Chapter 7
We’re breaking the rules is all I can think, my heart thumping, as Tyler and I walk through the cool spring night toward the Louvre. This is stupid and potentially dangerous, and I don’t have my phone, and Mademoiselle Alvarez is going to—
“Pardon!” an elderly French man in a beret (twinsies) barks at me, and I realize I haven’t been watching where I was going and almost slammed into a stranger.
I mutter an apology as Tyler smirks at me.
“You okay?” Tyler asks.
“I’m fine,” I lie. If I tell Tyler how worried I am about our nighttime-in-Paris escapade, I know he’ll only mock me for being such a play-by-the-rules nerd.
Tyler resumes walking, using his map app to guide us to the Louvre, and I follow him.
The nighttime streets of Paris are sparkling and alive: The twinkling fairy lights outside the bistros. The groups of chattering, chic people, the clinking of wineglasses. The street singers on every corner, their voices husky and tired. I wish I could enjoy it all and not be so stressed.
Things quiet down the closer we get to the Louvre. The area around the museum feels hushed and stately.
“We’re back,” Tyler says as we approach the Louvre’s glass-pyramid entrance.
I’m not glad to be here with Tyler, but I’m glad to not be alone this time.
We pay the entrance fee in cash (I’m grateful my mom made me get euros from the bank before I left) and Tyler says, “I’ll cover the cost of our next stop.”
If there is a next stop, I think, already annoyed.
But when we walk into the gorgeous, grand interior of the museum, all my annoyance—and most of my stressing—melts away. I gaze at the huge space in awe. Since it’s so late, the Louvre is nearly empty; it’s just a few die-hard art fans murmuring and wandering around. Wow.
For the first time, I’m not thinking about being locked out of the hostel and breaking the rules and losing my phone—okay, maybe I am still thinking about all that a little.
“The Louvre closes at midnight,” Tyler warns me, and when I see the time on his phone, I realize that’s not too long from now. I glance around and see a passing security guard.
“Excusez-moi—where is the Mona Lisa?” I ask her in English, because this feels like a safe space for that.
She sighs, probably sick of the question, and points Tyler and me in the right direction.
“You know, there are other masterpieces in the Louvre,” Tyler tells me as we cut through galleries stuffed full of stunning marble sculptures. “You’re ignoring centuries of history with every step you take.”
“I don’t care,” I pant. I’m outpacing Tyler despite the fact that his strides are practically twice as long as mine. “I just need to lock my eyes on her, feel all the feels, and then I can move on with my life.”
“Spoken like a true art connoisseur,” cracks Tyler, overpronouncing connoisseur.
“You’re so pretentious,” I mutter, my annoyance coming back.
We zoom through the Denon Wing, one of the three major sections of the Louvre. I’ve read all about the Denon Wing in my months of studying Paris guidebooks, not to mention my Intro to Art History elective.
If all the paintings and statues come alive at night and hang out together when the museum is closed—which I know in my heart they do, as surely as I know mermaids exist—the Denon Wing would be the cool kids’ hot spot, where you’ll find the real A-listers of the Louvre, the pieces that are so famous that you’ve seen them a million times on postcards and memes even if you don’t know their names.
The Denon Wing has the majestic Winged Victory of Samathrace statue.
The Raft of the Medusa, a huge and striking painting showing a shipwreck.
But I’m not turning my head for any of them until I meet the mother, the icon, the queen of shady smirks and smize-ing herself: the Mona Lisa.
“Why do you need to see it so bad?” asks Tyler. “The Mona Lisa isn’t even famous for being that great of a painting. It’s actually—”
“Tyler,” I interrupt, “for the love of fondue, please don’t finish that sentence. Let me have this, okay?”
He holds his hands up in surrender. “Fine, whatever you say. You’re the boss for the next hour.”
“Merci.”
Tyler couldn’t possibly understand my reasoning; it wouldn’t be worth trying to explain. He doesn’t know how much Love and Baguettes means to me.
Love and Baguettes is a movie I found while randomly scrolling Streamie one night, post-Lucas breakup, in search of something, anything to distract me.
The movie took place in Paris, so I was instantly hooked.
Plus, the movie even had something profound to say, underneath any cheesiness: Sometimes a work of art can be so beautiful that it can bring back to life a part of your humanity you thought was cold and dead.
Just like the main character (whose name I don’t remember) was so numbed by all the horrible things that had happened to her, all the mundanity of her gray life in Kansas melted away the moment she saw a truly great masterpiece: the Mona Lisa.
And in that moment, the love of her life saw her from across the museum as the best, most vulnerable version of herself.
They locked eyes, and by the movie’s end, they were kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower.
By the time the credits rolled on my laptop screen, I was sniffling and beaming at the same time.
It made me think of something Mom says about Dad: that he was always moved to tears easily.
He could cry from listening to a recording of “La vie en rose.” I can remember myself how he cried at the end of Ratatouille every single time.
She also said how on their honeymoon trip to Paris, a particular piece of art at the Louvre moved him to tears.
Mom doesn’t remember which piece of art it was, just that she was struck by how pure his soul was.
I like to think I’m the same way. Or that I used to be.
Before last summer—before I fell for Lucas Zhao—I was an easy audience.
Almost anything beautiful could move me.
A perfect Simone Biles floor routine at the Olympics All-Around final.
A sappy falling-in-love montage in a movie.
A Sandy Springs High School performance of Legally Blonde: The Musical.
Then Tyler Travers walked back into my life, and Lucas promptly walked out of it.
But even before that, I think a part of me was closing off.
High school, coming out, joining the LGBTQIA+ Alliance, all without Dad around—none of it felt like it was supposed to.
None of it felt like coming home to myself.
And that’s the real reason I did everything I could do to get to Paris. To the place I know my dad loved. I feel a pang of missing Dad so much in this moment. I try to swallow down the emotion, and then—
“Ugh, there’s a line?” I say, my stomach sinking.
We’ve come to the room where the Mona Lisa lives. There’s a queue snaking several times over. Tourists are completely blocking the view of the painting. They’re on their tiptoes with their phones like they’re the paparazzi and the Mona Lisa is a celeb stepping out of a limo.
“It’s not so bad. You should have seen this place earlier, before the extended nighttime hours,” says Tyler. “It was a madhouse.”
“Well, she better be worth it,” I sigh.
“Don’t get your—” Tyler sees the look on my face, then shuts his perfectly sculpted lips. “Never mind.”
We get to the front of the line faster than I expect.
The “front of the line” in this case means that we’re standing behind a velvet rope a good thirty feet away from the wall where the Mona Lisa’s hanging, and there’s an elegant museum employee with a shiny bald head directing tourists in multiple languages to “please take your photos and move on.”
I have to squint to see the Mona Lisa. Not only is she far away, she’s enclosed in a bulletproof-looking glass box.
The glare from the lights and the supposedly forbidden flash photography obscures my view even more.
In Love and Baguettes, the main character got real close up, so close that her nose was practically touching the canvas.
Now I have undeniable proof that the scene was filmed on a set with a fake reproduction.
No one could ever get as close as the main character did in the movie.
When I finally find a decent angle without glare, I see that sure enough, the Mona Lisa looks exactly like she does in art history textbooks and online—smirking shadily as always.
I remind myself what a privilege it is to be sharing the same oxygen as one of most iconic images in history.
Painted by genius artist Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s.
World-famous. And here it is in front of me. The real thing.
And yet … I feel nothing—aside from a vague sense of sadness. I wonder if the Mona Lisa feels trapped in that little glass cage, being gawked at day after day, trying to live up to the entire world’s impossible expectations. Maybe that’s why she has that pained grin on her face.
“Messieurs, please take your photo, no flash, and move on, please,” says the bald man politely, gesturing toward the exit.
“Want me to get your photo with your girl?” Tyler asks, holding up his phone. Nice of him to offer, I guess.
“Nah. No thanks,” I say. Tyler looks surprised, and I’m surprised by myself. I just checked item number one off my to-do list, but I feel weirdly empty.
“We can go now,” I add, turning away and taking one last look at the lonely lady with the unreadable facial expression.