“Of course I would! I mean, I’ll have to ask my parents first, but if they’re okay with it, then I’m in.”
For a few seconds, we both just stand there smiling at each other on the sidewalk. People are sidestepping around us to get to the stairs leading down to the metro, but I’m barely paying attention.
“Well,” he says, “let me know what they say.”
“I’ll text you as soon as I get an answer.”
“Sounds good. See you, Alice.”
“See you.”
Paul looks like he might say something else, but then the moment is gone. He gives me a quick wave goodbye before he walks down the stairs, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. It almost aches to be away from him, and I just wish I knew for certain if he feels the same way about me.
Chapter 8
Adalyn
I wanted to believe this summer was the hardest thing I would ever have to go through. But as Papa says, things never get any easier during wartime. Either the war ends or life gets worse.
Two months have passed since they took Arnaud, and still I miss my friend every minute of the day. Sometimes I hear a voice that sounds like his and I spin around, longing to laugh with him again, only to find myself staring at a jumble of strangers. I don’t think I’ve laughed since July—not really. Not in the red-cheeked, doubled-over way we laughed in the Luxembourg Gardens that day.
Luc got the details from Arnaud’s neighbors about a week after the roundup. It was the concierge of his building who sold the family out. She told the officers exactly when his parents would be home, and when they arrived, they took Arnaud, too. The neighbors didn’t know where his two younger brothers ended up, but they assured Luc they never saw them get shepherded onto the buses headed for the Vel’ d’Hiv.
August brought more bad news. Luc got word through Geronte that the resistance group in Créteil had been compromised. The Gestapo dragged one of its members in for questioning, and under the threat of his whole family being deported, he turned over the names of three of his accomplices. We were safe, as no one in Créteil knew our names, but the three unlucky people were promptly arrested and sent to the prison of Fresnes. The woman in the pale blue coat, the one I met in the café, is among them. It is said that at Fresnes, resisters are beaten and starved for the smallest infractions—that they’re hung from the ceiling by an arm and a leg and tortured for information. The name “Fresnes” alone makes my stomach drop.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. It used to feel like a game, scurrying down to the Latin Quarter when school was out and rapping on the back door of the shoe store. We felt ecstatic—invincible—like the five of us could take down Nazi Germany if we just put our heads together. I know better than that now. We all do—those of us who are left. What I’m doing is risky. It could cost me my life.
But if Arnaud could be brave in the face of danger, then I must be, too.
Luc opens the door. He’s the only one in the room. I try not to look at the table, where Arnaud’s feigned “book club” scene is still on display.
“You don’t look well,” Luc says.
“I’m fine,” I mumble.
“Adalyn, I know you well enough—”
“I just miss him, Luc.”
And then he does something unexpected. In nearly two years of knowing him, Luc and I have never more than grazed each other’s skin by chance. Now, in the dim light, he pulls me into his arms and holds me against his chest. My cheek makes a nest in his shoulder, and his fingers find roots in my hair. Every heartbeat could be his or mine—it’s impossible to tell the difference.
“I know you miss him,” he says softly. “I do, too.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we should just stop all this,” I whisper, my voice catching. “I look at what happened to Arnaud, and I ask myself . . . I ask myself what difference we’re really making.”
I feel his hands on my shoulders, and the next thing I know he’s holding me at arm’s length.
“We have to do the opposite,” Luc says with determination. “We have to look at what happened to Arnaud and let it be the reason we don’t stop all this.”
He’s right.
We stare into each other’s eyes for what feels like an infinite stretch of time. At some point—I can’t quite say how long it’s been—a single tear rolls down Luc’s cheek. He doesn’t wipe it away. I follow its glimmering trail until it dries at the corner of his perfect lips.
“Adalyn,” he says, “I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“It isn’t good.”
An unwelcome chill settles about the room. It isn’t good? What more bad news could we possibly endure? He leads me over to the two chairs, and I take a seat, shaking.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” he says quietly. “I have to leave.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the Compulsory Work Service,” he replies. I can tell he’s trying to keep his voice steady. “Any able-bodied men over eighteen years old are being sent off to work in Germany.”
I shoot to the edge of my seat.
“Oh, Luc, you mustn’t—”
“I’m not going to do it. Of course not.”
“Good.”
“But that is why I have to leave.”
My body droops against the back of the chair as I gradually comprehend what Luc is saying. I can tell from the pained look in his eyes that he doesn’t have a choice: If he wants to keep fighting, then he has to hide. Our prolonged embrace from a moment ago suddenly takes on new meaning. I think Luc is really going to miss me.
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“Underground. Into hiding. I hear there are bands of guerrilla fighters forming in the south. Perhaps I’ll join them—we can find out how good I am with real weapons.” He laughs weakly, but his eyes still look sad. “Geronte is helping me figure out what to do. Which reminds me—he will be your contact now, Adalyn. I think you will like him . . . eventually. He has a tough shell.”
“What about Marcel? And Pierre-Henri?”
“They must leave, too.”
While Luc goes to the table to scribble on a small scrap of paper, I try to make sense of everything that’s happening right now. It is too much information to process all at once. I have so many questions I want to ask him, I don’t even know where to begin. . . .
But then I realize there is only one that really matters to me right now.
“Luc, when will I see you again?”
He returns from the table and places the scrap of paper in my palm, along with another half train ticket.
“I don’t know,” he answers.
“Wh-what?”
“This isn’t goodbye forever,” he says hurriedly. “I’ll be in and out of the city, I think. I just can’t say for certain when it will be.”
Just like the first time I met him, here in this very same room, I have the urge to run my hand along his cheek, thinner now than it was at the time, but no less beautiful. I might even like to touch my mouth to those perfect lips. . . . And with the way he embraced me earlier, I think he might feel the same way. . . . But no—he has already cried tonight—I mustn’t make this goodbye any harder for him.
I step out into the chilly September air feeling sapped of all my energy. I am a girl made of stone.
Life keeps on getting worse, just as Papa said it would.
A couple of days later, I’m sitting in the drawing room reading a novel—just glancing at the pages, really—when I notice that something feels off in the apartment. At first, I can’t put my finger on it: Maman is reading Suzette’s latest column with great focus, her red lips slightly parted, mouthing the words; Chloe sits at the table across the room, her sewing equipment spread out at her fingertips. It isn’t until I gaze from one to the other that I realize . . . what’s so strange about this scene is that neither of them is shouting at the other.
Now that I think about it, Chloe has been oddly calm all day; even her hair isn’
t as tall as it usually is. Which is strange, because Maman informed us over breakfast that we’d been invited to a very important salon at the Hotel Belmont tonight. Madame LaRoche and the twins are going to be there, along with a few of Maman’s other friends. Apparently, there will be writers and actresses and fashion designers and musicians in attendance. Even Suzette is expected to make an appearance.
It’s the exact kind of thing Chloe would despise.
I hope she isn’t up to something.
“Chloe, what are you sewing?” asks Maman when she finishes the column.
“My outfit for tonight,” Chloe replies in a singsong voice.
Oh no.
“Can I help you with anything?”
“No thank you, Maman! I should be fine.”
When Maman looks at the clock and says that it’s time to get ready, Chloe gathers up her things and skips off to her bedroom with a smile.
As I comb my hair in front of the mirror, there’s a knock at the door. Maman enters, wearing a lovely green dress with a cinched waist and full skirt. “Oh!” she says, noticing the dress I’ve laid out on the bed is a similar shade of green. “We’re going to match—shall I go change?”
“No, Maman. Don’t be ridiculous; you’re dressed already. I’ll pick something else.”
“But you look so beautiful in that dress.”
“Well then, why don’t we both wear green? I don’t mind if we match.”
Maman beams in the reflection of the mirror. “I’m so lucky,” she says. Then she walks over, eases the comb from my hand, and begins to pull it through my curls herself, as she’s done so many times before. I relax into my chair, enjoying the familiar repetition: a drag of the comb, followed by Maman’s hand smoothing my hair. She’s done this for me ever since I was a little girl.
“How are your lessons going, darling?”
“They’re good, Maman. Challenging, but good.”
Maman and Papa encouraged me to enroll in university so that perhaps I can teach music someday, and I took them up on their gracious offer, although it seems like such a small, selfish goal compared to what really matters now. I drift between classes, barely registering the lessons, feeling miserable that Arnaud didn’t get the same opportunity. Now that they’re leaving the city, I suppose Luc, Marcel, and Pierre-Henri won’t get it either. The only upside is that Maman and Papa are much less aware of my class schedule now, meaning it will be easier for me to sneak off and do work for Geronte—whom I am meeting tomorrow morning for the first time.
“Did anything fun happen this week?” asks Maman.
“No . . . actually, there was something rather upsetting,” I confess.
“Oh no,” she says, frowning. “What was it?”
“A professor in the music department didn’t come in on Thursday . . . and then yesterday, we found out he’d been arrested. His wife, too.”
Maman inhales sharply through her nose. “For what?” she asks.
“They were apparently sheltering Jews in their apartment.”
Maman stops what’s she’s doing and grips my shoulders as though to steady herself. She looks like she’s trying not to faint. With Papa around the house, she rarely shows this kind of emotion, but ever since the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, I think it’s been harder for her to trust that everything will be all right in the end. She brings up Pétain less than she used to, and even though she hasn’t openly said such a thing, I wonder if her confidence in the Old Marshal has finally been shaken.
Maman takes a deep breath to restore her composure and resumes her work on my hair. “That’s terrible, Adalyn. Did you know the man?”
“No. I only saw him in the halls a few times. People said he was lovely, though.”
Maman just shakes her head sadly.
After a minute or two, she says, “Let’s talk about something more uplifting. It’s wonderful to see your sister looking forward to a party for once.”
Oh, yes. Chloe. What is she up to on the other side of the wall? I still don’t know, so I nod at Maman in a noncommittal sort of way as she sets down the comb and begins pinning my curls in just the right place.
Maman and I, as usual, are the first to arrive in the foyer with our coats. Chloe’s door is still shut.
“Chloe, dear?” Maman calls. “Are you almost ready?”
“Just about!” Chloe answers.
It hurts me to see the joy twinkling in Maman’s eyes. I can tell how excited she is to spend a night with both of her daughters. Chloe rarely accompanies us to dinner parties at Madame LaRoche’s anymore—there’s usually a fight, and then my sister stomps off to join her friends someplace, or to shut herself in her bedroom. Each time, I see how it shatters Maman, who just wants everybody to get along and make the best of things. I can tell Maman thinks this time will be different, that maybe at last, her youngest daughter has come around. And maybe I’m wrong—I hope I’m wrong—but I know Chloe very well, and I know she would sooner walk back to Jonzac on foot than go to the Hotel Belmont tonight.
The bedroom door swings open. Chloe is wearing the long violet dress she was sewing in the drawing room earlier. Her hair is styled in an elegant chignon, and she’s even wearing a non-blinding shade of lipstick. I am desperately relieved—until I see the yellow star stitched to her chest. It looks exactly like the yellow star Arnaud was made to wear, except instead of the word “Juif” in the center, Chloe’s says “zazou.” I have seen other young people wear stars like this to protest the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies.
Maman is elated at the sight of her daughter all dressed up, until she sees what Chloe has done. It would be easier to watch if she spiraled into a fit of rage, but instead, her face crumples in disappointment.
“I’m ready,” Chloe says defiantly, a smirk playing on her lips.
“Darling,” Maman says in a low, controlled voice, “you cannot wear that to the Hotel Belmont tonight.”
“Why not?”
“You just can’t,” she insists.
I wonder if she’s thinking about the music professor.
“Because everyone who’s going to be there agrees that the Jews should be singled out and deported?” asks Chloe.
Maman looks affronted.
“Chloe,” I chime in, desperate to avoid a big fight, “of course we don’t think that. But you could get in trouble if a German sees you on the way there.”
Chloe plants her hands on her hips. The color rises in her fair cheeks.
“Well, if I can’t wear it, then I don’t want to go,” she says.
“Fine,” Maman says. “Adalyn and I will go by ourselves.”
I’m in the middle, once again. Chloe looks at me expectantly, as though daring me to side with Maman.
“You really won’t change outfits?” I ask, taking her by the hand. “Please, Chloe—I want you to come.” It’s true. These events would be much more bearable if Chloe was with me, and besides, we haven’t spent as much time together lately, now that I’m in university and Chloe has a whole new cohort of zazou friends.
But she yanks her hand away.
“No thank you.”
I sigh. I never want Chloe to be upset with me. At least she still lets me hug her goodbye, and then Maman and I set off for the Eighth Arrondissement.
“So who is hosting the party?” I ask Maman, trying to lighten the mood as we walk down the boulevard Haussmann. The wide, tree-lined street is mostly deserted. At certain intersections you used to be able to see Sacré-Coeur off in the distance, but not anymore, with Paris in the dark.
“Madeleine Marbot,” Maman says, “of the Marbot diamond family. Madame LaRoche and I happened to be seated next to her at Madame Agnès’s runway show. And then we ran into her again at Cartier, where she and Madame LaRoche had their eyes on the same clock, and that’s when she invited us all to the salon tonight.”
“That was generous of her.”
“She really is an admirable woman,” Maman says. “Madame LaRoche told me the whole story. She’s
one of these people who came back to Paris to discover the Germans had requisitioned her apartment. I still can’t imagine what that must have been like. . . . But in any case, Madame Marbot kept her head held high. She took up residence at the Hotel Belmont and has been hosting these salons ever since.”
“How interesting.”
“Yes. I suppose that’s the spirit, isn’t it? We all have to adapt, because who knows how long this will last. . . .”
We go in through the grand front doors, Maman leading the way. As we descend the short flight of stairs into the lobby, I spy them everywhere, infesting the place like rats: Germans. They sip wine and smoke cigarettes in the plush red chairs, and some even have their big black boots up on the tables. I despise them even more now, ever since Arnaud, but we both pretend not to notice them as we cross the marble floor to the lift.
We can hear the din as soon as we get off on the fifth floor. The doors of the suite open to reveal a glittering chandelier, and underneath, a party in full swing: hordes of people—mostly women—in their evening finery; a live band playing in the corner; hors d’oeuvres and drinks being passed around as though rationing were not in effect.
Not five steps into the room, we are greeted by a somewhat stout woman in a voluminous turquoise dress and matching feathered hat. She kisses Maman twice on each cheek.
“Odette Bonhomme! I am delighted to see you again.”
“The pleasure is mine, Madeleine,” Maman says. “I adore the hat.”
“It’s Madame Agnès, of course,” Madame Marbot says with a wink. “And your marvelous clutch?”
“Boucheron.”
Madame Marbot nods approvingly. Then she turns to me, laying her gloved hands upon my shoulders.
“And who is this charming creature?”
“My daughter Adalyn,” Maman answers.
“It’s lovely to meet you,” I say.
“Lovely to meet you, too, darling,” Madame Marbot replies airily. I can tell that her eyes have already latched onto another new arrival. “You two go and enjoy the party, now.”
And just like that, she’s gone.
“Odette! Adalyn!”
A flush-faced Madame LaRoche waves to us as she navigates her way through the crowd with the twins in tow. Along the way, she snatches two flutes of champagne off a passing tray and gives us each one.
The Paper Girl of Paris Page 12
