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“Maybe it won’t apply to us,” I say, hoping to convince myself. “Nate knows we’re just friends. And shouldn’t there be exemptions for friends who are in no way interested in each other’s bodies?”
Kurt’s mouth grows small and tight. “He didn’t say anything about exemptions.”
Because of our grade difference, our only period together is lunch. I head towards senior English alone and take my usual seat beside the leaded-glass windows. The classroom looks the same – dark wooden trim, empty whiteboards, chairs-attached-to-desks – though it still carries that feeling of summer emptiness.
Where is Josh?
Professeur Cole arrives as she always does, just as the bell is ringing. We have the same professeurs for each subject every year. She’s loud for a teacher, friendly and approachable. “Bonjour à tous.” Professeur Cole smacks down her coffee cup on the podium and looks around. “Good. No new students, no need for an introduction. Ah, pardon.” She pauses. “One empty desk. Who’s missing?”
The door creaks open with her answer.
“Monsieur Wasserstein. Of course the empty desk is yours.” But she winks as he slips into the remaining desk beside the door.
Josh looks tired, but…even tired looks good on him. He’s wearing a dark blue T-shirt with artwork that I don’t recognize, no doubt something obscure from the indie comic world. It fits him well – a bit tightly – and when he reaches for a copy of the syllabus, his sleeve creeps up to reveal the tattoo on his upper right arm.
I love his tattoo.
It’s a skull and crossbones, but it’s whimsical and simple and clean. Clearly his own design. He got it our sophomore year, despite the fact that minors in France are required to have parental approval. Which I seriously doubt he had. Which, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, makes it even sexier. My heart pounds feverishly in my ears. I glance around the room, but the other girls appear to be at ease. Why doesn’t he have the same effect on them that he has on me? Don’t they see him?
Professeur Cole makes us push our desks into a circle. She’s the only teacher here who forces us to look at one another during class. I take my seat again, and – suddenly – Josh’s desk is opposite my own.
My head jerks down. My hair shields my face. I’ll never be able to talk to him about that night in New York.
Halfway through class, the guy beside him asks a question. The temptation is too strong, so I steal the opportunity for another glance. Josh immediately looks up. Our eyes meet, and my cheeks burst into flames. I avert my gaze for the remainder of the hour, but his presence grows larger and larger. I can practically feel it pressing up against me.
Despite the fact that our schedule is, thus far, identical – English, calculus, government – I manage to evade him for the rest of the morning. It helps that he’s skilled at both disappearing between classes and arriving late to them. Even when the next class is literally across the hall. When the bell rings for lunch, it’s comforting to resume Kurt’s company. We take the back staircase, the one less travelled. It’s the Right Way.
“Did you speak to him?” he asks.
My sigh is long and forlorn. “No.”
“Yeah. That sounds like you.”
Kurt launches into something about a freshman in his computer programming class, a girl who is tall and serene and already fluent in several internet languages – totally his type – but I’m only half paying attention. I know it’s dumb. I know there are more important things to think about on a first day back to school, including whatever it is my best friend is saying. But I like Josh so much that I actually feel miserable.
He has yet to make an appearance in the cafeteria, and it’s doubtful that he will now, because I saw him weaving through the crowd in the opposite direction. His friends graduated last year. All of them. If only I were courageous enough to invite him to sit with us at our table. But his friends were so much cooler than us.
Besides, Josh is aloof. Untouchable. We are not.
In the lunch line, Mike Reynard – the senior who was the first to shout during Nate’s speech – proves my point when he slams his tray into Kurt’s spine. A bowl of onion soup splashes its entire contents onto the back of his hoodie.
Mike pretends to look disgusted. “Watch it, retard.”
Kurt stares straight ahead in shock. A slice of baguette covered in melted Gruyère falls from his back to the floor with a splat. A soggy onion noiselessly follows.
My cheeks redden. “Jerk.”
“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Mike says. Even though he did. He’s making fun of my soft voice.
I raise it so that he can hear me. “I said you’re an asshole.”
He smiles, an orthodontic row of unnaturally sharp teeth. “Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it, sweetheart?”
I clench the compass on the end of my necklace. Nothing. I am going to do nothing, and he knows it. Kurt shoves his hands into his hoodie’s pockets, which begin to shake. I know his hands are flapping. He makes a low sound, and I link my arm through his and lead him away, abandoning our food trays. Pretending like I don’t see Mike’s and Dave’s pantomimes or hear their cretinous guffaws.
In the quiet of the hall, Kurt races into the men’s room. I sit on a bench and listen to the tick of a gilded clock. Count the number of pear-shaped crystals on the chandeliers. Tap my heels against the marble floor. Our school is as grand and ostentatious as anything in Paris, but I wish it weren’t filled with such horrible, entitled weasels. And I know I’m just as privileged, but…it feels different when you live on the social ladder’s bottom rung.
Kurt reappears. His hoodie is balled in his arms, wet from scrubbing.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
He’s calm, but he’s still frowning with severe agitation. “Now I can’t wear it until it’s clean.”
“No worries.” I help him shove it into his bag. “First thing after school.”
The lunch line is empty. “I had ze feeling you would return.” The jolly, pot-bellied head chef removes our trays from behind the counter and slides them towards us. “Leek tart for mademoiselle, un croque-monsieur for monsieur.”
I’m grateful for this gesture of kindness. “Merci, Monsieur Boutin.”
“Zat boy iz no good.” He means Mike. “You do not worry about him.”
His concern is simultaneously embarrassing and reassuring. He swipes our meal cards, and then Kurt and I sit at our usual table in the far corner. I glance around. As predicted, Josh isn’t here, which is probably a good thing. But Hattie isn’t here either. Which is probably not.
This morning I saw her eating un mille-feuille and – even though I don’t blame her for wanting to start the day with dessert – I tried to stop her. I thought it might be dusted with powdered almonds, and she’s allergic to almonds. But my sister always does the opposite of whatever anyone wants her to do, even when it’s completely idiotic and potentially life threatening. We’re not supposed to have our phones out at school, so I sneak-text her: ARE YOU ALIVE?!
She doesn’t reply.
The day worsens. In physics, Professeur Wakefield pairs us alphabetically to our lab partner for the year. I get Emily Middlestone, who groans when it’s announced, because she is popular, and I am not. Sophie Vernet is paired with Josh.
I hate Sophie Vernet.
Actually, I’ve never given Sophie Vernet much thought, and she seems nice enough, but that’s the problem.
My last two classes are electives. I’d like to say that I’m taking art history for my own betterment – not so that I’ll have more to hypothetically converse about with Josh – but that would be false. And I’m taking computer science, because it’ll look better on my transcripts than La Vie, the class that I wish I could take. La Vie means “life”, and it’s supposed to teach us basic life skills, but it’s better known as the school’s only goof-off class. I have zero doubt it’s where Josh is currently located.
Professeur Fontaine, the computer science teacher, paus
es by my desk while she’s handing out our first homework assignment. Her chin is pointy, and her forehead is huge. She looks like a triangle. “I met your sister this morning.”
I didn’t even know Professeur Fontaine knew me. This school is way too small. I try to keep my voice nonchalant. “Oh, yeah?” When the sister in question is Hattie, whatever follows this statement is generally unpleasant.
“She was in the nurse’s office. Very ill.”
Hattie! I told you so.
Professeur Fontaine assures me that my sister isn’t dying, but she refuses to let me see for myself. When the final bell rings, I shoot a see-you-later text to Kurt, hurry towards the administration wing, push through its extravagantly carved wooden door, and—
My heart seizes.
Josh is slumped on the waiting room couch. His legs are stretched out so far and so low that they’re actually underneath the coffee table. His arms are crossed, but his eyebrows rise – perhaps involuntarily, for someone sitting with such purposeful displeasure – at the sight of me.
My response is another deep, flaming blush. Why can’t I have a normal face? Genetics are so unfair. I hasten towards the desk and ask the receptionist in French about Hattie. Without glancing up, she waves me towards the couch. A bracelet with a monogrammed charm jingles daintily from her wrist.
I can’t move. My stomach is in knots.
“Wait there,” she says, as if I didn’t understand her gesture. Another wave and another jingle.
Move, feet. Come on. Move!
She finally looks at me, more annoyed than concerned. My feet detach, and I plant one in front of the other like a wind-up doll until I’m sitting on the other side of the couch. The small couch. Love seat, really.
Josh is no longer in full recline. He sat up while my back was turned, and now he’s leaning forward with his elbows propped against his knees. He’s staring straight ahead at an oil painting of a haloed Jeanne d’Arc.
It is now officially more awkward to ignore him than to acknowledge his presence. I search for an opener – something elementary – but my throat remains thick and closed. His silence is a confirmation of my fears. That I was a mess in the café, that his help was given in pity, that he wouldn’t actively choose to interact with me and never will again—
Josh clears his throat.
It seems like a good sign. Good. “Good first day?” I ask.
A funny expression crosses his face. Was that a dumb question? Did it make me sound like his mother? Hattie is always accusing me of sounding like Maman.
“I’ve had better.” He nods towards the head of school’s office door.
“Oh.” But then I get it. “Oh! Sorry. I’m here for the nurse, so…I assumed…”
