Emma stormed past her mother and out of the boutique.
Her mother remained rigid, her thighs clenched together in her seat, while white knuckling her purse. Looking down at the floor, her mother departed as well. She cleared her throat. “Ahem.” She gave a weary smile.
The shopkeeper picked the dress from off the floor, hanging it back in the window before shooting a disapproving frown at mother and daughter.
Unlike Emma, her mother pretended. They stood outside the boutique. This time her mother crossed her arms, and the two remained uncomfortably silent.
Emma stood in the street and stared at the recently hung dress for a moment. It was a nice dress. It felt good, but it looked like something her mother wanted her to wear. The gray clouds gathered above and behind her. She readied to move on, yet in that moment, she looked upon her own drab, shapeless reflection in the paned glass. She hated her own appearance. Her lackluster brown hair plainly tied back in a straight, dull ponytail. Her face, though not ugly, was lacking any type of distinguishing attractive features. She straightened the wrinkles from her shirt. Emma lamented as she watched, through the reflection of the boutique window, many curvy, voluptuous women elegantly walk up and down the street behind her. Even her mother had cosmetically enhanced her appearance. Her skin was so tight, her mother had ruined her ability to smile, at least for a time, yet she inflated her own self-worth, but in the process, carelessly damaged Emma’s.
With her hands pressed tightly on her hips, her mother replied, “Well, what’s gotten into you?”
“Chillax, will ya.” Emma sighed, avoiding eye contact. Her tone turned a mixture of downhearted and cross. “I wanted to come to Paris more than anything, but I didn’t want to hang with you the entire time.”
Her mother batted her eyes, with plowed brows of furrowed ire, but then she upturned a single eyebrow. “Oh, I know what this is all about.”
“Yeah, right.” Emma indignantly hinted surprise. “Wait, what…you do?”
“Why of course I do.” Her mother dug through her oversized suitcase disguised as a purse. “Here,” she handed Emma a granola bar. “You’re just cranky because your blood sugar is low again.”
“It is not!” Emma faced her mother. The skin along the bridge of her nose crumpled, nearly touching her sharply creased eyebrows. She slammed her hands on her own hips. Her mother extended the granola bar toward her, but Emma released a hand, slapping the wrapped treat to the ground. “Ugh, you just don’t get it, do you?” she yelled. Her arms flung up and around into the air. “No, you, you’re my problem. I want my space!” She overlapped her arms, spinning, she turned away from her mother. “You’re always the problem,” she mumbled.
Her mother, cheeks flushed, had finally ceased speaking, while Emma enjoyed a brief moment of silence, before slowly turning back toward the shop window just to smirk at her mother’s reflection. Yet the enjoyment wore thin, for the harder Emma tried, the more she thought about tomorrow, about leaving, and that’s when she noticed the gorgeous boy in the window.
Emma tilted her head. He stared back on through. She tried to figure where he was without turning to look. He wasn’t in the store, but was across the street behind her. Emma, having just turned fourteen, believed that he looked to be around her age, if not a few years older. He brazenly eyed her up and down as he leaned against a small tree. He flirted brashly with her through the window’s reflection.
He wasn’t like any of the boys she knew back home. He seemed confident and mature. And from what she could tell, his skin was perfect. There wasn’t even a pimple in sight.
He was tall and lean. His jet-black hair was short, except for the shaggy, side-swept locks nearly covering his eyebrows. He was a clean, purposely jumbled mess to most adults, yet many girls walking past found him pleasing to the eye. His clothing flashed style, appearing new yet purposely faded, but vintage, with a revolutionary theme. He casually ignored the random stares by the crowd of finely dressed, older observers. They gawked at his fresh-from-bed look, but with a couldn’t-care-less expression, he defiantly stared back, making them uncomfortable as they passed by.
With a posh attitude, he rubbed his side-swept locks quickly up and down. He teemed with self-confidence, indignantly dismissing all who walked by him with a charming candor. He took a last puff of his self-rolled cigarette, passionately blowing rings of leisurely expanding smoke into the air. He boldly dropped the cigarette’s remaining end, crushing it under his foot, littering the clean ground, while a trashcan sat mere feet in front of him.
Their eyes met and locked through the reflection in the glass. Each read the other’s glance. He lacked emotion, but Emma found that alluring. She looked around for another girl, but it was just her he was admiring, so she smiled.
For most of the day, a thick overcast clouded the skyline, cutting off the top of the Eiffel Tower with a pocket of hazy, chilled air. And though there had been many sunny days since she had arrived in Paris, this was the first time Emma’s cheeks flamed a reddish tint.
“Are you even listening to me?” her mother scolded, annoyed and oblivious. She wagged her index finger back and forth.
“Huh? What?”
“I knew it. The whole time I was talking, you’ve been ignoring me.”
“Um.” Emma abandoned her sentence. She felt unsteady. Her mood wavered. She felt good. In that moment, nothing else really mattered. She lent her full attention to the hot boy with the piercing look. “Nah…no,” she briefly stuttered. “I wasn’t ignoring you. Go on, the granola bar…right?” She trailed off near the end.
“Oh, forget it!” Her mother shook her head, clamped her jaw, and began texting on her phone. “You think that I’m such a terrible mother, don’t you?” Her fingers typed fast. Her attention equally diverted. “Tell me. What other fourteen-year-old girl from Viola, Kansas, gets to go to Paris on a whim?”
“Whatever, Mom.” Emma darted her eyes toward her mother and let loose her tongue. “You wanted this trip more than I did. Just because this is what you wanted when you were fourteen, doesn’t mean it’s what I want now.” She smirked, pressing a known nerve ending. “But your poor little mommy couldn’t afford to take you to Paris.” She curled a tight smile with a self-satisfied expression, enjoying her pithy remark.
Her mother stuck her nose high and away. She huffed loudly out her nostrils, making a slight whistling sound. She pulled out her phone and madly texted. “Yeah, well, I could have brought Jody instead of you. She REALLY wanted to come you know.”
“HA!” Emma laughed. “Jody, your four-hundred-pound BFF from your old high school?” Emma covered her mouth and chuckled, glancing up at her mother, hoping to elicit a response. “Yeah, right.” No reply immediately came, as her mother continued texting, so Emma kept talking. “You would’ve had to book half the plane to accommodate her fat ass, and you didn’t get enough money from Dad in the divorce to pay for that.” She stopped laughing. Agitated, she glared directly at her mother. “Though I’m sure you’ll try to get more out of Dad once we get home. Hey! Listen to me!” She stomped her foot. Her arms straightened with elbows locked by her side. Her wrists bent outward as her fingers curved inward. Her whole body quaked with rage. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded. “I know it isn’t me, ’cause I’m right here, you witch.”
“Stop it!” Her mother’s face turned several hues of pinkish red, though not a wrinkle could be found amongst the Botox. “And you watch your mouth!” Then she calmed. Putting her phone away, she noticed people both inside the shop and on the street glancing, and some gawking, but all with eyes of judgmental displeasure. “Listen, you’re right. Why don’t we spend some time apart on our last day here?” Easing her tense shoulders down and relaxing her back, she held her rebuke, feigning a sweet smile instead, partly for her daughter, but mostly for the couple sitting at a street-side table nearby. “You’re stressing me out.” She continued. �
�You can only go up and down this street where the shops are.” She moved her index fingers back and forth from the top of the street to the end far past them. “And be back at the hotel before dark,” she tapped the clock on her phone, “so that leaves you about…three hours to do whatever you want.” She smiled faintly, stroking Emma’s hair as she did.
“Whatever.” Emma yanked her head from her mother’s reach. “The real reason you didn’t bring Jody is because she can’t afford all of your plastic upgrades.” With falling eyes and folded arms, she refocused her restless gaze on the reflection of the fascinating boy behind her across the street. He gave her a wary glance. He seemed to pose simply for effect, leaning against the public tree, appearing to claim it as his own.
Her mother snapped her fingers, turned her head opposite her daughter, held her arm straight, and raised her palm up to Emma’s face. “Oh, no you didn’t. Talk to the hand.”
Emma unfolded her arms and twiddled her thumbs. She looked away, arousing intense dislike with a set of rolling eyes up and away. “Yeah, okay, Mom.”
Her mother lowered her arm on a whim, and pulled out a mirror from her purse instead. She affixed her eyes with a favoring glance of herself. Applying lipstick, she angled her cheeks from side to side for a better view. She centered the mirror, touching features on her face that she enjoyed, almost overlooking everything around her for a brief moment. “Why can’t you just grow up?” she said, approving her own image.
Emma drew a long breath. “I was just about to say the same thing to you.”
Her mother, now conscious of her surroundings again, stiff-necked, straight-backed, her feet regimented side by side on the ground, darted a quick look toward the table where people had been sitting, but had since left. Her eyes narrowed. She clicked shut the mirror, slipping it away. “You think I’m a terrible mother or something, don’t you?” Her glazing eyes shunned Emma’s gaze.
Emma, her chin touching her chest, gave a distrustful glance up at her mother, and begrudgingly said, “No, I just think…”
Her mother rapidly interrupted, hearing only the part she wished.
“Good, then it’s settled. We both agree. I’m not a terrible mother.” She had a self-satisfied smile.
Emma mumbled lowly, “I was going to say, I just think you’re selfish.”
If her mother had heard the last mumble, she did not show it. “I’m going out to a club with some friends tonight, and you,” she pointed her long fingernail, “had better be in before I leave to go out.”
“What? You’re letting me actually do my own thing for once?”
“Don’t be smart.” Her mother said in a commanding tone. “But, yes. And remember, I know how you think, so you can’t get one over on me.” Yet the entire time, she failed to notice Emma’s budding, captured attention between mutual gazes with an older boy just feet behind them.
Impulsive, piercing looks were exchanged at high rates between Emma and the older boy in the window’s reflection. The fact that they shared this in front of her mother made it harder for them to look away. After a while, he became a mysterious thing. Even when he hunched forward to stretch, it was beautifully significant.
They seemed to have an unspoken language of their own. Everything he did appeared to designate and signify a meaning to Emma. Each met the other with wondering eyes, more powerful than forces of reason and logic. He appeared bold, striding, and confident. Emma, on the other hand, bowed her head and folded her hands, but by degrees, the stress lines on her forehead eased in chorus with his subtle gestures of interest.
“Now here’s some extra money.” Her mother unknowingly interrupted the moment, shoving crumpled pieces of currency in Emma’s half-open hands. “Ugh! I hate carrying cash.” She opened her arms for a hug. “Are we friends again?”
Emma drew back while counting the money. “Oh, yeah,” she facetiously said, looking only at the crinkly paper as she unfolded the bills. “Best friends forever, Mom.” Emma squeezed the money tightly in her hand. “You’re so stinking cheap! Dad would have given me more, ya know.” She scowled a devious grin.
“I’m not cheap!” She rubbed the top of Emma’s head. “I’ve always tried to be your best friend,” she then rummaged through her purse, “but this isn’t little ol’ Viola, Kansas, it’s a very big, foreign city, and a young girl can get in lots of trouble before she knows it, especially if people know she has money.” Her mother looked from side to side before attempting a frown. She then reached deeper into her purse, pulling out and handing Emma some more crinkled bills.
Emma scrambled to grab fistfuls of cash. She fanned the money toward her mother. “Yeah, yeah, Mom, whatever. Stop telling me what to do, I’m fourteen, okay. I know what I’m doing.” She extended her lower lip and then stiffened her mouth with an offended glare.
“No, I’m being serious.” Her mother’s voice deepened. “There was this thing on the local news last night. A couple of city workers found the body of this twenty-year-old girl dead in the sewers under Paris.” Her mother kept fishing through her purse.
“So, that stuff happens everywhere these days,” Emma casually replied. “That’s just how the world is. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to me.”
“Yeah, but the weird thing was, the city workers said they’d just been down there the day before.”
“Again, so, what’s your point?”
“Well…here’s the creepy part. Everything she was wearing looked fresh and new, but her face and body was all like shriveled up as if she had been rotting there for months.” Her mother, eyes glued downward, pushed lipsticks, foundations, and eyeliners to the side of her purse, finally reaching its bottom. “Great, I’m out of money!” her mother exclaimed, with a showy display of irritation she stomped the ground. “Now I have to go back to the room for more money.” Frustrated by distraction, she began mumbling to herself, still digging, fishing, and moving things about in her purse. She then turned and walked toward the end of the small street and back up to the larger main road. She glanced briefly over her shoulder at Emma, attempting a smile through her Botox-tightened skin. Her lips held straight, making an uncomfortably odd smile. “Remember, be back at the hotel by six o’clock, okay, honey?”
“Um,” Emma muttered and groaned.
“I said…okay!”
“Sure!” Emma said aloud. She mumbled the rest. “I guess, whatever, as long as you don’t tell me that stupid, creepy story about the girl in the sewer ever again.” Frowning, she closed her eyes and shuddered, and then glared down the street at her mother. “For god’s sake, leave,” she whispered under her breath.
“Good,” her mother shouted, looking back for approval as she walked away.
Emma huffed. “Hello, you can go now.” She waved the back of her hand with a sweeping motion and a belittling smirk.
Seeing only what she wanted, her mother turned back around and sped toward Emma. “How about a quick hug?” She opened her arms wide.
“Uh, yeah, no thank you. People are like, watching.” Emma quickly glanced only at the hot boy. They caught eyes for the first time without the safety of a reflection between them. With her mother’s back facing him, he blew Emma a kiss, and her cheeks warmed an instant pale pink.
Emma wrestled her mother’s grabby, locked upper limbs, warding off her outstretched arms once again. She raised her hands in clenched frustration, slapping her mother’s hands down and away with a hard chopping motion. She finally turned her back completely on her mother. “Can you just go?” Emma abruptly said. She took a defiant stance. She pretended to look in the boutique window where the dress she tried on for her mother hung unworn once again.
“Okay.” Her mother swung her head back, taking melancholy strides in the direction she had come. She finally walked up the street, around the last corner shop, and then out of view.
Emma relaxed with a deep purging sigh, blowing out
a loud puff. She focused on the window and the dress, but only for the reflection it offered, yet the hot boy gazing back had vanished.
“God, I hate that selfish friggin’ cow,” she slurred angrily to herself, “but at least she’s gone. I hate…”
A strong male voice with a slight French accent interrupted. “I hate that dress, too. That’s what you were going to say, right?”
Emma swung to one side and then to the other. He was right there. They were face to face. She gulped and bit down on her lower lip. “Oh, totally, yeah.” She bobbed her head in agreement, flipping and blowing her long, brown, stringy hair off her face.
“Your mother’s right. A fourteen-year-old girl can get into a lot of trouble in Paris.” He leaned over as he whispered the rest. His warm lips neared the outer portion of her ear. “But it’s awfully fun.” He pulled back and grinned with a deviant sort of charm.
She got her first glance at his ink. One was a tattoo of a black and red scorpion, behind his ear, on the back of his neck. “I…um, I gotta go…I mean, I should be somewhere else.” Her stomach felt unsettled. She was attracted and repulsed at the same time.
“What? Don’t you like the way I look?” He opened his arms, pulling up his long sleeves. His arms were inked on both sides up and down to his elbows and beyond. He glanced from side to side at his own black velvet sports coat and white t-shirt with the French flag colorfully plastered across his chest with a single, messy dyed design.
Something Eternal Page 5
