“Ah! They’re right be­hind us!” Eva shouted, a hint of laugh­ter un­der­neath the fear in her voice. Marco, still run­ning, turned his head around: there they were. It seemed like half the town, chas­ing after them. The most hap­haz­ard army the world’s ever seen – women with wicker bas­kets of flow­ers, car­ry­ing gro­ceries, in­ter­rupted doing their evening chores, men in soc­cer jer­seys and worn, pas­tel polos and cheap, dark suits, some clearly half-drunk, the older ones just stand­ing and watch­ing. Every­where black hair and olive, Ital­ian skin. A few faces stood out: Giuseppe An­to­nio, who ran the cor­ner store, and his two young sons – the boys’ lit­tle feet kick­ing up dirt into brown clouds as they ran. Marco’s fa­ther, his face de­ter­mined, his black eye­brows fur­rowed, lips set, his grey tie fly­ing up in his face and, much fur­ther back, Clara, Marco’s lit­tle sis­ter, cry­ing as she ran, her arms flap­ping at her sides.

“Come on!” There was Eva’s voice again. Marco looked over at her, next to him, and shook his head: her mas­cara smeared under her eyes, her blonde braids un­rav­el­ing. She looked so out of place, he thought, mud from the dirt road spat­tered across the bot­tom half of her navy blue dress, the one with the lace, and soak­ing through her fancy, red leather shoes. He’d asked her again just the other day why she al­ways dressed up so much, and so weirdly too, she wore the strangest things, he’d said, and she’d blushed and looked away, and his mother had laughed and smiled, look­ing up at them from the liv­ing room table, where she was play­ing soli­taire.

They passed the white stone church, and in front of it, the statue of Saint Michael, blue sky and the moun­tains, green and brown, in the dis­tance be­hind it. How strange it felt, break­ing the rules, Marco thought – his arms moved awk­wardly at his sides, full of adren­a­line. At each step, he half ex­pected him­self to be un­able to move for­ward, his legs to stop obey­ing. If they were caught – and he knew they would be caught, they both knew it, of course they’d be caught – his par­ents would… he didn’t want to even think about it. But he’d told Eva he’d do it. He couldn’t turn back. Though he wouldn’t re­al­ize it until many years later, it was one of the things he loved most about her – how she saw every­thing in ab­solutes. He knew there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he would do what he’d said he’d do.

“I’ll get that,” Marco said, get­ting up from the din­ner table to an­swer the door.

“Hi,” he said, look­ing at Eva stand­ing on his front steps, her blue school bag on her back. He had hoped she’d look a bit sadder. They’d said their good­byes at school ear­lier. She’d said she’d stop by when her fam­ily was get­ting ready to start the drive. When she had told him her fam­ily was mov­ing, to Milan, in his room last Sat­ur­day, she’d been so mat­ter of fact about it. Yes, she re­ally was mov­ing, she’d said. Her Dad had got­ten a bet­ter job at a bet­ter mu­seum, she’d said. She said she’d write, and he could visit, and she’d def­i­nitely come back at some point. They could send post­cards. She had been very ex­cited about the post­cards.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Where?”

“We’re leav­ing! Come on, be­fore my par­ents fin­ish pack­ing,” Eva said, grab­bing Marco’s hand and run­ning out the door, leav­ing it wide open.

Marco could feel the sweat on his lip, and looked over at Eva, who laughed. They’d been run­ning for five min­utes. He could still hear the foot­steps and oc­ca­sional shouts be­hind them, though he looked back and saw the crowd was thin­ning out. The fear had gone away. The town was fad­ing away be­hind them. There, to their right, was the el­e­men­tary school, a small build­ing of grey brick, two sto­ries high with the yel­low slide and mon­key bars out front. Up ahead, the blue of the sea was just start­ing to show over the last hill.

“What’s in the bag?” he asked, pant­ing.

“Every­thing we need!” she said, grab­bing his hand.

They passed the last pas­tel houses, with their green wooden win­dow shut­ters and or­ange stucco roofs, and there – they were here. The port. It was small and full of small sail­boats that be­longed to the fam­i­lies in town.  A thin wire fence, waist-high, sep­a­rated the prom­e­nade from the bright blue Mediter­ranean below. Eva rested her elbow on Marco’s shoul­der as she kicked off her shoes, and then she was jump­ing over the fence and into the water, and he was fol­low­ing her. He was falling, it felt like for­ever, and then a splash and he felt heavy and the cold of the water pulled him down, and then he took a breath of the un­be­liev­ably fresh air and swept his wet hair out of his eyes. Eva smiled at him, six feet away, tread­ing water, and then she turned, swim­ming to the near­est sail­boat, an or­ange one, Maria, it said in white on the side – they’d seen it a mil­lion times be­fore. It be­longed to Nun­zio, the tai­lor. Marco fought against the water, and in a few mo­ments he was there. Eva held onto the boat with one hand, breath­ing heav­ily, and pulled at her blue dress, which clung to her skin.

“Marco!” He heard his fa­ther’s shout. Look­ing up, Marco saw him at the fence, swing­ing one leg over, and then the other. To Marco’s sur­prise, he was smil­ing.

“Ah, I guess it’s over. The race...” Marco said.

“It’s al­right,” Eva said, and shrugged. “You came.”

Marco heard sev­eral splashes, and looked over to­wards the shore, and saw his sis­ter and fa­ther, and Eva’s mother and fa­ther, swim­ming over to them. There were thirty or so peo­ple at the fence, above, talk­ing and laugh­ing and watch­ing.

“Oh, I for­got,” she said, blush­ing and reach­ing into her bag, which was still on her back. “Here, it’s for this week­end. If you’re free, I mean.”

It was a train ticket, soaked through.

“I’m sure they’ll still ac­cept it!” Eva said en­thu­si­as­ti­cally. “If you want to come, I mean. If your par­ents will let you go,” she fin­ished, busy­ing her­self with the ticket in her hand, dab­bing it with the cor­ner of her dress.

“Yes, I’ll come. I want to come,” he said. Her hand looked clammy as she con­tin­ued to dry the ticket off.

She smiled, and opened her bag again and care­fully put the ticket back in­side it, in a nylon vel­cro wal­let.

“Oh, okay. Well, make sure to get to the sta­tion early, so you get a seat! And I’ll meet you at the plat­form, just call me and tell me where you’ll be. And oh, I’ll bring lunch, and we can go to the park, I’m sure there’s a good park, I know it’s a big city but big cities ac­tu­ally have good parks, I was read­ing… ”

He didn’t re­ally hear the rest of what she said. He took a dive un­der­wa­ter, swim­ming back to shore, and every­thing slowed down -- the re­peated mo­tions, his legs kick­ing be­hind him, arms pulling at the water ahead, drag­ging it to­wards his sides and be­hind him. His eyes were closed, the image frozen in his mind -- Eva, his fam­ily, every­one, ex­actly where they were sup­posed to be. The sun shin­ing on the water in the port, bring­ing out all of the dif­fer­ent blues you could only see on such a per­fect day. If he could just stay under the water, he thought, time would have to stop. He could only hold his breath for a lit­tle while, so it would just have to. But then, how­ever, he felt the tight­ness in his chest, his throat squeez­ing against it­self. As his shoul­ders rose up, to­wards the sur­face, he grasped at the water below, try­ing to hold on, to pull him­self down, but couldn’t. The cold air hit his face and he took a giant breath, and turned around, and saw the boats in the port, green and red and blue and pink, sway­ing gen­tly, just where they had been a mo­ment be­fore.