Looking for Alibrandi Read Free Page B

. can you believe it, Josie? He’s going to live in Sydney for a year. To work in some law chamber here. MacMichael and Sons, I think. Your socialite grandmother will make sure we see plenty of him. She’ll be his surrogate mother.”
    “But we can handle it, Ma,” I said, shaking her. “There’s no big deal.”
    “Josephine, you can’t handle it. You think you can, but I know you.”
    “That’s bull,” I exploded angrily. “I don’t care about him. I wouldn’t care if he was sitting in this room with us now. I’d look straight through him.”
    “He asked me how life was. When we were alone he even told me he had no regrets.”
    “What did you say?”
    She turned to me and smiled. My worry lifted then. My mother may look like a delicate soft, woman, but the strength in her eyes is such a comfort to me when I’m scared. She would never ever fall to pieces on me.
    “I said I had no regrets either.”
    “Did he ask if you were married?”
    “He asked if I had a family. I said yes.” She laughed bitterly. “His sister said that Michael is great with her kids. He loves kids, she said. He’d love to have some of his very own. I wanted to spit in his face.”
    “Spitting? Very impressive. My serene, lovable mother has become aggressive.”
    “I don’t know what I’m scared of, Josie. Maybe I forgot he existed after all this time.”
    “We don’t need him.”
    “What we don’t need and what we get are two very different stories.”
    “Well, I’ve got a wonderful idea. How about we never go over to Nonna’s place again so we can’t ever bump into him?”
    “You’ll have to meet him sooner or later, Miss, and you’ll go to your grandmother’s as per normal.”
    “Maaaa,” I groaned. “She drives me crazy. She’s starting to tell me all those boring Sicily stories. If she tells me one more time she was beautiful, I’ll puke.”
    “I want you to try and get on with her more.”
    “Why?
You
don’t. It’s not fair to expect me to.”
    “Our circumstances are different, Josephine. I’ve never got on with her. When I was young she used to keep me at such a distance that I used to wonder what I could possibly have done wrong. My father was much worse and it was only after he died that she took a step toward me. By then I kept
my
distance. With you, it’s different. She’s always wanted to be close to you.”
    Mama looked at me and shrugged.
    “I envied you that.”
    “Five, Jozzie,” I mimicked. “Five men came to ask for my hand in marriage when I was your age.”
    Mama laughed and I lay back content. I like to make her laugh. It’s weird that I’ve spent my whole life trying to impress her and out of everyone I know she’s the only person who loves me the way I am.
    “What does
he
look like?” I asked later, trying to act uninterested.
    She thought for a moment and then looked over at me, amusement lurking in her eyes. “He looks like a male Josephine Alibrandi.”
    Because it was the easiest thing to do, we both began to laugh.

Two
    SPENDING HALF YOUR morning trying to pull Sera away from a mirror is one of life’s mundane tasks.
    Thankfully I don’t have to go through it every morning, but two days after Mama told me she’d met Michael Andretti, we had the annual “Have a Say Day” in Martin Place. Sera volunteered to drive. She and Anna are the only ones of us who have a license.
    For two days I just couldn’t help thinking about my father. I felt sick at the idea of meeting him, though at the same time I desperately wanted to. But I couldn’t tell my friends about it yet. I just wanted to keep it to myself until I figured out how I felt.
    There are four of us who hang out together and we make the most unlikely group. Most of the other students in the school are in clone groups. They all look similar. Either blond yuppies or European trendies. Either intellectuals or the “beautiful people.”
    Our group represents all types, yet we hadn’t fitted into any of them in