I Try, a stravaganza fanfic

I Try

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Stravaganza

I try for a casual tone when speaking to Mrs. Mulholland, but my eyes dart away and my hand flies up to my eyebrow ring, as if fiddling with it could do anything to disguise the pounding of my heart.

"So how is…how's your son doing?" I ask her."He hasn't been at school for a while and…um…"

I can't tell her how I've missed him – his shy smile and polite hello, his curly black hair shining as he sits in front of me in the orchestra. The gentle, passionate way he plays the violin, with his bow stroking the strings like a caress. The eloquence of his silences, his wide dark eyes gazing into some beautiful faraway world I long to follow. So I try to sound like a casual acquaintance, which I am – concerned, but not with my stomach in knots and my head pounding with worst-case scenarios.

I glance at the photograph on the mantelpiece. My violin teacher follows my gaze, shakes her head, and sighs.

Games, changes and fears
When will they go from here
When will they stop
I believe that fate has brought us here
And we should be together, babe
But we're not
I play it off, but I'm dreaming of you
I'll keep my cool, but I'm feigning

"I suppose you haven't heard," she says. "He's…he's got cancer."

And that's when the bottom drops out of my world and I sink into a chair.

Mrs. Mulholland, looking at me with her son's warm eyes and and asking if I'm okay – as if my well-being matters a cent next to his – seems to fade and blur in front of me as I struggle to make sense of what I just heard.

Not Lucien. Please, God, not Lucien!

A choking lump forms in my throat. Some selfish part of me protests – if I cry in front of his mother, she'll guess how I feel for sure and that would only upset both of us even more. I make my escape to the bathroom, futilely trying to calm down, even though it feels like I've been smashed into a thousand jagged shards.

I try to say goodbye and I choke
Try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it, it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near
Goodbye and I choke
I try to walk away and I stumble
Though I try to hide it, it's clear
My world crumbles when you are not near

I see him standing there in Paolo's doorway, haloed by the sunlight, looking both hauntingly familiar and achingly strange. His hair is longer and tied back in a ponytail; he's wearing Renaissance-era clothes and his face looks older, somehow more defined. But he is still Lucien, and my heart gives the same half sweet, half painful bound in my chest as it always did, but intensified until the ringing in my ears makes me dizzy.

He's alive.

It can't be!

All I manage is to stammer out his name before everything goes black, and I wake up in my own bed in London.

I may appear to be free
But I'm just a prisoner of your love
And I may seem all right and smile when you leave
But my smiles are just a front
Just a front, hey
I play it off, but I'm dreaming of you
I'll keep my cool, but I'm feigning

His long hands dance through the air as he talks, telling Cesare and me everything that happened to him in Bellezza.

"I danced with her at the Carnival," he says, and suddenly a look crosses over his face I have never seen before. It's a sort of glow in his eyes, almost like when he plays the violin, but not quite. He seems to be looking past us into a glittering world of masked balls, into the eyes of this Duchessa of Bellezza, whoever she is.

I am stung by questions like vicious wasps: Is she beautiful? How does she feel about him? What does she have that I don't?

I force myself not blurt these questions out, not to grab him by the shirt collar and beg him to see what's in front of him – me, plain and awkward and full of love like a fountain overflowing.

But instead, I say nothing. And when he leaves, I send him off with a smile and a wave, as is appropriate. He's not even my friend, after all.

Sometimes I wish I'd gone on thinking he was dead. Who was it who said: "Despair is a free man, hope is a slave"?

I have no illusions about the time he kissed me. Well, I do, but I keep them in a tidy little drawer in my mind and don't think of them except in my darkest hours. It was the general high from winning the Stellata, that was all. The intoxication of victory, the laughing blur of red-gold flags and cheers and riding on the crowd's shoulders. Everyone was kissing and hugging each other.

But the feel of his lips, his warm breath, his hands on my shoulders…just the thought of it makes me want to sing and cry and laugh and smash something at the same time. I know it will never happen again, but it's like I'm addicted to him – it's probably a good thing Russell stole my talisman, because now I'm on withdrawal.

Every day I tell myself that it's better this way. The idea of us together is a ridiculous fantasy – even if we weren't in different worlds, he loves Arianna - an amazing girl who almost deserves him. I have no right, absolutely no right at all, to keep on dreaming.

But every night, I do dream.

Here is my confession
May I be your possession
Boy, I need your touch
Your love kisses and such
With all my might I try
But this I can't deny
Deny

Our relationship is special, he says. The two Stravaganti from the 21st century. I understand things about him which his Arianna does not.

Not that it means anything other than friendship. Friendship is a pale little flowerbud compared to the full-blown red rose of love, but it's what I've got and what I must learn to live with.

I grit my teeth and get through one day at a time. It gets easier as the weeks pass; I feel like a snake shedding her skin sometimes, a new Georgia emerging, and I hope – and fear – that maybe my strange, overwrought high school crush will stay behind with the old me. But my heart won't listen.

I try my hardest to forget, but I can't.