Chapter 2
As we unload our sore bodies and heavy bags from the van, I stare up at the hostel where we’ll be staying. It’s called the Grand Paris Youth Hostel, but nothing about it seems grand or, well, youthful.
In fact, the building looks like it might have survived cannon fire in the time of Les Misérables.
The stone walls are streaked with green mold and what seems like centuries of black grime.
It reminds me of those parts of Disney World where they make the outsides of buildings dirty and run-down on purpose so they seem authentic—but this is, you know, actually authentic.
“All right, étudiantes,” Mademoiselle Alvarez bellows, clapping her hands as we gather around her on the sidewalk. “Let’s do another count-off!”
Everyone groans. We already did a count-off when we first got into the van.
Nneka looks up from her fuzzy pink phone case, indignant.
“Do we have to do that right now?” she asks.
“Everyone’s going to think we’re a bunch of American kids from the suburbs.
” She smooths down her gorgeous center-parted black tresses, looking around self-consciously at the Parisian strangers strutting past, none of whom seem to care about us one way or another.
They’re all too busy smoking, or talking on their phones in loud French, or looking fashionable.
“You are an American kid from the suburbs, Belle,” sighs Mademoiselle Alvarez.
“That’s not how I identify,” retorts Nneka snootily.
“Yeah, that’s not how we identify,” repeats Cody/Gaston, draping his muscly arm around Nneka’s shoulders.
Nneka and Cody are the Power Couple of Sandy Springs High School, which is saying something—it’s the biggest school in Georgia, with over four thousand students, and almost all of them follow Nneka and Cody’s joint social media account, @TwoHeartsOneSoulXOXO, to watch them be the hottest couple 24-7.
(Even I couldn’t resist giving them a hate follow.)
Mademoiselle Alvarez ignores them. “Okay, start counting!” she hollers so loudly we all flinch.
Nneka nudges Gaston. “Oh yeah,” he mutters. He clears his throat and booms, “Un!” One.
“Deux!” says Josie “Colette” Brown. Two.
There’s no logical reason why Mademoiselle Alvarez needs us to count off again, just like there was no logical reason why she made us count off right before we boarded our plane at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and then again while we were flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
She’s been watching too much Unsolved Mysteries if she thinks one of us could vanish in the middle of a commercial flight.
But I guess I understand why she’s paranoid.
She’s chaperoning this trip all by herself after the French Club’s other faculty chair, Monsieur Higgins, emailed all of us the night before our flight saying he’d come down with a case of food poisoning “for the history books.” Apparently, he’d made a romantic home-cooked dinner of escargot au gratin for himself and his fiancé in anticipation of our trip, and the snails must have gone bad.
For the record, I totally believe Monsieur Higgins is telling the truth. He was almost as excited as I was for this trip, plus he’d attached a doctor’s note to his email.
I can’t remember seeing fresh snails in a grocery store in Georgia. I really hope Monsieur Higgins didn’t dig them up from his backyard or something. As I’ve learned from YouTube, you can literally die from that.
Focus, Ben. I don’t want to miss my turn in the count-off; I need to prove to Mademoiselle Alvarez that I can be trusted to explore Paris on my own, that I won’t get lost or pickpocketed or kidnapped.
We’re only allowed one hour of “independent exploration” per day, which I need if I’m going to check off everything on my to-do list. And as Mademoiselle Alvarez and Monsieur Higgins have reminded us over and over again, “independent exploration is a privilege, not a right.”
Just as my fellow French Club member Karen “Amélie” Firkus says “cinq” (five), my head suddenly feels naked. I wheel around. Tyler Travers, smirking, has snatched my beret.
“Don’t you know wearing this kind of thing makes you a prime target for pickpocketing?” Tyler says, holding the beret high over my head.
I don’t even bother to jump for it—there’s no point.
Tyler was a little bit shorter than me when he moved away from Sandy Springs, but he came back six foot four and transformed into Captain America.
His shoulders are filling out his baggy gray Sandy Springs Basketball hoodie.
His blond hair flops casually over his forehead, and when he brushes it back, it settles into place in slow motion, as if perfected by AI.
These are not the reasons why I hate Tyler Travers, but they certainly don’t help his case.
“What are you, a bully now?” I whisper through clenched teeth. “Give it back.”
“Not a bully,” he says, flashing his smug grin. “Just looking out for you.”
“Oh, please,” I say. “That’s the last thing—”
“REMY!” booms Mademoiselle Alvarez. “EARTH TO REMY!”
I give a start. Mademoiselle Alvarez’s eyeballs are bulging in my direction. “Remy” means me. I chose my French Club name in honor of my favorite cartoon rat from Ratatouille.
“Je suis désolé, mademoiselle,” I stammer. “It’s just that—”
“WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER, REMY?!” she blares. “You’re gonna have to pay a lot more attention if you’re getting your independent exploration time tonight, Remy!”
“Huit,” I mutter. Eight.
I throw a glare at Tyler. He tosses my beret to me carelessly. I don’t catch it—hand-eye coordination has never been my strong suit—and it falls to the ground.
“Thanks a lot,” I hiss.
“Dix!” Tyler pipes up, not missing his number by a beat. “Dix”—pronounced “dis”—is ten in French.
To me, he chuckles, “De rien—that means ‘you’re welcome.’ ”
I jam my beret back on my head. “I know what it means.” I glare at him.
“You’re a real dix,” I add under my breath, using the as-it’s-spelled pronunciation of the word.
A little pun to myself. I can’t tell if Tyler even heard me or not—he’s busy looking at something on his Apple Watch—but whatever.
I turn my focus back to Mademoiselle Alvarez.
Satisfied that we’re all present and accounted for, our fearless chaperone leads us into an open courtyard of the youth hostel. The courtyard is crowded with bicycles and scooters and big stone planters full of pastel spring flowers. Our roll-y bags clatter over the uneven cobblestones.
“Ooh, this is so Emily in Paris,” says Nneka.
I grin at her. “That’s my favorite show.”
“Mine too!” She grins back.
I catch Tyler smirking and tapping at his Apple Watch again. “Why am I not surprised?” he mutters.
What a douche. And I normally never use that word, but it is technically French.
We come to a wooden door so tall and heavy it looks like the drawbridge of a medieval castle.
“Listen up!” Mademoiselle Alvarez announces.
“This door locks automatically every night at ten p.m. sharp. It will not reopen until seven a.m. for any reason—not even for the French prime minister. So if you’re caught on the wrong side of this door …
I’m not even going to finish that sentence because it’s not going to happen. Understood?”
“Oui, oui, mademoiselle,” we all drone. We’ve gone over the rules of the hostel a million times. It’s in the forty-page itinerary we were required to read, print out, and sign.
Gaston pulls open the heavy front door and we all file into the lobby.
The rugs on the marble floor are patchy, and there’s an enormous chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
Two old-timey elevators on either side of the lobby look like rusty birdcages dangling from barely-there cables.
Between the elevators is a large desk, behind which the two most ancient human beings I’ve ever seen are standing.
“étudiantes,” Mademoiselle Alvarez tells us, “say bonjour to Madame et Monsieur Mouton.”
“Bonjour, Madame et Monsieur Mouton,” we all chant in unison.
Madame and Monsieur Mouton nod their heads slightly; or maybe I imagine they do. I’m not sure they hear us at all.
“Not to be mean, but did they crawl up from the Catacombs?” I hear Tyler whispering behind me.
I shoot him a glare. Coming from someone else, I’d think that comment was savage but kind of funny. But from Tyler, it just confirms to me that he is, in fact, an overprivileged bully.
“While we’re here,” says Mademoiselle Alvarez, signing us in on a clipboard Monsieur Mouton slides toward her, “let’s go through the rest of the rules again.”
Our groans echo off the soaring ceiling.
Malia Miller whines, “Mademoiselle, we’ve heard them a zillion times.”
“Well then, Ana?s, you can hear them a zillion and one times,” Mademoiselle Alvarez retorts. “Anyway. Each of these elevators goes to a separate half of the building—one wing for boys, one for girls. There is no way to sneak between them.”
She pauses to throw Nneka and Gaston a pointed look.
Nneka scoffs. “That gender policy is as antiquated as the décor.”
“Yeah!” contributes Gaston, putting his Frisbee-sized hand on the small of Nneka’s back.
Normally, Mademoiselle Alvarez would encourage this kind of discourse, but she’s laser-focused on not letting one of us inspire the next sequel to Taken.
“As you know,” she continues, adjusting her tortoiseshell eyeglasses, “in order to get an authentic experience of Paris, and to give you the experience of being citizens of the world, you’ll have an hour of independent exploration—”
This time, our squeals and whoops of excitement reverberate throughout the lobby.
“—each day. Your parents and guardians all signed permission slips for you to have this privilege, but remember, we’re putting a lot of trust in you.
It’s a privilege each of you must continue to earn throughout this trip.
If for any reason you lose my trust, your independent time will be taken away. Do you understand me?”