Beautiful Americans (23 page)

I unfolded a dark green silk-cashmere blend sweater from Tehen and held it up to me. It looked like it would fit perfectly.

“Alex, please!” PJ stopped me. “Enough!”

“Oh, stop it,” I brushed her off. “It was just one dress, one time.”

The antique princess phone next to the Marquets’ bed rang.

“Oh, God, that’s probably them,” PJ groaned. “I’ll be right back. Stay quiet, I don’t want them to know anyone’s here.” She rushed for the ringing phone. “And
don’t
take anything!”

“I won’t,” I smirked. “How many times do I have to tell you?” I just want to try on the Yves St. Laurent sandals I spot on the shoe rack.

Reaching for them, one the sandal’s straps got stuck on a shopping bag shoved behind the rack. “Well, well, well,” I said to myself as I poked around inside the bag, full of silky La Perla lingerie. “How scandalous!”

Mme Marquet seems to have a penchant for—or perhaps it was M. Marquet with the penchant for—negligees in every color, each with a matching thong. PJ’s host mom is a crazy fox! She must have been stocking up for the season. I figured she’d never know if I took a couple. There had to be two dozen sets in there, all with the tags still on! And God knows
I
couldn’t afford to buy sexy new lingerie. Not anymore, anyway.

So I slipped two negligees—there were
dozens
in that shopping bag—into my spacious tote bag, along with the corresponding underwear.

“Alex?” PJ said, coming back into the walk-in closet. “Are you alright? You’re so quiet I thought maybe you’d passed out from couture exhaustion.”

“I’m fine,” I answered her, swinging my tote bag over my shoulder. “I better go. Thanks for understanding about the dress.”

On my way home, I chewed on my cuticles, ruining yet another manicure, worrying about how mad PJ would be if she ever found out. Then I remembered about the Ming vase and grimly comforted myself that once I reminded her of that, she’d keep all my secrets.

 

Tonight, after everyone falls asleep, I rise from my bunk bed as quietly as I possibly can. In the darkness, I slip out of my thermal top and shorts. Removing my white cotton briefs, I stand shivering in the cold for a delicious moment before pulling the white silk negligee over my head. The thong fits perfectly, too.

Having swiped Zack’s hostel keycard from his wallet when we were on the tour bus this morning, I sneak silently into the boys’ dorm, tiptoeing across the cold linoleum floor from bed to bed to find out which one is George.

Thank God he’s on a bottom bunk. In the moonlight, I look down at him. He looks so child-like bundled up in his sleeping bag like that.

Alex
, my mom told me once,
there’s nothing better than the beginning of a relationship—all the promise, the expectation, the goodwill, the lack of resentment and hurt feelings. If you’re lucky,
she also said,
that’s all you’ll remember when it’s over.
I argue with her a bit in my head, my mom who everyone always says looks just like Juliette Binoche.
If you’re lucky
, I want to say back to her,
if you’re
smart
, it won’t ever
be
over.

Pulling my hair out of the pins I used to put it back, I shake it out so it looks full and wild. I then very slowly unzip George’s sleeping bag, opening it just enough so that I can slip inside but not enough so he’ll feel a chill and wake up too suddenly.

Pressing my body against his, I reach down, hoping to wake that part of him up before the rest of him. He moans a tiny bit, stirring awake.

Fear and surprise register in his eyes, but I clap my hand over his mouth before he can blow my cover. I put a strict finger to my lips. He rubs his body against mine as he becomes more and more conscious of what’s happening.

“Am I dreaming?” he whispers. “This is like the best dream I have ever had.”

Less than half an inch from his ear, I whisper softly, “I know a place where we can go.”

George smiles slyly and nods with raised eyebrows. I knew this was a good idea, I just knew it!

I pull him carefully out of bed, leading him toward the door. “Wait thirty seconds,” I instruct him. “Then follow me. Fifth door on your left. The door’s open.” I slip out into the pitch-black hallway and begin to tiptoe toward the empty room I found as I poked around the hostel earlier.

Suddenly, the corridor explodes with fluorescent light.
Please don’t be there.

Oh, God. I almost wish I was a Catholic like Olivia so I would know which saint I needed to pray to right now. The saint of half-naked girls sneaking into an empty dorm with the hottest guy at the Lycée? Surely God will forgive me for
that
.

God might, but my chaperones won’t, not if they see George and put together what I’m up to. I turn around, feeling like sand is slipping between my fingers. Just a moment before, George was following me, everything was going so perfectly . . .

George isn’t behind me. He followed my instructions to wait. Good boy.

“Alex!” Mme Cuchon bellows from one doorway, her red hair set free from its usual chignon and sticking out in clumps around her head.

Mlle Vailland, peeking around the door to the other girls’ dorm, looks just as pissed as Mme Cuchon. “
Qu’est-ce que tu fais?
” she asks, pulling a sweater over her head.

The racket in the hallway draws out the boys from their dorm as I try to charge back into my room. I’m not quick enough for them. The boys congregate at the door hooting and hollering as appreciatively for me as they did yesterday when Jay miraculously jumped onto the moving train.

I catch Zack’s eye. He should look delighted, after how I treated him today, but he just looks like he wants to go back to bed.

“You want some fries with that shake?” Drew jeers after me. I clap my hands over my naked ass and try to hide the bare cheeks as I run past Mme Cuchon into my own dorm.

“I just had to go to the ladies’ room,” I tell Mme Cuchon. “I don’t know what all the big fuss is about.”

“Just go to sleep, Alex,” Mme Cuchon sighs wearily. “And next time, don’t forget to bring your bathrobe when you need to get up in the middle of the night on a class trip.”

At breakfast I’m greeted by catcalls and wolf whistles, as well as scowls from Patty and her ugly twin sister. (
Get it? They’re identical twins, so they’re both ugly. I’m hilarious.
)

I look around at everyone in the hostel’s dining hall, wondering if I should take a bow or run for cover. I decide to hold my head up high.

George looked
so
elated to see me last night. Undeterred, I spot him eating cornflakes with Drew in the back of the cafeteria. Hooking my thumbs in my belt loops, I sashay over to them.

George and Drew have been up early, and are discussing the football stats they were reading on
ESPN.com
this morning. God, can you think of
anything
less compelling to discuss?

“George,” I butt in. “Are you so excited for Le Corbusier?”

“The what?” George and Drew look at me blankly.

“
Sainte-Marie de la Tourette,
” I remind them, emphasizing my comfort with speaking in French by pronouncing every word perfectly. “The monastery we’re going to this morning?” In truth, I’m not much looking forward to the excursion, but I want George to know that I take French culture very seriously—after all, it is in my blood.

“Oh, yeah, the silent monastery,” George remembers. “Think you can handle it?” Supposedly the monastery we’re visiting today on the outskirts of Lyon demands a vow of silence for the monks who live there.

“No way,” Drew answers for me, drumming his fingers lightly on the table and rocking back and forth in his chair. “I’ll bet you ten euros she can’t shut up for even ten minutes inside the monastery.”

Bristling, I glare at Drew. “I’ll take that bet,” I say hotly, deeply incensed by Drew’s characterization of me. I’m
outgoing
, not to mention incredibly
interesting
.
Of course
I have a lot to say.

Drew quits with the drumming and shakes my hand, sealing the deal. “You’ve got to keep quiet from the moment you get off the bus, and then all through the tour until we get back on. There’s no way you’re gonna make it, motor mouth.”

“We’ll just see about that,” I say. I never could resist a challange.

 

“Father Marie-Alain Couterier asked Le Corbusier to design the cloistered
Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette
in 1956,” Mlle Vailland drones over the bus PA system as we drive up the forested hill to Eveux-sur-Abresle, the site of La Tourette not far from Lyon. “Le Corbusier designed many notable buildings around the world, including the United Nations in New York. The monastery is a fine example of late Modernist architecture. Regard it carefully,
mes étudiants
. It’s a masterpiece.”

As we drive up I see a drab concrete building that looks more like an old Williamsburg factory building than a sacred cultural institution. Totally indifferent to the monastery itself, I like the idea of George and Drew sticking by me for the whole tour in order to make sure I’m keeping my end of the bet. With any luck, George and I can sneak away for a few minutes. . . .

I don’t like, however, how Drew keeps drumming on the back of my seat on the bus. I can’t tell him to quit. I can’t say anything at all.

Like I imagined, Drew follows me closely, with an amused George egging him on from the sidelines. Trying to get me to respond, Drew lobs silly questions my way all morning.

“But you wouldn’t know anything about this, would you, Alex? I mean, you’ve had so little contact with French culture before coming to Paris,” Drew teases me after a longwinded speech about the role of the Catholic Church in French life from Mlle Vailland. “Didn’t you say you wished you were less ignorant of French customs?”

Drew knows perfectly well that I am a connoisseur of French customs, and that of anyone on this program I’ve had the most contact with the French. Well, excluding this kid Cory from Denver who has actual French parents—both parents—who live with him at home in the States. Regardless, I am the resident French culture expert at the Programme Americaine.

I resist Drew’s goading, even when he offensively calls the convent “Saint Marie of the Tourette’s syndrome.” What a moron.

The monastery might be wordless for the monks who live there, but of all the visitors here today, I seem to be the only layperson who’s taken a vow of silence.

One challenge that presents itself rather quickly is how to effectively pull George into seclusion without being able to come out and tell him to follow me.

Finally, Mme Cuchon tells us to wander the grounds for a while and to keep out of trouble. She looks right at me when she says that.

Slipping my hand into George’s, I pull him towards a bank of trees near the chapel. Behind the little cement block of a church, I silently unzip my jacket and undo the top few buttons of my slim fitting vintage plaid cowboy shirt. Cocking my head to one side, I invite him to come closer with my best come-hither stare. Inside, I’m trembling.

“Oh, Alex,” George laughs. “You’re a real original.”

He groans a tiny bit as I slip his hand into my demi-cup nude bra. Just as he’s about to kiss me, Drew comes around the chapel, doubling over with laughter at finding us
in flagrante delicto
in what essentially amounts to a churchyard.

“Alex strikes again!” Drew shouts gleefully. “She never quits! She’s the hardest working girl at the Lycée de Monceau.”

I snap the top buttons of my shirt closed as I stomp angrily past him. “You’re an asshole, Drew,” I spit my words at him. Why do these things always seem to happen right when I’m about to make real progress with George? Why do people keep ruining the only thing that will really make me happy here in Paris?

“Ha!” Drew calls at my back. “You owe me ten euros. I knew you’d never make it all morning without talking.”

 

“You hate me.” It’s not a question. Zack hasn’t spoken to me in twenty-four hours. He really, truly must hate my guts. He crosses his arms and stares straight ahead at the empty tracks as we wait for our TGV train back to Paris at the Lyon train station.

“Seriously?” I ask. “You’re really giving me the silent treatment? After all that we’ve been through.”

Zack turns his back to me.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll apologize to the back of your head then. I’m really, really, really sorry that I was such a bitch at the McDonald’s yesterday. I hate me, too.”

No response.

“Come on, Zack! Let’s move on. I hate being in a fight with you,” I plead. Zack taps his foot with annoyance. I can tell he’s about to crack, at least say
something
, with the way he’s fidgeting.

I’m right.

“You don’t get it, do you, Alex? You humiliated me, you talked down to me—” he looks around to make sure no one can hear him. “Why do you think you can talk to me that way? And you did that in front of the guy I like. What if I did that to you?”

“Drew does that to me all day long,” I point out.

Zack’s nostrils flare in rage.

“Okay, okay!” I say. “That was the wrong thing to say.”

“Alex,” Zack whispers. “Jay could have heard you talking about him and me. He might know now that I’m gay. Everyone might know. Can you even comprehend how scary that might be for me? Some of these kids might hate me, just for that. Some of these kids might want to beat me up. And I don’t even know everyone yet. The only one I really know is you, and I don’t know if I want to know you anymore.”

My eyes swell with tears. “Don’t say that,” I beg. “Please don’t say that. We’re so fabulous, you and me. There’s no one else like you here for me. I can’t bear it if you won’t forgive me.”

But why should he? I hadn’t meant to, but I’d done the one thing I’d promised Zack that I wouldn’t do, all the way back the night we went out at Odeon. I hadn’t kept his secret safe.