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walls. It wasn’t just fear of the future that plagued me, but terror about what could befall me at any moment. Now that I knew how much of the picture I couldn’t see, I felt skittish all the time. Was there someone silently standing at my side? A car speeding through my ever-widening blind spot? Fueling my fear were the accidents that happened constantly—banging my forehead into an open cabinet, twisting my ankle when I missed a stair.
    I wasn’t just scared, but mad as hell. I felt victimized at every turn, like I was perpetually getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Why didn’t Rubenesque Ruby get struck blind instead of me? Now Ruby and all the other shiny, happy people would get to realize their dreams and I’d end up on government aid in an assisted-living facility at the ripe old age of thirty, maybe forty if I was lucky. I bathed in self-pity, and the longer I soaked in it, the more parched I became of positive feeling. It’s no wonder I had no friends.
    One morning in August, I woke to the sound of the phone ringing in the dorm room I shared with another apprentice. On the other end was my sister Marisa calling from Italy where she was spending the summer with Aunt Rita, my mother’s sister. I heard the clatter of cutlery being laid, and Italian mothers calling across the piazza for their kids to come in for lunch. It sounded warm and lively and inviting. I felt like the Little Match Girl slowly freezing to death on the wrong side of the window, watching other people have a perfect holiday.
    “You should get out of there and come to Italy,” my sister said. “Aunt Rita offered to pay for your flight.”
    “It’s not that easy.” I sighed. “I’m locked into this.”
    I’d been raised with industrial-strength stick-to-it-ness. I’d never so much as quit a cup of tea halfway through drinking it.
    Later that day, I stood in the wings ready to dress another actress for her moment in the spotlight, listening to the dialogue of the Arthur Miller play onstage and daydreaming about Italy. I hadn’t been since I was a kid, when my grandmother took me to Priverno, her hometown near Rome. For years, I’d wanted to go back, travel the country, see the canals of Venice, but it was always too expensive or my summer was too booked with internships and part-time jobs.
    Then I remembered I was going blind. If I waited, I might never see Venice.
    In the middle of my reverie, I heard the line of dialogue that signaled it was almost time for the costume change I was helping with.
    “You can only hope that you live with the right regrets,” intoned the lead actor.
    I’d heard that line every night for weeks. But tonight, it sailed right through the clutter of my mind and struck bull’s eye.
    I’m not the sort of deep-thinking person who often has revelations but waiting in the wings, I had a Big-Bang-sized epiphany.
    Carpe Fucking Diem .
    Taking the safe, sensible route—finishing my tour of duty in this place I hated—was the wrong regret.
    I’d tell the program director the next day that my great-grandmother was ill and I had to leave immediately for Italy. It was a lie and I didn’t care. Let Ruby take my place hammering nails; she had a whole lifetime to travel and naturally curly hair to boot.
    I, however, would throw caution to the wind. The way my father had attempted to when I was eleven and he pulled into our driveway on a Honda Nighthawk motorcycle.
    “Oooooh,” I’d shrieked, running to meet him at the front door, “Mommy’s gonna kill you.”
    He hadn’t returned that bike, like I thought he would. No, the Nighthawk had stayed; it just stayed parked in our garage. There was only one time that he took the bike out for a proper spin, crossing borough lines.
    “I’m going to drive my motorcycle to work today,” he’d remarked at breakfast.
    “Over my dead body,” my mother had remarked back.
    They went back and forth while eating Raisin Bran, and finally reached a compromise. My dad