Decameron: Be Careful Who You Make Fun Of [V/2]
Sometimes, late at night, Gostanza looks up the people who were mean to them in middle school. She gets on Facebook or LinkedIn in private mode and searches the names one by one, as they come to her: The people who made fun of her for being too sad, who called her spoiled. The people who taunted Martuccio for his shabby clothes and his big dreams.
It’s not an exercise in self-improvement, but it still manages to be therapeutic. Life isn’t like a Greek play, with a chorus to react to every twist and triumph in some satisfying way. She’ll never get to see what Stephanie L.’s face would look like if she saw Martuccio now (confident, successful, a respected leader). She’ll never know what Luke P. would have said if he saw where they made it (happy, so happy, and together).
The truth, she knows, is that they probably still wouldn’t say or do anything to give her peace. Her least charitable thought is that they lack the capacity to do so, but in reality they probably would be too distracted by other things to care. She’s found that people who were casually cruel in middle school generally have their own issues to work through as adults. And she knows that they probably had some version of these issues when they were mean and stupid kids, and she can forgive them in an abstract way for all of it.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like to imagine. She looks at Jeff Z’s stodgy work photo, and imagines him dropping a latte on his khaki pants in shock as he sees them in a coffee shop. “Gostanza?!” he sputters, mouth agog. “It’s been ages. How are—“ and at this point he sees Martuccio and freezes. The boy he mocked mercilessly in 7th grade, now relaxed and self-assured, smiling coolly at him. In some versions of the fantasy, Martuccio hands him his own latte and walks out. In others, a fan walks up to him and squeals “you’re him, right? You’re Martuccio?” while Jeff stares, astounded. When she’s feeling particularly colorful, Jeff breaks down in tears and begs both of them to absolve him.
She never does it for too long. The microfissures of past pain close up too quickly, like putting aloe on a sunburn and running out of surface area on your skin. She turns off her phone and lets her eyes start to adjust to the darkness of the room, blinking away the stark blue and white user interface and visions of Lipari Middle. Martuccio is lying next to her in bed, breathing slow and steady. In a second, she’ll be able to see him.
Decameron is a newsletter recounting the 14th Century set of quarantine tales for 2020. Read the original story.
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