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“I don’t know, this still seems like a dumb idea.”
Even though nothing’s happened yet, Giulia’s voice still carries a hint of I told you so, but Alberto’s never let that stop him before.
Luca’s face appears over the edge of the windowsill, three floors up. His curls are messy with salt water and about five centimeters longer than they will be in a month when he gets his annual shearing before the start of school in September. Tiny, seasonal freckles smatter his face between the darker ones that stick around all year. Even though Alberto can’t see them from down here, he knows they’re there because he counted them earlier when the three of them were piled together on the beach trying to catch the meteor shower Luca swore should be visible around two in the morning. He does his best to map them out every year, burn them into his memory, because this is his Luca. This is summer Luca, who isn’t afraid to jump off cliffs anymore and never misses an opportunity for fun, even if he does bring books to the beach. Summer Luca is light and free and glowing, and Genova doesn’t get to see him. It makes Alberto feel a little better over the winter when he reads his letters so many times he's memorized not only the words, but the way Luca's t's always slant more to the left than his other letters and he always writes uphill. Sure, Piero may have gone to Greece on his summer holidays and know a lot about Copernicus or whoever, but he doesn’t get to trace his fingers over the summer freckles that dot Luca’s cheeks or see the smile that takes over his entire face that only happens when he’s doing something moderately dangerous (because after all, he is still Luca.)
“Okay, I think I’ve found enough sheets!” he calls down, and Alberto gives him a thumbs up before handing the Super 8 to his sister.
“Giulia, it’s fine,” he insists. “I know all about knots. Besides, we’ve jumped off way higher stuff before.”
Giulia rolls her eyes and fiddles with a switch on the camera. “Fine, but I’m not going to feel sorry for either of you when you break an arm.”
“We won’t need you to. Trust me, I’m-”
“Yes, I’m sure you are,” she interrupts. “Now, how do you turn this on?”
He takes it back from her to demonstrate. He hasn’t had a lot of practice with it, to be honest, because film is expensive and the prize only came with ten rolls. He made a few short films when the kittens were born back in early spring, because Giulia had been upset that she wouldn’t get to see them when they were tiny, but he’d decided early on to save the rest of them to document the summer.
“This switch turns it on, then you push this button to start recording. But don’t hit it until I tell you we’re ready. Each roll only holds three minutes, and I want to save it for the action.”
“Beto, are you coming?” Luca calls again from the window.
“Sì, arrivo!” he responds, then to Giulia, “Remember, three minutes. Turn it off when I say cut.” And with that he dashes into the pescheria.
“I thought four would probably be enough,” Luca says when Alberto enters the room. He’s waiting at the window holding one end of a sheet, which is tied in a chain to several others, ending with the last one which is tied around one leg of Alberto’s bed frame. “Do you want to check the knots?”
Alberto waves dismissively. “Nah, I trust you. Help me get set up?”
Luca helps him weave the free end of the sheet between his legs, wrapping it around one thigh and then the other, finally tying it in a knot around his waist. It looks just a bit like a diaper, but this is the way the mountaineers did it in those pictures in the tourism office window, and he’s going for authenticity here, even if they are using bed sheets instead of rope. Village boys make do.
He pokes his head out the window and hollers for Giulia to turn the camera on, then motions for Luca to join him and positions himself on the windowsill to wait for her thumbs up to let him know it’s rolling. She fiddles with the switches and wheels a little, but seems to figure it out quickly and soon she’s holding the camera to her eye and giving him a thumbs up.
“It’s rolling!” she shouts, for good measure.
Alberto shades his eyes with a hand and points dramatically into the distance, then looks back to Luca. He strokes his cheek with a little more flair than he normally would, but the camera’s far away and he wants to make sure the motion is captured.
“Arrivederci, mio amore,” he says, exaggerating the pronunciation so they’ll be able to read his lips later when they play it back. In the outline in his head, when they collect all the clips and stunts they’ve filmed over the summer and string them all together, they’ll wind up with a narrative documenting the exploits of Italy’s bravest explorer-slash-adventurer and his fair love, the boy genius who creates all of his bespoke and impossibly cool adventure gear in his lab. He wishes there was a way to record sound, but maybe he could just narrate. Luca clutches Alberto’s shoulders and makes a show of brave mourning, then kisses him with just a little more passion than he would normally care for in front of his sister. It’s probably just for the camera, but Alberto’s heart flips just the same and he has to consciously remind himself that Giulia’s filming all of this so he doesn’t get too excited. He says goodbye with one last flourishing cheek cup, then grabs the sheet with both hands and lowers himself out the window.
He hasn’t even reached the second floor yet when he realizes that he’s made a horrible mistake and that bed sheets are a poor replacement for climbing rope. The knot around his waist is coming undone, and he needs to get to the ground as soon as possible before it completely lets loose.
“More slack! Quick!” he shouts up to Luca, who must think the situation is even more dire than it is, because Alberto drops a meter in the space of one second. Luca sees him falling and holds fast to the rest of the sheet, and the sudden stop is what does it. Now there’s nothing tied around Alberto’s waist, and his hands are sliding down the sheet. He tries grabbing onto it to hold it tighter, but it’s no use, and now he’s just falling through the air. An open shutter catches his heel on the way down and flips him onto his back, and before he has time to correct himself, he’s not falling anymore and everything hurts. The world looks a little white and fuzzy, but the hot, searing pain in his arm is the worst. That, and the way he feels like a barrel of fish has been dropped on his chest when he tries to breathe.
He’s finally managed to suck in some oxygen and the world is starting to come back into focus when he sees Giulia hovering over him, concern visible on her face behind the camera, which is still held firmly to her eye.
“Turn off the camera,” Alberto groans, trying to cover the lens with his hand.
“Are you okay?” she asks instead of obeying. The camera leans closer to his face and Alberto groans again and coughs in response. Giulia looks back up at the window, probably to Luca whose eyes must be about bugging out of his head at this point. Alberto can’t see that far just yet, but he doesn’t need to, because he knows Luca well enough to know he’s right. He must have asked something, because Giulia shouts back, “Yeah, he’s okay. Just knocked the wind out of him, I think.”
At last, she puts down the camera and bends to help him up.
“I can’t move my arm,” Alberto says in a panic when he realizes he has no control of anything below his right elbow. Giulia prods it and when he yelps, she shouts back up to Luca who is still half-hanging worriedly out the window.
“Luca, pull the sheets up! I’m bringing him inside.”
They’ve barely made it into the pescheria before Massimo meets them at the foot of the stairs.
“What happened to him?” he demands, but Alberto knows it’s worry, not anger in his voice. His left arm is flung over Giulia’s shoulders and she’s cradling his right arm in her hands, bent at a weird angle because he couldn’t straighten it out without shouting obscenities. He knows it doesn’t look great.
“He, uh,” Giulia looks desperately at Alberto for an explanation, but it’s all he can do at the moment to look like he’s only in mild pain. “He fell down the stairs,” she finishes unconvincingly, even though they’ve clearly just come in from outside. Massimo raises one eyebrow even higher.
“Is that why there are sheets hanging out of his window?” he asks.
Luca skitters into view and nearly collides with Massimo at the foot of the stairs. Giulia glares at him.
“Luca, I told you to pull in the sheets!” she charges.
Luca grimaces. “I panicked. He looked hurt.”
Alberto beams inwardly even through the dizziness and the pain, and if he could stand unsupported right now, he’d like to run over and kiss him right on the mouth, because it’s just such a Luca thing to do, and Alberto likes him and thinks he might fall completely in love with this dork someday. Probably soon.
In the end, Alberto has a broken elbow and a mild concussion, which admittedly puts a damper on the rest of the summer because he can’t swim with his cast on. But it was worth it, because when they hang a sheet up on the garden wall on the last night of summer to play back all of the reels from the last three months, Luca laughs at their acting and grips Alberto’s hand when the projected image of him falls gracelessly to the ground, and Alberto drinks in as many of the remaining drops of summer Luca as he’s given.