The pain of losing him is as visceral as ever. The only way I’ll ever move past it is to make sure that the loss wasn’t in vain. That I’ve learned something. At the very least, being proactive will feel better than sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. It takes me a while to figure out the right way to simultaneously apologize and make a gesture of friendship, but it takes me even longer to work up the nerve to talk to her.
She’s my sister, but she’s still intimidating as hell.
I find the courage on an empty Sunday afternoon when Kurt is out potholing with his friends. Or…maybe it’s not so much that I find the courage. Maybe it’s more that I’m forced into it, because every time my world comes to a standstill, all I can think about is the Josh-size hole in my heart. It’s too sad for me to be alone.
Hattie is sceptical at my text, but she agrees to meet me more willingly than I would’ve guessed. I wait outside her dorm. “Why did you want me to dress warmly?” she asks. “Are you taking me to a Siberian prison?”
I smile and cross the street without her. “Nope.”
She hesitates. And then she catches up and walks beside me. “Abandoned research station in Antarctica?”
“Nope.”
“You’re taking me to practise for our two-person skeleton race at the Olympics.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it’s finally gonna snow?”
I’m thrown by her question, which sounds like a real one. She’s staring at the sky. “I doubt it,” I say. “We haven’t been lucky so far. Why would that change now?”
“You used to be the positive sister,” Hattie grumbles. We walk together silently to the other side of the Seine, and she’s only further exasperated when we reach our destination. “Tante Juliette’s. Is this an intervention? Did you find out about my sex addiction? So I like old men in baby diapers, what’s the big deal?”
“I didn’t bring you to Tante Juliette’s.”
She snarls. “I’ve been here, like, a million times, remember?”
“Just shut up and follow me.”
For some reason, Hattie does. She follows me up the stairs. Around the third floor, I look back over my shoulder and say, “Diapers, huh?”
“And those adult-size cribs. That’s hot.”
I laugh.
There’s the quickest hint of a smile before she drops back into deadpan. “And unibrows. I like a geezer with a giant, coarse unibrow.”
I laugh again. “Oh god, Hattie.”
We pass by the purple door with the leopard-print mat. “Yeah, see, that’s definitely Tante Juliette’s door,” she says.
I lead her to mine. “And this?”
“Her stupid roof. Gen once threw my teddy bear over the edge, and a car ran over him. Sludge was never the same.”
“She did? For real?” I’m startled. I don’t remember this.
“Yeah, for real.”
I unlock the door and head up the rickety steps. “Well. Sludge is safe. I promise I’m not leading you up here to re-enact a traumatic moment from your childhood.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” I almost don’t hear her say it, it’s so quiet.
I pop open the trapdoor, and she squints into the sunlight. I reach for her hand and help her onto the roof. Her eyes widen. My unmovable, unshakable sister looks surprised by her surroundings. “Who did this?” she asks. “It’s yours, isn’t it? This looks like you.”
I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. “It’s on loan. I’ve been using it for a few years.”
Hattie whips around and narrows her eyes at me. “So Gen gave it to you? This is your place? The two of you?”
“Gen? No, Tante Juliette gave it to me sophomore year. It was a place where Kurt and I could escape from…everyone else. Gen doesn’t know about it.”
“She doesn’t?” There’s a heartbreaking note of hope in her voice. And I know that everything Sanjita said is true.
I smile gently. “Nope. It’s a secret. She doesn’t know.”
“It’s pretty,” Hattie finally says.
“Thanks. I’m glad you like it. Because it’s yours now.”
For the second time in a single minute, Hattie looks surprised. I hold out the key. She takes it slowly. “Don’t you want to give this to Kurt? Isn’t it his, too?”
“Kurt has new places to explore. And…he’s not you. He’s not my sister.”
She almost appears to be shaken. Almost.
“And, you know, you don’t have to keep any of this stuff, it’s just junk we’ve picked up over the years—”
“No! No, I like it.” She glances around, and her eyes catch on the mural, which I’ve been trying my best to ignore. “You brought Josh up here, too.”
I tuck my hands inside my coat pockets. “Yeah.”
“So was this some sort of gross sexual playground? Did you do it on top of this carousel horse-head?”
“Hattie!”
She laughs at my reddened cheeks, and after a moment, I can’t help but join in. “No,” I say. “But maybe you should wash the blanket in that trunk.”
My sister squeals with genuine horror, which only makes us both laugh harder. When we finally stop, she pulls her gaze away from mine again. She focuses on the river. “It’s cool of you to give this to me. So…thanks.”
“I’m sorry.” I take a deep breath. “For being so awful to you this year. And for blaming you for something that wasn’t your fault.”
Hattie nods. She doesn’t take her eyes off the Seine. But I know we’re okay.
I take another deep breath, and…there it is. A new and distinct smell in the air. Hattie turns her head and smiles at me as the first snowflakes of the year swirl down upon Paris. The city is cold and hushed and beautiful.
“Will you miss this next year?” she asks, and when I look at her in surprise, she adds, “Maman told me they mailed the first cheque to Dartmouth.”
I hesitate, and then I tell her the truth. “I will miss Paris. And I’ll miss New York. I’m excited and scared, but…I think I’m more excited than scared. I think,” I say again.
“You think?”
“I think.” I slide down the wall until I’m sitting down. She sits beside me. We cross our arms, shivering. “When Josh and I were in Spain, we went to this park. This really, really beautiful park. And it started these ideas in my head about how maybe I wasn’t the person that I thought I was. Maybe I’m not a city girl. Maybe I was only thinking about Paris versus New York, because nothing else seemed real, somehow. Like, everywhere else just seemed like something—”
“You’d read about in a book.”
“Exactly. But being in this beautiful park with this beautiful boy talking about this alternate future in which I’m someone who learns how to camp and climb rocks and build fires and sleep below the stars…in that moment, it seemed possible.”
“So what? You’re gonna be a park ranger?”
I laugh. “I just want to try those things. They sound fun.”
“What about Josh?”
My eyes catch on his mural. On the brownstone with ivy window boxes and the American flag. “What about him?”
“He’s not a part of your plans any more?”
“Well…no. We broke up. And I don’t need him to do those things.”
“Yeah, duh,” Hattie says. “But that’s not what I meant. I meant don’t you still want to do those things with him?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I still want to do everything with him.”
“Isla…why do you think that Josh didn’t love you?”
My voice grows even smaller. “Because I thought no one could love me.”
“And why did you think that?”
“Because I didn’t think I was worth loving.”
Hattie takes this in. And then she hits me in the stomach. I yowl in surprise, and she hits me again. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Ow.”
“Everyone is worthy of love. Even a dumb sister like you.”
I snort. “Yeah, thanks. I got that. I’m okay now.”
“Are you? Because you don’t act like a person who is okay. You mope around school, and you hardly ever leave your room, and you always look unhappy.”
“Says the sister with the permanent scowl.”
“You need to talk to him.”
I sigh and stare at my lap. “I know.”
“So why haven’t you?”
“Because now I do believe that he loved me. And I’m afraid that after all this time, after everything I’ve put him through…he doesn’t any more.”
“Ugh. So take a risk and find out. The sooner you ask him, the sooner you can get on with your life. Either way,” she adds.
Thanks to Josh, I am taking risks. I’ve learned that if I never leave those areas of my life that feel comfortable, I’ll never have a chance at a greater happiness. Accepting Dartmouth was a risk. Asking my sister to hang out with me was a risk. But the biggest risk of all is still Josh himself. I don’t yet have the courage to give him the opportunity to say no. It’s impossible, the not-knowing, but it’s better than getting the wrong answer.
There’s a muffled ring from inside my coat pocket. I pull out my phone to silence it, and then it drops from my hands and bounces against the concrete.
Josh.
It’s his actual name. I haven’t seen it on the screen of my phone since before Barcelona. My heart wrenches. “Is that him? How can that be him?”
“Whoa. He heard us.”
I pick up my phone. “What do I do?”
“One more ring until voicemail.” Hattie peers over my shoulder. “Tick-tock.”
I scramble to answer. “He— Hello?”
There’s a strange hiccup of silence. And then he speaks, and his voice – It’s him, it’s him, it’s him – is awash with strangled relief. “I didn’t know if you’d answer.”
“You got your phone back.”
“Yeah. Last week.”
I feel a stab of sadness that he didn’t call me immediately. And then a second stab, this one of guilt. I broke up with him. Of course he shouldn’t call me.
“It’s Sunday night,” he continues. “You aren’t at Pizza Pellino.”
“No, I’m at the Treehouse with Hattie.” And then I’m so dizzy that my vision goes black. “How…how did you know that I’m not there?”
But I’ve already anticipated his answer.
“Because I’m here.”
Chapter thirty
I’m trembling. Hattie’s ear is pressed against my head, listening in. Silver-white flakes catch in our tangle of red hair.
“Isla?” Josh says. “Isla, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“I was hoping you’d be here. At Pellino’s. My friends and I are on our way to the Olympics, so we stopped by for old times’ sake. I wanted to introduce you. I mean, I know you already know them. But I wanted you to know them.”
My head swims. “You want me to know your friends?”
“Is that too weird?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d like to see you again. We could talk?” His question is tentative.
He’s caught me off guard. I’m not ready for this. I have to prepare for this. “How long will you be in town?”
“Just tonight. We’re catching the train to Chambéry in the morning.”
Hattie is nodding her head like a madwoman.
“Um,” I say. “Sure. I guess I could be there in…twenty minutes?”
“Great!” Josh says. “Okay, bye.”
I stare down at my phone’s screen. “He hung up.”
“He was afraid you’d take it back,” Hattie says.
I put my head between my legs. “I feel ill.”
“That was the strangest timing. The strangest. It’s like fate, if I believed in fate. I don’t know. Maybe I believe in fate now.”
The tone of her voice makes me lift my head. She grins.
“Hattie.” My heart seizes. “What did you do?”
“Jeez, nothing.”
“Tell me what you did!”
“Ow.” She covers her ears at my shouting. “Maybe I mailed your stupid book to his dad’s stupid office in DC, I don’t know.”
I frown. “Huh? What book?”
“The one you brought home from Angoulême, thanks for not inviting me, that I stole from your room to read and discovered you’d had personalized? I thought it was so sad and pathetic that I mailed it to him. And maybe I attached a note saying how much you were totally still in love with him, and he should try calling you again.”
It’s the only thing that could shock me more than Josh’s call. Finding out that I have Hattie to thank for it. I’m speechless.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
“Thank you? I think? I’ll let you know when this is all over.”
“You’d better.” She pulls me to my feet, leads me through the trapdoor and down the stairs, locks the door, and slides the key into her pocket.
The pressure inside my chest grows at a paralysing rate. “I don’t know about this.”
“Shut up. You’re being annoying again.” Hattie leads me, stumbling, into the closest métro station. I feel like I’m moving both too fast and too slow. She shoves me through the turnstile and says, “Don’t be a chickenshit. Tell him how you feel.”
“What if he doesn’t love me?”
“He does.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Ugh, then who cares? You won’t lose anything you haven’t already lost.” She flicks a snowflake from the tip of my nose. “For once in your life, listen to your younger sister. She’s taller, and she knows better than you.”
The flakes are scattered, here and there, as they float down to earth. I glance at the grey-white sky. If only a blizzard would burst from above and bury me alive. That would be better than what I’m about to do. The temperature is below freezing, but I’m sweaty and feverish and short of breath. My feet touch Pellino’s threshold, but my body won’t go any further. One step at a time. I place my hand on the door.
Pushing it open has never felt so impossible.
A chain of brass bells signals my entrance. The maître d’ brightens at the sight of me. “Où est Monsieur Bacon?”
“Kurt has other plans tonight,” I reply in French as my gaze darts around the room.
“Oh. Are we sad?”
“No, it’s fine. I’m actually meeting—”
“Isla!”
It comes from the corner table. St. Clair is waving me down as Josh turns around in his chair. Everything transitions into slow motion. The maître d’, the noisy chatter, the smoky fragrance of the wood-fired pizza – they vanish as I wait for his eyes to find mine.
We lock.
The entire contents of my heart reflect back at me in his expression. Joy, pain, strength, wonder, sadness, beauty, hope. He is everything.
“Ah,” the maître d’ says. “Of course.”
He guides me towards the table as my heartbeat thumps in my throat. The room closes in. My soul aches with attraction. There are four empty seats, and the maître d’ pulls out the chair beside Josh. I’m shaking as I place my coat onto the back of it. I’m shaking as I sit down. I’m shaking as Josh glances at the maître d’ with a look of unmistakable gratitude. Does that glance mean what I want it to mean?
“Where’s Kurt?” Josh asks.
“He’s out with some new friends. Underground. It’s a long story.”
Josh lifts his eyebrows in surprise as the rest of the table beams at me – St. Clair, Anna and Meredith. “Wow,” I say. “The gang’s all here.”
“Everyone but Rashmi,” St. Clair says.
Anna gives him a swift kick below the table, but I catch it. “It’s okay,” I say awkwardly. At least it’s answered a question. They know about my history with Josh. I glance at the three empty seats. “Is she coming?”
“One of those was for Kurt,” Josh says, and I’m touched.
/> “The others are for our friends who got us into the Olympics,” Anna says. “We split up today, and they’re still out sightseeing. They should be here any minute.”
“Friends from California?” I grab the opportunity to show them that I’m not completely in the dark. Just mostly.
She nods. “Yeah, Lola and Cricket. Étienne and I—”
“Étienne,” Josh says, and Meredith cracks up.
“They’re teasing me because I’m the only person who calls him that,” Anna explains.
“You’re the only person allowed to call him that,” Josh says. “You and his mom.”
St. Clair smiles. “The only two ladies I need.”
“That’s sick,” Meredith says, but she’s still laughing. She has a wonderful, friendly laugh. A tiny nose ring catches the light and twinkles. Everything about her is cheerful.
It’s unreal to be surrounded here, in person, by his friends. Those faces from his artwork.
Anna is one of those naturally beautiful girls who has no idea that she’s beautiful. She dresses in jeans and T-shirts, and she has this gap-toothed smile and a bleached stripe in her long brown hair. She’s comfortable in her own skin. Her boyfriend is also beautiful, but he’s aware of it. Not that St. Clair acts like a jerk. He’s just loaded with confidence. He’s short, but it’s never gotten in his way. Nearly every girl at school was in love with him, not to mention most of the guys and half the professeurs.
But I was never in love with him. Not when Josh was around.
Anna clears her throat. “Anyway. Étienne and I—”
Josh and Meredith snicker.
Anna grins. “—work with Lola at a movie theatre. Cricket is her boyfriend, and Cricket’s twin sister is Calliope Bell. The figure skater?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “I’ve seen her face on about a billion advertisements.”
“That’s the one. She’s going for the gold.”
“And you’re all here to cheer her on?” I glance at Josh. He appears to be calm, but it’s superficial. A frenetic energy is pulsating from his core. Vibrating against me. I rub my arms, hair on end, but the others don’t seem to notice.
“Sort of.” St. Clair shrugs. It’s slow and full-bodied, very French. Maman has the same one. “Mainly we’re using it as an excuse to visit.”