american boy
90,000 words

There were sixty minutes left till I was due to meet him. Surely that was enough time to make myself look like a human being after the worst night’s sleep. At that moment, my face was crooked as usual - asymmetrical, which irritated me - and my hair the usual woolly mess. My clothes were possibly the only thing that looked fresh and smooth, ironed to perfection by mum. But my nose? I felt its edges under my fingers, the ridge of its bump, one nostril narrower than the other. I suddenly realised what made my face look uneven.
‘Fabio!’ There she called again, her voice far away (in the living room, I presumed), yet impossible to ignore.
‘Won’t be long!’ I turned my face to one side. Eyes sharply on my profile, I looked up and down at my forehead, the line of my jaw, the stubble on my chin. Nothing different, still all there, still the same, apart from a new blackhead, right next to the one that had materialised yesterday. How could these things sneak up on you in the night? I reached for the cream on the nearby chest without taking my eyes off the mirror. 
‘Stop looking at yourself, you look fine,’ mum said, a soft look in her eyes, her auburn hair shining in the morning light. 
‘Would you just give me a minute, pleaaaase?’
My hand trembled as I tried to squeeze as little cream as possible on the tip of my finger. I didn’t want to get it all over my shirt and give him a bad first impression. Marlon. Didn’t want to give Marlon a bad first impression. I had to start calling him by his name and make him feel welcome, as mum kept saying. I could see her figure in the mirror behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I clocked the bedspreads piled up in a big mess on my bed and knew she was going to go mad.
‘You’re not nervous, are you?’
‘No,’ I said, my eyes widening dramatically. I pressed down on my temples, flattening my side hair. 
She shrugged, straightening the rug behind me with her foot. ‘He’s very well brought up. And you’ll practise your English… even though he’s American,’ she said, the lines on her forehead deepening slightly.
‘They too speak English, for your information.’ 
‘Who?’
‘Americans.’
She scoffed, trying to look at herself in the mirror. ‘We’ll soon find out. But he’ll help you with your school work, hopefully. You’ll be in the same class, won’t you?’ She pulled the edges of her skirt down. She would normally wear long, flowing skirts, but today she had her knee-length tartan one on. She’d had it for as long as I could remember. 
‘Mhm.’
She moved closer, turning towards me. A sweet scent greeted me. ‘Look at you, all grown up.’ She lifted her hand to my chin, her big, almond-shaped eyes narrowing slightly. Whatever make-up she was wearing made her hazel-hued iris sparkle. ‘Is that stubble? You’re going to have to start shaving soon.’
Now she said it… I lifted my head and rubbed my chin, feeling its downy texture under my fingers. Finally! Reminded me of a newborn chick I once held as a child. 
‘Come on, we’d better go or we’ll be late. Oh, hang on.’ She stepped out of the room and came back promptly holding up a large sign. ‘Did I spell it right?’ 
“MARLON VALENTINE” was written in bright red block capitals. There it was, his name, glaring at me. The reality hit me: a perfect stranger coming to stay. I nodded.
She put the sign down and checked herself in the mirror again. ‘I have a good feeling about him,’ she said, fixing her skirt. ‘I think you’ll make good friends.’ She patted her hair, then turned to my bed and her face sagged. She glared at me. ‘You have 60 seconds. I’ll be at the door.’

​

Forty-five minutes left. 
As we drove down the hilly streets of the city, the sun rising up in the sky of Naples was covering the sea with a blanket of sparkling dots, making everything look new. The thought of meeting him struck me and a very familiar tightening in my tummy set in. Without fail, I always got stomach cramps whenever I had an assessment at school, and it felt like a knot, a sharpness which, at its worst, could cause me to double over in pain. But now there was something else added to the mix, which was new: a tingling, like butterflies, only more intense, and radiating upwards into my chest. As I was in the car with mum, I forced myself to stay as still as I could, putting a hand to my stomach and rubbing it gently. 
She liked the fact that I would have a new friend soon, someone I could share my room with. She worried about me not having many friends. As if a teenager’s happiness could be measured by how many friends he had. If dad was here, she would be too busy talking to him to be questioning me. God forbid he should miss an hour’s work! So I tried to forget about her presence. Which, in spite of her best efforts, I found incredibly easy to do.