The American Girl (5 page)

JULY 13, 2015

Blog Entry

Today we went to the pool. Again. Noémie took her bike and I borrowed her brother Raphael's. He's been studying film in Paris at the Sorbonne, so doesn't really live in the house anymore, but is coming home for the summer. He's kind of the local hero in St. Roch, the all-star football player, the guy that got the scholarship. Some days he's all you hear about, especially from Noémie's mom, who's fond of getting the family albums out. Noémie must get sick of it—I mean, I've only been here a few months and I'm already a bit sick of hearing how amazing and handsome and smart and athletic he is. At the same time, after looking at about a million photos of him over the last few months, I'm not sure I don't have a bit of a crush on him. After all, I practically know him already.

So I borrowed the all-star's bike and we cycled along the
dusty country road dodging Vespas and farm trucks, the boy saddle punching my girl butt with each pedal stroke. And then we were there: the pool, with its rusted green fence, its siren song of blue, its golden boy flesh pulling us through the rose-tangled gates.

In St. Roch, the pool is the place to be. There aren't many teens in this town, maybe twenty or so around my age and a little bit older. There aren't any jobs either: some really big scandal happened years ago from what I've heard, and it almost shut the place down. Now it's the southern French equivalent of one of those American ghost towns that used to rely on coal mining and then the mine shut and the people left. You might think that in a rural town surrounded by idyllic beaches, teens would tan there every day, but no jobs means no transport. You need a car to get to the beach and almost no one has one.

Plus, no adults go to the pool, so it's like this secret clubhouse where kids can smoke and get up to mischief. When I saw the photos on the study abroad site, the town seemed so picturesque and “so French.” Over the past few months, I've come to find those advertising-perfect images funny in a sad way: they're such blatant lies. In reality, this place is dying, everything around fading and breaking as residents abandon it and tourists find better places to go.

The kids I've met here feel trapped, as if they'll never go anywhere else or find anything better to do, so they make things worse by vandalizing everything, even the pool, where, unless it's raining, they all come after lunch and lounge on the burned grass around that little rectangle of blue. Surrounded by the
looping hate speech of their graffiti, they smoke and gossip and flirt and play guitar, and they swim, dive, dunk, splash, all day every day, all summer long. I guess it's okay, if you're good at flirting and swimming and tanning, if you're not feeling totally paranoid about who's stalking you.

(I know, I know. You all said to chill out and relax, and if it happens again to tell an adult. But wouldn't you be just a *tiny* bit freaked?)

We strolled in, not greeting anyone too enthusiastically, not letting our eyes fix on anyone beautiful, boy or girl. To me, the one outsider, they all look so at home there—as if they sprang up in the night, flesh fresh from the wrapper. Twenty pairs of fake Ray-Bans turning to watch us walk in before losing interest.

This early, the pool is empty except for two acid green noodles and a busted pink inflatable raft. We reach our usual spot under the olive tree and kick off our flip-flops, shake out our towels, ditch the baguettes Émilie made us take in the nearest bin. “Get Lucky” is playing on somebody's minispeakers as we strip off, stretch out, already breaking out the tanning oil
.
As usual, a knot of sinewy guys is looking our way, their eyes popping like the Photoshopped colors of a soda ad because their skin is so brown. They're hot, but all I can think is:
Is it one of them?

One is offering his hands up to the service of our un-sun-creamed backs, grinning straight-white-toothed, eager and horny. This is Noémie's doing, not mine. Berated at home and by her own account hated at school, she is Queen Bee at the pool. And it's not hard to see why: she totally has that French chick thing going on: the smooth tanned skin, cool, short-cropped
hair, beestings of tits (French titties, I call them). Lounging by the pool in her bikini, smoking American Spirit and shooting the shit, she's all
sang-froid
.

The guy with the hands—Freddie is his name—takes pride in his work. It's a weird feeling, but not a bad one. When he undoes my bikini top, though, and gestures that I should turn over so he can do my front, I shake my head, feel my face flush. Noémie rolls her eyes at me as if to say,
Prude
, or whatever the French is for that, and beckons him over. I want to tell him to tuck his tongue back in. He's her flunky. Neither of us would ever date him.

After an hour of sunbathing—and you could set your watch by this—Noémie says, “Let's play the game.”

So we obey her, playing the daily game of dunking each other in the pool, seeing who can hold their breath the longest. The St. Roch boys
love
these games of dunking. Me, not so much. But Noémie eggs me on, shooting me a disappointed look every time I try to drift towards the sidelines. She's a pro at the old peer pressure.

I'm holding my own until Freddie comes up behind me and dunks me hard and for a long, long time. I start panicking. Chlorine burns my throat and eyes. Starts stripping out my sinuses.

Alone down there where no one can hear me scream, I flail, kicking his leg, clawing his arms. I start to think—no, I start to
know
I am drowning.

JULY 31, 2015

T
he only things taken were my notes on the case, though actually, it was that choice that worried me. Why would anyone break into a car, not to steal it, not even to take the GPS—still sitting brazenly on the dash—but to take my lousy papers? I thought about the noise in the house, the headlights following me home. Maybe whoever was behind me on the road had followed me here.

“It looks to me that someone has cracked up your car,” said a French-accented voice at my elbow. “Have they also taken your things?”

I turned around, poised to take a swing, and saw a man in a panama hat and a crisp white suit, smoking a purple Sobranie and looking pretty pleased with himself for his observation.

“Computer printouts,” I said, “which were worth nothing. It's more just . . .”

“. . . stressing, I know,” he said, his eyes twinkling sympa
thetically. “There have been a few break-ins around here. The hotel should have warned you.”

“That would've been good,” I said, slamming the door. It bounced open again.

“It would seem the locking parts are broken,” said the man. “I may have something that will be of use in this.”

“I'm fine, really,” I said.

“It's not a problem,” he said, lifting his hat briefly to reveal thinning blond curls.

It seemed rude to say no twice. He walked a few feet, opened the trunk of a green Figaro, and pulled out some cardboard and gaffer tape.
How convenient
, I thought. It just so happened that he was out here when I found my car and that he had the very things I need to fix it. I squinted at the Figaro, trying to see if the headlights looked familiar from the road to St. Roch. I was still a bit bleary from the Jack Daniel's and it was hard to tell. I got my keys ready between my fingers to be on the safe side.

When he came back, grinning with DIY man-pride, I said, “So how come you were here in the parking lot? It's nearly three
A
.
M
.”

By way of answer, he took a drag of his cigarette. “We are both working on catching the lung cancer, I think. Here . . .” He handed me the tape.

I accepted it, not completely convinced, and bit off a length of silver tape. Together, we forced the door to stay closed with one of the most haphazard repair jobs of all time.

“Looks like a pirate with a shitty eye patch,” I said.

“Of course it is.” He smiled glassily, looking like he hadn't a clue what I was saying. “Are you staying at the Napoléon?”

I nodded. “You, too?”

Mr. Panama Hat smiled charmingly with one side of his mouth, and I felt surer than ever that he was either my stalker or a journalistic rival. Still, he seemed harmless enough for the moment, so I waited while he put his tape back, and walked back to the Napoléon with him. A few steps from the door, the rain started coming down hard. Before I knew it, my knight in shining armor was sweeping his coat off, holding it out to protect me like something out of a Robert Doisneau photograph.

When we were safely inside the doorway, he laid his hand on my arm. “I can see you are shaking.” With a little bow he pulled the door open for me.

“I'm fine,” I snapped. Chivalry frightens me.

“Really? It might do you good to drink one more Jack Daniel's for the road, to steady your nerves?” He smiled his charming smile, his face moving too close to mine.

“What do you mean ‘one more'? How do you know what I've been drinking?”

“You've been in the bar for a while,” he said with a laugh. “I did see you before, and now you are weaving a little. It is part of the reason I helped you.”

“Well, don't,” I said. “I can hold my drink and I don't need some two-bit Jean-Paul Belmondo impersonator holding doors open for me.”

I strode through the door to the old-fashioned brass elevator and jackhammered the button. It was stuck.

Monsieur Tremblé, the concierge, walked up. “All is well, mademoiselle?”

“No,” I said. “That gentleman over there has been bothering me. He—”

“That gentleman—” Tremblé gently released the button “—is Monsieur Valentin. I'm sure he would only be meaning to help.”

The elevator arrived and he pulled open the delicate birdcage.

“Thank you, Tremblé.” I smiled weakly and stepped inside, thinking that I knew that name from somewhere.

Monsieur Valentin. Inspector Valentin. I'd just missed a golden opportunity to have a drink with the detective in charge of the case. I could have drunk him under the table, charmed him, pumped him for information, and captured it all on video. Instead, I verbally kneed him in the balls. Typical.

JULY 13, 2015

Blog Entry

Hands burrow into my armpits, close on my upper arms, strong as a vise, pressing into me. Hurting me so I want to yell. But I can't because my mouth is full of water, my lungs burning, chest, flesh heavy as lead. The hands squeeze me, wrench my flesh, and I am fighting tooth and nail, fighting for all I am worth, sucking the water deeper and deeper, my nose, my throat on fire.

And then the hands haul me to land and I flop on the concrete oven shelf at the side of the pool, its grit raking my flesh, then I lie still, weirdly still, no longer fighting at all.

The field of my bright-light-spotted burning blur vision darkens. Something is over me, on me, blocking out the sun. Someone. Vaguely, I see a tanned face, dark eyes, lips. Then the lips are on mine, blowing, and strong hands pump my ribs. I cough, splutter up water, choking, wheezing for air. Lips press
mine again, soft and hot against my freezing lips, breathing harsh life into me. I cough harder. More water comes out. The man moves, turns me on my side. It strikes me that he is fully clothed in black and I have the surreal thought that the ghost of Johnny Cash just saved me from drowning.

My ears pop and the world shrieks again. Voices crash against my eardrums, angry, cacophonous. Waves of sound, argument, some angry exchange in French happening over my head that I am way too out of it to translate. The squall of words ends as suddenly as it started. The hands are on me again, under me, lifting my waterlogged floppy fish body. Johnny Cash cradles me against his black-clad chest. I blink and stare up like a baby. His face is all I can see and he is beautiful . . . and familiar somehow.

He frowns down at me and I hear my voice all high and dreamy. “Am I dead?” My own voice betraying me.

He grins and says, “That's terrible.”

“What?”

He's laying me down on a towel at this point, my own towel under the olive tree. Other faces jostle behind him to look at me. Noémie, Freddie, Sophie, Romuald. They are blurry, out of focus. Then I see Freddie, who nearly drowned me, and I look away, look back at Johnny Cash. Less Johnny Cash now that I'm gazing up into his dreamy brown eyes, more James Franco. He has the tousled dark hair, a stubbly beard, and cute crinkles in the corners of his eyes.

“Terrible,” he murmurs, leaning close to my face so only I can hear, “to almost drown and then the first words you come out with are cliché.”

I smile up at him, even though my ribs ache and my eyes sting and my throat burns. “So the next time I have a near-death experience I should—” cough “—stop watching my life flash in front of my eyes and take a minute to come up with a better line?”

“Ah, irony. You must be feeling better. I am officially no longer needed here.” He pretends to get up and then kneels down closer, grinning again. He smooths strands of hair from my forehead, then turns to Noémie and says something brusquely in French I don't catch.

“Mais non!”
says Noémie angrily, her pouty lips twisting in disgust. “I hate you.” She turns away, her arms folded.

The boy frowns. “Forgive my sister,” he says. “She has not taken care of you.”

“Noémie's your sister?” I say, surprised. And then I realize why he looks so familiar: it's Raphael, the Sorbonne student whose photos I've been admiring for months.

“But of course.” That charming smile again. “Didn't she say I was coming today?”

“No.”

Noémie turns around just far enough to interject. “You are an asshole, Raffi. Maman is expecting you Sunday. She will lose her mind.”

He smiles back sweetly at her. “But, dearest sister, my college term has ended, and I heard from Maman there was a nice new American exchange staying all summer, so I thought I'd come entertain her.” He winks at me.

We ignore Noémie as she pretends to vomit.

“Are
you
staying all summer?” I want to kick myself for my obviousness.

He shrugs. “Well, maybe, if I find something fun to do. Otherwise, I will go back to Paris. It can get quite boring here, you know?”

“Yeah, really.”

When Raphael tells me that he is nineteen and at college in Paris studying film, I try to pretend I don't already know everything about him. He finds out where I'm from in the States and seems really interested, asking about Boston and my college plans and what music I like. All the while, just at the edge of my vision, I see where Noémie sits scowling. Freddie is sitting next to her on her towel and every so often he just stares in my direction.

It makes me shiver under the shade of the olive tree, so that I find it hard to focus on what Raphael's saying, about how he's seen everything by Tarkovsky ever, and loves the Beastie Boys for their irony, and worships Tom Waits because he is God. I try to hold up my end of the conversation, but my mind keeps circling back to the bad things that have happened. I mean, come on. The texts have been weird. The video was megaweird and scary. But this near-drowning incident makes three.

Three weird, scary things in two days. And Freddie is starting to seem like he just might be stalker suspect number one. Maybe he dunked me like that because he wanted to scare me? Well, he's succeeded.