Beautiful Americans (22 page)

It’s so refreshing to be with someone like Jay after spending all term with Alex’s unpredictable mood swings and Olivia’s obsessive anxieties and hang-ups. “You should come and hang out sometime,” he offers suddenly, looking at me with an open, friendly expression that’s impossible to be anything but genuine interest in seeing me, being with me.

I look over to Alex, who’s fallen asleep with her gigantic headphones on. Her discarded copy of
Paris Match
lies forgotten on the table between her and me—her French isn’t good enough to get her through a whole issue. I pick it up, trying to look casual when I’m actually dizzy with pleasure at Jay’s invitation.

“Sure,” I answer as coolly as I can. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

 

Saturday morning, Mlle Vailland wakes us up early and marches us out to the chartered tour bus to see the sights of Lyon today.

The other guys—i.e. the hetero ones, i.e. all of them besides me and maybe,
maybe
Jay—constantly bemoan the paradox that is Mlle Vailland: She’s blonde, stacked, and dresses like she’s working a Pigalle nightclub—and yet is made totally unattractive and even, some say,
repulsive
by the shrill, nasal whine in which she delivers her lectures.

“My dick shrivels as soon as she opens her squawk box,” George remarks to Drew, loud enough for the back half of our tour bus to hear. Alex makes a face.

Mlle Vailland continues her speech unaware of George’s disparaging comments. “The Cathédrale St. Jean-Baptiste-de-Lyon is the seat of the Archbishop of Lyon,” she tells her sleepy, unappreciative audience. “It’s a great example of the French Gothic style . . .”

We climb off the bus, and take the requisite pictures of the church. I think of PJ again. She’d probably study every inch of it, and sketch a frighteningly accurate likeness in her sketchbook instead of taking a photo. PJ is the best artist at the Programme Americaine. My conversation with Jay yesterday really made me feel bad for her and how left out she must feel.

Once Mlle Vailland completes her tour of the cathedral, she lets us wander around by ourselves for a while. Olivia, still a little shaky on her ankle after attempting to dance on it too soon after her sprain, drops to her knees in a pew, saying Hail Marys like she has something
major
to atone for.

Alex and I roll our eyes. Olivia
would
be a Catholic—I knew all that guilt and sense of duty had to come from somewhere.

Listen, I know all about it. All those years at the Christ’s Message Baptist Church didn’t just let me go unscathed, either.

Alex’s mood has been particularly bad on this trip. Shivering as she smoked outside the Italian restaurant where we had our class dinner last night, I asked her about the black coat she was wearing. “What happened to the red Dior one?” I had said. Alex looked like she’d seen the messiah when she found that coat. Either she’d gone back to find out they’d sold the last one, or her credit card trouble had never been sorted out.

“I decided that coat was fug,” Alex snapped. “The color looked like—it
aged
me. It looked like something my mother would wear.” She’d stubbed out her cigarette with her brown riding boots—the same ones she’d been wearing all week, which was unlike Alex to wear anything over and over. Then she flounced back into the restaurant, careful not to look at George, who was cozy at a corner table with the twins and Drew, listening and laughing as Drew was drumming out the beet of a French techno-pop song that all the girls on the program are obsessed with.

Now, in the cathedral gift shop, Alex lifts up a purple rosary, the beads crafted from real roses like they used to do in the olden days, to show me. “We should get this for Livvy,” she says with a snicker. “Since she’s such a good little Catholic girl all the time.”

I look at the price tag. It costs forty-five euros.

“Ha!” I say. “Way too expensive for a gag gift.”

Alex smiles without looking at me. “Hmm,” she says. “I guess you’re right. Let’s go find that nun-in-training before she runs away to a cloister in the hills.”

We find Olivia at an altar in an alcove to the right of the nave, lighting a candle and fervently praying with her eyes closed.

“Look, Liv,” Alex pulls Olivia from her prayers. “We got you a present!” Alex reaches into her pocket and hands Olivia the purple rosary.

Olivia smiles and turns the heavy beads over in her hands.

“Oh, Alex!” she says, touched. “It’s gorgeous. It looks just like the one my grandmother gave me before she died last summer. I’d been wishing lately that I had it with me in Paris. How sweet of you.”

“Well, it seems like you’ve been talking to God more than your best friends the past few days,” Alex jokes sweetly and gives Olivia a hug. “Mme Cuchon is calling us, too. I hate to cut off your conversation with the divine, but the bus is leaving, sister.”

The girls start to hurry over to join the rest of the group leaving through the heavy wooden cathedral doors. I pull Alex back. “What the hell, Alex?” I ask sternly. “Now you’re stealing religious paraphernalia?”

Of course she is. It dawns on me that rich girls like Alex
love
to shoplift. She’s just a thrill-seeker with no other thrills available at the moment.

“Oh, grow up,” she growls at me, tossing my hand back at me. “What, are you jealous I didn’t get anything for
you
?”

I let her walk ahead of me, unwilling to kiss and make up right now.

 

Mme Cuchon takes us next to the Museum of the Resistance, which in its exhibits tells the story of the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation during World War II. Later, everyone is quiet as we walk out of the museum toward the McDonald’s where we are having lunch. Some of the girls, including Olivia, are still wiping tears from their eyes as we line up to order from the counter.

“It’s your turn,” Alex hassles Olivia, who can’t figure out what to get.

“Ummm,” she tries to decide. “I’m not really that hungry.”

“Liv!” Alex sighs in exasperation. “Get on with it! You’re holding up the line.”

Olivia looks behind her, embarrassed. “Oh, sorry,” she says.
“Je voudrais un jus d’orange, s’il vous plaît.”

“Jesus, that’s all you’re having?” Alex says. “Is your ballet school making you anorexic on top of all your other neuroses?”

“Alex!” I scold. “Give it a rest! What’s your deal?”

Alex doesn’t answer me. She mumbles her order to the cashier, who can’t understand her. Unlike usual, Alex doesn’t ask me to help her. She just points at one of the pictures for a Value Meal on the menu placard. “I hate McDonald’s,” she mumbles. “Whose brilliant decision was it to come here?”

I order a chicken sandwich, careful to specify to keep the mayonnaise on the side. The French love affair with mayonnaise is one of those things I’ll never understand.

“Zack, over here!” Jay gestures for me to join him, Sammy, and another guy named Cory at a table after I’ve collected my tray from the cashier. As I plop down next to Jay, I feel my body relax. I was really not looking forward to sitting through a sullen meal with Alex this afternoon.

“Zack,” Alex calls sharply from across the room, where she’s picking at her fries. “We’re sitting over here!”

I shake my head at her, a fake smile plastered over my face.
Just leave me alone, Alex. For a few measly hours. Just this once.

Alex’s eyes widen at the indignity of being ignored. Olivia looks on, ever fearful of Alex’s temper, as Alex hustles over to our table.

“Zack, are you deaf? We’re sitting over
there
,” Alex says, pointing at Olivia who won’t meet our gaze. Olivia looks humiliated, her face still puffy from the emotional museum visit.

“I thought I’d sit with these guys today, Alex,” I say evenly. Jay looks at us, puzzled. This
really
shouldn’t be a big deal. With Alex, however,
everything
is a big deal.

“Oh, I see,” Alex laughs harshly and pulls me roughly out of my seat by the arm. “Excuse me for a second, guys,” she says to Jay and the others.

“Oh I get it,” she hisses at me when we’re a stone’s throw from them. “The boys wanted to play with you for once.”

“Alex! Keep your voice down!” I turn back to look at the guys to see if they heard her. I’d
die
if they did. Literally die.

Jay looks at us from the table, puzzled. “Your food’s getting cold, man!” he calls to me. “You better come eat it before I do. French portions are way too small. I could eat three Value Meals.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” George agrees from the table where he sits with Patty, Tina, and Drew, just like at dinner last night. Alex looks at Jay, and then at George, chowing his burger and ignoring her.

Olivia gets up to throw away her orange juice cup. “You guys, what’s going on? Why aren’t you eating your food? Mme Cuchon’s hot to trot. You should hurry up.”

“Oh, we’re just having some boy trouble,” Alex says, her voice still low but not as low as I want it to be. I look at Jay. There’s no way he missed what she just said.

“Boys like Jay don’t know how to play with boys like you, Zack,” Alex whispers bitingly, her lips inches from my ear. “Jay wouldn’t even know what to
do
with a boy like you. You’re not his type, darling. You never were.”

Big Mouth

G
eorge sat with Patty at the class dinner we went to right after we got to Lyon, but afterward, Patty went to bed early while G George stayed up playing cards in the lounge with Drew and some of the other guys. I sat expectantly in the corner, smoking while Olivia braided my wet hair so that it would be all kinked for today when I woke up, but George didn’t look at me, not once.

When we get back from spending way too long at the Basilica Notre Dame de Fourviere (seriously—why do we have to go to the Notre Dame here when we already spent a whole day at the Notre Dame in Paris? That one was better, anyway), I stomp up to the second-floor dormitories at the state-run youth hostel where we are all staying for the weekend. Changing into my super short track shorts and form-fitting zip-up hoodie, I watch the other girls who’ve been assigned to my dorm room, among them the hideous Patty.

I’ve forgiven George for the night at PJ’s party, the night he ditched me and left with Patty, and I understand if he now feels he can’t shun Patty in public. A girl like Patty would go straight home to Texas crying if George publicly rejected her so soon after she came onto him. I know George, and he’s just being nice to her to keep her from having a breakdown and ruining her transcript by leaving the program early. He’s keeping
me
waiting, which isn’t fair, but this weekend is a big opportunity for us—a chance for us to clear the air, and remove Patty—and all other girls—from the equation, once and for all.

Mme Cuchon lets us have free time all evening, giving us a choice to go see Voltaire performed onstage at the University with her, for which goody-two-shoes Olivia jumps at the chance, or hang out under the auspicious gaze of Mlle Vailland at the hostel.

Seriously, Patty can’t even hold a candle to me. She’s wearing
pearl
earrings. Not glamorous, vintage pearls, but pearls like you’d wear to a sorority sister swear-in or some other heinous Texan tradition. And New Balance running shoes. Talk about aging yourself. Youth is about being young and fabulous, not dressing like a bridge and tunnel secretary.

A big group of them are stretched out on their beds, giving each other the
Cosmo
quiz of the month.

“You should join us, Alex,” Sara-Louise invites me over. I lean over so that she can help me pin back my bangs with the bobby pins I hold out to her.

“Yeah, Alex,” Mary snorts. “I’d love to know which sexual position suits
you
best.” She points at the diagrams printed next to the magazine quiz.

“Very funny, Mary,” I say dryly. “I would, but I can’t stay. I’ve got some things to take care of downstairs.”

It’s true, I do think it sounds fun to listen to punk-rock Mary try and convince Southern belle Sara-Louise of the greatness of Iron Maiden, or watch while Sara-Louise tries to smooth down Mary’s spiky hair with her gigantic can of hairspray. But I have no time for silly games right now.

Patty’s eyes narrow.

“See you guys,” I call cheerily as I bounce out of the room.

Before I go back downstairs, I wander the dark hallway of the youth hostel for a while. It being almost winter, with few backpackers and young school groups traveling around France at this time of year, the dorms are barely half full.

I hear George laughing from downstairs. The boys are sneaking shots of Jager—I saw the handle they brought with them. Soon George will be drunk and horny, and I think I’ve found an empty room—apparently left open accidentally by the cleaning staff—to take him when the time is right.

I just have to keep him from drinking too much
, I think as I secure the lock on the door with one of my bobby pins so that I can get back in later.
All I need is to have a repeat of the night at Sara-Louise’s.

 

I did return the Alexander McQueen dress to PJ, just like Olivia made me promise I would, even though I
really
wanted to keep it. However, admiring myself in it the next day, when I got it back from the cleaners, I had to acknowledge it was too big for me.

PJ led me into the Marquets’ master bedroom so she could return the dress to its rightful place among the other black-tie crinolines and satin sheaths. I whistled.

“Woah,” I said appreciatively. “This is one smoking wardrobe. It’s better than my mom’s!” I surveyed the shelves, crammed full of luxurious fabrics and gorgeous colors.

“Really?” PJ asked.

“No,” I scoffed. “Of course not. Please. My mom works for
Luxe
. Going into her closet is like going to Bergdorf Goodman, but with more vintage.”