Chapter Text
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POV MAYA BISHOP
Looking in the mirror before going to school was always the longest moment of my day. I stared at my reflection and tried to decipher the enigma I had become. I liked being a girl I liked my body, certain clothes, the fact that I was biologically who I was but, at the same time, there was a boy inside me screaming to get out. I wanted the freedom boys had, the way they moved through the world without the weight of judgmental stares, the raw strength that seemed to come with gender. I identified as one of them most of the time, but society didn’t have a drawer for people who wanted to be both, or neither, or something in between. I simply didn’t fit.
“Maya! You’re going to be late and I need you to watch Mac before you leave!” my mother shouted from downstairs, breaking my trance.
I sighed, pulling on a hoodie three sizes too big to hide any curves, and grabbed my backpack.
The dynamic in our house was an endless race against the clock. Ever since my father died three years ago, the structure had collapsed. My mother, Katherine, swallowed double shifts as a nurse at the local hospital to support me and my younger sister, Mackenzie. She was barely ever home. When she was, she was an exhausted ghost trying to show love that physical exhaustion almost always blocked. That left me with the role of almost-father, almost-mother, caretaker, and older sister.
I walked down the creaky wooden stairs and found the kitchen in its usual chaos. My mother was in her scrubs, finishing a cup of black coffee, deep circles under her eyes. Mackenzie, nine years old, was trying to balance a spoonful of cereal that insisted on falling to the floor.
“Morning,” I muttered, tossing my backpack onto a chair.
“Thank God, Maya. I’m already leaving, and the morning shift is going to roll straight into the night one today. I left money for pizza on the counter. Please make sure Mac does her math homework. I seriously can’t take any more emails from her teacher.”
“I’ll do it, Mom. Don’t worry. Go with God,” I replied, grabbing the dish towel to wipe up the milk Mackenzie had just spilled.
My mom walked over, kissed the top of my head quickly, and brushed a hand through Mac’s hair. “Love you girls. Behave.”
The door slammed shut and the silence in the house settled heavily around us. I looked at Mackenzie, who stared back at me with those pleading eyes.
“Maya, are you really going to help me? Fractions are really hard,” she asked, sugar smeared around her mouth.
“I’ll help, brat. But swallow that already because we need to run. If we miss the bus, I can’t walk you there today. My legs are destroyed from practice yesterday.”
Fifteen minutes later, after locking the house and dropping Mac off at her school, I walked toward my own personal purgatory: high school. If at home I was the thing keeping everything standing, at school I was invisible. Or worse, the weird kid nobody really knew how to approach.
My only safe places were Andy and Jack. They were the only people who didn’t look at me like I was a puzzle missing pieces. I found the two of them by the lockers, passionately arguing about something stupid.
“I’m telling you, Jack, if you put the sauce on top of the cheese, the crust gets soggy!” Andy gestured dramatically.
“And I’m telling you it all goes to the same stomach, Herrera!” Jack shot back, rolling his eyes, but a huge grin spread across his face when he saw me coming. “Well, look who finally showed up. Hey, man… I mean, Maya. What’s up?”
That tiny stumble over the pronoun didn’t hurt me. Honestly, it showed he was trying to keep up with nuances I barely understood myself.
“Hey, guys. Please don’t start food debates at seven-thirty in the morning,” I begged, pressing my forehead against the cold metal of my locker. “My head is exploding.”
Andy’s posture softened instantly, concern flashing across her face with that older-sister energy she always had around me. “Your mom picked up another double shift?”
“Yep. The usual. Me, Mac, and either frozen pizza or takeout later.”
“You should come over after school today. My dad’s making dinner and you could actually relax for once,” Andy offered, touching my shoulder gently.
“I can’t, Andy. I have to take care of Mac and study for my biology test. But thanks.”
“You know what you need?” Jack interrupted, crossing his arms. “A distraction. You live on autopilot, Bishop. Practice, Mac, house, school. You need something that’s just yours. I don’t know, pick up a hobby. Play something online with us.”
“I don’t have time for video games, Jack.”
“It doesn’t have to be games. Just… get out of your own head for a while. You always look like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your back,” he insisted as the bell rang, announcing the start of class.
The rest of the day passed in a gray blur. Between algebra equations and literary analysis essays I couldn’t care less about, my mind kept orbiting that feeling of not belonging. The boys at school treated me like a weird girl; the girls saw me as too distant to be part of their gossip circles. I floated in limbo.
When I finally got home, the routine swallowed me whole again. I made lunch for Mac, helped her with the awful fractions, washed the dishes piling up in the sink, and tried to focus on my own books. By nine at night, Mackenzie was already passed out in bed, exhausted from the day.
The house was wrapped in sepulchral silence. My mother wouldn’t be home until the next morning. I sat on my bed with the old noisy laptop balanced on my thighs. Jack’s words echoed through my mind: “You need something that’s just yours. Get out of your head for a while.”
I opened my browser. I didn’t want to play games, but I wanted to talk. I wanted to speak to someone who didn’t know me, someone who had no expectations about who Maya was supposed to be, or how Maya was supposed to dress. I typed one of those global chat sites people used to make friends into the search bar.
On the profile creation screen, I froze with the cursor hovering over the “Username” field. My heart sped up. I looked down at my oversized clothes. I thought about the boy trapped inside my chest. I typed: BoyBlue99. And in the gender option, for the first time in my life, I selected the box marked “Male.” A wave of adrenaline mixed with relief rushed through my veins. There, on that screen, I could be the boy I felt I was without having to explain myself or deal with the limits of my own body.
I entered the random chat room. The platform connected people from all over the world based on interests or pure chance.
I started talking to a few people. The first was a guy from Canada who only wanted to talk about hockey. The second was someone from Texas who could barely form a sentence without using incomprehensible slang. I answered briefly, pretending to have the kind of masculine energy I thought a seventeen-year-old boy would have. But it felt empty. I was almost closing the laptop, feeling a little stupid for lying about who I was, when the list of active users refreshed on the side of the screen.
One name caught my attention. It stood out from all the generic American and British usernames.
Sunny_Italy
I looked at the clock in the bottom corner of the computer screen. It was almost eleven at night here in the United States. I quickly calculated the time difference in my head; in Italy, it had to be early morning, maybe five or six the next day. The sun was rising there while darkness surrounded me here.
Without thinking too much, driven by sudden curiosity and complete exhaustion with my own reality, I clicked on the name and opened a private chat window.
BoyBlue99: Hi. Italy, seriously? Isn’t it early over there?
—
POV CARINA DELUCA
If you asked me at six in the evening on a Friday whether I would trade my life for anyone else’s in the world, the answer would be a firm “no,” accompanied by a dramatic hand gesture, like any good Italian would do.
I love my life in Bologna. I love the smell of fresh coffee mixed with the scent of warm bread coming from my mother’s kitchen early in the morning. I love the fact that my father, even exhausted after spending the entire day fixing cars at the garage, still finds the energy to spin me around in the living room and tell me I’m the brightest stella in his sky. We are not rich. Far from it. Money is tight, bills pile up, and because of that, I spend almost all my afternoons helping at my uncle’s small grocery store or tutoring younger neighborhood kids in Italian. Is it exhausting? Yes, very. But seeing the proud smile on my parents’ faces when I place the little money I earned on the kitchen table makes every minute worth it.
The problem isn’t my routine. The problem is that the world feels too big to fit only within the cobblestone streets of Bologna.
“Carina! For the love of God, turn that music down or the Pope himself is going to complain from Rome!” my younger brother Andrea’s voice echoed through the hallway while I finished packing my school supplies.
“Stop being grumpy, Andrea! It’s just a little music to wake up the spirit!” I shouted back, laughing as I lowered the radio volume by one notch.
I’m talkative. I’m cheerful. Sometimes people at school say I talk so fast it sounds like I’m trying to win an invisible race. I have great friends. Gabriella and Matteo have studied with me since we were children. We eat ice cream in the plaza, complain about our history teachers, and make ridiculous plans for the future. But lately, there’s been an itch in my chest. A curiosity Italy can’t satisfy.
I’m in that phase. That phase where my friends spend hours whispering about boys from the senior class, about how one changed his haircut or how another one has a beautiful smile. I look too. I feel that nervous flutter in my stomach when I think about romance, about holding someone’s hand, about finding out what it’s like to have a boyfriend. But the boys at school… well, they all seem the same. They play soccer, make dumb jokes, and have the same limited horizons. I wanted something different. I wanted the mystery of someone who grew up seeing landscapes I’ve only seen on television. I wanted to meet boys from other countries.
The only obstacle? My English is a complete disaster. At school, I memorize enough to get good grades, but having an actual real-time conversation? No chance. That’s why the translation app on my phone has become my best friend over the last few weeks.
That Friday night, I went to bed early, but my brain simply refused to shut off. I rolled to the left. Rolled to the right. Counted sheep. Counted the cars passing outside. Nothing. When I looked at the digital clock on my nightstand, the red numbers read 05:00.
Saturday, five in the morning. The sun was only beginning to threaten the sky over Bologna, painting the edges of the clouds a faint pink and gold. My parents were still deeply asleep. The silence was absolute except for Andrea’s faint snoring in the next room.
“Stupid insomnia…” I grumbled into my pillow with a sigh.
Frustrated, I grabbed my phone. I didn’t want to read a book, and there was nobody awake to talk to. That’s when I remembered a website Gabriella had shown me a few days earlier. A global chat room.
“It’s great for practicing languages, Carina,” she had said.
But in my head, the equation was different: global chat equals foreign boys.
I opened the browser on my phone and entered the page. The site asked me to create a username. I thought for a few seconds. I wanted something that showed I was from Italy but also sounded cheerful.
Sunny_Italy
I smiled at my choice. I set my profile as female, sixteen years old. To communicate, I split the screen with my translation app. I would type in Italian, it would turn it into English, and vice versa. Technological improvisation, but functional.
When I entered the general chat list, I noticed the activity felt strange. Of course, for me it was Saturday morning, but for most of the world it was still Friday night. Time zones were a fascinating kind of madness. While I was about to begin my day, someone on the other side of the planet was probably lying in the dark getting ready to sleep.
Suddenly, a private message box flashed on my screen with a soft notification sound. My heart jumped.
BoyBlue99: “Hi. Italy, seriously? Isn’t it early over there?”
My eyes widened. A boy. The username was BoyBlue99. Blue Boy. I felt my cheeks heat instantly, even knowing he was thousands of miles away. I rushed to the translator, typed my response in Italian, and copied the result in English.
Sunny_Italy: “Hello! Yes, very serious! It’s five in the morning here right now. I couldn’t sleep, insomnia attacked me. And you? What time is it there in… where are you from?”
His response didn’t take long. I could almost feel the hesitation in the pauses between his sentences.
BoyBlue99: “It’s eleven at night on Friday here. I live in the United States. Washington.”
“United States!” I thought, holding back an excited squeal so I wouldn’t wake the house. Washington. The time difference was six hours. He was at the end of his night, and I was at the beginning of my day. It was almost poetic.
Sunny_Italy: “Wow, Washington! That’s so far away! So for you Friday isn’t over yet, and for me Saturday barely started. I love how the internet makes the world feel small. What are you doing awake at this hour? Shouldn’t you be at a party with your friends on a Friday night?”
I waited. The typing indicator appeared, disappeared, then appeared again.
BoyBlue99: “I’m not really a party person. My friends tried to convince me to do something, but I’d rather stay in the silence of my room tonight. The day was long. What about you? What makes someone wake up at five in the morning on a Saturday if not work?”
I let out a muffled little laugh, biting my lower lip. He sounded a little serious, maybe even shy, which only made me more curious. The boys at my school would have answered with something stupid or tried to brag. He seemed… deep.
Sunny_Italy: “I work sometimes! I help my parents and my uncle at their shop in the afternoons. But today I just couldn’t sleep. My mind never stops talking. I’m a very talkative person. My friends say I even talk in my sleep, so imagine me awake!”
BoyBlue99: “Yeah, I can tell you have a lot of energy. Even through text, you seem… bright. Like your username.”
My stomach flipped. Bright. What a beautiful word to use for someone you just met.
Sunny_Italy: “Thank you! I try to be. The world already has too many problems for us to be gray all the time, don’t you think? But what about you, ‘BoyBlue’? Why blue? Is it your favorite color or are you feeling sad? You know, blue in English sometimes means sad. My translation app told me that once!”
There was a slightly longer silence this time. I got scared I had been too nosy. Sometimes my mouth — or my fingers — move faster than my common sense.
BoyBlue99: “No, I’m not sad. Well, not exactly. It’s just a color that feels like it matches me. Blue is calm, but it’s also deep. And sometimes it’s kind of invisible depending on where it is. That’s kind of how I feel at school. Like I’m there, but nobody really notices.”
My heart tightened a little reading that. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to feel invisible. At school, I knew everyone, greeted the janitors, talked to teachers. The idea that this boy somewhere in Washington felt alone in the middle of a crowd made me desperately want to keep talking to him, to make him smile.
Sunny_Italy: “Well, I’m paying attention to you now! And blue is a beautiful color. It’s the color of the ocean separating Italy and the United States. So don’t think you’re invisible. At least not to me, here on the other side of the ocean.”
BoyBlue99: “Thank you, Sunny. That was… really nice of you. Are you using a translation app to talk to me? Your English is a little stiff, but it’s cute.”
I blushed violently. I lightly smacked my forehead.
Oh my God, he noticed.
Sunny_Italy: “Yes!!! Oh, this is so embarrassing! Sorry! My English isn’t very good. I study a lot, but actually speaking is hard. I type in Italian and the app translates it. Please don’t laugh at me!”
BoyBlue99: “I’m not laughing, I swear. I think it’s amazing that you’re trying so hard to talk to a stranger. How old are you?”
Sunny_Italy: “I’m 16! I turn 17 at the end of the year. What about you?”
BoyBlue99: “I’m 17.”
Sunny_Italy: “Perfect! We’re almost the same age. What do you like to do, BoyBlue? Besides staying up late on Fridays philosophizing about the color blue?”
BoyBlue99: “I play sports. Running, mostly. I like the feeling of running until my legs burn. It makes my brain stop thinking for a while. And I also take care of my younger sister. My mom works a lot, so I’m kind of the one responsible for keeping the house standing.”
My admiration for him grew three sizes in that moment. A boy who ran, took care of his little sister, and helped his mother. He seemed so mature, so different from the dumb boys in my class who only knew how to play video games and leave their mothers to clean up after them.
Sunny_Italy: “You sound like an amazing brother. And a wonderful son too. Your parents must be really proud of you. I also have a brother, Andrea, but he’s annoying and complains about my music taste! But I love him anyway.”
BoyBlue99: “My dad passed away a few years ago. So it’s just me, my mom, and my sister now. That’s why things are kind of hectic here.”
The mood shifted a little, becoming heavier. I stared at the screen, feeling a wave of empathy wash over me. I couldn’t even imagine losing my father. My dad was my safe place. I wiped away a quick tear threatening to appear in the corner of my eye and typed with all the warmth I could possibly send through mechanical translation.
Sunny_Italy: “I’m really sorry. Truly. I didn’t know. You must be very strong to handle all that and still take care of your family. Your father, wherever he is, is definitely very proud of the man you’re becoming.”
There was a pause of almost two minutes. I was already biting my nails, convinced I had said something wrong again, when his reply finally arrived.
BoyBlue99: “Thank you, Sunny. Really. People don’t usually say things like that to me. Usually they just expect me to do what I’m supposed to do without asking how I feel. It was nice hearing that. Even from an Italian girl who can’t sleep and uses Google Translate.”
I let out a happy laugh, warmth spreading through my chest.
Sunny_Italy: “Hey! My app is very good, okay? And I’m happy to help. Now we are chat friends. You can talk to me whenever things get heavy over there in Washington. Since we’re in different time zones, when you’re going to sleep stressed, I’ll be waking up full of energy to cheer you up! What do you think of the deal?”
BoyBlue99: “Sounds like a good deal, Sunny_Italy. I think I’m going to like having you around.”
I looked toward my bedroom window and saw the first real rays of sunlight beginning to illuminate the rooftops of Bologna. The day was starting for me. I would have to get up soon, help my mother with breakfast, go to my uncle’s grocery store, and later meet Gabriella. But for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t only thinking about my own routine. My mind was flying over the Atlantic, landing directly inside the dark bedroom of a seventeen-year-old American boy who thought he was invisible.
He wasn’t invisible.
Not to me.
—
POV MAYA BISHOP
The silence in my room felt less oppressive after Sunny_Italy’s last message flashed across the screen. There was a strange lightness floating in the air, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. But the calm didn’t last long. Like in any global internet chatroom, my profile with the “Male” tag and the username BoyBlue99 started attracting attention.
Two new chat windows blinked in the bottom corner of the screen. One was from a girl in Miami with a flashy avatar, and the other was from someone in the United Kingdom. The messages were generic: “Hey, why are you awake?” and “Saw your profile, wanna chat?” I looked at those dialogue boxes and felt a stab of discomfort. They were looking for a boy. A real boy, the standard type they imagined. And even though I wanted that identity for myself, the idea of feeding empty conversations built on a shallow lie exhausted me. Without thinking twice, I moved the cursor to the top of those windows and clicked the “X,” closing both instantly. I wasn’t there to play internet heartbreaker.
I looked back at my conversation with the Italian girl. Before I could type anything else, her chat box updated.
Sunny_Italy: “BoyBlue, I need to go! My mom just woke up and I promised to help with breakfast before going to my uncle’s shop. The sun looks beautiful here in Bologna! Go sleep, you need to rest. Talk to you later?”
I smiled faintly, my fingers flying across the keyboard.
BoyBlue99: “Talk to you later, Sunny. Good luck at the shop. And thanks for the conversation.”
Sunny_Italy: “Buonanotte! 🌅✨”
The window stayed open, but her status changed to offline. I closed the laptop and placed it on my nightstand before lying flat on my back in bed. I stared at the dark ceiling for long minutes. It was bizarre how much impact a stranger from the other side of the ocean, someone who barely spoke English without the help of a translation app, had managed to have on my mood. For the first time in months, I felt… understood. She didn’t question the way I acted, didn’t think I was weird for preferring silence, and most importantly, she validated the fact that I carried the weight of the household on my shoulders. I fell asleep with a warm tingling in my chest, thinking about how the sun was already shining in Italy while I finally closed my eyes in Washington.
“Maya, wake up! You promised!” a tiny persistent hand started shaking my shoulder.
I opened my eyes with difficulty, morning light flooding the room. Mackenzie was standing beside my bed already dressed in a warm jacket and holding her old pair of roller skates. I looked at the clock: seven-thirty on a Saturday morning. I hadn’t slept much, but my body had flawless muscle memory when it came to sports.
“I’m coming, Mac. Give me five minutes,” I grumbled, sitting up in bed and rubbing my eyes.
The running track at the local park was my weekend refuge. Since my mother was still at the hospital finishing her night shift, I couldn’t leave Mac home alone, so the deal was simple: I would run until my legs begged for mercy while she roller-skated or drew pictures in the concrete bleachers.
Twenty minutes later, I was already on the track. The morning air was freezing, numbing the tip of my nose with every breath. I started warming up, jogging slowly while watching Mackenzie wobble around on her skates near the benches. When I finally fell into my normal running pace, my mind tried to focus on the stopwatch but failed miserably.
With every long stride I took around the track, the image of the laptop screen came back into my mind. I kept thinking about the girl from Italy. Was she still at her uncle’s grocery store? What was her life in Bologna like? She seemed so full of energy, so comfortable with who she was, even with the financial struggles she had casually mentioned. And then there was the other issue… she thought she was talking to a boy named BoyBlue. Part of me felt guilty for hiding the truth, but the other part — the one that hurt the most every day — felt selfish relief for finally having a place in the world where I could simply be “him.”
I completed five kilometers. My legs burned and my chest rose and fell hard. I stopped near the bleachers, resting my hands on my knees while catching my breath.
“You ran really fast today, Maya! You looked like you were running away from a monster,” Mac said, rolling toward me and grabbing my arm so she wouldn’t fall.
“I was just… clearing my head, brat,” I replied, grabbing my water bottle. “Wanna head back? Mom should be getting home.”
When we opened the front door, the smell of hospital mixed with exhaustion greeted us. My mother was sitting on the living room couch with her feet up, still wearing her light blue scrubs. She looked ten years older than she actually was. Her eyes were fixed on the turned-off TV, the pure definition of mental exhaustion.
“Hi, my loves,” she said in a hoarse voice, trying to smile when we walked in. “How was practice?”
“It was good, Mom. Mac didn’t fall once,” I lied slightly, winking at my sister, who held back a laugh. I walked toward the couch and pulled off my heavy hoodie. “You need a shower and sleep. I’ll make lunch.”
“Thank you, Maya. Really. My back is destroyed. The ER looked like a war zone today,” she confessed, standing up slowly and dragging her feet toward the stairs.
I looked toward the kitchen. The clock showed almost noon. Washington was officially in the middle of the day, which meant it was already six in the evening in Italy. Sunny_Italy’s Saturday was coming to an end while mine was only halfway through.
I worked quickly. I made simple pasta with the leftover sauce in the fridge and grilled a few chicken fillets. I called Mac, fixed a plate to bring upstairs to my mother, and we ate almost in silence. After cleaning the table and loading the dishwasher, I made Mackenzie sit down to finish one of her drawings.
My chest started racing again, a teenage anxiety I barely recognized in myself. I ran upstairs, entered my room, and locked the door. I grabbed the laptop, sat cross-legged on the bed, and turned it on.
I opened the browser and immediately entered the chat website. I typed my password quickly. BoyBlue99’s dashboard loaded. My eyes instantly moved to the saved friends sidebar.
My heart beat harder when I saw the small green circle glowing beside her username.
She was online.
—
POV CARINA DELUCA
“Carina! Wake up, bambina! The money is going to fly out of your hand if you keep staring at the ceiling like that,” Uncle Gianni joked, giving me a light pat on the shoulder with his large, calloused hands.
“Sorry, Uncle! I was just… thinking about a difficult math problem,” I lied, feeling my cheeks warm up as I grabbed the customer’s change.
“Math on a Saturday? You study too much, Carina. Go meet Gabriella. The rush already died down and your father told me you worked until late last night. Go have fun!”
I didn’t need him to say it twice. I thanked him with a loud kiss on his cheek, grabbed my bag, and walked out through the sunny streets. The weather in Bologna was perfect, that pleasant spring warmth that made you want to spend the entire day outside. I walked to the small square near San Petronio church, where I had arranged to meet Gabriella for gelato.
I spotted my best friend from far away. She was sitting on the stone bench, swinging her legs frantically while typing something on her phone. When she saw me, she waved dramatically, almost dropping her purse on the ground.
“Carina! Finally! I thought your uncle had enslaved you behind the counter forever,” she exclaimed, standing up to give me her usual loud hug.
“Stop being dramatic, Gabi. The store was busy earlier. But here I am! What’s the plan for today?”
We bought our ice cream, pistachio for me, stracciatella for her, and sat back down on the bench. I was ready to talk about school grades or complain about Andrea, but Gabriella had a different sparkle in her eyes. A conspiratorial sparkle I knew very well.
“You have no idea what happened last night,” she began, leaning closer to me and whispering as if the Pope himself were spying behind the newspaper stand. “Michele messaged me on Instagram.”
“Michele? The one from senior year who plays basketball?” I asked, opening a surprised smile. “What did he want?”
“He asked me to go to the movies next Friday. Just the two of us, Carina! It’s not a group hangout. It’s a real date!” she let out a muffled squeal, stomping her feet on the ground. “And I’m freaking out. Because… well, you know. If things go well, and we keep seeing each other… I’ve been thinking… about the first time.”
I almost choked on my pistachio gelato. I looked at her with wide eyes, quickly wiping the corner of my mouth.
“Gabi! We’re only sixteen for you to be thinking about that!” I argued, laughing nervously but speaking a little too loudly. Some elderly people passing nearby looked at us disapprovingly, and I immediately lowered my voice. “Are you crazy? You haven’t even gone out yet! He just invited you to watch a movie, probably some terrible action movie!”
“Oh, Carina, you’re so proper sometimes,” she rolled her eyes, laughing. “I’m not saying I’m going to do it on Friday! I’m just saying I’ve been thinking about it. I mean, we’re already sixteen. Almost seventeen! The girls from the other class are all dating and doing these things already. I don’t want to be the last one. Don’t you think about it? About boys, about what it’ll be like when it happens?”
Her question caught me by surprise. A vivid image of the blue profile with the username BoyBlue99 flashed through my mind. I felt butterflies in my stomach but swallowed hard. I hadn’t told Gabriella about the chat from the previous night. I wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe because it felt so personal, like a little secret locked inside a tiny box deep in my chest, and I didn’t want her jokes or questions to ruin the magic of it. If I told her I had spent the entire night talking to an American boy using Google Translate, she would call me insane.
“Of course I think about it, Gabi,” I answered carefully, staring at my melting gelato. “But I don’t know. I want it to be special. I want to truly know someone, you know? Not just because everyone else is doing it. I want a real connection. Someone I can talk to for hours.”
“You are such a hopeless romantic, Carina Deluca,” she sighed, resting her head on my shoulder. “But fine. When you find your mysterious Prince Charming, I’ll be here to say ‘I told you so.’”
We talked for another hour about the clothes she would wear for her date and all the usual school drama until the late afternoon began painting the sky over Bologna in shades of orange and purple. I said goodbye to her and walked back home, feeling a strange urgency speeding up my steps.
When I walked into the apartment, the smell of dinner was already spreading through the air. My father was in the kitchen helping my mother cut vegetables, and the two of them were laughing about something with their arms around each other. That scene always warmed my heart.
“Hello, my stella!” my father exclaimed, walking over to kiss my forehead. “How was it with Gabriella?”
“It was great, Dad. But I’m covered in dust from the grocery store. I’m going to take a shower before dinner, okay?”
“Go ahead, sweetheart. Don’t take too long, the polenta will be ready soon,” my mother warned with a smile.
I went upstairs to my room, grabbed a towel, and stepped into the bathroom. I let the warm water run over my body, relaxing the tired muscles from the long workday. As I rubbed soap against my skin, I couldn’t stop thinking about the clock. Here in Italy it was almost six in the evening. In Washington it should be around noon. Was he online? Had he logged in to see if I had left any messages?
I got out of the shower, put on comfortable clothes, sweat shorts and an oversized T-shirt, and threw myself onto the bed. I grabbed my phone with my heart racing, a mix of anxiety and pure excitement. I opened the browser, entered the site, and logged in.
The general chat screen loaded, full of text messages scrolling quickly in different languages. I ignored all of them. My eyes immediately went to the private contacts list in the corner of the screen. The small circle next to BoyBlue99 was… green. He was online.
A huge smile spread across my face. I opened the translation app in split-screen mode, took a deep breath, and typed the first message.
Sunny_Italy: “Hello, BoyBlue! Look who showed up! The time zone deal is working. It’s noon for you, right? How was your morning there in the United States?”
I stared at the screen, holding my breath. It didn’t even take ten seconds for the typing indicator to start blinking.
BoyBlue99: “Hey, Sunny. Yeah, exactly noon here. My morning was busy. I went to the track to train and had to take my little sister with me. We just finished lunch now. What about you? How was work at your uncle’s store?”
I kicked my feet against the bed, excited that he had answered so quickly.
Sunny_Italy: “Oh, work was good! Pretty busy. Then I met my best friend Gabriella and we had gelato in the square. But I spent the whole day thinking about our conversation from yesterday. I got curious about you!”
BoyBlue99: “Curious about what? I thought I had already talked enough about my boring life.”
Sunny_Italy: “Oh, stop that! Your life is not boring. But you talked about what you do, not about who you are. I want to know more! For example… what do you look like physically? Since we don’t have photos here, I need to use my imagination. Let me guess: you said you run, so you must be tall and strong?”
I waited for the answer, biting my lip. I really wanted to know. In my mind, I was painting the image of a typical movie American boy, but his sensitive personality didn’t match the dumb athletes I knew.
BoyBlue99: “Well… I’m relatively tall. I’m 1.73m. I have an athletic body because of my daily running practice and the crossfit I do at school. My hair is blonde, cut short, and my eyes are blue. Really blue, actually. I guess that’s why the nickname BoyBlue made sense in my head when I created the account.”
I mentally translated the message before even pasting it into the app. Blonde, blue eyes, athletic. Oh my God, he sounded like a model. I felt my cheeks burning again.
Sunny_Italy: “Wow… blonde, blue-eyed, and athletic? Okay, now I understand everything! You said yesterday that you feel invisible at school, but I don’t believe you, BoyBlue. Athletic and handsome boys like that in the United States always have girlfriends or a million girls chasing after them in the hallway! Are you hiding the truth from me? 😉”
There was a slightly longer pause. I wondered if he was smiling on the other side of the screen or blushing because of my teasing. I liked provoking people; it was part of my Italian personality to be a little bold.
BoyBlue99: “I swear I’m not hiding anything, Sunny. Things here aren’t really like Hollywood movies. Yeah, people know me because of sports, but I’m not the popular type who dates everyone. Honestly, I’m pretty reserved. The girls at school think I’m kind of… distant. Weird, maybe. They don’t have much patience for someone who prefers going home to take care of his little sister instead of going to parties and drinking cheap beer.”
My heart completely softened reading that. How could the girls at his school be so blind? A responsible, handsome, deep boy like that going unnoticed.
Sunny_Italy: “Then the girls at your school are very stupid! If you lived in Bologna, I’m sure you wouldn’t be invisible. I would love to have a friend to run with me… well, actually I hate running, I would sit eating gelato while watching you run, but you understood what I meant!”
BoyBlue99: “I think I’d like that. Having you cheering for me from the bleachers. It would be much more fun than watching Mackenzie try to roller skate and fall every two meters.”
Sunny_Italy: “Hey! Don’t make fun of your little sister, she must be adorable! But tell me, since I changed my time zone to talk to you, what are you going to do for the rest of your Saturday?”
BoyBlue99: “My mom is sleeping now, she worked all night at the hospital. I’m going to stay here in my room studying biology and making sure Mac doesn’t burn the house down. What about you? What does a talkative Italian girl do on Saturday night? Going to a party?”
Sunny_Italy: “Me? No! In a little while I’m having dinner with my parents and my brother. We always eat together on weekends. After that, I think I’ll watch a movie on TV or keep talking to a certain mysterious American boy… if he’s not too busy with biology, of course!”
BoyBlue99: “For you, Sunny, I can take a break from biology. The cells in the human body won’t move around if I take a little longer to reply.”
I let out a silly sigh, rolling around on the bed and hugging the pillow with my phone close to my face. Gabriella could forgive me with all her conversations about Michele from senior year, but no boy in all of Italy could ever have the sensitivity of that “BoyBlue” from Washington. I barely knew him, didn’t know his real name, and had never even seen his face, but the way he answered me, his patience with my translated English, and his maturity made me want to spend the rest of the night glued to that blue screen.
“Carina! Dinner is on the table!” my mother’s voice echoed from downstairs.
I huffed, annoyed that I had to interrupt the moment, but smiling because of what would come afterward.
Sunny_Italy: “My mom is calling me for dinner! I need to go now before my dad eats all the polenta. But I’ll come back soon, I promise! Don’t disappear, blue-eyed BoyBlue!”
BoyBlue99: “I won’t disappear, Sunny. Enjoy your dinner. I’ll be right here.”
I turned off my phone screen with my heart leaping with happiness. I walked toward the kitchen feeling that, somehow, that Saturday night would be brighter than any other I had ever lived in Bologna. And all because of a boy on the other side of the ocean.
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