Beautiful Americans (32 page)

I can’t stay here in Paris.

I need Annabel; I need her protection; I need her smarts and I need her bravery.

I pull
Madame Bovary
out of my pocket, fearful and unsure. There is a picture postcard inside it, one that Jay bought for me in the Louvre gift shop. It’s a self-portrait of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. I flip it over and scrawl a note on the back of it.

I can’t—I
won’t
—look back as I run down the Boulevard de Clichy. In the early hours of Christmas morning, I’m the only one on the street, odd for Paris at any hour of the day. The city is unusually serene. Mine are the only footprints in the freshly fallen snow.

Good Friends Are Hard to Find

I
forget to close my curtains when I fall asleep on Christmas Eve. Bright sunlight seeps into my room early the next morning, and out my window I can see a thick blanket of white snow covers my street from the Square St. Lambert at one end to the Rue de Lecourbe at the other.

Mireille and Paul are somber children, bookish and nerdy. They aren’t the types to greet Christmas at the break of day. Last night, after we all set our shoes out by the fireplace so that
Père Noël
could fill them with gifts and candy, Romy and Jacques took my host brother and sister and me to
la Messe de Minuit
. We did not get back from the midnight service until two, when the fat snowflakes were already coming down. Romy’s parents and extended family joined us at the apartment for
La Reveillon
, a huge Christmas Eve feast that lasted until the very first light was creeping over the horizon. The whole family will most likely sleep in until the early afternoon.

Unable to fall back to sleep, I get up and go to the window. I look out at the snow for a long time. I think about Christmas, about my own family and how far away they are. My mom will have been up all night wrapping gifts. My little brother, Freddie, and my little sister, Heather, will stampede the Christmas tree by 5 A.M., but my dad won’t let them open any presents until he and Mom tell the Christmas story start to finish from the Bible and they’ve all prayed about it. One of the kids will try and open their gifts too fast or out of turn, and my dad will yell at them to slow down and remember that greed is a sin. By the time it’s over and time for church, my mom will be so tense she’ll be dropping things—the pancake batter, the pitcher of orange juice—and my dad will just want to forget the whole holiday and watch the game. My aunts and uncles and cousins will come over to the house for brunch and ask how I’m doing over in Paris and my parents will say just fine. But really they won’t know
what
to say because what kind of kid goes all the way to Paris to live far away from his family when he’s just sixteen years old? What kind of kid doesn’t come back for the holidays and, in truth, wishes he never had to come back at all?

Then I consider an even worse scenario: that the whole family is having the most wonderful, spiritual holiday ever, and it’s all because I wasn’t there to ruin it for everyone with my long hair, my “fruity” clothes (as my dad never ceases to say), and my bad attitude about the Baptist Church, the Bible and all the other accoutrements of Christmas in Germantown? Maybe they finally have what they want—the perfect Christian family.

The radiator clanks inefficiently in the corner of my room, the way it does every morning now that it’s winter. It feels like the toll of a bell, a reminder that life is passing me by. I came to Paris to find myself and to find love. And all I’ve found, by the looks of it, is loneliness.

Pierson hasn’t emailed in over three weeks, too busy with his boyfriend to keep in touch. Sometimes, on a quiet morning like this one, I could wile away hours chatting with him in Amsterdam, comparing notes on our European experiences. Not anymore.

The letter from the Lycée came yesterday morning. I found out that I got a Bon the Final Comp. I chalk up the answers I missed to frittering away so much time with Alex, strolling the Jardin de Tuileries, going out drinking just because we can, seeing French movies without subtitles and ending up missing most of them while I explain the dialogue I was able to catch to Alex in the dark.

I hope Jay got an A on the test. I hope he gets to keep his scholarship for the rest of the year.

Flopping onto my stomach, I flip through the contacts list on my cell phone, thinking maybe I’ll call Olivia, wish her a Merry Christmas. Before I come to her name, though, I stop at Jay’s and look wistfully at his number, wishing I had the balls to call him up.

“Hey, Jay,”
I’d say casually.
“Did you hear that weird thing Alex said in the Lyon McDonald’s? She’s right, I’m gay. What’s more, I have the hots for you like I’ve never wanted anyone before. Want to come over?”

Ha.

While I’m staring at the screen, my phone starts to vibrate with an incoming call. Confused, I see Jay’s name flash at me and I start to try and hang up, thinking I’ve accidentally called him. But no! He’s calling
me
.

“Hey, Jay,” I say casually, or as casually as I can manage under the circumstances. “What’s going on?”

“Zack!” he says. “Oh, man, I’m glad you answered. Listen, I need to talk to you. Can you be at the Parc Monceau in a half hour?”

“At the Parc Monceau?” I ask, perplexed. Neither Jay nor I live up there, in the seventeenth.

“I’ll explain when you get there,” Jay says hurriedly. “Meet me at the Colonnade.”

I dress quickly and carefully, selecting a light blue slim-fitting button down with some loose True Religion jeans and a wide army-print belt. A newsboy cap and my long wool coat will keep me warm, but at the last minute I grab a cashmere scarf Alex bought for me at the Galeries Lafayette. I had thought it was a little too gay to wear to school, but today, I can’t help admiring how nice it looks tied around my neck.

The Colonnade de Naumachie is a half-ring of crumbling stone ruins around a small, murky pond in the northeastern corner of the Parc Monceau. The water’s surface is thick with fallen leaves. Jay, obviously quite distressed, is pacing around the path that runs alongside the ruins when I arrive.

“Hey, man,” I say easily.

“Zack!” He shakes my hand in greeting, the way straight guys always do. “This is going to sound weird, but there’s something I have to tell you.”

I hold my breath, waiting for the words I’ve always wanted to hear.
“I’m gay, too, and I love you, Zack.”

“Look!” Jay hands me a postcard with a portrait of a young man from the nineteenth century. “It’s Ingres! It was slipped under my door this morning.”

I flip over the postcard.

 

Jay can’t keep still. “Do you see that?” he asks me. “Did you read what she wrote?”

I don’t understand.

“PJ’s running away from something,” he says. “She must have had to leave all of a sudden and couldn’t tell anyone why. I called her house; no one answered.”

“Jay, slow down,” I say, still totally mystified. “Is PJ in some sort of trouble?”

“That’s what I am trying to tell you!” Jay practically shouts. “All I know is that when I woke up this morning, I went out to get the paper and found this postcard underneath it. She must have come by my house while we were sleeping. That
means
something, man. It’s got to mean something. I don’t know what yet, but I swear I am going to find out.”

I read over what PJ wrote again.

“So, wait a minute,” I say. “Why did you call me?”

“I need your help, man!” Jay tells me again. “You’re the one kid in this program who’s got a good head on his shoulders. You’ve always been solid to me, man. None of the other guys are going to take me seriously. Everyone will think I’m just hot for PJ and blinded by how much I love her and not thinking straight. But this is serious. I’ve got to find her. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”

“But, Jay,” I say. “I’m not ‘solid.’ You and I aren’t
friends
. I mean, we are,
sort
of. But, the reason I’ve, I mean . . . I
like
you. Because I’m gay. Couldn’t you tell? On the Lyon trip, or since then?”

For the first time since I got to the Lycee, Jay stops moving around. “What are you talking about?” he says, not meanly, but plainly puzzled.

“Remember how I went and sat with you guys at the McDonald’s in Lyon?” I tell him quickly, each syllable of explanation more heart-wrenching to get through than the last. “And Alex was pissed. Couldn’t you tell that she was jealous, when she came over and pulled me away and chewed me out in front of everyone?”

“Alex was chewing you out?” Jay says. He thinks about it. “Oh!” he realizes, coloring red as he puts things together. “I guess I didn’t get it. I figured she just didn’t want you to sit with Sammy and Cory and me because we’re not cool enough for your crowd.”

We both fall silent.

Jay’s innocence, his fundamental goodness, his naïveté about matters of sexual orientation, about the bitchy things Alex would do to embarrass me and put me in my place, is heartening and heartbreaking at the same time. If it is even possible, I’ve fallen for him more than ever, and just at the moment he’s telling me . . . he’s in love with PJ?

“So you like PJ?”

“Oh, man,” Jay says in agreement. He shakes his head, but not to say no—to show there are no words for how much he likes her.

“And does PJ like you?”

“Well,” Jay says, gesturing at the postcard in my hand. “She trusts me. She wrote to me. That’s all I know right now.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Jay continues, “I’m going to withdraw the rest of my scholarship money. I just got the disbursement for next term. I’m going to use it to find PJ.”

“Jay, no! She didn’t even say where she was going! How are you going to find her? She probably just went back to Vermont.”

“I don’t think she did. Did she ever once tell you anything about her family? About missing anything from home?”

“No,” I admit. “But where else would she go if not home?”

“She wouldn’t leave France.” Jay kicks at the snow, already dirty and melting. “There’s something keeping her here, I just know it.”

“You’ve got to help me, Zack,” he says. “Whatever the reason for your friendship, I know you’re a good guy. I don’t care if you’re gay; stuff like that doesn’t bother me. It shouldn’t keep anyone from being friends. Please help me find her.”

I can see Jay is going to do this with me or without me, and as nasty as it is to be this near to him and know that my worst fears are true—that Jay is straight and will never see me the way I see him—I can’t resist how much he needs me right now. My heart feels like it’s being squeezed, like my lungs might actually capsize, at the notion that Jay doesn’t like me at all; had never even thought of me in that way. But the one thing that keeps me from throwing myself into the muddy, freezing pond next to us is that he also didn’t shun me, either. Being gay was no big deal to him. I never thought I could come out to a guy—a guy who was good at sports, running for trains, and playing video games—and that guy would not even blink twice. I can only hope that everyone else I ever come out to is just as cool about it.

“This is ridiculous,” I say finally. “Maybe Olivia knows what’s going on. She lives down the street, let’s go ask her. Before you do anything crazy with your scholarship money.”

“Will she mind if we barge in this early on Christmas morning?”

“No,” I say, totally certain. “Livvy will want to help.”

“Awesome. Let’s go!”

Just then, I get a text from Pierson.

Merry Christmas! It says. Wish you were here!

Hustling toward Olivia’s homestay, I can’t help but relish the feeling of Jay and me together, whatever the reason might be.

You never know, I text back as we wait for a green light at the crosswalk at the Parc’s gates. In the new year, I might very well be.

Joyeaux Noël

Z
ack shrieks bloody murder when he opens my bedroom door first thing on Christmas morning. Thomas and I are still asleep in bed together, our bodies still intertwined from the night before.

“Zack!” I gasp, pulling the sheets up to my neck as I sit up and try to locate my clothes and my senses. Thomas, equally shocked, just stares at Zack.

Zack covers his eyes and goes back out to the hall. “Oh, my God,” he says through the door. “I am so sorry. Elise let me in. I had no idea . . .”

I pull on Thomas’s shirt and some black dance leggings. The shirt comes down to my knees. I toss Thomas his boxers and pants and let Zack back in when we’re both decent. “Shhhh,” I say. “Don’t wake up Mme Rouille!”

“So y’all are . . . a couple?” Zack says, still unable to look at us. He looks like a scared little boy. I glance over at Thomas and then back at Zack.

“I’ve got to go,” Thomas says as he darts out of the room. “I shouldn’t be in here.”

“It’s complicated,” I answer Zack. “What are you doing here? It’s only eight o’clock in the morning. And it’s Christmas!”

All of a sudden, I’m terrified. “It’s Alex,” I guess. “Alex is in trouble. I knew something was the matter when I called her yesterday. Where is she?” I start pulling on my Ugg boots and combing out my bedhead with my fingers.

“No, it’s not Alex,” Zack tells me. “It’s PJ. And Jay. Jay’s actually . . . Jay’s in your living room.”

“What?” I freeze. “Oh, God. You guys have to get out of here. Mme Rouille and Thomas have a train to catch. . . . My family will be here any second. Does Alex know anything about this?”

Zack shrugs. “I don’t think so. Why would she?”

You never know with Alex. I start walking Zack out to the front door.