“Where have you been all my life?” I ask the beautiful panini. “How is it possible I’ve never had a sandwich like this before?”
He takes a large bite. “Mmmph grmpha mrpha,” he says, smiling. Which I’m assuming translates to something like, “Because American food is crap.”
“Mmmph mrga grmpha mmrg,” I reply. Which translates to, “Yeah, but our burgers are pretty good.”
We lick the paper our sandwiches were wrapped in before throwing them away. Bliss. We’re almost back to the dormitory, and St. Clair is describing the time he and Josh received detention for throwing chewing gum at the painted ceiling—they were trying to give one of the nymphs a third nipple—when my brain begins to process something. Something odd.
We have just passed the third movie theater in one block.
Granted, these are small theaters. One-screeners, most likely. But three of them. In one block! How did I not notice this earlier?
Oh. Right. The cute boy.
“Are any of those in English?” I interrupt.
St. Clair looks confused. “Pardon?”
“The movie theaters. Are there any around here that play films in English?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“What? Don’t know what?”
He’s gleeful to know something I don’t. Which is annoying considering we’re both aware that he knows everything about Parisian life, whereas I have the savvy of a chocolate croissant. “And I was under the impression that you were some kind of cinema junkie.”
“What? Know what?”
St. Clair gestures around in an exaggerated circle, clearly loving this. “Paris . . . is the film appreciation . . . capital . . . of the world.”
I stop dead. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.You’ll never find a city that loves film more. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of theaters here.”
My heart feels like it’s falling inside my chest. I’m dizzy. It can’t be true.
“More than a dozen in our neighborhood alone.”
“What?”
“You honestly didn’t notice?”
“No, I didn’t notice! How come no one told me?” I mean, this should have been mentioned Day One, Life Skills Seminars. This is very important information here! We resume walking, and my head strains in every direction to read the posters and marquees. Please be in English. Please be in English. Please be in English.
“I thought you knew. I would have said something.” He finally looks apologetic. “It’s considered pretty high art here. There are loads of first-run theaters, but even more—what do you call them?—revival houses. They play the classics and run programs devoted to different directors or genres or obscure Brazilian actresses or whatever.”
Breathe, Anna, breathe. “And are they in English?”
“At least a third of them, I suppose.”
A third of them! Of a few hundred—maybe even thousand!—theaters.
“Some American films are dubbed into French, but mainly those are the ones for children. The rest are left in English and given French subtitles. Here, hold on.” St. Clair plucks a magazine called Pariscope from the racks of a newsstand and pays a cheerful man with a hooked nose. He thrusts the magazine at me. “It comes out every Wednesday. ‘VO’ means version originale. ‘VF’ means version française, which means they’re dubbed. So stick to VO. The listings are also online,” he adds.
I tear through the magazine, and my eyes glaze over. I’ve never seen so many movie listings in my life.
“Christ, if I’d known that’s all it took to make you happy, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rest of this.”
“I love Paris,” I say.
“And I’m sure it loves you back.”
He’s still talking, but I’m not listening. There’s a Buster Keaton marathon this week. And another for teen slasher flicks. And a whole program devoted to 1970s car chases.
“What?” I realize he’s waiting for an answer to a question I didn’t hear. When he doesn’t reply, I glance up from the listings. His gaze is frozen on a figure that has just stepped out of our dorm.
The girl is about my height. Her long hair is barely styled, but in a fashionable, Parisian sort of way. She’s wearing a short silver dress that sparkles in the lamplight, and a red coat. Her leather boots snap and click against the sidewalk. She’s looking back over her shoulder toward Résidence Lambert with a slight frown, but then she turns and notices St. Clair. Her entire being lights up.
The magazine slackens in my hands. She can only be one person.
The girl breaks into a run and launches herself into his arms. They kiss, and she laces her fingers through his hair. His beautiful, perfect hair. My stomach drops, and I turn from the spectacle.
They break apart, and she starts talking. Her voice is surprisingly low—sultry—but she speaks rapidly. “I know we weren’t gonna see each other tonight, but I was in the neighborhood and thought you might want to go to that club I was telling you about. You know, the one Matthieu recommended? But you weren’t there, so I found Mer and I’ve been talking to her for the last hour, and where were you? I called your cell three times but it went straight to voice mail.”
St. Clair looks disoriented. “Er. Ellie, this is Anna. She hadn’t left the dorm all week, so I thought I’d show her—”
To my amazement, Ellie breaks into an ear-to-ear smile. Oddly enough, it’s this moment I realize that despite her husky voice and Parisian attire, she’s sort of . . . plain. But friendly-looking.
That still doesn’t mean I like her.
“Anna! From Atlanta, right? Where’d you guys go?”
She knows who I am? St. Clair describes our evening while I contemplate this strange development. Did he tell her about me? Or was it Meredith? I hope it was him, but even if it was, it’s not like he said anything she found threatening. She doesn’t seem alarmed that I’ve spent the last three hours in the company of her very attractive boyfriend. Alone.
Must be nice to have that kind of confidence.
“Okay, babe.” She cuts him off. “You can tell me the rest later. You ready to go?”
Did he say he’d go with her? I don’t remember, but he nods his head. “Yeah. Yeah, let me grab my, er—” He glances at me, and then toward the entrance of our dorm.
“What? You’re already dressed to go out. You look great. C’mon.” She tugs his arm, linking it to hers. “It was nice to meet you, Anna.”
I find my voice. “Yeah. Nice to meet you, too.” I turn to St. Clair, but he won’t look at me properly. Fine. Whatever. I give him my best I-don’t-care-that-you-have-a-girlfriend smile and a cheerful “Bye!”
He doesn’t react. Okay, time to go. I bolt away and pull out my building key. But as I unlock the door, I can’t help but glance back. St. Clair and Ellie are striding into the darkness, arms still linked, her mouth still chattering.
As I pause there, St. Clair’s head turns back to me. Just for a moment.
chapter ten
It’s better this way. It is.
As the days pass, I realize that I’m glad I met his girlfriend. It’s actually a relief. There are few things worse than having feelings for someone you shouldn’t, and I don’t like where my thoughts were headed. And I certainly don’t want to be another Amanda Spitterton-Watts.
St. Clair is just friendly. The whole school likes him—the professeurs, the popular kids, the unpopular kids—and why wouldn’t they? He’s smart and funny and polite. And, yes, ridiculously attractive. Although, for being so well liked, he doesn’t hang out with many people. Just our little group.
And since his best friend is usually distracted by Rashmi, he’s taken to hanging out with, well . . . me.
Since our night out, he’s sat next to me at every meal. He teases me about sneakers, asks about my favorite films, and conjugates my French homework. And he defends me. Like last week in physics when Amanda called me la moufette in a nasty way and held her nose as I walked by her desk, St. Clair told her to “bugger off” and threw tiny wads of paper into her hair for the rest of class.
I looked up the word later, and it means “skunk.” So original.
But then, just as I feel those twinges again, he disappears. I’ll be staring out my window after dinner, watching the sanitation workers tidy the street in their bright green uniforms, when he’ll emerge from our dorm and vanish toward the métro.
Toward Ellie.
Most nights I’m studying in the lobby with our other friends when he comes home. He’ll plop down beside me and crack a joke about whatever drunken junior is hitting on the girl behind the front desk. (There’s always a drunken junior hitting on the girl behind the front desk.) And is it my imagination, or is his hair more disheveled than usual?
The thought of St. Clair and Ellie doing—things—makes me more jealous than I care to admit. Toph and I email, but the messages have never been more than friendly. I don’t know if this means he’s still interested or if it means he’s not, but I do know that emailing is not the same as kissing. Or things.
The only one who understands the St. Clair situation is Mer, but I can’t say anything to her. Sometimes I’m afraid she might be jealous of me. Like I’ll catch her watching the two of us at lunch, and when I ask her to pass me a napkin, she’ll kind of chuck it at me instead. Or when St. Clair doodles bananas and elephants into the margins of my homework, she’ll grow rigid and silent.
Maybe I’m doing her a favor. I’m stronger than she is, since I haven’t known him as long. Since he’s always been off-limits. I mean, poor Mer. Any girl faced with daily attention from a gorgeous boy with a cute accent and perfect hair would be hard-pressed not to develop a big, stinking, painful, all-the-time, all-consuming crush.