Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) by Esther Dalseno Read Free Book Online Page B

cause a ripple in the schoolyard society – everyone ignored me as they previously did, and never looked our way. The strong boys did not bully me quite as often as before, for when they did, Orlando Khan would stretch out his arms and make his brown fingers into claws, and his long, curving nails scared the boys, as well as his guttural tiger growls. He would mock them, hiss at them, and thrust his claws at them like a caged animal. The bullies would call him figlio di puttana -- whatever that meant -- and something about his kind taking over Europe, and something else about his religion -- whatever that was -- but Orlando would promise his cousins would be waiting for them outside the school gates the very next day, and the bullies would pretend they didn’t care. But Orlando would laugh his loud, musical laugh as we watched them run to the lavatory, because they were about to piss their pants.
    Orlando taught me many things. How to swear -- colorful, wonderful words that were much worse than ‘stupid’ and ‘damn’. He called everyone “God-damn bastardo salami-eaters, except for you Gabriel,” and I learned that the pretty girls would not always look the way they did, that one day they would possess this thing called “bosoms” that my mother had, and I was terrified thereafter to ever look at my mother’s chest region.
    Once, he bought a pipe to school and presented it to me. I took one puff, inhaling deeply as he instructed, but I coughed and spluttered because it was the most God-damn awful thing I had ever tasted. My head swam and my eyes watered and Orlando laughed. When I tried to explain to him that my mother was probably retarded, he shrugged and said, “Everyone’s mother is a little retarded”, and that made me feel better. But I never told him about the swallow-girl, and I never told him my secret. But he would watch me watch Mariko in the schoolyard and sigh, and his eyes lit up like mother’s fortune teller, like he could read the cards that lay in the future between her and I.
    And when Volatile’s eyes glazed over from boredom, I would whisper to her with a surprising lack of shame of my dealings with Darlo Gallo.
    It had all started, as far as I knew, at La Casa di Gallo . I remember that place, a stone palace in the valley, with its manicured lawns and a hundred pruned fir trees, the fountain spouting crystal water from the urn of a marble maiden. I was in a chamber somewhere deep in the house, on a thick sheepskin rug, and I was six years old. My parents had left me there while they drank coffee, possibly in futile business negotiations, with Alfio Gallo. There were toys all round, ceramic harlequins and stuffed bears, wooden alphabet puzzles, and a bleached Pinocchio puppet with hinges in its limbs. But my eyes were drawn to a naked doll stuffed inside a toy truck. I pulled it out, ran my fingers over its hard plastic body, the high arched breasts, the big inane head, the painted blue eyes. I was entranced by its hair, long and white gold and curly, just like my own.  I was kneeling on the rug, stroking this hair, when I saw Darlo Gallo for the very first time.
    She screamed. She ran over to me, snatched the doll from my hands, and cuffed me over the head with it. I fell back, not with pain, but with shock.
    And as I staggered to my feet to behold this little girl, trussed up in a dress that looked like it had been assembled from five miles of lace, her long auburn hair and her wet open mouth, I was astonished by the blankness within her eyes. Even at that young age, I sensed her soullessness. Enemy, my little mind predicted. But something strange happened in that three-minute encounter. As she stared at me, all the rage disappeared from her face, and something seeped over the nothingness in her eyes, something foreign and disconcerting, that made ghost pimples sprout on my flesh. She dropped the doll, in a trance, and her hand slowly stretched out toward me. I recoiled, resisting