Chapter four
The head of school is finishing up her usual first-day, post-breakfast, welcome-back speech. Kurt and I are in the back of the courtyard, nestled between two trees pruned like giant lollipops. The air smells faintly of iron. The school looms over us, all grey stone and cascading vines and heavy doors. Our classmates loom before us.
There are twenty-five students per grade here – always one hundred students in total – and it’s difficult to get accepted. You have to have excellent grades, high test scores, and several letters of recommendation. It helps to have connections. Gen got in because Maman knew someone in the administration, I got in because of Gen, and Hattie got in because of me. It’s cliquey like that.
It’s also expensive. You have to come from money to attend.
When my father was only nineteen, he built an overdrive pedal called the Cherry Bomb for guitarists. It was red and revolutionary and turned him from the son of a Nebraskan farmer into a very wealthy man. It’s one of the most copied pedals ever, but musicians still pay top dollar for the original. His company’s name is Martintone, and even though he still tinkers with pedals, as an adult he works mainly as a studio engineer.
“I have one final announcement.” The head’s voice is as poised as her snow-white chignon. She’s American, but she could easily pass for French.
Kurt studies a map on his phone. “I’ve found a better route to the Treehouse.”
“Oh, yeah? After all this time?” I’m scanning the courtyard for Josh. Either he slept in or he’s already skipping. I planned my outfit carefully, because it’s the first day in months when I know I’ll see him. My style tends to be rather feminine, and today I’m wearing a dress patterned with tiny Swiss dots. It has a scoop neck and a short hem, both of which help me look taller, but I’ve added a pair of edgy Parisian heels to keep me from looking too innocent or vanilla. I can’t imagine Josh falling for someone vanilla.
Not that Josh would ever fall for me.
But I wouldn’t want to ruin any chance.
Even though I don’t have a chance.
But just in case I do.
Even though I don’t.
“But I’ll let him tell you in his own words,” the head says, continuing a sentence whose beginning I did not hear. She moves aside, and a short figure with a shaved head steps forward. It’s Nate, our Résidence Director. This is his third year here. He’s also American, but he’s young, working on his doctorate, and known for being lax with the rules yet firm enough to keep us under control. The kind of person that everybody likes.
“Hey, guys.” Nate shifts as if his own skin were the wrong fit. “It’s come to the faculty’s attention—” He glances at the head and changes his story. “It’s come to my attention that the situation in Lambert got a little out of hand last year. I am, of course, referring to the habit of opposite-sex students hanging out in each other’s rooms. As you know, we have a strict policy—”
The student body snickers.
“We have a strict policy that ladies and gentlemen are only allowed to visit each other with their doors propped open.”
“Isla.” Kurt is annoyed. “You’re not looking at my phone.”
I shake my head and nudge him to pay attention. This can’t be good.
“Things will be different this year, upperclassmen. To remind you of the rules—” Nate rubs his head and waits for the gossip to stop. “One. If a member of the opposite sex is in your room, your door must be open. Two. Members of the opposite sex must be gone from your room by nightfall according to the weekday and weekend hours listed in your official school handbook. This means that, three, there will be no spending the night. Are we clear? The consequences to breaking these rules are big, you guys. Detention. Suspension. Expulsion.”
“So, what, you’ll be doing random room checks?” a senior named Mike shouts.
“Yes,” Nate says.
“That’s unconstitutional!” Mike’s sidekick Dave shouts.
“Then it’s a good thing we’re in France.” Nate steps back into the gathered faculty and shoves his hands into his pockets. He’s clearly aggravated by this new hassle in his life. The crowd breaks as abruptly as his announcement, and everyone is griping as we make our way towards first period.
“Maybe it won’t apply to us,” I say, hoping to convince myself. “Nate knows we’re just friends. And shouldn’t there be exemptions for friends who are in no way interested in each other’s bodies?”
Kurt’s mouth grows small and tight. “He didn’t say anything about exemptions.”
Because of our grade difference, our only period together is lunch. I head towards senior English alone and take my usual seat beside the leaded-glass windows. The classroom looks the same – dark wooden trim, empty whiteboards, chairs-attached-to-desks – though it still carries that feeling of summer emptiness.
Where is Josh?
Professeur Cole arrives as she always does, just as the bell is ringing. We have the same professeurs for each subject every year. She’s loud for a teacher, friendly and approachable. “Bonjour à tous.” Professeur Cole smacks down her coffee cup on the podium and looks around. “Good. No new students, no need for an introduction. Ah, pardon.” She pauses. “One empty desk. Who’s missing?”
The door creaks open with her answer.
“Monsieur Wasserstein. Of course the empty desk is yours.” But she winks as he slips into the remaining desk beside the door.
Josh looks tired, but…even tired looks good on him. He’s wearing a dark blue T-shirt with artwork that I don’t recognize, no doubt something obscure from the indie comic world. It fits him well – a bit tightly – and when he reaches for a copy of the syllabus, his sleeve creeps up to reveal the tattoo on his upper right arm.
I love his tattoo.
It’s a skull and crossbones, but it’s whimsical and simple and clean. Clearly his own design. He got it our sophomore year, despite the fact that minors in France are required to have parental approval. Which I seriously doubt he had. Which, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, makes it even sexier. My heart pounds feverishly in my ears. I glance around the room, but the other girls appear to be at ease. Why doesn’t he have the same effect on them that he has on me? Don’t they see him?
Professeur Cole makes us push our desks into a circle. She’s the only teacher here who forces us to look at one another during class. I take my seat again, and – suddenly – Josh’s desk is opposite my own.
My head jerks down. My hair shields my face. I’ll never be able to talk to him about that night in New York.
Halfway through class, the guy beside him asks a question. The temptation is too strong, so I steal the opportunity for another glance. Josh immediately looks up. Our eyes meet, and my cheeks burst into flames. I avert my gaze for the remainder of the hour, but his presence grows larger and larger. I can practically feel it pressing up against me.
Despite the fact that our schedule is, thus far, identical – English, calculus, government – I manage to evade him for the rest of the morning. It helps that he’s skilled at both disappearing between classes and arriving late to them. Even when the next class is literally across the hall. When the bell rings for lunch, it’s comforting to resume Kurt’s company. We take the back staircase, the one less travelled. It’s the Right Way.
“Did you speak to him?” he asks.
My sigh is long and forlorn. “No.”
“Yeah. That sounds like you.”
Kurt launches into something about a freshman in his computer programming class, a girl who is tall and serene and already fluent in several internet languages – totally his type – but I’m only half paying attention. I know it’s dumb. I know there are more important things to think about on a first day back to school, including whatever it is my best friend is saying. But I like Josh so much that I actually feel miserable.
He has yet to make an appearance in the cafeteria, and it’s doubtful that he will now, because I saw him weaving through the crowd in the opposite direction. His friends graduated last year. All of them. If only I were courageous enough to invite him to sit with us at our table. But his friends were so much cooler than us.
Besides, Josh is aloof. Untouchable. We are not.
In the lunch line, Mike Reynard – the senior who was the first to shout during Nate’s speech – proves my point when he slams his tray into Kurt’s spine. A bowl of onion soup splashes its entire contents onto the back of his hoodie.
Mike pretends to look disgusted. “Watch it, retard.”
Kurt stares straight ahead in shock. A slice of baguette covered in melted Gruyère falls from his back to the floor with a splat. A soggy onion noiselessly follows.
My cheeks redden. “Jerk.”
“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Mike says. Even though he did. He’s making fun of my soft voice.
I raise it so that he can hear me. “I said you’re an asshole.”
He smiles, an orthodontic row of unnaturally sharp teeth. “Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it, sweetheart?”
I clench the compass on the end of my necklace. Nothing. I am going to do nothing, and he knows it. Kurt shoves his hands into his hoodie’s pockets, which begin to shake. I know his hands are flapping. He makes a low sound, and I link my arm through his and lead him away, abandoning our food trays. Pretending like I don’t see Mike’s and Dave’s pantomimes or hear their cretinous guffaws.
In the quiet of the hall, Kurt races into the men’s room. I sit on a bench and listen to the tick of a gilded clock. Count the number of pear-shaped crystals on the chandeliers. Tap my heels against the marble floor. Our school is as grand and ostentatious as anything in Paris, but I wish it weren’t filled with such horrible, entitled weasels. And I know I’m just as privileged, but…it feels different when you live on the social ladder’s bottom rung.
Kurt reappears. His hoodie is balled in his arms, wet from scrubbing.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
He’s calm, but he’s still frowning with severe agitation. “Now I can’t wear it until it’s clean.”
“No worries.” I help him shove it into his bag. “First thing after school.”
The lunch line is empty. “I had ze feeling you would return.” The jolly, pot-bellied head chef removes our trays from behind the counter and slides them towards us. “Leek tart for mademoiselle, un croque-monsieur for monsieur.”
I’m grateful for this gesture of kindness. “Merci, Monsieur Boutin.”
“Zat boy iz no good.” He means Mike. “You do not worry about him.”
His concern is simultaneously embarrassing and reassuring. He swipes our meal cards, and then Kurt and I sit at our usual table in the far corner. I glance around. As predicted, Josh isn’t here, which is probably a good thing. But Hattie isn’t here either. Which is probably not.
This morning I saw her eating un mille-feuille and – even though I don’t blame her for wanting to start the day with dessert – I tried to stop her. I thought it might be dusted with powdered almonds, and she’s allergic to almonds. But my sister always does the opposite of whatever anyone wants her to do, even when it’s completely idiotic and potentially life threatening. We’re not supposed to have our phones out at school, so I sneak-text her: ARE YOU ALIVE?!
She doesn’t reply.
The day worsens. In physics, Professeur Wakefield pairs us alphabetically to our lab partner for the year. I get Emily Middlestone, who groans when it’s announced, because she is popular, and I am not. Sophie Vernet is paired with Josh.
I hate Sophie Vernet.
Actually, I’ve never given Sophie Vernet much thought, and she seems nice enough, but that’s the problem.
My last two classes are electives. I’d like to say that I’m taking art history for my own betterment – not so that I’ll have more to hypothetically converse about with Josh – but that would be false. And I’m taking computer science, because it’ll look better on my transcripts than La Vie, the class that I wish I could take. La Vie means “life”, and it’s supposed to teach us basic life skills, but it’s better known as the school’s only goof-off class. I have zero doubt it’s where Josh is currently located.
Professeur Fontaine, the computer science teacher, pauses by my desk while she’s handing out our first homework assignment. Her chin is pointy, and her forehead is huge. She looks like a triangle. “I met your sister this morning.”
I didn’t even know Professeur Fontaine knew me. This school is way too small. I try to keep my voice nonchalant. “Oh, yeah?” When the sister in question is Hattie, whatever follows this statement is generally unpleasant.
“She was in the nurse’s office. Very ill.”
Hattie! I told you so.
Professeur Fontaine assures me that my sister isn’t dying, but she refuses to let me see for myself. When the final bell rings, I shoot a see-you-later text to Kurt, hurry towards the administration wing, push through its extravagantly carved wooden door, and—
My heart seizes.
Josh is slumped on the waiting room couch. His legs are stretched out so far and so low that they’re actually underneath the coffee table. His arms are crossed, but his eyebrows rise – perhaps involuntarily, for someone sitting with such purposeful displeasure – at the sight of me.
My response is another deep, flaming blush. Why can’t I have a normal face? Genetics are so unfair. I hasten towards the desk and ask the receptionist in French about Hattie. Without glancing up, she waves me towards the couch. A bracelet with a monogrammed charm jingles daintily from her wrist.
I can’t move. My stomach is in knots.
“Wait there,” she says, as if I didn’t understand her gesture. Another wave and another jingle.
Move, feet. Come on. Move!
She finally looks at me, more annoyed than concerned. My feet detach, and I plant one in front of the other like a wind-up doll until I’m sitting on the other side of the couch. The small couch. Love seat, really.
Josh is no longer in full recline. He sat up while my back was turned, and now he’s leaning forward with his elbows propped against his knees. He’s staring straight ahead at an oil painting of a haloed Jeanne d’Arc.
It is now officially more awkward to ignore him than to acknowledge his presence. I search for an opener – something elementary – but my throat remains thick and closed. His silence is a confirmation of my fears. That I was a mess in the café, that his help was given in pity, that he wouldn’t actively choose to interact with me and never will again—
Josh clears his throat.
It seems like a good sign. Good. “Good first day?” I ask.
A funny expression crosses his face. Was that a dumb question? Did it make me sound like his mother? Hattie is always accusing me of sounding like Maman.
“I’ve had better.” He nods towards the head of school’s office door.
“Oh.” But then I get it. “Oh! Sorry. I’m here for the nurse, so…I assumed…”
“It’s okay.” And he says it like it is.
I wonder why he was called to her office. Because he skipped her welcome-back speech? Because he was tardy to his classes? It seems harsh to punish him for these things on our first day. And, great, now we’ve been silent for at least twenty seconds.
Tell him. Tell him. Just tell him already!
“Listen,” I blurt. “I’m really embarrassed about last June. I was taking a lot of medication, and I don’t remember much about that night, but I’m pretty sure you paid for my meal so I’d like to pay you back. And I’m sorry. For being weird. And thank you for walking me home. And for paying for my food.”
He waits until I’m done. “It’s okay,” he says again.
And I feel stupid.
But Josh frowns as if he feels stupid, too. He scratches his head, somehow managing to muss his close-cropped hair. “I mean…don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. And you don’t need to pay me back, it was only a few bucks.”
This is the moment. Right here. This is the moment to place a hand on his arm, lean in, and say the least I can do is treat him to a meal in return. Instead, I just think it.
“Are you okay?” Josh asks. And then he makes another face.
It takes me a few seconds to figure it out, but that’s the third time he’s said the word okay. His embarrassment gives me a surge of confidence. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’re here to see the nurse?”
“Oh! No, I’m checking in on my sister. She’s sick.”
He looks confused. “Geneviève?”
I’m thrown. He remembers Gen, and he remembers that we’re related. He knows something about me. I shake my head. “My younger sister, Hattie. It’s her first day.”
He winces. “That makes more sense.”
I can actually see Josh beating himself up in his head. The role reversal is fascinating. Somehow, I’ve made him nervous.
“So…how are your teeth?” he asks. “Everything heal?”
I smile, more to ease his discomfort than my own. “No problems.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.”
But I look away, down at the rug, unable to hold his gaze. The sketchbook. It’s right there. Poking out of his bag. It’s black and it has the blue sticker and it’s definitely the same one. I should ask to see the drawing. I should just…open my mouth and ask. One question. It’s one frigging question!
“You can see your sister now,” the receptionist says.
I startle. “Merci.” I stand hastily and grab my bag. “Good luck,” I tell Josh, but then I’m flustered all over again. Just because it’s him. I scramble down the hall before he can reply. The nurse’s door is open, and Hattie watches me enter from a paper-sheet-covered cot. She tucks her bobbed, choppy hair behind her ears as if preparing for battle.
I tuck my long, wavy hair behind mine. “How do you feel?”
“What are you doing here?” Her question is accusatory.
“I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Are you breathing all right?”
“No, I’m dying, and I only have fifteen minutes to live. I want a pony.”
The nurse enters from an adjacent room. She’s tiny like me but stronger and rounder. “Isla! It’s nice to see you, dearie. Your sister gave us quite the scare. But we shot her with epinephrine, and she’s been resting all day. The swelling in her throat is gone, and her breathing is back to normal.”
“I told you I was fine,” Hattie says.
I want to scream. I ask calmly, “Do Maman and Dad know?”
“They’re on an airplane back to New York, duh.”
My jaw tightens. “Are you going to call them later?”
“Why would I do that when I know you will?”
The nurse steps in. “The school will call your parents tonight.” She glances uneasily between us, no doubt wondering how three sisters who look so alike can be so different. We have the same pale white skin and bright red hair, but Gen is ambitious, Hattie is contrary, and I’m…the quiet one. Who never causes trouble.
“Is she allowed to go back to her room?” I ask.
Hattie fumes. “God, Isla.”
“What?”
“Stop being such a freaking mom!”
Her favourite accusation strikes with unexpected force. The shout reverberates around the room. I’m blinking back tears as I turn to the nurse. “I— I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” But her eyes remain wary. “Hattie, I’m almost done with your paperwork. You’ll be able to leave in just a minute.”
It’s a dismissal for me, too. I rush towards the exit, head ducked, straight past Josh in the waiting room. There’s no doubt that he overheard everything. I’m barrelling through the door when he says in a loud and clear voice, “Your sister’s kind of a bitch, huh?”
I stop.
My love for him quadruples.
When I turn around, he grimaces. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No!” I say it too quickly. “I mean, she is. Thank you,” I add for good measure.
Josh grins. It’s wide and relieved and reveals a rarely seen pair of dimples. I could live inside those dimples for the rest of my life. “Do you, uh…” he says. But I don’t think he had a question to begin with.
I tilt my head.
The head of school’s door opens, and we both jump. She leans out. “Monsieur Wasserstein. Has it already been three months? It’s as if you never left.” But her voice is droll, almost amused. “Come in.”
Josh’s expression falls back into that familiar blankness. He stands slowly and hefts his bag over his shoulder. As he disappears into her office, he gives me one last glance. His face is unreadable. The head of school follows his gaze and discovers me by the exit.
“Isla.” She’s surprised. “Is your sister feeling any better?”
I nod.
“Good. Good,” she says again.
She’s delaying, searching my face for something, but I don’t know what. I hope Josh will be okay. I glance at her office door. When I look back, she’s frowning as if she’s just found trouble.