Anna and the French Kiss

“I hope you’re wearing a beret.” This is how Toph greets me.

I’m already laughing. He called! Toph called!

“Not yet.” I pace the short length of my room. “But I could pick one up for you, if you’d like. Get your name stitched onto it.You could wear it instead of your name tag.”

“I could rock a beret.” There’s a grin in his voice.

“No one can rock a beret. Not even you.”

St. Clair is still lying on my bed. He props up his head to watch me. I smile and point to the picture on my laptop. Toph, I mouth.

St. Clair shakes his head.

Sideburns.

Ah, he mouths back.

“So your sister came in yesterday.” Toph always refers to Bridge as my sister. We’re the same height with the same slender build, and we both have long, stick-straight hair, although hers is blond and mine is brown. And, as people who spend tons of time together are prone to do, we talk the same.Though she uses bigger words. And her arms are sculpted from the drumming. And I have the gap between my teeth, while she had braces. In other words, she’s like me, but prettier and smarter and more talented.

“I didn’t know she was a drummer,” he says. “She any good?”

“The best.”

“Are you saying that because she’s your friend, or because she’s actually decent?”

“She’s the best,” I repeat. From the corner of my eye, I see St. Clair glance at the clock on my dresser.

“My drummer abandoned ship. Think she’d be interested?”

Last summer Toph started a punk band, the Penny Dreadfuls. Many member changes and arguments over lyrical content have transpired, but no actual shows. Which is too bad. I bet Toph looks good behind a guitar.

“Actually,” I say, “I think she would. Her jerkwad percussion instructor just passed her up as section leader, and she has some rage to funnel.” I give him her number. Toph repeats it back as St. Clair taps an imaginary wristwatch. It’s only nine, so I’m not sure what his rush is. Even I know that’s early for Paris. He clears his throat loudly.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I need to go,” I say.

“Is someone there with you?”

“Uh, yeah. My friend. He’s taking me out tonight.”

A beat. “He?”

“He’s just a friend.” I turn my back to St. Clair. “He has a girlfriend.” I squeeze my eyes shut. Should I have said that?

“So you’re not gonna forget about us? I mean ...” He slows down. “Us here in Atlanta? Ditch us for some Frenchie and never return?”

My heart thrums. “Of course not. I’ll be back at Christmas.”

“Good. Okay,Annabel Lee. I should get back to work anyway. Hercules is probably pissed I’m not covering the door. Ciao.”

“Actually,” I say. “It’s au revoir.”

“Whatever.” He laughs, and we hang up.

St. Clair gets up from the bed. “Jealous boyfriend?”

“I told you. He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But you like him.”

I blush. “Well ... yeah.”

St. Clair’s expression is unreadable. Maybe annoyed. He nods toward my door. “You still want to go out?”

“What?” I’m confused. “Yeah, of course. Lemme change first.” I let him out, and five minutes later, we’re headed north. I’ve thrown on my favorite shirt, a cute thrift-store find that hugs me in the right places, and jeans and black canvas sneakers. I know sneakers aren’t very French—I should be wearing pointy boots or scary heels— but at least they aren’t white. It’s true what they say about white sneakers. Only American tourists wear them, big ugly things made for mowing grass or painting houses.

It’s a beautiful night.The lights of Paris are yellow and green and orange. The warm air swirls with the chatter of people in the streets and the clink of wineglasses in the restaurants. St. Clair has brightened back up and is detailing the more gruesome aspects of the Rasputin biography he finished this afternoon.

“So the other Russians give him this dose of cyanide in his dinner, lethal enough to kill five men, right? But it’s not doing anything, so Plan B—they shoot him in the back with a revolver. Which still doesn’t kill him. In fact, Rasputin has enough energy to strangle one of them, so they shoot him three more times. And he’s still struggling to get up! So they beat the bloody crap out of him, wrap him in a sheet, and throw him into an icy river. But get this—”

His eyes shimmer. It’s the same look Mom gets when she’s talking about turtles, or Bridge gets when she’s talking about cymbals.

“During the autopsy, they discovered the actual cause of death was hypothermia. From the river! Not the poisoning or the shooting or the beating. Mother Nature. And not only that, but his arms were found frozen upright, like he’d tried to claw his way out from underneath the ice.”

“What? No—”

Some German tourists are posing in front of a storefront with peeling golden letters. We scoot around them, so as not to wreck their picture. “It gets better,” he says. “When they cremated his body, he sat up. No, he did! Probably because the bloke who prepared his body forgot to snip the tendons, so they shrank up when he burned—”

I nod my head in appreciation. “Ew, but cool. Go on.”

“—which made his legs and body bend, but still.” St. Clair smiles triumphantly. “Everyone went mad when they saw it.”

“And who says history is boring?” I smile back, and everything is perfect. Almost. Because this is the moment we pass the entrance to SOAP, and now I’m farther from the school than I’ve ever been before. My smile wavers as I revert to my natural state of being: nervous and weird.

“You know, thanks for that. The others always shut me up long before—” He notices the change in my demeanor and stops. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Yes, and has anyone ever told you that you are a terrible liar? Horrid. The worst.”

“It’s just—” I hesitate, embarrassed.

“Yeeesss?”

“Paris is so . . . foreign.” I struggle for the right word. “Intimidating.”

“Nah.” He quickly dismisses me.

“Easy for you to say.” We step around a dignified gentleman stooping over to pick up after his dog, a basset hound with a droopy stomach. Granddad warned me that the sidewalks of Paris were littered with doggie land mines, but it hasn’t been the case so far. “You’ve been acquainted with Paris your whole life,” I continue. “You speak fluent French, you dress European ...”

“Pardon?”

“You know. Nice clothes, nice shoes.”

He holds up his left foot, booted in something scuffed and clunky. “These?”

“Well, no. But you aren’t in sneakers. I totally stick out. And I don’t speak French and I’m scared of the métro and I should probably be wearing heels, but I hate heels—”

“I’m glad you’re not wearing heels,” St. Clair interrupts. “Then you’d be taller than me.”

“I am taller than you.”

“Barely.”

“Please. I’ve got three inches on you. And you’re wearing boots.”

He nudges me with his shoulder, and I crack a smile. “Relax,” he says. “You’re with me. I’m practically French.”

“You’re English.”