Chapter 5
No.
I try turning the doorknob again. Nothing. I pull on it with all my strength. Still nothing.
My stomach turns. I can’t believe it. I’m too late. It must be ten p.m., and the door is locked. I missed curfew!
I slam my shoulder against the rough wood. It’s solid as a granite fortress.
Merde, merde, merde!
I back up to get a running start and throw all my body weight against the door, but it doesn’t even thud. And now my shoulder is killing me.
I try not to cry. I knock on the door. Once. Twice. Three times.
I yell up, “Hello? Bonjour? Bonsoir?”
No answer.
I yell, “It’s Ben and I’m locked out! I mean, it’s Remy and I’m locked out!”
Silence.
I shout all my classmates’ names—both their American and French ones—until my voice is hoarse.
Nothing works. There’s utter silence. The walls of this hostel must be so thick that you can’t hear a peep from outside.
I even try the most pathetic attempt at reverse psychology in history. “I don’t want you to open,” I say snootily to the doorknob before tugging on it in despair.
It doesn’t work.
I crumple down to sit on the cobblestones and stay there, hugging my knees.
The bone-chilling reality of the situation settles in: I’m going to be locked out for the whole night, then sent home when Mademoiselle Alvarez finds me in the morning.
Not just sent home but expelled. I see my future going up in flames.
How quickly my American-in-Paris dream became a straight-up nightmare.
* * *
I lie flat on the courtyard cobblestones among the flowers in planters and gaze up at the grayish night sky. I can make out a few faint stars. It’s not so uncomfortable, if I’m being honest.
I guess my options are (1) stay right here for eight hours, try to sleep, develop a neck cramp, and face the consequences of my very stupid actions when Mademoiselle Alvarez finds out what happened in the morning, or (2) run away and take the first train to Disneyland Paris, where I’ve always wanted to visit, and stay there forever.
The latter doesn’t sound like the worst option. Especially if you consider that I might be expelled from Sandy Springs High School. Maybe I could somehow, with my limited French, talk my way into one of those jobs wearing a Mickey Mouse costume and change my identity.
The only flaw in this otherwise foolproof plan is that I can’t disappear on Mom.
She’s a Disney travel agent, so she’d probably be able to track me down somehow, whether or not I was hiding in a Topolino costume.
She’d stop at nothing to find me. She’d call the US Embassy and the National Guard and the CIA and it would become a whole big missing-teenager case and turn into an international incident and all the true crime YouTubers would talk about me, and when I turned up safe and sound, Mom and I would be sued for wasting government resources. Or something like that.
I wonder if Mademoiselle Alvarez even knows I got locked out yet.
Or maybe she sees Gaston and Tyler on her Find My Phone app in the boys’ dormitory and assumes I’m in there with them.
I sort of can’t believe Tyler went back into the hostel without me.
He could have waited or propped the door open for me or something.
I would have done the same for him if he was late, even though he’s basically my worst enemy.
But I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s too cloistered in his hot-rich-dude bubble to care about anyone besides himself.
My anger at Tyler propels me back up to my feet.
I have to try again. I bang my fist on the door as hard as I can.
“Open the door! Ouvre la porte!” I shout, even though I know it’s totally hopeless.
I bet Madame and Monsieur Mouton already scuttled back down to the Catacombs to sleep the moment the clock struck ten.
Just as that creepy image gets lodged in my head, I hear fast footsteps pounding toward me. I glance over my shoulder. A long shadow looms over the courtyard. My heart is racing and my palms are sweaty.
Are you friend or foe? I want to ask, but I’m too nervous to make a sound.
As the silhouette gets closer, the dim light of the courtyard illuminates Tyler Travers’s face.
Foe. Definitely foe. And yet I’m absurdly relieved to see him.
“Where the eff were you?” Tyler demands in a harsh whisper, striding toward me and grabbing my shoulders. His face looks a bit frantic and pale.
“Where the eff was I?” I hiss back, pushing his hands off me. “Where the eff were you?”
“I was looking for you!” Tyler snaps.
“Where?” I snap back, confused. “When?”
“Just now!” Tyler shouts, exasperated. “And before!”
We’re both gesturing with our hands a lot, I notice. For a second, I sort of want to laugh at us. But then I remember the world of hurt we’re in for when Mademoiselle Alvarez realizes we’re missing. “What are you talking about?” I demand.
“After we parted ways outside the restaurant,” Tyler explains, “I only got half a block before I realized: I left Ben Lim alone in Paris without a phone.”
I wince, highly offended. “Why did you say Ben Lim like that?”
He ignores me. “I should have at least let you borrow my Apple Watch so you’d know the time.”
“Hello, yeah,” I concur, as indignantly as I can. “Like any decent human being would.”
“I went straight to the Louvre,” Tyler goes on, “but I couldn’t find you anywhere there.
I got back here to the hostel a few minutes before ten to wait for you, but it didn’t look like you were gonna make it, so I circled the block, in case you were close but couldn’t find the entrance. I’m glad you’re okay at least.”
After that torrent of words, Tyler lets out a deep breath. Now that he knows my organs aren’t being harvested by the French mafia, his shoulders visibly relax as he takes out his phone and texts someone. I gawk at him.
“But why didn’t you just stay here and prop the door open?” I ask. Not that I have any room to question anyone else’s irrational behavior right now.
“I had no idea how far away you were!” says Tyler, looking up from texting to flash me his best What are you, an idiot?
scowl. “And I tried. The alarm starts going off if you hold the door open for too long. It’s weird that a building that has a rusted-out Rube Goldberg machine for an elevator also has the security system of a Swiss bank. ”
“I have no idea what you just said.” I stare at him, then look at the closed door of the hostel. And I realize, with fresh horror:
I am locked out.
The reality hits me in the face like a stale baguette.
Tyler Travers is locked out, too.
We are locked out together.
And the door doesn’t open until seven a.m.