Dad squeezes Mom’s shoulder. “Have you ever seen a photo of your grandparents?”
“No,” she snaps, wriggling away from his touch. “All I knew is they died before I was born.”
I have an idea. I find an opening in the top of the frame, slide out the photo, and flip it over. Sure enough, there’s writing on the back: Maman, Papa, Chloe, et Adalyn. 1938. Chloe was Gram’s name, which means her sister had to be . . . Adalyn.
I haven’t heard that name before. In my grade at school, there are five Emilys, four Hannahs, three Ashleys, and three Samanthas, but nobody named Adalyn. I like it—more than I like Alice, which sounds so mousy and uptight. There’s something about the dark-haired girl that makes it hard to look away, and it isn’t just that she’s prettier than any other human I’ve seen in my life. There’s a strange sort of look in her eyes, like she’s analyzing the person taking her picture.
“Her name was Adalyn,” I tell Mom as I hand her the photograph. She slots it back into the picture frame without so much as a passing glance. Dad runs his palm over what’s left of his thinning hair. He does it whenever he’s in over his head and contemplating what to say next.
“Maybe we should go get some lunch,” he suggests. “Diane, what do you think?”
“That’s fine with me.”
My heart sinks. I’m not ready to leave yet. I want to keep exploring—I haven’t even seen any of the bedrooms yet. But at the same time, I know Dad is right. This is a lot for Mom to absorb all at once, and it’s better for her if we don’t stick around for too long. I don’t want to be selfish. With one last sweeping look at the apartment, I make a silent promise to Gram that I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’s probably best that I come alone next time so I can stay for as long as I want.
I follow my parents into the stairwell and close the door behind us. I left the curtains open so the light will shine in.
Chapter 2
Alice
Sunshine streams through the window above my bed in the rental apartment. It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I’m wide-awake, buzzing with anticipation.
For three long days, my parents and I have been wandering around museums and other landmarks. We saw the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower . . . and the whole time, nobody said a word about Gram or the apartment. Dad and I were Prewitt-ing even harder than usual, commenting on the magnificent paintings and the stunning architecture and desperately hoping that Mom wasn’t too miserable. Finally, late last night, Dad got an email from the head of the cleaning crew saying they were done removing the dust and debris, and we were free to come back whenever we wanted. The guy said he’d never seen anything like Gram’s apartment—une capsule temporelle, he called it.
A time capsule.
I press my ear to the paper-thin wall between my room and my parents’. They must still be asleep. Quietly, I brush my teeth, change into shorts and a T-shirt, and put on my sneakers; they’re the only shoes I brought with me, because I wear them with everything. As I slip out the door, I shoot my parents both a text so they don’t freak out when they wake up. All things considered, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t come face-to-face with Mom this morning. I mean, she did say that I’m free to go back to the apartment whenever I want, as long as she doesn’t have to come along, but it’s hard to know what she’s really thinking. I wish it were easier.
Part of me feels guilty for abandoning her today, but she does have Dad to keep her company, and after seventy-two hours away, the apartment at 36, rue de Marquis is pulling me back. As I make my way on foot up the rue de Richelieu, there’s something about the world around me that seems inexplicably brighter, like somebody cranked up the sun. Walking past a tiny park, I notice a fountain that must be fifteen feet high, its jets of water arcing gracefully through the air. That’s one of my favorite things about Paris so far—that everywhere you turn, there’s something stunningly beautiful plopped in the middle of an ordinary city block. Our Airbnb is a cramped two-bedroom apartment over a cell phone repair shop, but across the street is a gorgeous church that was built in the seventeenth century. The city is full of surprises like that.
My first stop is a coffee shop I find along the way, a place so tiny and so aromatic, you could probably get your caffeine kick just by breathing in the air. Feeling bold when I step up to the counter, I use my so-so French to order a black coffee: “Un café noir, s’il vous plaît.”
It’s my go-to order, even though it’s so bitter. Whenever we go to Starbucks, my friends Hannah and Camila order pumpkin spice lattes and mocha Frappuccinos with whipped cream on top. I’ll admit they taste pretty good—okay, fine, they taste amazing—but Gram taught me to appreciate coffee that isn’t pretending.
When the barista hands me my order, it isn’t what I expected. The cup is three inches tall, smaller than kiddie size. The coffee is sludge-like, deep brown and opaque. There’s barely any of it in here.
When I take a sip, I can see why. It’s the strongest coffee I’ve ever had in my life. It tastes like a slap in the face. Is this a trick they play on Americans? Could she tell by my accent? But looking around me, I see other people drinking it, too, no problem. How are they doing it? I’m too embarrassed to ask for something else, so I take it with me in the hope that I’ll get used to it, the same way I trained myself to tolerate cilantro. Every three blocks I take another sip, but somehow, I think it’s only getting stronger. When I get to Gram’s street, I force myself to down the last nose-wrinkling dregs before I toss the cup triumphantly into the trash.
I climb the stairs to apartment five, turn the key in the lock, and push open the door. Wow—the cleaners did an incredible job. I can see details that used to be hidden beneath the blankets of dust: the elaborate claw feet of the dining room table and chairs, the patterns on the oriental rugs in the drawing room, Gram’s and Adalyn’s smiling faces in the photographs next to the front door. It’s like the whole apartment shifted into focus.
I still can’t believe Gram left it to me.
I could go around studying every piece of furniture in the apartment, but what I really want to do is learn as much as I can about Gram and her family. Since we read the will I’ve been thinking about it constantly, shutting my eyes and replaying scenes in my mind, and now I’m certain Gram was intentionally keeping secrets. I remember a couple of times when her past almost came up in conversation, and she cleverly managed to steer things in another direction before I realized what she’d done.
Take last March, when I asked if she would look over my homework for European History, which was a detailed map of Germany’s invasions in World War II. I thought she might actually be interested, since she was alive when it happened, but Gram scanned the page for no more than a second before setting it aside and asking, “Is this the class with the boy? Has he figured out how to properly kiss a woman?”
Yes, this was the class with the boy. After all my stress about not having a date, Nathan Pomorski ended up asking me to the spring semiformal. He kissed me in the middle of a slow song—or rather, he suctioned his lips onto the bottom half of my face, so that my whole entire mouth ended up inside his. It was horrible.
“Not that I’m aware of,” I told Gram. “I already told him nicely that I don’t want to hang out again, but I don’t think he got the message. He keeps showing up at my locker to say hi.”
Gram slammed her coffee mug onto the table with a thunk. “So tell him he kisses like a vacuum cleaner!”
At that point, we both dissolved into laughter, and the history homework lay forgotten.
I didn’t get to see the bedrooms the other day, so that’s where I go first. It isn’t hard to find them. Farther down the hallway where I peeked inside the coat closet, I find two doors, each with a painted sign on it. One says “Chloe.” The other says “Adalyn.”
There’s no question about it, I’m doing Gram’s room first.
Gram’s room—what a weird thought. I still can’t process the fact that she
lived here, that her hand turned this very same rickety brass doorknob. My heart beats wildly at the thought of finding some kind of clue about her past inside.
Oh, jeez. The room looks like a hurricane came through here. Gram’s closet door is wide open, and clothes are strewn haphazardly across the bed. Random shoes and books lie open on the floor. I can’t imagine what it looked like before the cleaners got to work. Is this how Gram packed to leave for America?
Two tiny objects on top of the dresser catch my eye, and the questions I was asking myself completely disappear as my throat tightens up again.
The tears come quickly, like there’s a hand squeezing my neck and forcing my feelings to the surface. I wiped them away when it happened in front of Mom, but this time, I let them flow freely down my cheeks, hot and wet and salty—a real mess of emotion. I’m a wreck . . . and I’m immediately embarrassed about it. I usually don’t cry in front of anybody, including myself. It was the needle and thread on the dresser that got me, a sliver of evidence that Gram, my Gram, once lived and breathed in this foreign room. She worked as a seamstress when she first moved to America, before she got her degree to become a teacher. She always loved to sew, though; she even made clothes for my stuffed animals when I was little. I pick up the needle and roll it between my fingers, and amazingly, like someone draping a blanket around my shoulders, the apartment starts to feel a little more like home.
I pull myself together and get back to looking around. On top of the clothes pile, there’s a long purple dress Gram apparently didn’t want to take with her. Strangely, it has a yellow star sewn to the chest that looks like it was added later. The star says “zazou” in the middle. What does that mean? I know the Nazis made Jewish people wear stars on their clothing during World War II, but Gram was Christian.
I peruse the scattered clothes some more, caressing the fabric and wishing Gram were here to explain everything to me. Why was this place such a secret, and why did she leave it to me? Why not Mom? Was there something she wanted me to find? In search of clues, I move to the chest of drawers, finding only a few stray stockings inside. Argh. Give me a sign, Gram! Stupidly, I look over my shoulder to see if anything has magically revealed itself, but the room is the same as it was when I came in.
If it’s mostly old clothes in here that Gram didn’t want to take with her, maybe I should look in the room next door—the one that belonged to Adalyn, the mysterious great-aunt I never knew I had. I take one last lap of Gram’s room and go back out into the hall.
Adalyn’s door swings open with a long, low creak.
The first thing I see, in the mottled sunlight coming in from the courtyard, is a gorgeous canopy bed with carved wooden posts. I used to beg my parents for a bed like that nonstop when I was in the first grade, but then Mom went through that dark phase, and I learned pretty quickly how to censor my behavior. I guess I forgot about it by the time second grade rolled around, and I haven’t really thought about it since.
I scan the room, wondering where to look first. If someone went into my room back home, where would they find my most personal belongings? No question, it would have to be my desk drawer. That’s where I stash all my cringeworthy poems that will never ever see the light of day. It’s also where I keep the address Nathan gave me for his summer camp in Canada; he asked me to write him letters because there isn’t any cell service there, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I hurry over to the writing desk under Adalyn’s bedroom window, but with my fingers on the knob of the drawer, I pause. I feel like a bit of a snoop, rummaging through her things. If Mom ever opened my desk drawer and saw the poems I wrote a few years ago, when she was in another one of her phases, I’d probably die on the spot. But all that being said, Adalyn hasn’t lived here for years—decades, in fact. Wherever she is now, I doubt this stuff is particularly important to her.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I pull.
Inside, there are pencils, blank stationary, and a few stray coins and bobby pins. There’s also a leather-bound black notebook. I flip it open to the first page, and right away, I see paragraph after paragraph of tiny cursive handwriting. There’s a date in the top right corner: 30 mai 1940—May 30th, 1940.
My heart skips a beat.
I think I just found Adalyn’s diary.
I know I’m being the ultimate snoop, but I can’t resist. I’ll go through their parents’ bedroom later. Right now, I need Google Translate.
I check the other drawers to make sure there’s nothing I missed, except for one that’s jammed so tightly it won’t budge. Then I hightail it back to the Airbnb, stuff my laptop into my backpack, and set out in search of a café with free Wi-Fi. I could have done this from the rental apartment, but I didn’t want to risk having Mom walk in on me and get upset all over again. Thankfully, it doesn’t take me long to find a quiet seat in the corner of a café; it’s a gorgeous summer day in Paris, which means everyone else at the restaurant is clamoring for a table outside on the sidewalk. As soon as I connect to the internet, I prop open the diary with an elbow and begin to type the first entry into Google Translate.
“Something to eat, mademoiselle?”
The waiter is here to take my order.
“Oh, um . . .” I squint at the chalkboard on the wall. “Un pain au chocolat, s’il vous plaît.”
“And would you like anything to drink?”
Yes—but I don’t want to make the same mistake as I did this morning, when I tried to place my order in French. This time, I think I’ll stick to English.
“Can I just have a cup of black coffee, please?”
“Un café?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I turn back to the diary. It’s slow going; sometimes it’s hard to make out certain letters, and my French isn’t good enough that I can make an educated guess about what the word actually is. I end up opening a second Google Translate tab where I can enter the different possibilities until an English word pops up that seems like it fits. My glasses keep sliding down my nose because I’m hunched so low over the page.
The waiter returns with my order. One flaky pastry that looks like heaven on a plate, and one—oh no. It’s another tiny coffee cup. How did I let this happen again?
“Un pain au chocolat et un café, mademoiselle.”
Eventually I’ll get to the bottom of this, but for now I thank him and get back to work. Every time I get through a particularly dense section, I reward myself with another bite of pain au chocolat. I love how it practically melts on my tongue.
At last, I finish going through the first diary entry. I roll out my neck and stretch my wrists. I take a minuscule sip of coffee—Jesus Christ, that is powerful—and then I read.
I have never kept a diary before.
I am starting one now because it feels like the only way I can begin to make sense of the past few weeks. If I don’t write it all down, I may not believe some of the things I have seen with my own eyes.
I found this empty notebook when I was searching for bandages to wrap my feet. Uncle Gérard said I deserved to keep it after what I’d been through. So now I am writing from the attic of Gérard’s farmhouse—more specifically, from the mattress that Chloe and I are to share for the time being. Who knows for how long? My sister is complaining about the cramped sleeping arrangements (as she complains about most things), but I find this dreary little attic is the only place I can hear myself think. Between Maman, Papa, Gérard, and four of his friends who also left Paris, the house is terribly crowded and the nervous energy is too much to bear.
Where to begin this wretched story? In May, the Germans invaded France. At school they always told us not to worry, that Hitler would never get past the Maginot Line, but they were wrong.
Everything happened very quickly after that. Papa said we were leaving Paris for Gérard’s farm in Jonzac. We had to pack up the car as fast as we could. Maman put on three dresses and two coats and packed a carrying case of jewelry, and told Chloe and me to do t
he same. She left the apartment in her most expensive pair of high heels because she didn’t want to leave them behind. I wonder what became of them.
Fleeing was meant to be for our safety, but there was nothing safe about that road out of Paris. Picture a filthy, weary current of humanity stretching as far as the eye can see. Some families pushed their belongings in teetering wagons. Others had nothing but the ragged clothes on their backs. Papa drove the car for as long as he could, inching through the congestion. Eventually we ran out of petrol near Orléans. Because there was none to be had anywhere, we had to abandon our beloved Citroën like a corpse at the side of the road—many of our things still inside it—and continue our journey on foot.
We walked for three days. Our feet ached and bled. Even with all the money Papa took out of the bank, we could not find a room anywhere. We slept—or tried to sleep—in the grass beside the road. We nibbled at the bread, cheese, and sausage we had thankfully thought to pack.
There are things I saw on the road that I will never forget for as long as I live. The crowd was a living thing. It could swallow you. There were children shrieking in terror because they’d been separated from their parents. How would they ever find them again, when they were too young to know where they were going? There were elderly people splayed out on the ground because they were too weak to go on walking. Some were alive. Some weren’t. I was desperate to stop and help these people, but Maman and Papa kept marching on ahead, and I couldn’t lose them. I had the food.
The worst of all was when the bombers came. We were tired, filthy, starving. And then we heard the dull drone, getting louder and louder by the second. We looked up and saw German planes flying toward a section of the road up ahead of us. Three of them. At first I assumed they were heading someplace else, but then they dove with a terrible screaming sound. They shot at the people on the ground. Innocent people who had nothing—who had been walking for days. And then they were gone.
The Paper Girl of Paris Page 2
