The Bridge

by Jill Cox

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  For my parents

  I love you with my whole heart and half of Meredith’s

  ONE

  Pythagoras believed that three is the perfect number. Maybe he was right, or maybe he was the original Jedi Master. Whatever the reason, the number three is everywhere.

  Three blind mice. Three wishes. Three’s a crowd.

  The third time’s the charm. The third degree. The third wheel.

  You can’t blame a girl named Mer-e-dith Fi-o-na Sul-li-van for noticing this phenomenon. We moved to Oregon from Ireland in March, three months after my third birthday. I graduated third in my high school class – all of the hard work, none of the glory.

  At Highgate College, French majors have three choices if we want to study abroad. Most people choose to spend the summer before junior year at Highgate’s campus in the picturesque French town of Tours. Or, if you prefer a semester in France, you can tag along with another school’s program – but their credits rarely transfer, which might explain the popularity of Highgate’s summer program.

  But the third choice? The one every French major fights tooth and nail to get? The coveted Beckett Endowment Scholarship, which provides room, board, travel expenses, and tuition for three Highgate students at the prestigious Centre Lafayette in Paris.

  The Centre Lafayette gears its yearlong program toward an elite group of students from several top American schools. Classes are taught exclusively in French, and they’re so rigorous that at the end of the year, you have fifteen course credits rather than ten. Which explains why there’s a qualifying exam: a three-hour, yank-out-your-teeth-with-a-monkey-wrench kind of test that I spent every free second preparing myself for last year.

  And that hard work paid off. Somehow last spring, I’d scored high enough to wrangle one of the Beckett scholarships. I still had no idea whether I’d placed first, second, or third, but it didn’t matter; once we made it to this level, we were no longer competitors.

  This year’s Highgate delegation? Marshall Freeman, Dan Thomas, et moi. Champions of Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité.

  But for some reason this year, Highgate decided at the last minute to send a fourth student. Why would they throw off the system like that? Four is not perfect. Four is a freaking trapezoid.

  So as the flight attendants began closing the overhead bins on our Paris-bound plane, I stood and turned to peer over my seatback at Marshall, the only other Highgate student onboard. I smiled and waved while he shoved a handful of kale chips in his mouth. Ranch-flavored, judging by the scent wafting my way.

  “So, Marshall,” I asked as casually as possible. “Any idea why they’re mixing things up this year with a fourth delegate?”

  “Uh, no. Do you know who it is?”

  “No.” I tapped my finger against my lower lip. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened. It couldn’t have been a tiebreaker. They would have made the bottom two students take a new version of the test. What’s your theory?”

  Marshall had just pushed himself to a standing position when his mouth suddenly shifted into a grin. I guess the kale leaf covering his eyetooth distracted me temporarily because it took me one beat too long to notice we were no longer alone.

  “Hey, Sully.” I turned to find Pete Russell and that semi-permanent smirk of his I’d grown to despise. “You guys didn’t have to stand to greet me. This isn’t First Class.”

  No way. Someone had to be pranking me right now. Pete Russell was Lucky Number Four?

  If I’d majored in something noble, like environmental science, I would be on a flight to Antarctica right now, or Ushuaia. Or even the Bikini Atoll. Sure, I might have died early from radiation poisoning there, but at least I could have skipped hours of buckled-in mental torture six inches away from the ultimate frat boy.

  Pete watched me for a second, then laughed. That full-throated, you’re-such-an-idiot chuckle of his that made me want to suffocate him in his own simpering glibness. As he shoved his ancient-looking duffel bag into the overhead bin right next to my brand new black leather tote, I slid back down into my seat and stifled my rage. In what bizarro universe did Highgate College’s best and brightest include a kale-addicted simpleton and the reigning buffoon of Sigma Phi Beta?

  “Lucky you, Freeman,” Pete said over the headrest as the purser called the flight attendants to order. “Looks like you’ve got the whole row to yourself.”

  Through the crack between the seats, I heard (and smelled) Marshall’s sigh of relief. “You think?”

  “I know. That aisle seat was assigned to Dan Thomas, but he flew over early with his parents for some conference they had to attend. Hey, man – you got something…” Pete made a scratching motion against his tooth, then glanced down at me and smirked again.

  I glared at Pete as he finally turned around and settled in beside me, scrolling through his phone. What sort of loophole had qualified Pete Freaking Russell for this moment? Okay, yes – he spouted doctoral-level insight every day in French lit class. But every other time I saw him on campus, he was either cheering on a food fight or quoting random scenes from a movie only morons enjoyed.

  This guy was the boorish bane of my existence. And now he was following me to Paris.

  A grin began to tug at his lips as he spoke without looking up from his phone. “You know you’re staring at me, right? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Sully. I like this effect I’m having on you as much as the next guy, but there’s no reason you can’t parcel out your admiration in tiny segments throughout the flight.”

  I shoved in my earbuds, turning my whole body toward the window as we taxied down the runway. As I fidgeted with the silver charm bracelet on my wrist, I thought back to dinner last night at Sullivan’s, the Irish pub my parents owned on the Oregon coast.

  My brother Ian had driven all the way back home from Seattle on Friday so he could chauffeur me over to the Portland airport today. And last night after my dad’s extra-long prayer, Ian had slid a small black velvet box toward me. Inside, tucked under a dozen twenty-euro bills, lay a silver charm bracelet with a tiny fairy attached. Not the cartoonish kind, but something he’d picked up this summer when he’d been in the Orkney Islands updating the Scotland guidebook for work
.

  Oh, that clever brother of mine. Anyone else might have thought I had a Tinkerbell fixation, but the two of us knew the truth. Fée in French meant fairy. Just close enough to my nickname to be perfect. With my mom’s blue eyes brimming over, Ian clasped the bracelet around my wrist, shifting the fairy charm right to the center.

  “Your job this year, Fee, is to fill this bracelet with silver charms from every place you visit. I’ve started you off with this one, but the rest is up to you. Italy for spring break, London for the weekend – wherever you like. All I ask is that you put this handful of euros to good use. Don’t go wasting it all on coffee. Not even in Paris.”

  The plane had just leveled off to its cruising altitude when I felt Pete Russell’s eyes boring into the side of my head. I yanked out my earbuds and jerked my head his way. “You do know you’re staring at me, right? There’s no reason you can’t parcel out your admiration in tiny segments, you know.”

  He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Touché, Sully. I’m just sitting here listening to Marshall chomping his chips behind us while I slowly decode a mystery about you.”

  “And what is that?”

  A grin spread to his cheeks, which were surprisingly less hairy than they’d been during last spring’s Rumpelstiltskin phase. He was still sporting several days’ worth of growth, but the only thing really left of his once monstrous beard was a bit of a soul patch. And then, as though he’d read my mind, Pete rubbed his chin and smiled even wider.

  “The mystery,” he smirked, “is that I always hear Drew Sutton on his phone with someone named Fee. Now that I’ve seen your bracelet, I get it. Fée, Fee. Very cute.”

  “It’s not cute. It’s none of your business. And since when do you know Drew?”

  Pete scratched his soul patch again, sneering at me like a silent movie villain. Suddenly, all the missing pieces clicked together.

  Sigma Phi Freaking Beta. My childhood friend Drew and this chucklehead were bros.

  Why did I never remember those two were in the same fraternity? Probably because Drew and every other Sigma Phi I knew were the kind of guys who’d scrape off your windshield after an ice storm or climb a tree to save your cat. The types who always show up for a first date holding a dozen roses and wearing their nicest sweater.

  Not Pete Russell. Most days, he looked like he’d crawled out of a yurt in the woods, thanks to his predilection for poorly groomed facial hair and his indiscriminate fashion sense.

  While the captain gave the latest flying conditions over the intercom, I scanned Pete’s outfit of the day: cargo pants, a black fleece covering up what I assumed was a Sigma Phi Beta formal t-shirt, light blue as always. No shock there. But then he’d completed his international flight ensemble with flip flops and a Peruvian chullo hat.

  “Man, I’m beat.” Pete tugged at the braids on his hat – left, right, left, right – so that his eyes barely showed below the brim. “I stayed up half the night packing only to discover a few of my things were still in storage at the Sigma Phi house. The guys had to help me dig through the basement this morning. Your boy Sutton was there. Did he tell you?”

  “No. Maybe he was too distraught over the brand new Pete-shaped hole in his life.”

  Pete grinned lazily. “I doubt it. But he did make me promise to deliver a message if I saw you on the plane. I had to repeat it back to him five or six times until I got the words exactly right.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I tried to appear cool. “What was it?”

  “I’d love to tell you, Fee, but my brain does not work on zero sleep,” he yawned, pulling the brim of his hat all the way over his eyes. “Ask me tomorrow. I don’t want to mess this one up.”

  And just like that, Pete Russell was out. No matter how many times Marshall said hello on his way to and from the lavatory, no matter how many times the plane bumped and shimmied, Pete hardly shifted, his arms crossed in triumph for the entire eleven-hour stretch. He didn’t even snore. He just Sleeping Beauty-ed his way across the time zones, like this was his hundredth trip.

  If he hadn’t looked so rosy-cheeked and childlike, I might’ve shoved an earbud up his nose.

  But then somewhere between the arrivals gate and the baggage claim at Charles de Gaulle, Pete disappeared. Disappeared, and never returned. Which gave me a while to think as Marshall and I waited in the taxi line. So I made a decision: it was time to stop sweating this four-person twist. Someone had made Paris possible for me, and I wouldn’t allow anyone to ruin this year. Not even Pete Russell.

  I touched my bracelet again, rubbing the tiny fairy charm between my fingers like a talisman against everything that might go wrong. This was Paris, and I was finally here.

  Team Fee forever.

  TWO

  The Centre Lafayette was on the rue Guynemer in the sixth arrondissement, just across the street from Luxembourg Gardens. The modern façade was rather nondescript, but once you stepped through the heavy black doors it was like stepping back in time into an eighteenth-century hunting lodge – everything from floor-to-ceiling mahogany paneling to ornate doorknobs. Light poured in from a wall of glass at the far end of the entry hallway, and the energy created by all of the students milling around in the courtyard beyond reminded me of a movie set on some Ivy League campus in the 1950s.

  From the outside, the Centre Lafayette could’ve been any old building, but on the inside? It was a charming little beehive, and I was in love.

  I followed Marshall down a small passageway lined with hunter green ivy-patterned wallpaper into a cloakroom where everyone seemed to be storing their luggage. While Marshall found space for our bags, I continued on a few more steps until I stumbled upon a large, open room where several students were already seated.

  The same deep mahogany paneling I’d seen in the foyer filled this space, except on the left where a glass wall revealed a staircase and three levels of quiet study rooms beyond. Twelve long, well-worn tables were set up in three distinct rows, with four or five metal chairs at each table – just enough for all fifty of us. All of the chairs faced a central dais near the far wall where a microphone and a projection screen stood at the ready. Every single sound echoed and bounced from the beautifully polished hardwood floor to the ceiling towering thirty feet above me. This had to be the famous Grande Salle.

  Marshall still hadn’t caught up to me, so I followed my nose down a few steps to a small room beyond. Yes! The famous coffee vending machine. No lie, the Centre Lafayette online forums had entire sub-chats dedicated to the drink options of this magical device. Sampling every flavor was at the top of my First-Week-in-Paris Bucket List.

  While the inner mechanism whirred to life and brewed my first selection – un café express – the window panes thumped softly against the sills as a light breeze swept into the small room, carrying with it the tiniest whiff of baking bread. I stared out the open window into the courtyard beyond. A handful of green benches were scattered about, as well as three tiny white buildings on the far end that appeared to be garden sheds converted into classrooms.

  I wanted to fly back in time and hug my younger self. She’d pushed me to come back to Paris every second of the past three and a half years. Thank you, I wanted to whisper. You were so right.

  The sound of heels clacking on hardwood jarred me back to the present. I glanced down at my watch. How was it already almost eleven? I yanked my second cup of coffee – un café au lait – from the machine and zoomed back to the Grande Salle, plopping down next to Marshall just as the program director began her spiel.

  “Bienvenue, je m’appelle Madame Beauchamp,” she was saying as I grabbed my notebook from my messenger bag. But for the next thirty seconds while I dug frantically for a pen, all I heard was blah blah seminars, blah blah housing. I’d spent an hour packing my school bag with this very moment in mind. Miss something in orientation, fail at life. So why hadn’t I packed a pen?

  My head was practically buried inside my bag when I heard the screech of metal against hardwood fr
om the empty seat on my left. When I looked up, I saw Pete Russell dressed in a button-down shirt and nice jeans, holding the exact brand and color of pen I use. Every trace of the soul patch was gone, his face as smooth as a Marine’s.

  No sign of the chullo hat, either. I’d never seen Pete once without his chestnut hair in a mess, and now, it was cut so short that I almost did not recognize him. There was no way he could have cut it this morning. He’d had enough time to shave, but not to do both.

  “Everything okay, Sully?” For once, Pete wasn’t smiling with his mouth but with his eyes. Huh. For two years, I’d been trying to figure out who he looked like, and now… whoa. I would never tell anyone this, but Pete looked so much like Chris Pratt, the two of them could be related.

  Well, not completely. I was pretty sure Chris Pratt’s eyes were green and Pete’s were deep brown, like a golden retriever’s or something. But they both had the same twinkle.

  Hold on a minute. Since when did I notice Pete Russell’s eyes twinkling? Gross. I needed a nap.

  THREE

  Pete didn’t even try to contain his laughter when he handed over my pen. “You okay, Fee?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said under my breath. “Did you steal this from me on the plane?”

  “Someone hasn’t had enough coffee today,” he sing-songed past me over to Marshall, then slid my half-empty cup toward me. “Drink up, old chap. We’ve got a long meeting ahead of us.”

  At the front of the room, Madame Beauchamp cleared her throat. “Pardon, monsieur? Mademoiselle? S’il vous plaît?”

  Oh, this was so not how I wanted to start off the school year.

  For the next ninety minutes, I did my best to focus while Madame Beauchamp prepared us for the following week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we would have ten seminars total, each one a mini-presentation of the course offerings for this year. On Thursday morning, we’d select our year-long courses, immediately followed by a long weekend in Normandy with the entire Centre Lafayette faculty. The following Monday, September 4th, would be the official start of school.