Chapter 8
EIGHT
BENJI
THEN
“I don't know what to write,” I say to my mother in French.
She gives me a very familiar ‘et alors?’ look, lips pushed out, shoulders shrugging and eyes wide. “What do you want to say?”
“Well, if I knew that I would be writing it.”
“No,” she says carefully and abandons the vegetables she was chopping in the kitchen to come and sit next to me at the dining table. “I asked you what you want to say, not what you think you should say. These are two very different things.”
I push the card away from me and groan. “This is ridiculous. It's a fucking Valentine's card not a personal statement or a job application.”
Maman gives me a horrified look, which is equally familiar. “You don't think un coup de coeur is important? And you call yourself my son?” She places a hand on her chest for extra impact.
“Maman, she doesn't even know I like her. I suspect if she knew it was me who sent her a card, she'd rip it to shreds.”
“Ahh, unrequited love. This is the most powerful kind.” She reaches for the card I bought in Paperchase after school and inspects it with a vague air of disapproval. I knew I should have got the slightly more expensive one.
“It's not love!” I snatch the card back. “I just ... fancy her.” I switch to English because that verb works better here.
Maman studies me for a moment then interlocks her fingers.
“Bon. I'll repeat my earlier question. What do you want to say to her?” She steers the conversation back to French.
I sigh. “I want to tell her that I think she's the coolest person I've ever met.
I always want to be near her to hear what music she has playing in her headphones because it's always different, not like what everyone else is listening to.
I always want to be close enough to hear her conversations because she's so boldly direct and beautifully succinct. She doesn't take shit from anyone and I love that. I want to tell her how I always try to sit near her in French so we can get partnered together and when we are, I feel torn between staring in her eyes and wanting to memorise every single thing she says. I want to tell her how striking her art is, that I sneak into the art room whenever I can just to see if any of her works in progress are on display. And I want to tell her that she smells so good. Like the first batch of fresh peaches in summer, sitting in a bowl in the sun with the bright blue sky above them and dry olive groves behind them. I want to tell her that my heartbeat changes when I’m near her. It gets faster and thumps harder and I feel … more alive.”
“Now that is my son.” Maman cups my face in her hand and strokes my cheek like she always does, ever since I can remember.
It's in moments like these that I physically itch to tell her my big secret.
To say the words, "Maman, I'm bisexual. I like boys too.
" But I always chicken out. Today's excuse is that I don't want to take away from what I just said about D— Ravel.
Because it's all true, I just can't actually write that.
“But you don't want her to know it's you feeling all these powerful things for her?”
“No way. She hates me.”
“Well, that's not terrible.”
I blink at my mother, dumbfounded. “It's not?”
“No, that means she has strong feelings for you. We don't hate people we do not care about.”
“Hmm, I'm not convinced.”
“Give me your pen.” Maman lifts her hand, palm up.
I do so before realising why that's a big mistake.
Maman starts to write in the card.
“She is in your French class, no? So she will understand if I write in French.”
“Maman, no! What are you doing?” My brain lurches to English, proving it’s ultimately my default language in moments of panic.
“Helping you!” She shifts away when I try to grab hold of the pen.
“But I only bought one card!” I groan again.
“And one card is all you need. Voilà!”
She slides the card over to me with a proud look on her face.
I read her writing once, twice, three times.
Ma Valentine, je veux toujours être près de toi, ton amour secret.
“Shit, Maman, that's a bit intense. You make me sound like a stalker.”
“If she doesn't like it, she's not the woman for you,” Maman says with that ‘et alors?’ look again.
“But I don't want to scare her.”
“Love is scary,” Maman says as she stands, “terrifying!”
She says this with far too much excitement, her brown bob shaking as she waves her hands around.
I switch to English again. “Again, I don't love her. I just ... notice her.”
“And now maybe she will start to notice you. She will certainly be looking around at all the boys she sees differently.”
It's like a door opening for me. I decide to walk through.
“Or girls,” I say quietly but firmly, keeping my eyes on Maman as she resumes chopping vegetables. “She's bisexual.”
Maman looks up for a few seconds. “Oh? Bon.” And then she goes back to slicing with her knife, sharp rhythmic movements that I focus on as I speak again.
“In fact, I think I am too.” I raise my voice so she can definitely hear me. I’ve come this far. “I'm bisexual, also.”
Mama’s eyes find mine and they are virtually expressionless but for a sheen that wasn't there before. It seems to take forever but finally, finally her lips curl into a big smile.
“Benji, mon amour!” she calls out as she drops the knife once more and rushes over to give me what I'm pretty sure is the best hug of my life.
I don't mean to be there when D— opens the card. I’d tucked it inside her locker, hoping she'd get it after the final lesson of the day, but for some reason she's already found it, and she's about to open it right in front of me.
Well, not exactly in front of me. Technically, I'm in front of her, sitting as I now normally do in the front row closest to the door. My tummy problems aren't getting better and I've had one too many close calls in recent weeks.
But I can hear in perfect clarity the conversation between D— and Raquelle behind me as we all sit waiting for Mlle Bonneville to arrive.
“Oh my God, it's a Valentine's card!” Raquelle exclaims in a whisper-hiss.
There's a snort of disdain and I just know it's come from D-.
“Then it's probably a joke,” she adds.
“Don't put yourself down. You're hot.”
“Jesus, I didn't say I wasn't hot,” D— says, and I can't help my smile. “It’s just that everybody here thinks I'm a queer weirdo who hates everyone, so nobody is going to be sending me a serious Valentine’s card.”
She's not wrong. That's a kinder summary of some of the comments I've heard uttered about her among some of the football guys.
“But you're my queer weirdo,” says Raquelle, and I think they embrace. “Anyway. Open it. Quickly, before Mademoiselle arrives.”
I hear the tearing of paper. I hold my breath and close my eyes like maybe that will transport me somewhere else.
And then I hear a soft gasp before Raquelle reads out the message my mum wrote, first in French then in English. “My Valentine, I always wants to be close to you, your secret love.”
“It’s lame,” D— says and the words may as well be daggers thrown into my back.
“I don’t know,” Raquelle muses while I try and catch my breath and keep my composure. “I’m kind of digging the stalker vibe. Like, how nice that somebody just wants to be near you all the time.”
“It’s a joke,” D— says firmly, and I hear rustling like she’s stashing the card away in her bag. “If somebody wanted to be close to me, they would have the nerve to ask me out.”
Raquelle snorts. “I don’t know. You’re not exactly approachable.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s pretty easy to figure out who sent it.” Raquelle’s voice lowers, and I have to lean further back to hear properly. “They wrote it in French so it must be somebody in this class.”
A rush of heat floods my face, my neck and I’m pretty sure the tips of my ears.
“Nah.” D— is quick and seemingly confident in her dismissal. “Everybody knows I aced French at GCSE and got the best scores in the AS exams last year.”
I flinch. Second best, I add mentally and then want to face-palm myself for being so pedantic at a time when my world could come crashing around me.
“And even the stupidest people in this school can use an online translator or a dictionary to write French.”
“But the handwriting,” Raquelle says absently. I crane to listen to what she says next but Mlle Bonneville walks in, a coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the other, and the lesson begins.
Raquelle and D— don’t talk about the card again while I’m sitting in front of them and as soon as I can, I move to get paired with Greg so I don’t have to listen to them if they do.
It’s a blessing from above that my stomach behaves enough that I can just sit in the back of the classroom and pray that some miracle will make me disappear into the ground.