Forbidden French

“Do you regularly sneak around in the library?” I ask her, standing one aisle over, giving her enough space that I hope it will keep her from running again.

She doesn’t answer.

In fact, she doesn’t even look remotely compelled to answer my question.

I’ve never met anyone like her. Her ability to stare someone down without uttering a single word is so intriguing to me. Half these kids at St. John’s never shut up. There’s always something to brag about, some trip they just took or some celebrity they’re supposedly friends with. Who cares. None of it’s real. Not like this.

“Do you not like that question?” I ask her, gentling my tone as I lean in. “What about another? Who gave you those eyes?”

Her dark eyebrows furrow as if she has to really think to come up with the answer.

“They’re a shade of green I’ve never seen before,” I add, hoping to get her to lower her guard.

She looks shyly down to the floor and then back up with conviction in her gaze.

“My dad.”

Her voice is so delicate and light.

“Do they make me look scary?” she asks, sounding so sad at the prospect.

I have a sudden urge to reach out and brush the side of her cheek with the back of my finger like my mother used to do when I was little. I wish I could reassure her that every cruelty she’s ever had to endure will only make her stronger in the end, but that’s a lie. Some people get the short end of the stick, and Lainey Davenport is one of those people.

My back is starting to ache from crouching down to her eye level, so I prop my elbow up on the shelf before I reply, “No offense. I’m not sure if you were hoping to lean into the whole mysterious persona, but you just look like a little kid. Nothing scary about you, eyes and all.”

Her delicate chin rises in defiance. “I’m not a kid.”

“You’re twelve,” I say, sounding less than convinced.

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” I amend.

“I’m not that young,” she insists.

Oh right. I’m not that young, says the diminutive girl with rounded cheeks and trembling shoulders.

“I don’t know why you’re trying to shirk off youth. I’m young, you’re young—big fucking deal. We have years to make mistakes and learn from them and grow up.”

Her mouth flattens in a discontented line, but she doesn’t argue.

It strikes me suddenly that I’ve been granted something very few kids at St. John’s have experienced—an interview with Lainey Davenport. Anne Rice wishes she were in my shoes.

I barely know what to ask first. I want to know it all.

I start with, “Why did you seem sad when your grandmother was here earlier?”

She rears back in shock and shakes her head. I don’t know if she’s surprised I noticed her or if she’s surprised she wasn’t doing as good of an acting job as she thought during the picnic luncheon.

She looks away like she’s considering her exit strategies, and I realize too late that I might have delved too deep too soon. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want her to ask me why I noticed her looking sad. The fact is, Lainey is hard to miss. The swell of rumors that surround her act as a buffer between her and the rest of the student body. She walks around with a black cloud hanging over her head. Even if there were no whispers, I think she’d always stand out with her contrasting features, such dark hair and such light eyes. I suppose I’m simply intrigued by the girl who’s intrigued the whole school.

After taking a moment to compose herself, she looks back at me and steps closer to the shelf, closer than she’s dared this whole time, and instead of replying to my question, she fires one back at me with one brow raised tauntingly.

“Why did your dad come all the way to St. John’s only to stay for a few minutes?”

What a loaded question. Perhaps it’s her way of telling me I’m not the only voyeur among us.

Interesting.

I like this game.

I wave my finger up and down her body. “Why did you wear that frilly dress? Do you like it or did you have no choice?”

“Why did you wear that suit?”

I nearly grin at her intelligence.

I lean in. “Why don’t you stand up for yourself when people bully you?”

She leans in. “Why do you always seem angry and detached from the rest of the world, even your own friends?”

“Why is a little mouse like you hiding in the library at this time of night?”

“Why is a devil like you asking me all these questions?”

She’s breathing hard and her nostrils flare. I get this great sweeping feeling like I can see her down to her soul, and yet at the same time, it feels like if I held my hand out to touch her, it would pass right through the air, merely a mirage.

I never do get my answers.

The whiskey took effect, or maybe she grew bored of my taunting—she left after her last question, spinning on her heels, her dark curls bouncing.

The next morning, I wake up with a pounding headache, the kind of pain I know won’t budge even with Tylenol. I almost feel sorry for myself. It was stupid to drink that much. I never do it, hence why I still had that almost full bottle of whiskey three years after my friend gave it to me.

I wince when I sit up and look over to see that Harrison isn’t in the room. His bed is a crumpled mess. The clock reads half past eleven. I accidentally slept through breakfast in the dining hall, not that food sounds all that appetizing at the moment anyway.

I think of last night and wonder how Lainey is feeling this morning, then I brush the thought aside. She’s not my concern. Whether she wants to admit it to herself or not, she’s a kid. I have no business befriending her. Actually, I have no business befriending anyone right now. I have a set of goals that were hand-delivered to me yesterday by a cyborg in a suit. I have ten weeks left in this place, and then I’m gone, back to Paris where my life will consist of coursework and my internship at GHV.

Lainey will need to learn to fend for herself.

The door’s flung open, and Harrison walks in balancing three plates of food.

“First of all, idiot, you slept through breakfast, but I’m a good friend so here’s some cold eggs and hash browns. Pancakes and sausage too, though I took a bite out of both on the way up.”

Plates clatter as he haphazardly sets them down on my desk.

“Second, where the hell were you last night? I swear to god if you’re sleeping with Pippa again, you’re going to regret it.” He mimes the infamous Psycho knife scene. “She’s batshit, man.”

I get up out of bed and try to ignore the fact that the world feels like it’s tilting on its axis. “I wasn’t with Pippa.”

“Good, because I think Francesca is into you, and you cannot walk away from that. Please, for me, just spend the last few weeks before you graduate making the rounds.”

“Francesca isn’t my type.”

“Collette then?”

“No.”

“Are you kidding? It physically pains me that you don’t take more advantage of the French shit. You could just wander around saying whatever the hell you want and these girls would go wild for it.”

I rub my temples, trying to ease the headache that seems hellbent on staying put.

Harrison starts another sentence, some other thing that’s going to annoy me.

I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “Could you just shut up for five seconds?”

“Unfortunately, no. It’s a real problem.”