Isla and the Happily Ever After

  “Sorry. My door sucks.”

  “Um, actually.” Josh’s hands are in his pockets again. His shoulders are practically up to his ears as we head towards the exit. “I should be the one apologizing. It’s my fault that your door sucks.”

  “It is?” I’m not sure why, but this delights me. “What’d you do?”

  He glances at me. “I might have kicked it.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you angry?”

  “No.” His face scrunches up. “It was a stupid reason.”

  “Oh, come on. You can’t hold out on me now.”

  Josh groans with good nature. “Fine. I kicked the lock last winter to break it so that my ex-girlfriend – girlfriend at the time – could come and go as she pleased. And before you ask, yes, I did try to get a duplicate key made first.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “That’s…kind of ingenious. Kurt and I just trade ours around. Sometimes I forget to get mine back, and I get locked out of my own room. Well. I used to. Oddly enough, it hasn’t happened this year.”

  He snorts as he holds open the main door for me.

  “Using your hands this time,” I say. “A novel approach.”

  As if on cue, he flinches and looks at his right hand. But it’s a moment of genuine pain. My smile disappears. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing.” But my expression must be so bullshit that he laughs. “Really, I’m fine. I’ve been drawing more than usual—”

  “Because of the holidays?”

  “Exactly.” He grins. “It’s just a little tendinitis.”

  “Tendinitis? Don’t you have to be old to get that?”

  Josh glances over his shoulder. “Can you keep a secret?” He lowers his voice. “You have to promise not to tell anyone, okay?”

  “Okay…”

  “I’m eighty-seven years old. I have terrible hands but amazing skin.”

  I burst into laughter. “Scientists should study you.”

  “Why do you think I’m in France? Because it’s the home of the world’s best dermatological universities, that’s why.”

  His straight face only makes me laugh harder. He glances at me, pleased, and then smiles to himself. We cross the narrow street. Somehow, our strides are in sync despite our difference in height. His entire body is lean and lovely. I want to lace his long, gorgeous fingers through mine. I want to bury my nose against his long, gorgeous neck.

  Josh is overly focused on the cobblestones.

  Something is happening between us. Is it friendship? It doesn’t feel like friendship, but it’s possible that I’m projecting my own desires. And I’m ashamed for even thinking about him like this after what happened last week. Because I’m not thinking. I’m hoping. People aren’t supposed to be able to change, but…I’ve never bought that. Maybe Josh could learn to like Kurt. Maybe I misinterpreted his actions. There could have been any number of reasons for him to want to escape from Kurt so quickly. Maybe.

  “So tell me what you’re working on,” I say.

  “Oh, man.” Josh rubs his neck. This seems to be his most frequently used gesture of unease. “It’s always sort of embarrassing to tell someone new.”

  “What is it? I promise I won’t laugh.”

  “You say that now.” He grimaces and keeps his eyes on the jumble of bicycles and scooters parked alongside the road. “I’m making a graphic novel about my life here at school. A graphic memoir, I guess. There’s not a phrase for it that makes it sound any less egotistical. Unfortunately.”

  So it’s true. “How big is it?”

  “Um, about three hundred pages. So far.”

  My jaw actually drops.

  “I really like myself.”

  “You don’t have to turn it into a joke.” I shake my head. “That’s incredible. I’ve never done anything like it, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I’m not done yet. One more year of school.”

  The colossal white dome of the Panthéon appears before us, illuminated like a beacon. We live on the Left Bank in the bottom of the Latin Quarter, along the edge of a residential neighbourhood. It’s peaceful but – because there are several other schools nearby – it’s not very quiet during the day. But it is magnificent at dusk. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live here.

  “Have you always been this passionate about drawing? I mean, a lot of kids are, but then we’re sort of taught to stop.” I look up at him. “You never stopped, did you?”

  “Never.” Josh finally meets my eyes, but his expression has turned mischievous. He points at my necklace. “Tell me the real story.”

  I stop walking. “Try flipping it over this time.”

  “Oh?”

  I smile and hold it out on its chain. He takes the compass, angles it into the light, and reads the engraving on the back – first silently and then aloud. His voice is deep, clear but quiet. “Isla. May you always find the Right Way. Love, Kurt.”

  “It’s the only sentimental gift he’s ever given me. I suspect his mom helped, but it doesn’t matter. He has this thing about maps and directions and finding the best route. But I like that the words have more than one meaning.”

  Josh places it back into my hands. “It’s beautiful.”

  He turns contemplative as we trek up the rue Saint-Jacques. Perhaps he is reconsidering Kurt. There has to be a way to approach the subject. I’ll find a way. A siren wails past with its French ooo-WEE ooo-WEE, but it only heightens the return of our silence. I’m relieved when we emerge into a bustling district of retail.

  Album is a chain, but this particular location is split into two stores that sit across a busy intersection from each other. One sells American superhero-type imports and figurines. The other sells Franco-Belgian books called les BD, les bandes dessinées. French comics tend to have a better presentation than their American counterparts. They’re hardcover, taller, glossier. They have a wider range of stories and, because of it, they’re also more widely read. Comic shops are everywhere here, and it’s not uncommon to find businessmen and -women browsing their aisles in expensive haute couture.

  Without having to discuss it, Josh and I enter the location with les BD. We’re greeted by the heavenly perfume of freshly printed text, and a youngish man with a trim beard gives us an amiable salut from behind the counter. I nod a greeting in return.

  “Isla.”

  It startles me to hear Josh speak my name. I turn around, and he holds up a book from the edge of the first display table. It’s the new Sfar, of course. I take it, and it opens with the delicious crack of a hard spine being tested for the first time. I’m thrilled to discover that it’s one of his fantastique titles – the pages are filled with woods and monsters and swords and royalty and love. Adventure.

  “Yeah?” Josh asks.

  I beam. “Yeah.”

  He looks happy, and then sad, and then he turns so that I can’t see his face. It worries me. I want to know what’s wrong, but his body language tells me not to ask. But then he turns back around – as if he’d made up his mind about a conversation that I didn’t even know we were having – and blurts, “Does your boyfriend like comics?”

  For a moment, I think he’s joking.

  The word was a joke. But his expression is serious, and it looks like he expects a serious reply, and I am very, very thrown.

  I swallow. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry.” He frowns at the table of new releases. “I don’t know why that sounded so harsh.”

  My heart hammers against my chest, but I speak the words slowly. “Kurt. Isn’t. My boyfriend.”

  Josh freezes. Several seconds pass. His eyes are fixed on a Tintin reissue. “He’s not?”

  “No.” I pause. “No.”

  “But…you’re always together. You’re so close.”

  “We are close. Best friends close. Practically brother and sister close. Not – not – boyfriend and girlfriend close.”

  “But…the necklace. You share k
eys…”

  “Because we’re friends. Who hang out.”

  His ears have turned a deep crimson. “So…you’ve never gone out with him?”

  “No! I’ve known him since we were in diapers.” My mind is reeling. “I can’t believe you thought we were dating. For how long?”

  “I— I guess this whole time.”

  A new and terrible panic stirs within me. “This whole time as in this year or this whole time as in since Kurt was a freshman?”

  Josh seems to have a lump in his throat. “Since he was a freshman?”

  “Does everyone think we’re a couple?” Our classmates joke about it, but I never thought that they were serious.

  “I don’t know.” Josh shakes his head vigorously, but he says, “Probably?”

  “Ohmygod.” I’m finding it difficult to breathe.

  He lets out a strange laugh. It’s near hysterical, but it stops as abruptly as it starts. “So are you dating anyone? Someone else?”

  “No. No one since last year.”

  “Cool.” His fingers tap rapidly against the stack of Tintins.

  I fight to keep my voice steady. “And you? Are you seeing anyone?”

  “Nope. No one since last year.”

  I want to weep with joy. He liked me, but he thought he couldn’t like me. It’s difficult to wrap my mind around this idea. I suspected his attraction, but the full truth of the situation is unbelievable. How is it possible that my crush – my three-year-long crush – has a crush on me? This doesn’t happen in real life.

  Josh is equally thrown. He’s grasping for something to say when his eyes catch on the Sfar. “There’s more downstairs, right? Should we go down there?”

  “No.” I hug the book with both arms. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

  Chapter seven

  I’m still clutching the book – now through a blue Album bag – as we wander towards the Seine. We have another hour before I’m supposed to meet Kurt for sushi in the Marais. Night time has officially arrived, and the streets are abuzz. I feel as if I’m floating. Glancing, smiling, blushing. Both of us. My voice has abandoned me. Josh’s left hand grasps his right elbow, an anchor to keep him in one place.

  How does one proceed in a situation like this? If only the discovery of mutual admiration could lead promptly into making out. If only I could say, “Listen. I like you, and you like me, so let’s go find a secluded park and touch each other.”

  We steer around a group of tourists pawing through bins of miniature Notre-Dames. Josh swallows. “Just so we’re clear,” he says, “I wasn’t, like, trying to steal you away from Kurt when I asked if you wanted to go to the store with me. I was trying to, you know…be your friend. I don’t want you to think I’m a creep.”

  I smile up at him. “I don’t think you’re a creep.”

  But Josh looks at an ornate iron balcony, a carved stone archway, an enormous poster for the Winter Olympics in Chambéry. Anything but me. “It’s just that last weekend I realized that even if you were, um, taken, I still wanted to hang out with you.”

  He wanted me as more than a friend first. My chest tightens happily. “Last weekend?”

  “Yom Kippur?” Josh glances at me to see if I’m following his train of thought. I’m not, and I’m grateful when he launches into it without me having to ask. He seems relieved for the new topic. “Okay, so the period of time between Rosh Hashanah – which was the day before we came back to school—”

  “That’s the Jewish New Year?”

  He nods. “Yeah. So the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is for reflection. You’re supposed to think about mistakes, ask forgiveness, make resolutions. That sort of thing. And then Yom Kippur is, essentially, the deadline.”

  We split apart to pass a gentleman walking a basset hound, and when we reunite, the distance between us halves. “So. Wait. You contemplated your life and…resolved to become my friend? Even though you’re no longer a practising Jew?”

  Josh gives me a wicked smile. “Is that a requirement for your friendship?”

  I give him a look.

  He laughs, but he follows it with a wistful shrug. “I don’t know. There’s something…poetic about this time of year. And it’s not like I’ve figured out everything spiritually or whatever, but I do think it’s still okay to make resolutions. On my own terms.”

  “Sure it’s okay. My family is Catholic, both sides, but they never go to Mass. I don’t even know if my parents believe in God. But we still put up a Christmas tree, and it still gives us a sense of peace. Traditions can be nice.”

  “Do you believe in God?” he asks.

  For some reason, his directness doesn’t surprise me. The real Notre-Dame is ahead of us, gigantic and humbling, and its reflection shimmers in the dark river below. I stare at it for a while before answering. “I don’t know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic.”

  He smiles. “I like it.”

  “And you’re a Yom Kippur Atheist.”

  “I am.”

  I’ve never had a conversation like this before, where something so sensitive was discussed with such ease. We cross a bridge towards the cathedral. It’s on the Île de la Cité, the larger of the two islands that comprise the centre of Paris.

  “I have a question,” Josh says. “But I’m not sure how to ask it.”

  I wish that I could give him a playful nudge. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

  There’s an excruciating pause as he searches for the right phrasing. “Kurt has…autism?”

  Internally, I cringe. But I spare him as he spared my own ignorance. “Yeah. What the DSM used to call Asperger’s, and what they now call high-functioning autism. It’s the same thing. But it’s not a problem, it’s not like it’s something that needs to be cured. His brain works a little differently from ours. That’s all.”

  Josh gestures towards a bench in the cathedral’s small park, and I reply by moving towards it. We sit down about two feet apart.

  “So how does his brain work?”

  “Well.” I take a deep breath. “He’s super-rational and literal. So sarcasm, metaphor? Not his strengths.”

  Josh nods. “What else?”

  “It’s difficult for him to read faces. He’s worked on it a lot, so he’s way better than he used to be. But he still has to remember to make eye contact and smile. I mean, obviously he smiles, but he only does it when he means it. Unlike the rest of us.” I’m rambling, because I’m struck again by the fact that I’m sitting on a bench – a bench not even on school property – beside Joshua Wasserstein.

  “So he’s honest.”

  “Even when you don’t want him to be.” I laugh, but it immediately turns into worry. I don’t want Josh to get the wrong idea. “He doesn’t mean to be rude, though. Whenever he finds out that he’s accidentally hurt someone’s feelings, he’s devastated.”

  “It’s kind of French, you know? Not the hurting-people’s-feelings thing. Only smiling when it’s sincere. Americans will smile at anyone, for any reason.”

  “You don’t.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.

  Josh is taken aback. It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts. “Yeah, I’ve been told that I have a hard time…concealing my displeasure.”

  “I know.” I hesitate. “I like that about you.”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “You do?”

  I stare at the bench’s wooden slats. Somehow, the two feet between our bodies has halved into one. “It means that when you do smile? I know it’s not false. You’re not just smiling to make me” – I shake my head, and my hair bounces – “whomever, feel better. If they’re saying stupid things. And can’t seem to stop talking.”

  His mouth spreads into a slow smile.

  “Yeah.” I laugh. “Like that.”

  “What else?”

  I tilt my head. “What else what?”

  “What else do I need to know about Kurt?”

  His phrasing implies that
we’ll be spending more time together. The happy tightness returns to my chest. “Not much else to know. It’s not like he’s a card-counting savant or a mathematical genius or anything. I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s brilliant. But those stereotypes are the worst. Though he does love routine.”

  Josh smiles again. “Let me guess. Sushi?”

  “Same day, same time, same restaurant.” Kurt and I meet after his weekly therapy session, but Josh doesn’t need to know that.

  “Same entrée?”

  “Shrimp nigiri and miso soup. But I get the special, whatever it is. I ask the server to surprise me.”

  The bells of Notre-Dame peal out from the towers. We startle, covering our ears and laughing. The bells are loud – a cacophony of chimes crashing over one another. From this close, it’s hard to even make out a pattern. They ring and ring and ring, and we’re helpless, completely bowled over with laughter, until they cease their clattering.

  The distance between us has disappeared.

  His jeans rub softly against my bare legs. I’m too aware of my movements, too aware of my nerves, too aware of everything. All five senses are overloading. I jerk my head towards the cathedral. “That was my cue.”

  “Mind if I walk with you?” Josh’s question sounds anxious, like he’s trying to catch his breath. “I need to pick up a brush. At Graphigro.” It’s an art supply store a few blocks away from the restaurant. I don’t know whether he really does need a new brush or whether this is an excuse to spend a few more minutes with me. But I’ll take it either way.

  This entire evening has been surreal. We cross another bridge, the Pont d’Arcole, onto the Right Bank. The scent of metal and urine wafts up from the Seine, but even this barely registers. We’re in a two-person bubble. The noises that I should be hearing – cars speeding, pedestrians rushing, construction clattering – are muffled. Instead, I hear my heart thumping against my ribcage. Josh’s steady footsteps against the pavement. The occasional swish of his pant legs catching against each other.

  Ask me out. I chant it like a mantra. Ask me out, ask me out, ask me out.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” It ruptures from my mouth, far less casual than I’d hoped. “I mean, you don’t have detention, do you?”