunder," Tyler said through a mouthful of bears. "Showing up here with the envelope I thought you'd lost. Stupid, charming Italian guy."

"What are you talking about?"

Sifting through her airplane-mussed bag, Tyler pulled out the copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He opened the front cover of the book, plucked out a different, smaller envelope that was nestled there, held it up like a visual aid. "Reason #20," it read. Only it wasn't written in Carissa's purple pen.

It said "JESSA"-in thick, black pen. Boy-writing pen.

"Tyler..." Jessa's voice edged a warning.

"Carissa wanted the last one written by someone I thought should write it. You know, based on the trip." He flipped black hair from his eyes and as much as he was trying not to, he couldn't quite mask his grin.

Jessa shook her head. "I saw the manual. She didn't say anything about this." She took the envelope as if it might burn her, or sing to her, or spill infinite light on her, something like that.

Tyler shrugged, his smile winning over. "There may have been an addendum."

"Tyler! Seriously, you and Carissa..."

"Just stop," Tyler interrupted. "You know, he's right-for a smart girl, you can be a real dumba.s.s sometimes. Good thing we love you so much."

Jessa's skin rippled with sudden heat.

Dylan Thomas.

Tyler kicked his knees up on the bus seat in front and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt down over his eyes. "Just read it."

She opened the envelope, extracting a piece of stationery, the top emblazoned with the swirled script of the hotel name from their last night in Italy.

This is not a reason, not an instruction, not a memory of something to unfold for you so you can hold its mirror self up to your face, study it for answers; it is not advice or judgment or laughter or a history of us.

There are no answers.

It is simply this: You are human-flesh, blood, bone, soul, heart, dreams, memory.

But you are so much more, Jessa.

You are an artist, a poet, a dreamer.

I stand at a window, looking out at a dark world streaked with light. And I see what you see, my eyes filled with a constant threat of tears, at all the desolate beauty in the world.

Her heart flushed with air, with all of the Italian sky at once in her soul, with the words in black and white in her lap. Dylan Thomas-a poet. How ironic and wonderful and obvious.

She read the poem again. "Oh, Tyler."

Tyler studied her from under his hood. "I know."

As the landscape of her normal life whirled by the window, her own mind flashed to the day at Pompeii, everyone sitting on the gra.s.s, Dylan Thomas playing guitar. You've got terrible vision if you don't see that I'm in love with you...

She did. She really, really had terrible vision. Terrible, sucky missing-the-point vision.

Her mind filled with pieces of him, a little Dylan Thomas mind collage: dancing around her singing Mamma Mia!; walking alone on the beach, his face bathed in a sheet of light; chatting with Mr. Campbell at the front of the bus; his brow pinched in anger about Sean's kiss; last night, outside the bus, the weight of his hand on her wrist like a familiar bracelet whose metal had grown warm against her skin.

I'll miss you, you poor poet, you-said in the way only another lonely artist could say it, another soul finding its way through the fog.

Tyler already had her phone in his hand. Grabbing it, she clicked to Dylan Thomas's number.

She texted: Is there room at that window for another pair of eyes?

A minute later, her phone rang.

acknowledgments.

Twenty Reasons I'm a lucky author: I have so much grat.i.tude for my agent Melissa Sarver at the Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency for all her love, love, love.

My writing group: Kirsten Casey, thanks for your wit and friendship and for using language in the most inspiring (and often irreverent!) ways. Jaime Young, thanks for your compa.s.sion and honesty. Ann Keeling, thanks for your heart and integrity, especially for the early read of this ma.n.u.script.

I'm grateful for my other early readers: Rachel McFarland, Tanya Egan Gibson, and Sands Hall-this book would not be what it is without your insight and encouragement.

Mom, Dad, Krista (who puts up with my constant questions about the web page)-thanks for always believing.

It's not often a book gets three amazing editors to love it. Thank you to Daniel Ehrenhaft, who first loved Jessa's story.

And next to Kelly Barrales-Saylor, who nurtured Jessa through so much of her journey.

And to Leah Hultenschmidt, who came in toward the end and helped bring her home.

Paul Samuelson, a terrific publicist-thank you for spreading the word.

Thanks to Kristin Zelazko, Aubrey Poole, and all the people who make the Sourcebooks Fire books so beautiful!

Mich.e.l.le Litton-Italy guru! Thank you for the attention to my Italian details. Any oddities in the book are errors in my memory and my inability to Google correctly.

Thank you to my friends (all of you!) who ask, "How's the book going?" and listen patiently to the answer, and especially to Dawn Anthney, Erin Dixon, Emily Gallup, Crystal Groome, Lillian Lacer, Caryn Shehi, Gary Wright, Michael Bodie, and Loretta Ramos. Oh, and Todd McFarland, of course!

Thanks to the Sagebiels and the Culbertsons, all of you, who always root for me.

My students, past and present, especially the ones who went to Italy with me oh so long ago-you are an inspiration.

Marnie Masuda, thanks for asking me to go to Italy in the first place-you make a most wonderful travel partner.

Forest Charter School (everyone there!)-I feel lucky to be a part of your school.

I'm so grateful for my daughter's caregivers during the writing of this novel: Tall Pines, Karen Slattery at Pine Mountain, Sydney Lewis, Vienna Saccomano, Bethany Anderson, Daisy Sagebiel, Christie Allen, Mom and Dad (again!), Erin (again!): all of you provided such amazing care of Anabella so I could write with a clear head knowing she was in such good hands.

Thanks to the cafes that indulge my presence when I can't write from home, especially Broad Street Books, Summer Thyme's, and Flower Garden.

Whether it was to the same lake each summer with my parents and sister or to Europe, Peru, Mexico, Italy, Hawaii, travel transforms me, and I come back slightly altered by a place and the people I interact with there.

Most important in my little sphere, thank you to my husband, Peter.

And to my sweet daughter, Anabella.

about the author.

Kim Culbertson technically writes for teenagers, but there are some grown-ups who like her work. She is the author of the award-winning young adult novel Songs for a Teenage Nomad (Sourcebooks Fire, 2010). When she's not writing for teenagers, she's teaching them, and she currently teaches English and creative writing at Forest Charter School. The fact that she's a published author doesn't seem to dazzle her students, who still complain about how much homework she gives them. She lives in the northern California foothills with her husband and daughter and travels as often as she can. Visit her website at www.kimculbertson.com.

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