Are We There Yet? by David Levithan

add up to no clear reason at all.
    Julia takes his hand. He thinks the subject is finished, but then she asks, “When did that start?”
    She seems so genuinely to want to know the answer that he finds himself talking again. “I guess it was high school,” he says.
    “So when he was your age now?”
    That sounds strange to Elijah, but he guesses it's true. He nods. “About my age. And I was eleven or twelve. Just startingit all, you know. And Danny became a closed door to me. Literally. Wherever he went, the door closed behind him, and that's all I'd see. Like I'd done something. When he'd open the door, when we actually saw him, he was always grouping me with my parents, always saying I was taking their side or scamming to get into their good graces. That I was the good son. But the thing is, he'd been good, too. Then the doors started closing. And it wasn't even like he was doing anything so crazy. I mean, he wasn't shutting himself in his room and smoking up or looking at porn or sneaking in girlfriends. He wasn't hiding anything but himself. And I just didn't get it.”
    “Do you get it now?” Julia asks.
    “I don't know. I don't have a little brother, I guess. It's different at my school. I like having the door open.”
    They have walked past the busier part of town and are now in a streetlight that barely glimmers above the river darkness.
    “He's cute, you know,” Julia says.
    “He is?”
    “In that isn't-doing-what-he-wants-to-be way. A look like that, you just want to help.”
    “In what way?”
    “I don't know,” Julia says. “You just want to tell him it's okay to be himself.”
    “And me?” Elijah asks.
    Julia arches an eyebrow. “You? You're much easier. You're cute in a cute way.”
    “Really?”
    Julia smiles.
    “Really.”
    Elijah slowly feels lucky again.

Danny has deliberately lost his way. He feels it is too much of a defeat to return to the hotel so early. He is suddenly concerned about what the concierge will think.
    So he wanders through Florence, which doesn't feel like Venice at all. He walks down to the Arno, to be by the water. He leans against the railing and stares at the other side, thinking of home. A few minutes later, he is distracted by an eager conversation, spoken in a foreign tongue. Not ten feet from him, a young couple talks in an embrace. (
Young
being seventeen or eighteen … this has become young to Danny, and he hates that.) The boy is not beautiful, merely good-looking, wearing (of all things) a beret. The girl has long hair that shifts every time she laughs.To them, Danny is as real as the river or the city—nice, incidental music behind the conversation. Danny turns away, obtrusive in his own eyes. The couple is taking in all the magic of the moment for themselves. They have left Danny with nothing but scenery and air. And the air is beginning to chill.
    Danny moves away from the river, back to the streets. Paying closer attention, he realizes the packs that pass him are all American. A succession of American collegians—all having the same conversations (“And so I told her to …” “Are you telling me I should …?”“Get out of here!”). They are all attractive, or trying very hard to be attractive. Danny chuckles at this endless parade of semesters abroad. He doesn't feel at all like one of them. He doesn't have their gall or revelry.
    It seems entirely fitting when the fluorescent logo of a 7-Eleven rises before him. Amused, Danny steps in—just to seeif a 7-Eleven in Florence is any different from a 7-Eleven in Connecticut or California. Slurpee is spelled the same in any language, and while some of the beverages are different, the beverage cases still mist if he opens the door for too long. Struck by impulse, Danny tracks down the snack cakes. And indeed, there it is: the all-new, cosmetic-free Miss Jane's Homemade Petite Snack Cake—translated into Italian.
    Danny reads the name aloud, mispronouncing most of the syllables. He grins and