Chapter 3
Twelve Weeks Ago
Saturday morning, as I was battling my hair into a braid, Nick rang our buzzer.
Madame Dupuy invited him in, and their voices receded down the hall to the living room.
I wrapped an elastic around the end of my hair, slipped on my baby-blue platform Vans, found my phone and purse under my bed, and trotted down the hall, ready for the Louvre.
I felt like I’d stepped into a job interview when I entered the living room.
Madame Dupuy sat in Dad’s chair, looking polished and professional in her crisp white blouse, slim black ankle pants, and gleaming black loafers.
A scarf in Starbursts colors knotted casually around her neck relieved the severity of the outfit.
Her dark hair fell around her face in a stylish shoulder-length layered cut that emphasized her gray eyes.
She looked both intimidating and striking.
And amazingly, she looked like that every day, cooking and cleaning in outfits like the ones my friends’ moms wore to work and leaving every evening looking just as spotless as when she’d arrived.
I mean, aprons were involved, but still.
Our Portland housekeeper dressed like a grad student, in old logo tees from the brewery where her boyfriend worked, faded chinos, and sneakers.
She was also a potter, so her clothes were usually dusty and often spattered with clay.
I didn’t think Madame Dupuy would so much as go down to get her mail in anything less than business casual.
Nick perched on the edge of the couch, moving his hands up and down his thighs like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. He wore the cornered look of an interviewee who’d forgotten his résumé, and he was dictating a phone number to Madame Dupuy as she typed it into her phone.
“I’m ready,” I said brightly, and Nick looked up, relieved.
Madame Dupuy raised an eyebrow at me, and now I felt like the one who’d forgotten her résumé.
I repeated myself in French. She nodded and got up, satisfied with my pronunciation for once, as well as the fact that I’d remembered to use the feminine form of “ready.” She told us to have a good time, glaring at Nick to imply But not too good a time, and we left as quickly as we could without actually running.
“Wow,” Nick said as we waited for the elevator. “Your housekeeper is really old-school.”
I nodded. “She’s a little scary. She’s been nice to me, though.”
“She made me give her my number, tell her both my parents’ names, their cell numbers, where they worked, and their work numbers. I thought she might ask to see my passport next.”
“I think she takes her job seriously.” We got off the elevator and crossed the lobby.
“I think she used to work for the French secret police. She’s probably calling an old colleague right now, asking them to run a background check on me.
” He held the door open for me, and we started toward the Métro station.
I laughed at the thought of Madame Dupuy as a spy.
She didn’t look like someone with a secret identity.
“Is there anything special you’d like to see when we get to the Louvre?”
“The Mona Lisa,” I said immediately. He groaned like I’d just tightened the thumbscrews.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s…kind of meh. She looks like she’s listening to a geometry lecture. Take my advice and don’t bother.”
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and put my hands on my hips.
“I don’t care. I’ve never lived in a city with a must-see painting before.
I promised my friends I’d send them a selfie with it.
Plus, I have to spend the rest of the summer conjugating the subjunctive plus-que-parfait, so you have to treat me nice today and do what I say. ”
He stroked his chin, pretending to think it over. “Okay, but then you have to let me show you the stuff that’s worth seeing.”
I nodded. “Sure. But first, the Mona Lisa.”
He sighed. “Yes, mademoiselle.”
I’d just gotten my Navigo card so I didn’t have to keep buying Métro tickets, and I was super excited when I passed it over the scanner at the station and the gates opened and let me through.
I waved it at Nick. “It worked!” He smiled at my enthusiasm and scanned himself through like it was not a thing at all.
We climbed the stairs to the platform, whose walls were covered in giant ads for Galeries Lafayette, Club Med vacations, and mobile phone companies.
Across the tracks on the opposite wall, somebody’d graffitied a pigeon riding a skateboard onto a Visit the Parthenon travel poster.
“I love that pigeon,” I said, pointing.
“That’s new,” Nick said. “I know the guy who did it.”
“Really?” I was impressed. The pigeon looked so alive that I started to imagine a life for it—where it hung out and what its favorite sandwich was and how it lived with its grandma and dreamed of competing in the X Games.
“Yeah. He’s kind of a friend. Nice that he’s doing new work; I haven’t seen him around for a while.”
“Wow, you have impressive friends.” The train pulled in, and we got on, settling into seats near the doors.
Part of the Métro line in our neighborhood ran on elevated tracks.
As we rode above Boulevard de Grenelle toward the river, we got a wonderful view of belle epoque apartment buildings decorated with carved-stone flowers.
Every building had a different pattern of wrought iron railing for the windows and tiny balconies, some sinuous and viny, some geometric.
Planters filled with trailing geraniums hung from their railings, adding splashes of red, orange, and lavender to the tawny limestone buildings.
We had to change lines to get to the Louvre, which I hadn’t done before. “Just remember the end point of the line you want to be on,” Nick explained, “and follow the signs. It’s easy.”
I stuck close to him, though, because I had no idea where we were going in the bewildering maze of hallways crammed with people.
I dodged a woman headed straight at me, and we got separated, the stream of people pushing me farther and farther away.
I could see him, parting the crowd as he went, but the mass of people flooding between us wouldn’t let me close the gap.
I was afraid I’d lose him and be stuck down there forever.
He finally noticed I wasn’t beside him and scanned the corridor, but short people in crowds equals invisible.
He didn’t see me, so he stopped. People flowed around him like a river flows around a boulder.
I thought for the billionth time that it must be nice to be tall.
Battling my way to him, I said, “Sorry I lost you, but people kept trying to run me down. Is walking a contact sport here?”
He smiled. “If you don’t yield to them, mademoiselle, they’ll get out of your way.”
“It’s just, I have this super-big personal bubble, and I don’t like people getting in it uninvited.” Cole was always doing that, standing so close he almost touched me. If I moved away, he’d just move closer. I shivered and reminded myself that he was in Portland, and I was here.
I turned my attention back to Nick, who was nodding.
“I get that. When we first moved here, I hated how people get right into your space, and they’re like, ‘Excuse you.’ What you do is, you think of your bubble as impenetrable and use it like a tank.
Aim it straight at people, and they’ll go around. ”
That seemed unlikely, but then I remembered how our debate coach had told us to stand when we were debating.
Straight. With our shoulders back and our feet apart.
“Take up space,” he’d told us, practice after practice.
“People who take up space are intimidating. Intimidating debaters win.” He said it so often that Cole turned it into a joke.
“You’re taking up too much space,” he’d say when I’d pause outside our round to make sure I was standing straight and had my shoulders pulled back.
It worked, though. At one meet, Lily told me about overhearing one of the guys from Eugene talking about this scary Portland debater and realizing they were describing me.
I looked at Nick and put my shoulders back, spaced my feet apart, and stood straighter.
“Nice,” he said. “You look badass. Now, the next person who comes at you, aim your bubble-tank straight at them and imagine flattening them. Ready?” I took a breath, then nodded.
We eased back into the tide of people, me muttering, “Take up space. Be a tank.” The first time someone headed straight at me, I flinched and stepped aside.
“You’re a tank,” Nick encouraged. “You will squish them if they get in your way.” I squared my shoulders again and headed straight at a burly guy with a beard who saw me but didn’t try to avoid me. I fought the urge to dodge. At almost the last minute, he veered out of my path.
I turned to Nick, jubilant. “It worked!”
He smiled back. “Of course it worked. You are invincible.”
We barged through the crowd, me giddy with my newfound superpower. There were so many people that Nick jostled against me a couple of times. “Sorry,” he apologized as we emerged onto the platform. “I’m being all French and invading your space.”
With Nick, though, it didn’t seem like invading. More like politely sharing. I bowed, flourishing my arm out. “Consider this your engraved invitation into my bubble.”
He laughed. “I accept, mademoiselle.” Then he stepped closer, bumping my shoulder with his.