by Jill Cox
“Are you serious?” Pete’s eyes went wide. “I would not have guessed that. So, what? Did bespectacled baby Sutton give you his favorite pencil one day at school and the rest was history?”
“You’re hilarious,” I rolled my eyes. “No, Drew and his mom moved to Oregon from this small town in East Texas right before kindergarten. He had such a twang; none of the other kids had ever heard someone speaking English with a different accent than their own, so you can imagine how that went. I don’t think he said more than one word a day for the entire first month of school. I hated it.”
“I can see that. Did you Riverdance your way across their faces?”
“No doubt I thought about it,” I grinned. “But my younger self was a little more whimsical than the Meredith you know today. So instead of violence, I wrote him a story one day in class and gave it to him at recess. After that, we were sidekicks forevermore.”
“Rewind one second. Did you say you write stories?”
“I used to.”
“Maybe you should start up again. That colorful imagination of yours should be put to better use,” he smirked. “But wait, didn’t Sutton live with his grandparents growing up?”
“Yeah.” The breeze from the ocean chilled me so quickly that I actually shivered. “Drew’s dad left before he was old enough to remember, so that’s why they moved to Oregon – to live with his mom’s parents. When she died, he took the Suttons’ last name. We were ten.”
“Oh. Well, that’s… I’m sorry. I had no idea. Was… I mean, did she get sick, or…?”
I tugged my sweater closer to me and shook my head. “Her heart just stopped one night while she was sleeping. They did an autopsy and everything, but there was no medical explanation. My mom thinks she just really loved Drew’s dad, so she died of a broken heart.”
Pete nodded, his eyes fixed on the ground. “I’ve heard that happens.”
“Me, too.” We walked on in silence for a hundred feet or so, and as we ambled, I considered asking Pete why he and Drew weren’t better friends. The more we talked, the more I realized those two might understand each other in a way none of the rest of us could.
As we neared the gates, Pete took his sunglasses off his face and stopped walking. “Can I ask you something else, Sully?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“What would it take for us to be friends? You and me, I mean,” he added quietly. “It feels like things have been easier between us since we got to Paris, so maybe you should tell me what I did wrong back home. I don’t want to screw it up on this side of the world, too.”
“You really don’t know?” Pete shook his head. So I took a deep breath and continued. “Do you remember meeting me on the first day at Highgate?”
Pete eyed me strangely. “Yeah. Why?”
“Well, this may sound dumb, but I’d spent most of the summer fretting about that first French class. First impressions are crucial at a new school, and people are creatures of habit. Where you sit matters. Especially when it’s your major.”
“No, I get that. Too close to the front and you’re too eager. Too far back? Slacker city.”
“Exactly. Except that when I walked into Room 207 of Hatley Hall, I found a very intimidating beast in that optimal middle seat, perusing his textbook like he could not care less.”
The color drained from Pete’s face. “Oh. Wait, Sully, I can explain…”
I held up my hand to silence him. “You gave the impression of being the type of person to speak only French in class. So I asked you very politely, ‘Um, pardon. C’est le cours de Composition 3301?’ But you didn’t look up from your book. You just nodded. So I sat down behind you and wished I could disappear.”
Pete’s eyebrows knotted together. “Hold on a second. That’s not entirely true. I know I talked to you that day.”
“Oh, you talked to me. After what felt like an eternity, you swiveled around in your seat, turned your snapback around, eyed my t-shirt and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, man. Lincoln City? I hate that dump.’”
A brief flash of something crossed Pete’s face. “You were wearing a Sullivan’s Restaurant t-shirt. Kelly green.”
“You remember?”
“Of course I do.” His smile drew into a thin line as he crossed his arms over his chest. “So, wait – that’s it? We’ve spent the last two years at odds with each other over a t-shirt?”
“Pete, you insulted my parents’ livelihood and my hometown in less than ten words. How did you expect me to respond?”
He grew quiet again, and for a moment, he looked at me so strangely that I wondered if I’d missed something. But then he shoved his hands in his pockets again and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I hurt your feelings, and for that, I’m sorry.”
I walked ahead, listening to our feet fall together on the gravel again. But ten steps away from the bus, Pete wrapped his fingers gently around my elbow.
“Nothing below a marquis,” he said as I turned toward him. “That was the message.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last week as I was leaving the Sigma Phi house, Drew Sutton asked me if I knew you. When I said yes, he asked me to remind you not to settle for anything less than a marquis. What did he mean?”
“Nothing really.” Every capillary in my body lit up in flames. “I mean, this will sound so ridiculous out of context, but Drew and I have this inside joke about my meeting an aristocrat while I’m here.” I shook my head as I laughed under my breath. “Like that would ever happen.”
“Huh,” Pete muttered, nodding hello to some girl as she passed by. “Nothing lower than a marquis. So that means no barons, no counts…”
“Right?” I laughed again hollowly. “What else is there? A prince? Anyway, it’s just a stupid joke. I’m not sure why he even brought it up.”
A grin spread slowly across his face. “You might not meet a prince, but you might cross paths with a Grand Duke someday. Like, say… maybe one from St. Petersburg?”
He stood still, looking down at me while my brain caught up. Pyotr Petrovich Romanov Russell, rightful Grand Duke of St. Petersburg. Either Pete was messing with my head again, or…
“Watch out, ladies and gentlemen. The lightbulb just flickered.” He jumped over to the bus door, bowed deeply, then held out his hand for me to climb aboard. “Dasvidaniya, Tsarina Fiona Sullyevna. I’ll make sure to let Sutton know you’re holding up your end of the bargain.”
TEN
My schedule every Monday started with La Francophonie, a general French culture class, followed by three hours of nineteenth-century lit. Friday was a walking tour class known as Promenade Parisienne. Art history met every Tuesday and Thursday at the Musée d’Orsay. But my favorite class was History of France.
History major Drew would be so proud of me. That is, if we were communicating in any way more significant than messaging funny memes to each another.
Our professor, Monsieur Ludovic, was so extraordinary that the Centre Lafayette provided him with round-trip transport on the high-speed TGV train every week from Tours, where he lived. At one-thirty every Wednesday, Monsieur Ludovic breezed into the Conservatoire, his lecture already pouring from his lips like we’d missed something important and might never get it back.
Guillaume Ludovic was an odd bird, to be sure. His wild hair was salt-and-peppery, and he wore it bushy and unkempt, like Einstein’s. And he wore the exact same outfit every week.
Black pants and shoes. A black sweater. A crisp, white Oxford cloth button-down with a white ascot at his neck.
Maybe it was a uniform.
Whenever Monsieur Ludovic stepped through the door, I expected him to be wearing a cape for some reason. I guess something in his stride made me think of the Three Musketeers. Or maybe more accurately, Professor Snape.
Of course, there’s always one person who doesn’t appreciate even the most amazing teacher. Every week, without fail, my boy Marshall Freeman would p
ull out a gigantic, seventy percent dark chocolate bar at some crucial moment in Monsieur Ludovic’s address. Crinkling the wrapper unabashedly, he gnawed off chunk after chunk from the chocolate brick he held in both hands like a baby bottle, with zero awareness that he’d sidetracked the lecture.
The Wednesday evening after our second history class, Anne and I found Marie-France waiting on the sidewalk outside her apartment. Forget television. Her new source of entertainment was the Lafayette Channel. Which is why the following week, she widened our circle to include Dan, Harper, Kelly, and Pete.
The Lost Generation may have had Gertrude Stein, but we had Marie-France. Wednesday night dinners on the rue Bonaparte were just the sort of thing you dream about when you imagine living in Paris. She pushed our language boundaries and taught us her culture, but she made us think outside the box about our own culture, too.
During dessert on our third Wednesday night together, Marie-France leaned back in her chair at the head of the table and spread her arms wide at us. “Ah, mes amis,” she sighed. “Vous êtes les flèches dans mon carquois.”
Aw. We were ‘the arrows in her quiver.’
With just seven words, Marie-France had galvanized our posse. Kelly even found these vintage-looking arrow stickers in all shapes and sizes at the flea market near their apartment, and the following Monday before class, she doled them out to each of us by the coffee machine.
By the end of the day, there were arrow stickers popping up all over the Centre Lafayette, some with a motto: “That’s so flèche.” I even heard that girl Meg Green say she’d spotted one on the Métro.
Anne and I rarely saw the inside of our chambres de bonnes except to sleep, but despite the flurry of activity, I was getting the best grades of my life. So when my laptop started chirping at me in the middle of the last Saturday night in September, I was surprised when I opened my chat window to find a very angry older brother staring back at me.
“Hey, look. You do exist,” Ian chided. “Are you trying to put me in the hospital?”
“What are you whining about? I talk to Mom and Dad all the time. Is it my problem that they don’t pass my news along to you?”
“You are so missing the point, Fee. How am I supposed to know you are healthy and alive? Me? Your needy brother who has no life?”
“Oh, listen to the humblebrag king feeling sorry for himself. By the extra gel in your spiky black hair and the fancy hotel bedding behind you, I’m guessing Greg’s latest guidebook update has you five-star suffering in what, Oslo? Helsinki? Some new hotspot in Greenland, maybe?”
“Portland,” he smirked. “And stop changing the subject. You know I rely heavily on your social media presence to keep my big brotherly nerves under control. I didn’t buy you that fancy camera for Christmas last year so you could use it as a paperweight.”
“Ian, come on. I’m half-asleep. Do you know what time it is?”
“It’s time for you to start acting like my school nerd sister instead of her extroverted clone. Be honest, Fee: are you drinking too much?”
“Are you?” I growled. “Seriously, Ian, why are you freaking out? I’m just doing what you told me. Don’t look back, Fee,” I mimicked his hybrid Irish-American accent. “Fill up that bracelet with new memories. Those were your words.”
I watched Ian’s shoulders slacken a bit, then he relaxed against the pillows behind him. “I know they were. And I meant them, but I sort of expected you to document every street sign, lamppost, and doorknob within a ten-foot radius of you so I would know you are okay. At least for the first couple of weeks until you got settled. Instead, I find myself stalking total strangers’ feeds for some sign of life, and I’ve got to say, Fee, you and your new friends are either really busy studying or you’re busy coupling off. I just can’t decide if I want to know which.”
I laughed so hard that I was worried I would wake Anne next door. “Now I know you’re drunk. No one’s coupling off, Ian. Why would you even say that?”
Ian picked up his phone, and within a few seconds, my own phone buzzed. I opened the message to find a black-and-white photo of my history notes Pete had posted on Facebook earlier that week, followed by a screen shot of the accompanying caption:
Save me a seat in class tomorrow, Sully. You’ve got a real cliffhanger going on with this cartoon of yours, and I don’t want to miss an installment. What will become of Edith of Nantes, the buxom waitress with the winning smile? Will she stay with Henri IV, or fly off to St. Barth’s with that handsome Hugh Guennot? I have to know. Hey, maybe you could introduce a Grand Duke? #PlotTwist
I didn’t want to laugh. I really didn’t. But between Ian’s crimson scowl and the words of Pete’s message, I couldn’t stop myself.
“I can’t believe you, Meredith,” Ian squealed. “First, you make no attempts to hide your outrageous flirting with some frat boy named Pete on the most public forum in the world, and now you’re laughing about it? What has gotten into you?”
“Ian, you are completely overreacting. Trust me.”
“I might have believed you a month ago, but now Andrew Sutton texts me – and this is not an exaggeration – hourly about this Pete Russell guy. I have no choice but to overreact.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, rewind,” I said, tossing my cell phone over to my bed. “First of all, let’s talk about the Facebook post. Obviously, you’ve forgotten French history, or else your real concern would be my academic standing. Do you know how it felt to discover I’d misunderstood an entire lecture on the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots, and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre? What if I fail, Ian? These classes count toward my major.”
“Fascinating.” Ian’s eyes widened, and he leaned in toward the camera. “Defensive about her grades, not defensive about the fella. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m meeting our friend Andrew for breakfast tomorrow morning. For once, he’s only ten percent as nervous as he should be.”
“Wait. You drove to Portland to see Drew?”
Ian laughed, that full-throated, high pitched childlike laugh that I loved so much it almost made my eyes fill up. “No, you dork. Greg sent me here to handle a couple of meetings earlier today. I head back to Seattle tomorrow.”
“Oh. Right, of course. But you are going to see Drew?”
“Yes.” Ian’s smile was halfway between pity and irritation. “We spoke right before I called you. He spent about three seconds telling me Lindsay dumped him, again, and then thirty minutes on this Pete person. Is this guy new to Highgate? How come I’ve never heard of him before?”
“Drew and Lindsay broke up again? Are you sure?”
“You didn’t know?” Ian watched me for a few seconds, then frowned. “Wow. When Drew told me you guys didn’t talk much, I assumed he was pulling my leg. Now I feel kind of bad.”
“For what?”
He looked at me strangely for a minute, then lifted an eyebrow. “Well, I might have mentioned that your new friend Pete appears dashing and debonair. You know, like Hemingway. In fact, you know that black-and-white photo you posted of you and your friends at La Rotonde? I may have screenshotted it over to Drew and labeled you The Not-So-Lost Generation: Hadley + Tatie + Zelda + Scott.”
Oh, fantastic. “Why do you taunt him, Ian? Drew won’t catch your reference. Not everyone spends their life researching the American expat community in 1920s Paris. The only reason you know about it is because you work for a guidebook company.”
“It’s cool, Fee. He took it well. Here’s the text he sent me.”
My phone buzzed again – a blurry shot of what must have been Drew’s middle finger. “Classy, Ian. Come on, don’t mess with Drew. I mean it. You know he takes you seriously.”
“I know, I know. But he makes it so easy,” he smiled. “Now, listen, cut your brother some slack and tell me how the charm bracelet’s filling up.”
“Pretty well so far. I’ve gotten a couple of obvious ones for Paris and I picked up one in Rouen and another in the shape of Normandy.”
“N
ot too shabby, young lady. And how many have you gotten outside of France?”
“I’ve only been here five weeks! Don’t I get time to adjust?”
Ian smiled again, his eyes softening. “Sounds like you’re doing just fine. Hey, grab that old-school paper planner I see by your bed and block off the weekend after my birthday, okay? I’m coming to Europe for a few days.”
“Shut up!” I nearly hugged the screen. “Already?”
“Yeah, Greg is sending me to Prague that weekend to update some shots for the guidebook, and he said it’s cool if you tag along. I fly into Charles de Gaulle on the first, and we can hop a flight east the next day. Unless you already have plans that weekend.”
“No. In fact, I was just wondering yesterday what to do, because the Centre Lafayette observes All Saints’ Day from Wednesday to Friday this year.”
“Merci beaucoup, Napoleonic Code. I knew that guy was useful for something.”
“I don’t think Napoleon determined religious holidays, Ian.”
“Oh, what do you know? You can’t tell the difference between an Edith and an Edict.”
“Clever. Hey, I’ll check with Marie-France to see if you can stay in one of the empty chambres de bonnes down the hall. Unless Greg is springing for a suite at the Ritz or something.”
“I wish.” Ian cocked his head to the side, then moved the screen closer to his face. “You know I expect to meet your friends, right? That includes Mister History Notes.”
“Hey, I’ve got nothing to hide. But let’s keep your Internet stalking our little secret, okay? I don’t want my friends to get the wrong idea about you.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed. “So much deflection in so few words. You realize you haven’t asked me a single thing about the Lindsay breakup, right? Are you just trying to make me feel guilty for suggesting that you stop fretting over our mutual friend Andrew, or do you actually not care?”
I peered into the camera. “What’s it like to sit behind that screen and judge everyone else’s lives? Hold on, where did you say you were again? Back in Mum and Dad’s basement?”
