Contemporary Milan, Italy.
In the dazzling world of Vincitore Academy, Margherita, a half-Korean firebrand from humble beginnings, ignites a clash of wills with the P2, the city's elite quartet of dazzling and infuriatingly entitled boys.
Yet, privi...
In mid October, Chiara turned sixteen. To celebrate, Margherita slept over. They had dinner with Chiara's family, watched some Korean drama, and went to bed to chat and gossip.
Chiara shared a bedroom with Marco, who was ten years older. Rent was prohibitive in Milan, and as much as Marco would have loved to move out, like most people his age, he couldn't afford to do so.
The money he earned helped the family get by as well. However, Marco was a looker; he had the same green eyes and freckles as Chiara but was trim and fit. Most nights, he slept over at some friend's or girlfriend's, which worked out when Margherita wanted to stay.
The two girls lay in the dark, side by side, chatting, as they had done since they could remember.
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"How come you haven't worked up the courage to talk to Sergio, yet? You said you had his number...Did that douche bag from two summers ago smother your spark?" Margherita asked, hugging one of Chiara's plush toys, Margherita's favorite in fact, a blue monster with bug eyes.
On the summer before starting high school, at fourteen, Chiara had briefly dated a nineteen-year-old guy. She'd been head over heels, but things had happened too fast. Eventually, he'd ghosted her at the end of summer, leaving her with a broken heart and much shier than he'd found her. Chiara hated that he'd let him change her.
Chiara mumbled, "Sometimes, I wonder if I like Sergio as an excuse, because I know he'll never like me back."
Margherita hugged her friend. "It's your birthday; let's do something about it?"
Unlike Chiara, Margherita had been a late bloomer and had no dating experience. Sure, she'd always liked some guy or another, but mostly because it seemed like the thing to do.
Chiara chuckled. "Do something like what?"
"You have his number. Message him and see what happens?"
Chiara had been watching Sergio from afar since her first year of high school. Sergio was older and the prototypical bad boy; leather jacket, smoked at recess, bad grades. Margherita had never liked him, but Chiara trying and moving on seemed preferable to Chiara remaining stuck on this Sergio fantasy.
Chiara smirked and pulled out her phone. Sergio's Insta was good: all of his pictures were black and whites, artfully out of focus, mostly of him alone or with different girls, a few with the same couple of guy friends he hung out with all the time.
She inhaled for courage and opened a new direct message on Insta, rather than using his number. Chiara and Marghe typed and deleted a hundred versions of the same direct message, which in the end read something like, "Cool pics, great black and whites to my bright colors..."
Sure enough, all of Chiara's pictures were vivid renderings larger than life: her laughing, duck facing with Marghe, at Happy Pizza with Marco, or playing volleyball, which she loved.
