The American Girl (13 page)

AUGUST 3, 2015

Video Diary: Session 4

[Quinn lies on her bed in fetal position, the sheets pulled over her]

Aunt Molly wheeled me around the hospital grounds today . . . like I was a total invalid. I could've walked around with her, but she wouldn't let me. So I just sat like a baby in a stroller with her sunglasses on, while she smoked and checked her iPhone.

And then, um, on the way back . . . we walked by some trees. White, skinny ones, like the trees in my dreams. They gave me the creeps, those trees. I could remember running through them . . . from them, someone chasing behind me, trying to get away.

[Pause]

Then the car hit. They say that's why I'm in here. Hang on—

[Quinn pokes her head out of the covers and talks to someone off-camera]

“No, no. I'm fine.
Bien.
Yeah, bye.”

[She settles back on the pillows]

So anyhow . . . it's pretty cool hanging out with my aunt. Don't know what the rest of my family are like, but judging by her, I'm guessing pretty laid-back. A hippie family who get high a lot . . . ha ha!

[Quinn h
olds her iPhone up to camera]

Oh yeah, well, I've got new tech to play with now . . . in my hours of boredom. Aunt Molly gave me a charger for this iPhone, though she was too clueless to work out which end of an iPhone is which. As soon as it charged, I, um, well, I kinda wanted her to go, because it gave me butterflies to see this picture come up on the screen.

[She shows the camera an iPhone cover picture of herself with Raphael Blavette]

It's weird actually, because I didn't remember Molly, and when she showed me a photo of my dad, I didn't remember him either. But I remembered the guy in the photo: Raphael. Though maybe that's only because his face is on TV all the time, his and his sister's and his mom's. Whenever the nuns catch me sneaking off to the lobby to watch it, they order me back to bed. I think they don't want me to know the tabloid version of the story or the fact that I'm in the middle of it. My therapist is supposed to guide me through that process step-by-step.

[A long pause as Quinn flips through photos on her iPhone]

So . . . I spent ages lying in bed, doing this, taking a look at what everything was like before the accident. My TV-soaked brain put names to the faces: Raphael, Noémie, Émilie. Looks like we were having an awesome time, on the beach, at the pool, in a nightclub. There was one image that I couldn't have taken, that kind of freaked me out a bit: a screenshot of a woman screaming with a man's hands around her neck, like a still from a horror movie or something.

[She shows the photograph to the camera]

This is freaky, right? Really freaky. Maybe it's from TV, like a film still or something. I took the same picture four times, see? Weird.

So, later, I woke up
[yawns]
. Oh yeah! I, um, I totally remembered something new: Noémie and Raphael in the woods with me. At a party, I think. I remembered those freaky trees, the darkness, and music, loud music shaking the ground under our feet. We were dancing. In the firelight, maybe, or like someone was swinging a flashlight around. I remembered Raphael, you know, not just a face . . . more . . . a feeling.

[She leans back in the pillows and closes her eyes]

And when I close my eyes . . . I can feel the boards creaking under my feet in that house, uh, the Blavette house, I think. I can see myself, creeping past Émilie's door to get to Raphael's room, past Noémie's door, the purple sign hanging on the handle with flowers and French words that roughly translate as
Go Fuck Yourself
. Ha ha! Then Raphael's door with its map of the Paris subway and some kind of pretentious film poster and a sketch of the night sky he made when he was twelve years old and wanted to go
into space on a moon mission and leave all of this behind. Like it's a picture, that's how I remember this moment.

[Pause]

And then . . . I push his door open. God . . . and . . . my stomach just has, like, butterflies, when I see how he's sleeping on his side, his hair falling onto the pillow.

[Quinn stares at her phone]

You see this?

[Shows photo]

He's not in this one, just his rumpled bed. If you look closer
[zooms in]
, there are these two little hearts torn out of pink tissue. Did I put them there? Am I that corny? And there, on his bedside table, there are some tattoo transfers of skulls with roses in their teeth, a little pink tube of Love Hearts candy, a seaside postcard in bad French.
Je t
'
aime.
I love you . . .

I know it's my writing 'cause of all the consent forms I've been signing.
I love you.
Eww, was I really that obsessed?

[Quinn throws herself back on pillows]

I keep pushing my brain, you know, like a really tough workout. I want to remember the rest, but the memories just get tangled up like a nightmare. My mind goes to a dark place and my heartbeat gets so loud. There's water dripping in this nightmare. I call out and, uh, nobody answers. All I know is, this is a place where bad things happen. I'm alone there.

[She hides her face until it's hard to hear her muffled voice]

And there are footsteps, following me.

AUGUST 4, 2015

I
t was just past noon when Marlene piled into my cramped rental, casting a skeptical eye over the cardboard repair work. True to her word, she had engineered a lunch invitation at Mas d'Or and dressed for battle accordingly, very latter-day Bardot in a black plunge-neck dress and tortoiseshell shades. I decided not to dwell on my fashion choice of jean shorts and flip-flops.

“The turnoff is on the left at the cliff edge,” she said, gesturing dramatically. “I don't know why that whole
mas
is not just sliding pompously into the ocean.”

The seascape moved beyond the hot tinderbox of the car in blue and gold ribbons, towards a golden house poised like a dancer on the edge of a cliff.

“It's like a fairy tale castle,” I said, trying to sound suitably impressed.

Marlene rolled her eyes sarcastically, but underneath, her face lit up with the prospect of fresh gossip. “She bought the place from Émilie for
pennies
.”

I pulled the car to a juddering halt in front of the grandiose gates, and got out to press the button. After a moment, the intercom crackled and the gates creaked open.

“They did a
French deal
,” said Marlene significantly when I got back in. “The new owner, she does not buy the house outright or make a mortgage, she places a bet.”

“On the cost of the house?”

“On when the owners will die,” she said in a macabre tone.

“Shut up! Seriously? Isn't that kind of . . . morbid?” I pulled the car up in between a gorgeous E-type Jag and a gleaming vintage Buick, hoping my parking wasn't too obviously insane.

Marlene threw open the door, panting in the heat that swamped the car. “It makes sense to me. The owners receive some pocket monies for their house and then the buyer, she pays them a rent each month. If they live a long time, until one hundred years old, say, the buyer might pay millions, much more than the worth of the house.”

“And if they die quickly, the buyer gets a mansion dirt cheap,” I said, climbing out.

“Exactement.
And now the poor Blavettes have disappeared.” She slipped on her shades and headed for the Grecian temple of a front porch as if she was going to a funeral. I could see where she was going with this one; but the fact that Stella was her social nemesis made it all a little less plausible. She pulled the bell. “At
least it is no longer a moldy old
mas
with the wallpaper on the ceilings and the doors.” The delicate chime echoed down some distant hallway inside the house.

“Wallpaper on the doors?” I eyed the clean neoclassical lines of the porch.

“These old
paysans
like the Blavette family, they love flock wallpaper. They put it everywhere except the floors. When you go in it is like snow blindness with this wallpaper everywhere. Wallpaper blindness.”

I started to laugh, but was interrupted by a solemn butler ushering us into an immaculate foyer with a sweep of stone staircase and minimalist white walls. “Well, Stella may be a murderess,” I whispered, “but she's got fabulous taste.”

We followed the butler through to an elegant living room where there was no television and not a piece of lavender or local art in sight. It was a little spooky in its clinical whiteness. When Stella herself appeared in a tailored orange dress, it seemed as if the house had sent out a human avatar of itself. Her face under its dark chignon and her yoga-toned arms were beautiful in the same cold, white way as Mas d'Or. Together they formed a single sculpted marble organism, which I soon found spoke in the voice of Mary Poppins.

After Marlene introduced us, Stella announced, “We're lunching on the patio, ladies. Follow me.”

Under the wisteria-twined pergola, we sipped Prosecco and chitchatted. All lunch long, the butler served up cold soup that tasted of vinegar, and there seemed no opportunity to move the conversation on from the title of Stella's latest novel and how
the last two were selling. Once or twice, she asked me solicitous questions about Quinn's recovery and I gave vague answers, which she listened to without seeming especially interested. I had given up on discovering anything when, with a little wink to me, Marlene asked how Stella was managing without her best friend.

Stella's reply surprised me. “I'm sure Émilie is fine,” she said with complete confidence.

“Really?” I asked, watching, in the corner of my eye, a lizard crawling in and out of cracks in the wall around the patio. “Seems like the police are taking it seriously.”

She shot me a polite little frown and drained her Prosecco. “Noémie, poor thing, is quite unwell. Anorexic. Bulimic. And Raphael has his troubles, too. Émilie does her best, always, but she'd be the first to admit she's not a natural mother. Perhaps she's whisked them off for one of those American-style interventions.”

“Leaving the exchange student to roam the woods?” I asked, feeling as perturbed as I probably sounded.

“Well,” Stella sighed. “Émilie means well with all these exchanges she takes under her wing, but she overloads herself and sometimes she struggles with the children in her charge—”

“Such as that girl at the school who died,” said Marlene darkly.

“Well, that one wasn't quite Émilie's fault.” Stella gave Marlene an odd look. “It was Marc who took the children on the trip to Les Yeux that day, after all.”

“Les Yeux?” I asked. The name sounded familiar.

Stella turned back to me with a patient smile, holding her glass out for a refill. The butler silently obeyed. “Les Yeux are the local caves—
the eyes
, don't you know—positively the jewel in the crown of the regional heritage foundation. Marc's first love. Oh yes, he was an expert on all things Les Yeux,” she said bitterly. “He adored taking hapless groups of children there, a captive audience for his lectures on local history.”

“And family history,” Marlene added, “don't forget that.”

“Oh yes,” Stella said, sipping fervently, her lips, bereft of rouge, now gleaming white. “The Blavettes
are
the region's history, really, the number one family. As I remember it, there's some dreadful family secret locked deep in those caves he liked terrifying the children with. Sounds as if it worked a treat that day . . .” She let out a manic little giggle and Marlene and I exchanged looks.

“You think the girl from the school died in there?” I asked quietly. I couldn't help thinking of poor Nicole, her death swept under the carpet somehow, forgotten.

“Oh, something like that.” Stella took a most unladylike swig. “There was a big stink, I seem to recall, but Marc's disappearance rather eclipsed it for everyone, y'know. To tell the truth, I'm pretty hazy on the details.”

The butler refilled my glass without me asking him. I pressed it to my mouth, not really wanting to get any drunker, but not wanting to be rude either, despite how crazy my hostess seemed to be. “And what was the deep dark secret hidden in the caves?”

“Oh—” Stella drained her glass “—some hidden chamber of horrors or other they all used to visit. Truly, I can't remember.
I'm a claustrophobe, y'know. Never even let him take me into the first chamber.”

“Perhaps he became lost in there, wandered off, Stella,” Marlene suggested.

“Oh no, not Marc!” Stella retorted with irritation.

“He knew that place like the back of his hand. They all did, those Blavettes. Surprised they didn't all just move in there, really, y'know, when I pried this place from their grip.”

JULY 18, 2015

Blog Entry

I wake up to the sound of what I think is crows calling from the roof, but as I come to, I realize those rackety sounds are someone retching air in the bathroom on the other side of the wall from my bed. I hear Émilie's voice then, soothing, and Noémie sobbing pitifully before being sick again.

I imagine her concave belly lurching with each spasm, her greyhound ribs pressing the cold rim of the bowl, her skin rough with goose pimples, suddenly pale, her lips dry, dark stings of burst capillaries freckling the soft flesh above her eyes. I pull the sheets into me, feeling a coward for not helping her somehow.

Later, Émilie pokes her head around the door and says could I find something to do on my own today, because Noémie has
food poisoning or something and doesn't feel up to going to the glass-blowing thing we had planned.

I peer over the sheets guiltily. “Maybe I could put a video on, cheer her up?”

“No thank you, Quinn,” she says firmly. “I think she really just needs her mom today.” She turns away, her face as closed as my shutters.

I remember what Raphael said about his sister:
She makes herself sick
. And what he said about his mom:
Watch out for her
. Later, as if to underscore the point, I hear their voices rising and sharpening just like the crows on the roof. I'm beginning to get the feeling that they have a pretty toxic relationship—the way some people get trapped in a vortex of blame and fear . . . and love, I guess, just like Mom and Dad did before they split. I put Howlin' Wolf on repeat and turn him up loud.

The heat is too much, pressing in on me. It makes me drowsy. I wake to a hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes and my stomach flips over. It's Raphael. He's back! Back! I didn't scare him off, after all.

He reaches over and pulls the buds out of my ears. “Come with me,” he says.

“Okay.” I get up, shaking the pins and needles from my feet. Dazed, I hunt for flip-flops, lip gloss.

“Quickly,” he beckons, sounding hassled.

When we reach the stairs I see the unfallen tears in his eyes. In my pocket, the iPod I never switched off sings tinny through the earless earbuds.
That spoon, that spoon, that spoonful.

We climb on Raphael's bike and neither of us wears helmets. If my mom were alive and she saw me doing this—if my dad saw me doing this, even . . . Jesus, for once they'd agree on something. Oh God, the thrill of the road unspooling fast as tape, carrying us . . . to where? Raphael was cryptic to say the least. All I know is that we are getting away from the Blavette house and its lightning storms. I don't look at the road or the ruffle of his hair in the wind, or the sky or the sea. I just close my eyes and feel the bike's hum, feel it skim the road so low I know we will crash.

After a while, I open my eyes, startled to be alive. Green is all around us, surreally lush. The bike grumbles itself quiet. We leave it to sleep against a great oak. Raphael takes my hand and rests it on the far side of his hips.

“As a child I always would come here when I wanted to be alone. It is the best place, really.” He jumps up, pulls down a young twig, and rips it from the bough, turning it into a switch to beat the ground with.

I look up to the great stained-glass dome of green leaves and blue sky. “It's beautiful.”

“It's dark,” Raphael whispers in my ear, “and it has many secrets, just like me.”

“Ah, the mystery man!” I laugh.

He frowns and throws the twig away, lets go of my waist. I can see I've offended him and, for a while, follow awkwardly behind, feeling a blush creep along my throat. I look at the ground, the pattern of red and yellow leaves broken with green shoots, white flowers. I wonder what the forest's secrets are. Raphael's, too, for
that matter. Or if either of them is worth the trek up and up over the dry land, the earth's hot pulse on our feet.

Looking up, I find the scenery has shifted, the forest's curtain parting to reveal darkness. Two eyes stare at us, the great black eyes of a double cave. Their appearance is so dramatic, so unexpected, it's more like a scene out of
Twin Peaks
than real life.

I stop dead. “Wow.”

Raphael turns and grins.

“I told you it would be good. We have come to Les Yeux. The Eyes. We call them the Devil's Caves.”