Anna and the French Kiss

“Jeez, stare much?”

“What?” I jerk my head back, but Rashmi’s not talking to me. She’s shaking her head at Meredith, who looks as sheepish as I feel.

“You’re burning holes into St. Clair’s head. It’s not attractive.”

“Shut up.” But Meredith smiles at me and shrugs.

Well. That settles that. As if I needed another reason not to lust. Boy Wonder is officially off-limits. “Don’t say anything to him,” she says. “Please.”

“Of course,” I say.

“Because we’re obviously just friends.”

“Obviously.”

We mill around until the head of school arrives for her welcome speech. The head is graceful and carries herself like a ballerina. She has a long neck, and her snow-white hair is pulled into a tidy knot that makes her look distinguished rather than elderly. The overall effect is Parisian, although I know from my acceptance letter she’s from Chicago. Her gaze glides across us, her one hundred handpicked pupils. “Welcome to another exciting year at the School of America in Paris. I’m pleased to see so many familiar faces, and I’m even happier to see the new ones.”

Apparently school speeches are one thing France can’t improve.

“To the students who attended last year, I invite you all to give a warm welcome to your new freshman class and to the new upperclassmen, as well.”

A smattering of polite applause. I glance around, and I’m startled to find St. Clair looking at me. He claps and lifts his hands in my direction. I blush and jerk away.

The head keeps talking. Focus, Anna. Focus. But I feel his stare as if it were the heat of the sun. My skin grows moist with sweat. I slide underneath one of the immaculately pruned trees. Why is he staring? Is he still staring? I think he is. Why why why? Is it a good stare or a bad stare or an indifferent stare?

But when I finally look, he’s not staring at me at all. He’s biting his pinkie nail.

The head wraps up, and Rashmi bounds off to join the guys. Meredith leads me inside for English. The professeur hasn’t arrived yet, so we choose seats in the back. The classroom is smaller than what I’m used to, and it has dark, gleaming trim and tall windows that look like doors. But the desks are the same, and the whiteboard and the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. I concentrate on these familiar items to ease my nerves.

“You’ll like Professeur Cole,” Meredith says. “She’s hilarious, and she always assigns the best books.”

“My dad is a novelist.” I blurt this without thinking and immediately regret it.

“Really? Who?”

“James Ashley.” That’s his pen name. I guess Oliphant wasn’t romantic enough.

“Who?”

The humiliation factor multiplies. “The Decision? The Entrance? They were made into movies. Forget it, they all have vague names like that—”

She leans forward, excited. “No, my mom loves The Entrance!”

I wrinkle my nose.

“They aren’t that bad. I watched The Entrance with her once and totally cried when that girl died of leukemia.”

“Who died of leukemia?” Rashmi plops her backpack down next to me. St. Clair trails in behind her and takes the seat in front of Meredith.

“Anna’s dad wrote The Entrance,” Meredith says.

I cough. “Not something I’m proud of.”

“I’m sorry, what’s The Entrance?” Rashmi asks.

“It’s that movie about the boy who helps deliver the baby girl in the elevator, and then he grows up to fall in love with her,” Meredith says as St. Clair leans back in his chair and nabs her schedule. “But the day after their engagement, she’s diagnosed with leukemia.”

“Her father pushes her down the aisle in a wheelchair,” I continue. “And then she dies on the honeymoon.”

“Ugh,” Rashmi and St. Clair say together.

Enough embarrassment. “Where’s Josh?” I ask.

“He’s a junior,” Rashmi says, as if I should have known this already. “We dropped him off at pre-calc.”

“Oh.” Our conversation hits a dead end. Lovely.

“Three classes together, Mer. Give us yours.” St. Clair leans back again and steals my half sheet. “Ooo, beginning French.”

“Told you.”

“It’s not so bad.” He hands back my schedule and smiles. “You’ll be reading the breakfast menu without me before you know it.”

Hmm, maybe I don’t want to learn French.

Argh! Boys turn girls into such idiots.

“Bonjour à tous.” A woman wearing a bold turquoise dress strides in and smacks her coffee cup down on the podium. She’s youngish, and she has the blondest hair I’ve ever seen on a teacher. “For the—” Her eyes scan the room until they land on me.

What? What did I do?

“For the singular person who doesn’t know me, je m’appelle Professeur Cole.” She gives an exaggerated curtsy, and the class laughs. They swivel around to stare.

“Hello,” I say in a tiny voice.

Suspicions confirmed. Out of the twenty-five people present—the entire senior class—I’m the only new student. This means my classmates have yet another advantage over me, because every one of them is familiar with the teachers. The school is so small that each subject is taught by the same professeur in all four grades.

I wonder what student left to vacate my position? Probably someone cooler than me. Someone with dreadlocks and pinup girl tattoos and connections in the music industry.

“I see the janitorial staff has ignored my wishes once again,” Professeur Cole says. “Everyone up.You know the drill.”

I don’t, but I push my desk when everyone else starts pushing theirs. We arrange them in a big circle. It’s odd to see all of my classmates at the same time. I take the opportunity to size them up. I don’t think I stand out, but their jeans and shoes and backpacks are more expensive than mine. They look cleaner, shinier.

No surprise there. My mom is a high school biology teacher, which doesn’t give us a lot of extra spending money. Dad pays for the mortgage and helps with the bills, but it’s not enough, and Mom is too proud to ask for more. She says he’d refuse her anyway and just go buy another elliptical machine.

There may be some truth to that.

The rest of the morning passes in a blur. I like Professeur Cole, and my math teacher, Professeur Babineaux, is nice enough. He’s Parisian, and he waggles his eyebrows and spits when he talks.To be fair, I don’t think the spitting is a French thing. I think he just has a lisp. It’s hard to tell with the accent.

After that, I have beginning French. Professeur Gillet turns out to be another Parisian. Figures. They always send in native speakers for foreign language classes. My Spanish teachers were always rolling their eyes and exclaiming, “¡Aye, dios mio!” whenever I raised my hand. They got frustrated when I couldn’t grasp a concept that seemed obvious to them.

I stopped raising my hand.

As predicted, the class is a bunch of freshmen. And me. Oh, and one junior, the angry scheduling guy from this morning. He introduces himself enthusiastically as Dave, and I can tell he’s as relieved as I am to not be the only upperclassman.

Maybe Dave is pretty cool after all.

At noon, I follow the stampede to the cafeteria. I avoid the main line and go straight to the counter with the choose-your-own fruit and bread, even though the pasta smells amazing. I’m such a wuss. I’d rather starve than try