Everybody walks differently—nose forward, chin forward,
leading with toes, with shoulders, with stomach, eyes roving, eyes straight
ahead, eyes scanning the pavement, like a shark or goose or
hippo—and I suppose they walk differently in different places at different
times too. But Nina somehow
managed to have Paris move around her.
I
don’t know how she did it. I
watched and could see her feet moving like everyone else’s and yet, somehow,
Paris flowed around her and she was always at the center of it.
She
glided straight out of the club, straight down rue des Lombards, which turned into rue de la Verrerie, then made one turn, left, on rue Vieille du Temple, and that was it. Simple. I was
home.
We
talked the whole way, she texting at the same time, her eyes somehow seeing
cars in the fog at the cross streets.
Once, without even looking up from her phone, she hooked my elbow and
kept me from stepping in front of a truck that came shooting out of the fog.
Her
mom worked for a financial something-or-other, her dad traveled a lot so it was
a treat when he was home and when he played in Paris. She attended a lycée,
hated school, loved boys—especially Gilles, Jean-Claude, Philippe, Bruno—loved
clothes—specifically Chanel, Dior, Valentino, Balenciaga, though she didn’t own
any of those labels—loved pizza, loved 80’s New York rap, Detroit City, her
mother’s cooking, and President Obama.
She loved the fact that I was being home-schooled by my aunt, wanted to
visit me when I went back to New Jersey, loved that I had survived on an island
and had a face-off with pirates and a shark. She announced, “You are a true nature girl, Daisy, a
fauve, a femme sauvage.” I had no idea what she was talking
about half the time, especially the boys and designers, but somehow it didn’t
matter because it was just so fun to talk to her.
When
we arrived at Aunt Mill’s carriage door, I was surprised. “Give me your phone a sec,” she
said. I did. She tapped away at it, then handed it
back. “I put my number in for
you. Call or text when you’re
lost. Day or night. Or just call and we can hang. Okay?”
“Thank
you so much. You saved my life.”
“
Another week and you’ll be showing me around.” She gave me a double-cheek kiss and glided off into the fog.
“Lost
it?” said Aunt Mill, with her best exasperated-teacher frown. I was sitting at the table, eating a
slice of cold pizza she’d brought home from a place called Pink Flamingo.
“Yeah,
it must have fallen from my pocket in the metro or something. I’m really sorry. I’ll buy you a new one. And then I couldn’t figure out how to
retrieve your message and then I got all turned around in the fog and ended up
at this place called Le Baiser Salé.”
“You
went into the Basier Salé?”
“Is
that bad?”
“They
let you in?”
“I
was with Nina, the girl who showed me the way home.”
“How
old is Nina?”
“Like
thirteen. She lives nearby. Her dad is the guy who you hear playing
piano late at night.”
“What
guy playing piano?”
“You
don’t hear him?”
She
didn’t answer, just gave me more frown.
I could have gotten the same look from Principal Smootin back home and
saved everybody a lot on air fare.
Fine, I thought, if that’s the way you want it. I can zip my lip as well as the next
girl. She could tell that’s what I
was thinking and the frown sort of eased into her standard smirk. She reminded me of Clymene all of a
sudden.
She
shoved forward the work I did that morning. “So this is a curious approach to solving your math
problems. It appears you just
added the various answers until you got the combination to the safe.”
“Yeah?”
“You
didn’t do the problems.”
“I
got the answers.”
For
a second it looked like she might laugh, or at least smile, but she was a
veteran teacher and kept her face frozen.
“I wish we had a third sister in Moscow, so I could just send you
on. If we had a fourth sister you
might make it to Beijing.”
“You
can send me home if you want.”
“That’s
not a valid option, Daisy. You’re
so angry with your mother right now you won’t even contact her, even though
I’ve asked you twice.”
“I’m
not angry with her.”
“No?”
“I
just forgot to do it.”
“Conveniently.”
I
felt like barfing pizza just then, which was sad because this Pink Flamingo
place made good pizza. “I’ll go do
it right now if you want.”
“Why
don’t you then.”
I
left the room. Stormed out
really. The old wooden floors
creaked and thumped. I went right
to my computer, fired it up, my toe tapping like a mechanical beaver while the
laptop did its start-up thing. I
clicked open the e-mail and wrote: Dear Mom, having a wonderful time. Rain never stops. Always dark. Rats everywhere.
Food is weird. The pizza
makes you want to barf.
I
deleted that and wrote: Dear Mom, Aunt Mill is a Nazi. Why didn’t you warn me? She has an armband and a little
mustache and everything. She’s
teaching me how to goose-step.
Otherwise everything is just super. Hope you are doing swell. My name is Daisy in case you’ve forgotten me already.
I
deleted that, took a deep breath and wrote: Dear Mom, all good here. Sorry I haven’t written. Learning a lot of math from Aunt Millicent. Hope you are feeling better. Can’t wait to hear what’s happening at
home. Tell Clymene I miss her.
I
deleted the last line about Clymene.
It was a dead giveaway. No
way my Mom would buy that one. I
hit send. Then I looked at all the
e-mails waiting in the inbox for me.
There was a bunch from my mom, of course—saying all the normal mom stuff
really. Then there were three from
Lucia. The ones from Lucia made me
cry. I guess I had a lot of cry in
me because they really made me low.
☠
