Beautiful Americans (8 page)

“I love this city, too,” Olivia grins. “Zack, come dance with me.”

Olivia slips off the red Louboutins and pulls Zack up to his feet. He twirls her over so that they’re slow dancing next to the older French couple. A few other pairs join them, too, enjoying what will likely be one of the last warm nights of the year. All around us, groups of people of all ages murmur to one another, smoking and happily clinking glasses. Olivia and Zack are elegant, easy dancers. They don’t look a bit out of place.

That’s the beauty of Paris. There’s always room for an impromptu slow dance. You just have to move some of the tables out of the way.

“Hey,” George says quietly, reaching for my cigarette and taking a long drag. “Drew managed to get a joint past airport security for me. Think anyone here will care if we smoke it?”

“Really?” I say, a little scandalized. “Wow.” I’m not generally a huge fan of pot, but I will definitely smoke a joint right now if it means I can slip away with George. “Let’s go into that little alley over there.”

We leave George’s Blackberry with Drew so he can call mine if he needs to. As I press my number into his contacts list, my pulse quickens.

Leaned up against the side of the building in the dark, we take a few hits of the joint. The weed hits me all at once. Everything suddenly feels slower, more deliberate.

George puts his hand on my back, rubbing the soft fabric of my dress between his fingers. “This is nice,” he says quietly.

“My dress?” I ask, my voice thick.

“Well, that, too,” he says. “But I meant . . . I meant this.” He gestures around.

I look at the dumpster we are standing next to. It stinks like garbage. And urine.

Past the dumpster, though, is the tiny Rue de Barres, and beyond that, the lustrous butte of the back of the St. Gervais church, one of the oldest churches in Paris. That’s what he’s referring to—the gorgeousness of Paris, the way romance and mystery creep into every darkened alleyway.

“My mom took me to a concert there once,” I tell him. “Like, last year. It was a harpsa . . . harpsichordian . . .
harpsichordist
.” Why on earth is that word so fricking hard to remember right now?

George wheezes like this is the funniest thing in the world. Suddenly, it is. It’s hysterical, actually. “She . . . she took you to what?”

I can’t stop laughing, either. “She really wanted to see it! She talked about it all day. Don’t laugh!” I say, busting up.

“You stop laughing!” George says. “You’re the one cracking up!” He leans into me a little. “Did you enjoy the concert? Did you like the harpsa . . . harpsa . . . whatever it was called?”

I swat at him. “I
did
. I enjoy high culture very, very much.” With that, I take a long, serious puff of the joint. This makes George laugh even harder.

“Whatever,” he laughs. “You totally fell asleep.”

I double over in hysterics because he’s right. “I did!” I snort. “How did you know?” Neither of us can stand up straight after that we’re both laughing too hard and too stoned. George pulls me over to him, and just hugs me while we stand there shaking in silent fits of hilarity. I reciprocally put my arms around him, wondering if he’ll kiss me if I look up at him at just the right moment.

Suddenly, I feel the insistent buzz of my Blackberry going off in my bag.

Make it stop,
I think in disbelief.
Rewind back to the part where George and I were about to fall in love.

George throws down the rest of the joint and stomps it out forcefully under his loafer. He pushes me in the opposite direction than we came, toward St. Gervais. “Run, Alex!” he grunts at me. I don’t even answer my Blackberry, I just
go
.

My stomach lurches as I force my legs to move. If I learned one thing from all my escapades last year, it should have been to eat before you party, but I of course skipped dinner so I could spend more time diffusing my hair properly before going out.

We circle the church and find ourselves on the empty, darkened plaza facing the back of the Hotel de Ville, Paris’s City Hall.

“Call your Blackberry,” I instruct. “Find out what happened. Should we go back?”

George dials and listens for a second, but Drew doesn’t answer.

I’m busy trying not to throw up and still look hot and alluring. Let me tell you, it is no easy task. “Come on, babe,” George gestures at me. Despite him holding me for so long before, we don’t touch as we walk swiftly down the Rue du Pont and toward the café.

“Shit!” George curses quietly. “What did they do?” There are cops surrounding the table we’d all been sitting at. There are at least four of them, each of them looking sternly at Drew, PJ, Olivia, and Zack, who are staring at the ground. The record player has been turned off, and other patrons are getting up to leave in the commotion. George and I hang back, unsure whether to wait or escape.

“This isn’t a playground,” I hear one of the cops say to PJ in harsh French. “You kids are causing a lot of trouble here tonight. This is a quiet neighborhood, not your personal
discothèque
!”

“Where did the others go? The ones with the drugs?” another cop demands.

“
Non, monsieurs, vous vous trompez,
” a tinkling, melodic voice says in French. It’s PJ!

PJ slips out of her old oversize cardigan and stands up to her full six feet, revealing just a thin white camisole and a wrap skirt. Her hair glows in the candlelight, spilling down her shoulders in messy waves.

She gives the cops surrounding the table an expansive, open smile. I hold my breath. Even I knew Mme Cuchon was serious when she told us drugs were totally off limits in this program. If the cops saw us in the alley, George and I will be booted out of the Lycée for sure!

One of the cops leans in to make his point. “In France, there are serious punishments for troublemaking kids. That’s a promise.”

“Oh, don’t be silly! Drugs?” PJ exclaims, wrinkling her nose like a supermodel bunny rabbit. She’s acting like she has known these cops since they all went on family picnics together as young children. “Our friends? They’ve just been to get some
chewing gum
. See? Here they are now. Alex,
cherie
, show them the gum you just bought.” She reaches out to me, pulling me close to her and keeping her slender arm firmly around my shoulders.

As a dedicated smoker who is also dedicated to having fresh breath, I
always
have several packs of gum on me at any given time. Anyone who knows me at all knows that, even PJ. I reach into my tote bag and pull out an unopened pack of Orbit.

“Yup,” I say stupidly, hearing my own voice tremble. “I’ve got the gum. They sent me for gum. And I went and got it. And my friend here”—I cock my thumb at George, who is standing frozen to my right—“he came with me, because he’s so nice like that.” The cops’ unyielding expressions remain unchanged. We’re
so
busted. I close my eyes and start rehearsing how I am going to spin this to my mom. After everything that happened last year, she is
not
going to look on this fondly.

PJ takes the gum from me and pops a piece into her luscious mouth. “Hmmm, great flavor, Alex. Want to try some?” she offers the cops. “It’s delicious.”

They watch her mouth as she chews. Then they look at each other, their shoulders relaxing a bit.

Each cop takes a piece.

I shove a big wad into my own mouth to mask any lingering pot smoke smell. We are all standing there, noisily chomping on the gum. George, Olivia, Drew, and Zack are all staring at PJ and me, knowing all of our fates at the Lycée rest on our ability to charm these cops silly. If we screw this up, Olivia can kiss her scholarship goodbye, Zack will get sent back to the Bible-bangers in Tennessee, and George and Drew will never speak to me again. I pray PJ knows what she’s doing.

“Now, is there anything else you’d like to know about me? I mean, my friends and I?” PJ titters attractively. I half expect her to ask one of them to sit in her lap next.

She purses her full lips together. “
Monsieurs
, we are
so
sorry to have caused any trouble.”

As if transfixed, the cops shrug and shift their weight. They can’t seem to figure out what they are doing with us.

“
Non, non,
” one of the cops says with a small smile. One of the other cops takes a long look at me, and then at PJ—quick-witted, beautiful PJ—and shakes his head. Still nestled in the crook of her thin, pale arm, I give the cops my most innocent look.

“Go home now, kids,” another cop says with a flick of his wrist. “Don’t forget to pay your bill on your way out.”

The cops saunter away. I hear one of them say something like, “What a shame the girls were so young!” and all of them laugh.
Blech
.

PJ drops her arm from around me and puts her cardigan back on.

“PJ! You are incredible!” Olivia squeals once the cops are out of earshot. She does a triumphant leap into the air and hugs herself. “Wow!”

“Seriously, great job—those cops didn’t know what hit them,” Drew agrees. “That was pure witchcraft.”

Zack, his brow dripping with nervous sweat, just nods emphatically and pulls at the damp collar of his button-down shirt.

George sighs with dramatic gratitude, staggering comically toward PJ with outstretched arms. “Oh, man, that was close! You really saved our hides there, Miss PJ. I thought I was Boston-bound for sure. How can I ever repay you?”

I feel the vomit creep into my throat when he actually puts his arms around her in a grateful hug. It’s a little
too
friendly for my comfort.

“Yeah, thanks,” I say quietly.
Now I’m going to have to be eternally grateful to you, you freak!

PJ just shrugs. “This kind of thing has to stop happening to me,” she says.

“What, are you in the business of saving everyone’s ass all the time?” George gibes, still standing right next to me.

“With varying success rates,” PJ comments. Everyone laughs. Everyone but me.

OCTOBER

Keeping the Faith

“
D
o your host parents actually talk to you in French, like they’re supposed to?” Zack asks us over lunch at Café Dumont, the Ternes café where he and Alex can often be found during lunch and after school.

The French kids all go home for lunch. (Yet another reason that none of us has really gotten the chance to know them . . . that and they avoid us like our lack of worldliness will somehow rub off on them.) Some American guys, like Jay and some of his friends, and George and Drew and their hangers-on, eat at this fast-food kebab place on the main drag, Boulevard de Courcelles. The rest of us split ourselves up between one of a few other dimly-lit cafés near the Parc Monceau.

Most Americans who live in this ritzy neighborhood near our school (like me) go home, too, but today I’m in the mood for a Parisian café. I like this one best because it makes every day feel like a cozy rainy day— the café is dark and moody, with small candles in red votives, and the air is heavy with steam from hot drinks and the delectable smell of the roast chickens rotating in the rotisserie behind the bar. Today is one of those days when I just want to lounge around and soak up the atmosphere. Paris must be rubbing off on me.

“Mme Rouille barely talks to me at all!” I groan. “And when she does, it is always in English. How am I ever supposed to learn how to speak naturally if we only speak French with our teachers and other Americans?”

The waitress has long since cleared our dishes away, and the three of us sprawl out across the table, lazily looking over our French textbooks. What we
should
be doing is practicing the pluperfect tense, since it’s one of those concepts that none of us seem to be able to get a grasp on. What we’re really doing is practicing the age-old art of French lethargy.

“I know. It’s so frustrating,” Zack says. “Finally, I just flat-out asked them to speak to me only in French.” Zack, like Alex, lives with a French family who insists on family meals every night. Both Alex and Zack have younger siblings at their homestays that they couldn’t care less about, but Zack at least knows their names. Alex calls her little host brother “
le Morceau de Merde
”—the Piece of Shit.

“My family is all trolls,” Alex tells Zack and me in a bored voice. “I can’t figure out
what
language they’re speaking. English? French? Who knows? They all just mindlessly mumble at me.” She sips from her frothy café crème.

“Alex, you should try to get to know them better,” I urge her. “That’s the whole reason you’re here. To see how the French live!”

“Honey, I
know
how the French live,” Alex says exasperatedly. “I
am
one. My dad was raised here. My mom spent the most important years of her life here and now practices the most Francophile lifestyle possible in New York. Remember?”

Zack giggles. “Pretty soon, Alex, we’re
all
going to feel like we’re as French as you are. I myself can barely remember what real barbeque tastes like—I don’t even know if I can call myself a Tennessean anymore!”

“I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that,” Alex teases snottily. “I’m really going to miss it when you stop talking about fried okra and Kenney Chesney—it’s been so thrilling to hear all about your life back on the farm!” The two of them snicker at each other affectionately, reminding me once again how uncanny it is that they’ve only known each other a few weeks. Both Alex and Zack seem to have settled into Paris so easily. They hardly ever talk about home except to make fun of something cheesy Americans do for fun.

But me? I never stop thinking about what’s going on in California—if Vince is liking school, how my mom is holding up without me, and
especially
about Brian. I still haven’t told anyone about my brother, and how horrible it feels to be so far away from him. I want to, but I don’t want to bring everyone down, or worse, make people feel sorry for me. Like right now—I could tell Alex and Zack, since they are supposed to be these great new friends of mine, but it would just kill the good mood they are in. They’d never understand how unresponsive Brian is over the phone if I try and get my mom to put him on when I call, and how Brian doesn’t actually comprehend what a computer is for just yet. One day, he will, but not while I’m in Paris. And I miss talking to him! I miss the way he lets me in. I miss our special bond.