The American Girl (11 page)

AUGUST 2, 2015

Video Diary: Session 2

[Quinn sits in her hospital bed, propped against pillows. Her hair is tied back]

Woke in the dark again today. Covered in sweat. So gross!

[Turns camera towards window]

The light coming through the curtains is sad. Know what I mean?

[Turns camera back and leans towards it]

I had this dream. I was in the woods. It was really dark. There were trees all around, crowding me. I was trying to get home, but there was only, uh, this little bit of moonlight. So I was counting the trees going by—one . . . two . . . three . . . But the moon kept moving between the trees, jumping onto the wrong side of me so I couldn't find the way. Anyway . . . weird, right?

It was hard to breathe when I woke up. Like I couldn't move.
The shadows in that corner over there
[points]
kept changing like the moon in my nightmare. I kicked off the covers to try and just . . . breathe. I lay there, just gasping. Till it got cold.

And then—and I was, like, totally nude by this point—I opened my eyes. These two nuns were leaning over me, talking in the strange language, which I now know is French!

“You were having a fit,” said this one nun. “Hyper . . . ventilating.”

But I couldn't move my mouth to say anything.

“Take these,” said the other nun, and pushed two pills between my lips. “You will breathe easier.”

It made me cough so hard I had to lie still for a long time afterwards. Don't know how doing nothing can make you so . . . tired.

[Pause]

And everything . . . my skin . . . my eyes . . . are just so icky, you know? So sensitive to every sound, every smell. The lights burn my eyes. When the nuns bring food in, it makes me want to be sick. Every sound basically bursts my eardrums.

So, um, the police came into my room to chat (they said). The guy in uniform was smiling, young. Said his name was Didier. The man in the panama hat—the one from before—never said who he was, but when he went out of the room, Didier said, “That's Inspector Valentin. He's in charge of your case.”

I was, like, “What happened?” And Didier was all, “They found you wandering in the woods outside of town or whatever. A car hit you! And now they're searching for the people you were staying with. The Blavettes, who happen to be missing.”

So, uh, anyway . . . the therapist already told me those things—the accident, the Blavettes, that I came here for some kind of study abroad thing. It was superweird having strangers explain my life to me.

Not that I don't trust them . . . exactly . . . just, um, when I think about what I can remember, there's, uh, there's nothing there. Just a blank feeling, y'know . . . like staring at a wall.

[Long pause]

I think I cried a bit 'cause I couldn't remember any of it. Made me feel like I was going crazy. Didier was nice. He said amnesia wasn't the same as being crazy. He gave me some tissues. The inspector came back and took out a big notepad, just like the therapist. I told him my memory about the woods, trying to escape, the dark, and the crickets chirping. Feeling scared.

The inspector asked lots of questions—if I remembered my home and my parents, or traveling to France, or what I was doing the night I got lost.

“A disco, maybe,” he asked, “a bit of dancing?” He did a little jiggle then, dancing with his hands.

[Quinn demonstrates]

I burst out laughing. I laughed and laughed. There they were just staring at me. I couldn't help myself! The inspector was all . . . like . . . frowning and stuff. I think he was mad at me, like I wasn't taking it seriously.

“Is there nothing else at all?” he said. “It could help save lives. It is important.”

So, um, I squeezed my eyes shut and thought about the woods and the moon and the trees . . .

It was no good. I told them I felt really bad about it. Didier smiled and said it didn't matter. But if that was true, the inspector wouldn't have asked the same question like a gazillion times! It must matter, mustn't it?

[Long pause]

If I could make myself remember, maybe it would help them find the people they were looking for. I keep closing my eyes and trying to see them—the Blavettes. I was staying in the house with them for weeks, they say. I must have had dinner with them all the time. I close my eyes and try picturing a dinner table and food . . . people around it. But all I see are these, uh, these three featureless faces. Smooth. No noses, eyes, ears, mouths . . . Like moons of just . . . skin . . .

[Quinn stares into the camera]

. . .
pointing at me as if I've done something wrong.

AUGUST 2, 2015

T
he shouting was audible from the hospital reception area and as I walked down the corridor, it grew louder. Some of the nuns were running towards me. When they ducked inside Quinn's room, my stomach plummeted.

Hovering in the doorway, I got a front row view of Quinn's tantrum. It was like a scene from
The Exorcist
. Her face was red and contorted with anger. The mattress and sheets were on the floor. As I went in, a bedpan hit the wall inches from my face and fell with a clatter—thankfully empty. Didier, the poor gendarme assigned to her door, was trying to grab one arm without hurting her, while Sister Eglantine grabbed the other.

Quinn broke away from them both, clawing now at the bare bedsprings, flinging open a drawer with bed linens in it. The fragile bird of yesterday was now wild and fierce and frankly insane, muttering the same words over and over. “Ivan.” Or maybe, “My phone.”
iPhone.
Of course! I crossed to the drawer
I'd rifled through two days before and reached into the plastic tray for the phone, now long since run out of charge. I went to the bed and gave it to Quinn.

She froze midsnarl and dropped the pillow she was shredding. “My phone.” She took it from me, her thumb running over the cracked surface, calm once more.

Sister Eglantine sagged with relief.

“She seems to have access to some very recent memories,” the therapist was saying.

“Really?” I said, feeling both nervous and intrigued. On the one hand it was fantastic that she was remembering more, both for her own sake and for mine. On the other hand, I wondered how long it would be until she tore into me the way she'd torn into that bed.

“Some of her video entries. Well—” his gray eyes flicked nervously behind his glasses “—they are so recent that they are quite disturbing.”

“What sort of thing?” I asked, scratching nervously.

“She remembers the woods, running through them before the accident. She remembers terrible fear. Her brain is still healing, though, and as it stands her memories are more like strong emotions than actual narrative memory.”

“Have you told Inspector Valentin?”

He nodded. “He has spoken to her at some length by now. But really there was nothing concrete for his missing-persons investigations. I have informed him, though, that Quinn's memory is likely to be jolted by objects or photographs . . .”

I peered at Quinn, who sat wrapped around her dead phone,
miles away. The possibilities opened up like some ancient grimoire, as fearful as it was wonderful. I could show her photos of people—Émilie, Noémie, Freddie, Nicole—and watch her reaction. Or would that make her worse? “So you're saying that if I showed her, like, her Instagram or old family photos or something, she might remember more?”

“Yes,” he said. I thought he would leave then, but before he did, he leaned closer to me, his mouth a grim line. “A caution, Miss Perkins. Your niece is evidently traumatized. She will have other symptoms: paranoia, aggression, and, as we've seen, violent behavior. However you decide to help her, you must tread very carefully.”

When I told Bill what had happened, he seemed a bit too interested. I got the uneasy feeling that he was mulling over using it as some sort of angle on the story—as if Quinn were a suspect. I hadn't had a chance to turn off my hidden camera before I ran into Quinn's room and saw what was happening, but I didn't want anyone else to get a look at her in that vulnerable state. I tried to undo my slipup by telling Bill that there was no way he was using any of the hospital scenes. He was so irritated with me I half expected him to have an aggressive episode. I panicked a bit then: all my video automatically uploads to a shared area so that I don't have to risk storing it. I woke up in the early hours sweating and went to remove the file from the index on the site. I was in a cold sweat, convinced I never should have turned the camera on in the first place. But by the time I found the folder where the clip should be, it seemed Bill had already deleted it.

JULY 17, 2015

Blog Entry

I wake up to someone shaking my shoulders.

“Get up,” says the voice.

Dark eyes stare into mine and hands clasp my arms. For a feverish moment, I think Raphael has come to kiss me again. Last night, after we kissed, he lent me his T-shirt to sleep in instead of my soaking-wet one and kissed me good night. I still haven't come down from the high of it. Wanting him closer, I raise my hand to his pale face and stroke his cheek, my thumb lingering on his lower lip as full and soft as a girl's.

The hands push me gently back against the pillow. “Quinn,
qu'est-ce-que tu fais?
” It's Noémie, sounding both anxious and annoyed. “We must go from here. Maman is not well . . . not happy. Raphael has gone off somewhere on his bike and we don't know if he will come back. Did something happen last night?”

“No,” I say, hoping she can't tell from my face that I'm lying. The thought that Raphael has run off after what happened last night is too upsetting to think about.

She shakes me again. “Please, we need to get ready. We are going for lunch at a house of a friend of Maman's.”

“Fine. But seriously stop shaking me. Else I'm gonna puke.”

“I know, but I need this T-shirt . . .” she says, and to my amazement, she lifts the shirt over my head a little roughly, as if she were undressing a naughty child. The fabric rakes my eyes.

“Noémie, stop,” I say, annoyed. “I'll do it myself, but why?”

Noémie rubs her eyes with her hand and I realize she's crying. “You do not understand. It is so bad for her sometimes. Ever since Papa left, we are always in trouble to pay the bills.”

All of a sudden, it clicks. “That's why you joined the exchange program, isn't it? I'm not here so you can improve your English. I'm like some kind of cash cow, paying the bills.” I fling Raphael's shirt on the bed, mad at all of them.

Noémie shrugs wearily. “We have had many exchanges. They are staying always. From Russia, India, China, UK. You are not the first that has come.”

I get up, shaking with anger, wanting to go confront Émilie now. “And I bet this happens every time. It starts out fine and then she gets mad and starts being mean.”

She doesn't say anything, looking past me at the sun outside the window. I notice how pale she is. On the tops of her arms are the faintest bruises, like finger marks, as if someone grabbed her by the arms and shook her.

The emotion drains out of me. I sit down on the bed, feel
ing weak, remembering how Raphael said Noémie hurts herself, tried to kill herself when she was only twelve; how
Maman
can be, you know . . . a bitch
.
Watch out for her.
“I should go home,” I say. “I'm just causing trouble here.”

Noémie looks startled. “Please don't go,” she says fervently. “Maybe it will be fine today. Maman will be happy, I know, and you'll want to stay.”

Her sudden enthusiasm for my staying surprises me. She looks so fragile. My anger fades and I remember that I am topless. I grope for a shirt and pull it on hastily.

“Come on, then, let's go,” I say, even though I feel the bad mojo rising. I take her hand, so thin it feels like a silk glove full of twigs, and we sneak out onto the landing on tiptoes. I almost giggle at this, remembering how Kennedy and I would plan sleepovers at each other's house, then sneak downstairs after our folks were in bed and do a taste test of some of the more exotic drinks in the liquor cabinet. Blue curaçao, crème de menthe. It would be all the more thrilling because of the constant fear of discovery, a punishment—being grounded, or in her case actually being spanked. Yes, back when we were twelve, that's how life was.

That's how life still is for Noémie. That's how scared she is of her mom.

T
HE LUNCH TURNS
out to be with a very proper family friend of the Blavettes, the very British Ms. Stella Birch, a wealthy writer of kinky erotica novels and fan of all things cucumber-related. It is, as the British like to say, fucking awkward, from the moment
we walk in and Stella greets us, to the second course (after the cucumber soup, before the Eton Mess) when something Émilie says makes Noémie burst into tears and run from the table. Émilie makes excuses and follows her out and they're gone awhile.

The atmosphere plummets from medium awkward to mega-awkward until Stella saves the day by unexpectedly breaking out a decanter of single-malt whiskey and a pack of Virginia Slims and offering me both with a kind of freewheeling flappy hand gesture that suggests she doesn't really give a fuck how much I smoke or drink in her house. I can suit myself. And I do. We sit on her immaculate patio getting quietly drunk. I watch her from the corner of my eye, trying to puzzle her out: late thirties, childless, husbandless, fancy-free, her freckled porcelain skin a little roughened by the sun, her auburn curls beginning to silver, her blue eyes tending to look away when she speaks in that crisp British accent, as if she has secrets to keep or sorrows to hide.

“So,” she says, breaking the long silence. “Enjoying life
chez Blavette
?” There's a mischievous twinkle in her eye that tells me she already knows the score.

“Yeah,” I say, looking around nervously and seeing that Émilie's nowhere in sight. “I mean, no. Not exactly. The vibe's kind of—”

“Highly strung?” She inhales a delicate puff of smoke from her Virginia Slim. “I imagine it's a little cramped for Émilie and co., disagreeably shoehorned into the schoolhouse annex. They used to live here, you know, at Mas d'Or.”

I look around at the gleaming marble walls, the golden dragon things and cherubs spewing mineral water, the gleaming pool. “No shit.”

She snorts a polite little laugh. “Yes shit. Marc—Noémie's father—vanished a couple of years ago. The school closed at roughly the same time and they fell into a spot of trouble, moneywise. I took the place off their hands as a matter of fact.”

She says it as if it was a charitable act, but knowing Émilie, I can imagine how it went down. “Um, that was nice of you.”

“Yes, just imagine. For centuries, really, their family had the best of everything. Houses. Vineyards. Land. Most important of all, their status as the greatest family in the region. In two short years, it was gone. Every whit. And then there's you, a young American, brash and nouveau riche. How do you imagine that makes them feel?”

“They probably hate me,” I say. “Émilie probably . . .” I'm just about to finish that thought when an Émilie-shaped shadow falls across the pale stones of the patio. I don't know how long she'd been standing there. I catch a strange look in her eyes, a hurt look, as if whatever she heard peeled away a layer of her and left a wound open to the air.

Without meeting my eye, she says, “Stella, Noémie is quite unwell. It was a delightful dinner but we must now take our leave.”

“Of course, darling. I do hope everything's fine,” says Stella, getting up with marvelous elegance for a drunk girl, “torrid day and all. Do hope everyone pulls 'round. Do hope poor Noémie . . . speak of the devil!”

Noémie stands in the patio doorway like a hollow-eyed ghost from a Japanese horror film. She stares, glazed, as if something terrible has happened in the depths of that mansion between her and Maman, something darker than I can imagine.

We leave in haste, as if rain clouds have gathered over us, although actually the sky's so blue it makes me ache. In the back of the car, Noémie cries silent tears. The dusk swells, darkening the air, and I let my hand creep along the passenger seat and slip inside hers. She holds it tight all the way back to the house. There, a new message awaits me and another video, actually the same video. The woman's face, distorted and terrified. A text that simply says,
Help me.