REMINDER: These teasers ARE NOT appropriate for children under the age of 13. After that, I leave it to the discretion of parents depending on how overprotective they are.

High school senior Andrew Brown seems to have it all – a hot girlfriend, a tight clique, and a ticket punched to college in the fall. Even better, it’s spring break and he’s in Italy on a travel study that promises to be the zenith of underage debauchery he and his friends have been anxiously anticipating for months.

Andrew, however, has a secret, and it’s not a fickle hallway whisper of a superficial crush or an embarrassing hook-up – not even close. This one has the potential to alienate his best friend, land their art teacher in jail, and irrevocably change the history of one of Long Island’s preeminent Catholic high schools forever.

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 10 of ‘Knowing When You’re Too Young to Grow Up’, my unpublished, contemporary adult manuscript. To see the progression of the project, follow the link. In “Where Kites Fly and Suns Die,” the protagonist finds himself in a Florence piazza observing young children on a dilapidated carousel and lamenting fading youth.

Whenever I go to Manhattan, I always pity the horses willing their tired bodies down Park Avenue with dirges of huffs and grunts in a drawn out, spectacular march towards death, almost like a prolonged Passion of the Christ.

Their automated counterparts we’re currently watching rotate in a burnt-out piazza Glenn might or might not have named are in a similar lot, tired and abused – wearily working, working, always working. They, who jerkily buck up and down out of sync to the organ music they’re supposed to keep up with, whose nostrils once flared pink and purple and red but are now dull pennies, whose faces no longer have faces after the weather stripped them away, comprise the saddest carousel I’ve ever seen.

Yet, to the kids who ride these downtrodden beasts, they are atop Secretariats and Man O’ Wars. They see what we can no longer see – the imaginary – and truly believe they are champion riders. To them, they are.

“Look!” Becky says to me behind her sketchbook. “Aren’t they adorable?”

Precious, I think, because they don’t know that a world with as many failures as successes exists outside of theirs. They don’t even know they are a part of it yet, as miniscule as a mouse in a mansion all by itself. And they are better for it.

“I wish I was that old again,” I say, more to myself than anyone else, turning to Ant’s gaze. It’s needy – not clingy needy, but I miss you needy – and it’s been a while since I felt that feeling.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Pete snorts. “You’re not that far removed, buddy.

“I’m not that close either, pal,” I shoot back snidely.

“That’s your problem, bud,” he chuckles to himself virulently. “You still think you can change the past, but you can’t. Because what’s happened can’t be changed. You have to straight live your life. And that’s it.”

Now, in this square where kites fly and suns die, the drying rain makes the brickwork pavement sparkle like a child’s summer camp craft. If only life was as simple as it was then, I lament. But it’s not, and it never will be. The bemoaning organ playing an elegy to our lost childhood reminds me of that. And I can’t argue with what he’s saying because, for the most part, it’s the truth. What he doesn’t realize, though, is that I’m not looking to change the past; I’m looking to change the future.

Since I punished Ms. Benevo, Pete and I haven’t spoken anything more than good mornings and goodnights in days. And there’s been nothing good about them. Pete’s been all lugubrious and down on himself, in mourning even, for his teacher’s been conspicuously cold to him – not lugging him around like her carry-on everywhere she goes.

Instead, she’s acting exactly like the chaperon she always should’ve been – exactly how I wanted her to be – treating him like he’s any other student. She even reprimanded him for talking too loud to Tommy the other day in the Accademia di Belle Arte Firenze. We were seeing the David and I thought Pete was going to cry, practically begging her for a word, a sign, another chance, anything. But she wasn’t having it. She shot him down so coldly – deriding him, making him feel small in front of his peers like she used to do to everyone but him – and the whole time, he became redder and redder with embarrassment and his face looked like a thermometer about to explode. And I felt sorry for him because he was so lost without her.

I’m not sure what I expected to happen – in my mind, even though I was resigned to losing him and moving on beyond our high school friendship, I guess I still believed somewhere that they would end and he’d realize how good we had it and everything would be back to the way it was before her. But it can’t. Because you can’t go back like Pete always tells me. And you can’t forget once you know.

Pete pats me on the shoulder. I shudder. “I’ll catch you later,” he says, pausing with a purpose, still more to say, “pal.” There it is.

“Hands, Mr. Goodman!” Behind her sunglasses, Ms. Benevo fixes her stare on us, but really she’s looking directly at me. It’s full of contemptuous scorn, seething disgust. It’s the hatred I once felt for her. As dire as Pete looks, though, his eyes imploring her to give him another chance, she refuses, turning away from him to have some fake conversation with Fr. Bagnani. And Pete’s probably wondering how he could be so dispensable when he thought it was love, but for her it wasn’t; for her, it was convenience.

She knows, like I know standing in the suddenly empty square where the carousel’s stopped moving, that there will be someone after Pete and someone else after that. And I’m feeling that familiar feeling that follows me around like my shadow. For a moment, I’m the loneliest boy in Italy. Just me and the birds, wondering how, after everything that’s happened, she still manages to land on her feet. And I realize then that no one tells for the same reason I haven’t – because once she’s done with them, they feel like I did. They feel the same shame I did. And they want to disappear, for there’s no one who gets what they’re going through.

“Andrew Brown.”

Hearing Ant’s voice, I realize I’ve been fidgeting restlessly; my hands are practically rheumatic. She wraps her fingers around mine. I stop shaking, relieved from my moment of abject loneliness. Because of her.

“What was that about with Pete? I thought you two were close.”

“Oh, uh,” I say in a complete stupor, “we used to be, but I guess, I guess when a guy gets a girlfriend sometimes he forgets who his friends are.”

“Or, in your case” – she stirs at my side – “when a guy gets a girlfriend, he sometimes forgets who she is.”

I wince. “Ouch, I stepped into that, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, that was too easy, but I’m just kidding. Who is she anyway – his girlfriend?”

“Just some girl Julie, ” I bristle, not wanting to lie to her. But I can’t tell her the truth, either.

“Julie?”

“You don’t know her,” I add hastily. “I guess she’s older or something.”

“Wait, isn’t Ms. Benevo’s name–”

“Yes, yes it is!” I stammer. And I don’t say anything else at first until I feel her eyes asking me one more time if it’s our teacher we’re talking about because she’s sure it is. And I can’t hide it from her and I don’t want to, so I sigh, “Yes, we’re talking about Ms. Benevo.”

I anticipate a loquacious reaction from her, not that she’s like that but it is after all the juiciest gossip since the lacrosse team ran train on Melissa and Jenny at the White Party. Yet, Ant really doesn’t have any reaction at all. It’s as if I simply confirmed what she already knew. She just nods somberly and lets the silence carry on our conversation. It’s the silence speaking louder than any of our words. Kind of like a conversation with Pete, I think.

She squeezes my hand three times. “It’s a crazy world we live in, you know that?”

“It is, indeed.” I squeeze hers back.

A young girl no older than four with scraped knees and clothes-hanger arms is determined to convince her mother for another ride on the carousel whose lights are dark. She doesn’t understand it’s switched off.

As I light another cigarette, I think about my sister Gracie. We used to go to town fairs when we were younger, when we were still a family. She had to be no older than five or six, and she loved everything and anything about them, whether it was the dingy stuffed animal with the one button eye or the sopping zeppoles with extra powdered sugar – she loved it all. I could see her now, smiling, with my grandparents; they were lively, dancing at their fiftieth wedding anniversary. A homesick feeling quickly passes; that home, the one I’m sick for, no longer exists. That home’s a memory hidden away for when I see my mother’s boyfriend or my father’s in a fit or when the hollow house that’s so big neither of my parents has to see each other in it is empty.

She’s growing up so fast; she’ll be going to high school soon. I wish she didn’t have to go through with it, or at least what I perceive it as from my experiences – wasting herself away for the opportunity to be in the “in crowd,” lining up for the chance to sleep with the captain of the lacrosse team while the rest of the squad rails lines in the bathroom and waits their turn. It’s a dangerous time to be in high school; not only are the expectations far greater, but the drive to be popular often takes precedent over morals our family doesn’t seem to have. Maybe she’ll be different – well, if our parents are any indicator – I hope she’ll be different.

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