Meg Cabot - Every Boy’s Got One

“Well, while I’m here,” I said, mostly to get Cal’s goat, “I’ll be happy to draw you some original Wondercats, Peter, for your Web site or whatever.”

A look of total joy suffused Peter’s round-cheeked face, and he raced up the stairs with my bag, chattering a mile a minute about his favorite Wondercat cartoons. I made sure to keep him talking too, so that Cal Langdon heard every word.

Villa Beccacia has seven bedrooms. Holly told Cal and I to pick whichever ones we liked best. Six of the bedrooms are huge, with ancient canopied beds with curtains around the sides, just like Scrooge’s bed in A Christmas Carol, and walls lined with dark panels and bookshelves, on which sit copies of everything from books on bird-watching to Valley of the Dolls in Italian.

The seventh bedroom is tucked away beneath a sloping roof, its single dormer window facing the pool. It’s clearly a boy’s room, with dark blue bedspreads on its twin beds, and matching dark blue tiles in the adjoining bathroom. All of the paintings on the walls are of ships. The oldest one has the words A sua eccellenza il sig Cav Francesco Seratti engraved beneath it. Whatever that means.

I knew at once this was the room for me.

Peter was horrified. He said, “No, you don’t vant this room. You vant the pretty pink room.”

But I said, “Cal can have that one.” (I know he heard me, too, because I heard a snort from the hallway.)

So Peter grudgingly put my bag down and went downstairs to see what his grandmother wanted, since she was bellowing for him (she has quite a set of lungs for such a tiny old lady).

And now I’m lying on one of the twin beds writing this, while everyone else is doing who knows what. All her life, Holly’s talked about Villa Beccacia, the money pit her eccentric uncle bought with his first million doing… well, whatever it is Holly’s uncle does. And now I’m finally IN it! And it feels as much like home as if Zio Matteo were MY uncle!

Oooh, Frau Schumacher is calling us. Authentic Italian (if German-made) snacks must be ready. Yum!

___________________________________________

To: Jane Harris <jane@wondercat.com>

Fr: Malcolm Weatherly <malcolmw@snowstyle.com>

Re: Ciao

Hey! Where are you? I haven’t heard from you. Hope things are going good.

Listen, do you remember if I left my green ESPN hat at your place? Because I can’t find it anywhere. I know I could just go buy a new one, but that was my lucky one. If you remember, could you let me know? And when you get back, send it to me, if you still have it?

Cool.

Rock out.

M

___________________________________________

To: Listserv <Wundercat@wundercatlives.com>

Fr: Peter Schumacher <webmaster@wundercatlives.com>

Re: JANE HARRIS

Listen up, kids! You are not believing what is happening! JANE HARRIS, creator of our beloved Wundercat, is here in Italy! Yes! IN THE HOUSE THAT IS NEXT DOOR TO THE ONE OF MY GRANDMOTHER!!! She is helping her friend to get the elopement in Castelfidardo!

And I have conversed with her! She says she will be drawing me some original sketches of our most favorite cat for this site! YES!!!!!

And JANE HARRIS is looking to be HOT! She has the dark brown hair (long, like we like it, boys!) and big brown eyes, and the very cute figure (sorry, girls!). She is looking very much like the beautiful vampire warrior Selene (played by the ravishing Kate Beck-insdale) in the finest film ever made of all time, Underworld !

And she has slain this mortal’s heart!

I will be reporting more of the news of JANE HARRIS as it is happening!

Until then,

 WUNDERCAT LIVES FOREVER!!!!

P. Schumacher

Webmaster, www.wundercatlives.com

Travel Diary of Holly Caputo and Mark Levine

Jane Harris

Okay, I know the Italians have contributed a lot to our society, what with da Vinci and Mike Piazza, not to mention cannoli.

But seriously, why couldn’t Holly and Mark have eloped to some country where they actually have electricity?

All right, all right, I KNOW Italy has electricity. In theory. In most areas. It just doesn’t, apparently, extend to her uncle’s house. When the stove is on, anyway.

Because the minute Mark turned the stove on to start boiling water for the pasta Frau Schumacher left us, all of the lights went out.

And when we called Frau Schumacher to ask her if her power was out, too, she was all, “No,” and then when we explained what we’d been doing when the light went off, she cackled, “Oh, you cannot turn the owen on vile the lights are on as vell!”

Seriously. She was laughing like a crazy person at the idea of the stupid Americans trying to use a stove AND have lights on at the same time.

So then we asked her where the fuse box was, so we could turn the power back on (and I guess just eat antipasto for dinner) and she went, “Oh, yes. Vell, you go down the road to the gate—”

And Holly was all, “The ELECTRONIC gate? To the driveway?”

And Frau Schumacher was like, “Yes,” as in, “What other gate would I be talking about, dorkus?” and then went on to say, “Go through the gate to the Wirgin Mary statue under the big tree—”

Seriously. THROUGH the gate. MILES from the house. Well, okay, but like two hundred yards. TO THE VIRGIN MARY STATUE. Under the big tree.

“—zen open her back and you will find the fuses.”

 Yeah. That’s how they turn the power back on when it goes out in Italy. They go DOWN the road, THROUGH the gate, UP TO the VIRGIN MARY statue, OPEN her back, and flick the switch.

Oh yeah. In the dark. And the pouring rain.

Since Holly thought she hadn’t understood Frau Schumacher correctly, she handed the phone to Cal and made him ask again, in German.

Same answer.

So Cal said he’d go do it.

Which I have to say is the first sign of generosity—well, except for paying for dinner last night—from him so far. Especially since Frau Schumacher said she could send Peter.

But Cal insisted. He ran outside, and Holly and Mark and I sat in the dark making jokes about all the escaped Italian convicts that might be lurking outside, just waiting for someone to turn their stove on so that their lights would go out and they could rob them.

After a little while we heard the front door slam and Cal came back, dripping wet and cursing like a sailor.

But the lights weren’t on.

“What happened?” Mark wanted to know.

Only Cal wouldn’t say. He stumbled around in the semi-darkness, found the bottle of Jack Daniel’s Holly’s uncle had in his liquor cabinet, poured himself a stiff one, and downed the whole thing in one gulp. Then he sat down—getting Zio Matteo’s white couch all wet—and buried his head in his hands.

“Oh,” Mark said suddenly, like he knew what was wrong. “Was it—?”

Cal just nodded, not looking up.

So Mark went, “Okay. Never mind. I’ll go.” And grabbed the crummy flashlight we’d found in Zio Matteo’s pantry.

Of course I couldn’t let him go after that. I mean, I totally had to see whatever it was that had so destroyed the Modelizer.

And all it turned out to be was a little snake! A tiny one, curled up at the bottom of the fuse box, which someone had cleverly bolted to the Virgin Mary’s back. Mark said Cal has been terrified of snakes his whole life.

Which is kind of sweet, in a way. You know, that he actually has a weakness? I mean, I can almost forgive him for the phenylethylamine thing.

Almost.

Except that now I’m soaking wet and one of my Steve Maddens got stuck in the mud in the road and came off and I had to pry it out with my fingers while Mark laughed his head off at me and now we can’t make any hot food unless we do it by candlelight (even though Cal, recovering from the snake sighting, is out on the terrazza or whatever it is, trying to stoke up a fire in the stone barbecue thingie, saying we could grill up the fish Frau Schumacher left us. As if somehow if he accomplishes this it’s going to make us forget the whole part about how he was scared of that tiny snake. Yeah, so not going to happen, Mr. Million Dollar Advance for My Big Boring Book But I’m Scared of Snakes).

And I miss The Dude—even waking me up at 4A .M. for a moonlit serenade.

And I can’t seem to stop thinking about how I missed this week’s ER because I was too busy packing to come here, and how it really is a shame that Holly asked me and not her brother Darrin to be her maid of honor. I’m sure DARRIN wouldn’t be sitting in his room trying to dry his hair with a damp towel (what is up with these tiny Italian towels? They are the size of those hot cloths they handed out on the airplane on our way here—not to me, of course, but in first class. I just happened to see them because the line to the bathroom was too long in coach, so I snuck in to use the facilities in the forward cabin) thinking about Dr. Kovac.

No, at a time like this, Darrin—and his boyfriend Bobby— would probably be brainstorming about what to get for Holly and Mark. You know, as a wedding present. Like Egyptian cotton sheets, or a hand-tinted Audubon print, or a George Foreman grill, or something really meaningful like that.

Not a stupid travel diary that, guess what, I can’t even give to them now because I’ve mentioned the best man’s alleged Large Appendage a few too many times—