My Grape Year: (The Grape Series #1)

by Laura Bradbury

  There was nothing I disliked more than people who abused positions of authority, and it looked as though I had a prime example in front of me.

  “Don’t smile at her,” Sandrine warned. “It will just make her angrier.”

  “I smile at everybody,” I hissed back.

  “I know,” Sandrine whispered back. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. It makes you seem a bit simple, or demented.”

  I shrugged. “It’s the Canadian way. I can’t help it.”

  It was our turn. Sandrine showed her card to le Dragon. Le Dragon took her time inspecting it, then imperiously shooed Sandrine on her way. Sandrine motioned at me to show my card. I did.

  Le Dragon inspected me and—dammit—I caught myself smiling at her. She looked down her nose at my card.

  “You are not allowed out,” she said, with what looked like an immensely satisfied smirk.

  “What?” I asked. “Of course I am. I’m almost eighteen.”

  Sandrine was now on the other side of the door, wildly motioning at me to shut up.

  “You don’t have the permission square ticked on your card.” Le Dragon thrust it back in my hand. “You must stay inside the school during the school day. Go away.”

  Rage erupted inside me. I would not be treated like a five-year-old, even though I might speak French like one.

  I stood my ground. “There must be some mistake.”

  “There is no mistake,” she said, “except for the fact that you are still standing here in front of me. Go to the cantine.”

  I glanced at Sandrine, who was staring at me with wide eyes now.

  “You go ahead,” I called over to her. “I’ll get this fixed tonight and we can go some other time. Sorry.”

  “Move!” le Dragon shouted at me.

  I stared at her and then, with a defiant toss of my head, turned around and stalked back towards the cantine, my blood boiling. I flopped down in a chair across from Thibault. His other friends were chattering away about an upcoming history test.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I was wondering where you were.”

  I told him the saga of le Dragon as best as I could and he laughed.

  “She’s a witch,” he said. “You don’t want to cross her.”

  I dug my fork into the tabouleh salad that had just been placed in front of me. “She does not want to cross me. Trust me on that.”

  Thibault’s fork froze midair. “Did you really just say that?”

  “Yes,” I said darkly, still possessed by righteous anger. “You’ll see.”

  I stared at Thibault then, not smiling for once. Nothing got me riled up like injustice, especially injustice created wantonly and willfully by tyrants like le Dragon. I was usually an easy-going person, but if I felt that I or somebody I cared about was being wronged, I transformed into the most stubborn person in the universe.

  He smiled at me then, a slow, sincere smile as if he was actually seeing me for the first time. “Ma petite Canadienne,” he said. “I do believe that I may have underestimated you.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  That night I explained my dilemma to Madame Beaupre, who blamed herself for not signing the correct permission form that first morning at school.

  “There were so many papers,” I reassured her. “It would be a miracle if you even knew what you were signing.”

  “I didn’t exactly,” she admitted. “There were quite a few.”

  The next morning she came back into the school with me and explained the problem to the secretary at the front office.

  Within minutes le Dragon was there, staring us both down with her predatory eyes.

  Madame Beaupre turned up her considerable charm to full voltage, but for the first time ever it failed. It was as if le Dragon was her kryptonite; and le Dragon kept insisting that nothing short of written permission from my parents back in Canada would suffice to enable her to tick that permission box on my school card. I could tell that she had no intention of ever letting me out of that gate during the school day.

  “Mais, c’est ridicule,” Madame Beaupre protested. “We are acting as Laura’s guardians during her time in France, us and her other Ursus host families.”

  “Do you have the paperwork to prove it?” demanded le Dragon.

  “Well…not exactly, but—”

  “I’m late for a meeting,” le Dragon said, then turned on her heel and stalked off.

  “Well!” Madame Beaupre exclaimed. “Of all the ——.” Madame Beaupre used one of the Extremely Rude Words that Thibaut had tricked me into saying at the beginning of the year. I never thought I would hear something so vulgar coming out of her exquisite mouth.

  She turned to me, guilt stealing over her features. “I’m so sorry, ma puce.”

  “Thank you for trying. I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. I’ll phone my parents tomorrow.”

  “That woman!”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll figure out a way.”

  She watched the receding figure of le Dragon walking across the courtyard.

  “I’m not so sure,” she said. “She is a disagreeable woman and she has taken a disliking to you.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “But how could anyone not love you?” she asked. “You are charming.”

  The next morning before going to school I called my parents and asked them to mail me a letter via priority mail giving me permission to leave the school grounds during the school day. They were astounded that the school would not just allow soon-to-be-eighteen-year-old students free reign during their spare time, but agreed to do so right away. So, high school students were allowed to smoke with abandon all over the school grounds but weren’t allowed out in a picturesque, crimeless, little winemaking town with a population of 20,000 people? It made no sense.

  A few days later, during which time I had actually celebrated my eighteenth birthday with a delicious meal and my favorite pastries chez Beaupre, Sandrine asked me if I could go to le Square with her again. “Do you have your permission yet?” she asked. “I told Stéphanie about your run-in with le Dragon and she wants to meet you even more now.”

  “Soon,” I said. “Very soon.”

  “I’m going away with Stéphanie and her older brother, Franck, next weekend,” Sandrine said, looking pleased. I wouldn’t have been able to detect the shine in her eyes and slight quirk of her upper lip during my first few weeks at Saint Coeur, but I could now.

  “Where?” I asked, feeling a tug of jealousy. I would love to be planning fun weekends away with my friends, but for the moment I couldn’t even leave the grounds of the school.

  “A town up in Northern Burgundy. We’re going to celebrate the arrival of their cousin’s baby. Another friend of ours, Olivier, is coming too, and a couple of Stéph and Franck’s other cousins will be there. It’s going to be super.”

  Again, I marveled that the word “super” sounded so much cooler and nonchalant in French. “How old is her brother?” I asked, more to be polite than because I was really interested.

  “He’s twenty-one,” Sandrine said, and her upper lip twitched a bit. “Franck is génial.”

  I had learned the day before that in French the word did not mean “genial” like in English, but rather, “awesome”. “Cool”. “Amazing.”

  “He’s doing his military service this year in Dijon with the Air Force,” she continued. “You’ll have to meet him too.”

  “Sure,” I agreed, absent-mindedly, but I was already fantasizing about my moment of triumph when I showed le Dragon the letter from my parents. I would take such pleasure in waltzing in and out of that stupid wooden door she guarded like a sentry at a prisoner-of-war camp.

  The letter from my parents arrived a few days later, and I brought it in first thing in the morning. Le Dragon took it from me with an expression of distaste, like it was sprinkled with arsenic.

  Her eyes roved over the text and within a few seconds she passed it back to me. “Thi
s is not acceptable,” she said. “It is not in French.”

  “Of course it’s not in French,” I said. “My parents speak only English.”

  “It needs to be in French,” she said, her eyes glittering.

  “What does it matter?” I protested. “You wanted a letter of permission to have on file. Here it is.”

  She leaned closer to me and said under her breath. “This letter is not acceptable, Mademoiselle Bradbury. That is my final word.”

  “It isn’t mine,” I snapped, and stormed off. Was there anyone I could appeal to above le Dragon? From what I could tell she seemed to be in complete control of the gates, answerable to no one.

  My next class was English. The teacher had put a new seating plan into place in an attempt to wrest control of his class from rowdies such as Thibaut. I was, I saw, sharing a double desk with that very miscreant.

  “I’m going to kill her,” I muttered in English as I sat down beside him.

  “Kill who?” he asked in French.

  “Le Dragon.”

  “Ah,” he said, looking amused. “Rumor has it that she has taken a disliking to a certain little Canadienne.”

  “Rumor would be true.” I took my textbook out of my bag and banged it down on the wooden desktop. We were reviewing contractions that day, which meant I could spend the entire class concocting revenge scenarios, as I already grasped English contractions better than the teacher.

  Thibaut laughed and then watched me with a thoughtful expression as I mentally flipped through various outrageous—but highly satisfying—methods of thwarting le Dragon.

  “You are even prettier when you are furious,” he observed.

  “What!?” I looked at him, startled and annoyed. “Shut up, Thibaut.” In the previous week or so, I had adopted the same callous treatment Sandrine doled out to the boys in our gang, especially Thibaut.

  Thibaut’s eyebrows flew up. I didn’t say it to be mean, but couldn’t he see that I was in no mood for flirting? Besides, since when was he interested in flirting with me? Up to then, all Thibaut had seemed interested in was tricking and baiting me.

  “You mean you wouldn’t go out with me if I asked?” he asked.

  I turned and subjected him to a frank inspection—the exact kind that he gave me, often. He was tall and muscular, with light brown eyes and a contagious smile. He wasn’t handsome exactly, or even cute, but he had charisma, buckets of it actually. There was a certain chemical fizz between the two of us, especially when we were bickering, which was increasingly often now that my French was improving. Still, I didn’t think I would go out with him given his reputation. Sandrine had warned me that he was a notorious womanizer, and I had no intention of falling into his toils.

  My inspection appeared to unnerve him. Perhaps not many girls served him up his own sauce, though I couldn’t imagine why.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” I concluded. From what I knew of Thibaut so far, his emotions didn’t run deep enough for me to fret about his reaction.

  The teacher walked in, and I turned to the front of the room to listen to his instructions.

  “Laura,” Thibaut hissed at me after I had ignored him for a few minutes, “I’m hurt.”

  I stared at him, skeptical. “You’ll get over it.” I patted his arm.

  “Why won’t you go out with me?”

  “I’m not even sure I like you, even as a friend,” I said. “Besides, you’re not my type.”

  “What is your type?”

  “Thibaut!” The teacher pointed his wooden pointer at my deskmate. “Mademoiselle Bradbury can afford to be distracted in this class, but given your last few test scores, you cannot. Pay attention!”

  I snorted, and Thibaut cast me a hurt look. Sandrine, a few desks ahead of us, turned around and we shared a satisfied look. High school boys could dish it out but, just like back in Canada, they couldn’t take it.

  At the cantine Sandrine caught me and pulled me down in the chair beside her. “What was going on with you and Thibaut in English?”

  “Nothing. He was just asking me stupid questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Would I go out with him if he asked, that sort of thing…”

  Sandrine shot Thibaut, who was seated a little further down the table, a murderous look. “What did you say?”

  “I said no! What did you think I’d say?”

  “Thank God. Trust me, you should stay away from him. He’s a fun friend but—”

  “Don’t worry. We have his type in Canada,” I said. “A lot of them, as a matter of fact. I’m not naïve.”

  “Good. Did you get your permission? Can I finally take you to le Square with me?”

  I shook my head. “She turned me down again because my parents’ letter wasn’t in French. Can you believe that?”

  Sandrine frowned. “Of her? Yes. You shouldn’t have challenged her like that. She’s taken one of her dislikings to you. Honestly, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to get the permission now.”

  “I won’t stop until I do.”

  Sandrine examined me to see if I was serious.

  “I’m stubborn,” I added. “In case you hadn’t figured that out already.”

  Sandrine nodded. “I’m stubborn too. Like a donkey, my family always says.”

  I reached down to take my parents’ letter out of my backpack. “Can you help me translate this into French?”

  “If you tell me what it says.” Sandrine took out a pen, and half an hour later we had composed an elegant, forceful letter in French. That night I dictated it over the phone to my parents and instructed them to send it immediately.

  I received it a week and a bit later. On the bus on the way to school, I admired the vineyards that were turning brilliant shades of yellow, scarlet, and orange, while daydreaming of finally being able to best le Dragon and all of her ridiculous rules.

  Back in Canada I was not the type of student that ever butted up against the teachers in any way. Here, though, I refused to let a despot steal the dream of wasting time at French cafés from me. It was simply too important. If she hated me for it…too bad. I was going back to Canada at the end of the year anyway.

  The first thing I did when I got to the school was go to the office, which I now thought of as le Dragon’s lair. She was there, chastising a beleaguered student about something.

  She eyed me with disfavor. “You again?”

  “I have the letter here from my parents. In French.”

  She pursed her already tight lips and jerked her arm at me to sit down. Her office was small and shabby, and had a particularly bloody painting of Jesus impaled on the cross hanging on the wall. I suspected this chef d’oeuvre came from her personal art collection.

  I waited as she perused the letter, savoring my moment of triumph.

  She thrust it back to me. “I cannot accept this.”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded, slipping into the informal “tu” form as I did whenever I got upset.

  “This letter is not from France, so it needs to be stamped by a notary.”

  “Are you joking?” I said. Luckily I had learned this expression from Sandrine the day before. I used the “tu” form again, but this time deliberately as an insult. I was learning.

  Just then, the head nun popped her head in the office to ask le Dragon a question. She stopped mid-sentence though, as she must have noticed the bristling atmosphere or that le Dragon and I were sitting opposite each other like a couple of gunslingers readying for a shoot out.

  “Excuse me.” I turned to the head nun and then passed her my letter. “Could you please read this?”

  I then launched into the best explanation I could manage of my battle to leave the school grounds. When I was done the head nun didn’t chastise le Dragon as I was hoping, but she did ask me for my student card. I extracted it from my backpack and gave it to her. She found a pen somewhere in the folds of her voluminous robe and ticked off the box that allowed me to leave the school during the day.
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br />   “Merci,” I said, casting a triumphant look at my nemesis. “Now that wasn’t so difficult…”

  “Oui,” the nun said. “Now please go to class. We have some things to discuss here.”

  I walked out but couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder. Le Dragon was staring at me with her lips tightly pressed together. I had won this battle, but she clearly intended for there to be a war.

  CHAPTER 14

  That Saturday, Julien had departed to his school in Switzerland, where he was being taught how to manage fancy hotels. We all missed him, even Biscotte who kept nudging me for extra pats and scratches.

  Monsieur Beaupre offered to take me on a bike ride in the vineyards. I longed for my friends at school, especially Sandrine, to call me up and arrange to do something together to fill my weekends. French teenagers, though, seemed to be slow off the mark in making these kinds of overtures. I had heard that friendships in France took much longer to build, but once they were built, they were for life. That was all fine and dandy, but I wanted someone to hang out with on the weekends tout de suite. Still, now that I had permission to go to le Square with Sandrine, I entertained a hope of creating a social life for myself in Burgundy. Maybe I just needed to be patient. Ugh! Not one of my strengths.

  I set out on Madame Beaupre’s bike. I was a bit wobbly—she was several inches taller than me. Still, very quickly Monsieur led me off the main streets of Nuits-Saint-Georges and onto the rocky paths that wove their way through the vineyards. The ground was ochre, and because it had barely rained since the harvest, clouds of red dust billowed behind us.

  I had a hard time not stopping every few minutes to take photos of the vineyards’ leaves. Every shade of yellow, scarlet, and orange were represented in every possible combination. It was sublime.

  “That is one of the reasons why this department is called The Côte d’Or,” he said. “Because of the golden vineyards in the fall. Golden Coast. Also,” he added mischievously, “some say it is because of all the wealth generated by the wine industry.”

  Indeed, everything around us looked ancient, but also extremely well tended.