The Distance from A to Z

by Natalie Blitt

  “So, we’re responsible for watching six movies, logging in eighty hours of conversation in at least ten different settings, and decoding a dozen songs. And then the final project,” Zeke reads from the papers in front of him.

  “Eighty hours is a lot.”

  “Ten hours a week for eight weeks. Shouldn’t be too bad.”

  Ten hours. In addition to the three hours a day, five days a week in class. That’s a lot of Zeke time. I mean, French time.

  His phone dings and his eyes drop down to it. His thumbs tap out a message, and then he shakes his head, tossing the phone back in his bag. Where it continues to ding, and Zeke continues to ignore it.

  “Should we start tomorrow? Or we can do later today. I just have to be somewhere for a few hours this afternoon.” Zeke’s mouth moves into a smile but it isn’t real. It’s tight around the edges, like he’s working hard to make it seem easy.

  “Someplace fun?” I ask. I don’t know why I’m digging.

  “Non.” His voice says butt out. It says none of your business.

  “Après le dîner?” he asks, grabbing his bag with the dinging phone.

  I notice he shakes out his leg under the table and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask about it again, but then I decide against it. He’d tell me if he wanted to.

  “My roommate and I were going to try the cafeteria around seven. So I’ll meet you outside at a quarter to eight?” Huit heures moins le quart. Eight o’clock minus a quarter. I love French.

  “Bien.” And then he leaves, his limp more pronounced.

  When I get back to my room, I find Alice back on her bed, scribbling furiously in her notebook. I don’t even bother trying to decode her garbled response to my entry. My body still feels achy from sitting in class for so long, my muscles buzzing from the sugar and caffeine. I exchange my cute first-day-of-class skirt and top for leggings and a tank, and then stretch to warm up. I’ll take a short run—je vais courir—and that will ease the agitation in my body. L’agitation? I quickly flip through my dictionary. Yup.

  “Sorry,” Alice murmurs, closing her black Moleskine. Her voice is craggy, like it’s still an effort to dislodge the words.

  “No worries, I know how it is.” Ne t’inquiète pas.

  Urgh. My autotranslate is going psycho. Mon auto—Shut it. Tais-toi.

  I’m losing my mind.

  “You okay?” she asks, slipping the notebook back into her brown leather messenger bag.

  “Yup.” I smile. “Just need to get my mind off class. What are you up to?”

  Alice shimmies across the bed, and it’s only then that I realize she’s in pajamas.

  “Didn’t you go to class?”

  She scrunches her nose and her shoulders rise and drop. “I might have gotten back into pajamas after class?”

  Seriously, it’s like looking in the mirror.

  “Come on, let’s get outside. I was going to go for a run since it seems like a gorgeous day.”

  “I don’t run,” she says without moving. As though this might be the line in the sand.

  “Well, do you walk?”

  We’re just finishing up a leisurely stroll around the campus when my phone rings. Well, not so much rings as sings. Actually, sings is too kind for what it does. It screeches and bellows and squeals through a very annoying version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

  “What the—” Alice’s face is horrified, and her gaze darts around, as though she’s trying to find the drunk guys who are butchering the song.

  Lucky for me, I know they are far from here right now. “I can’t effing believe you changed my ringtone again,” I growl into the phone.

  “Abby! How’s life in New Hampshire cow town?” My brothers are laughing hysterically and in the background there’s the sound of a batter being called up. Must not be the Cubs, because otherwise they wouldn’t interrupt a game.

  “Number sixty-four, Kelsey Ryan,” I hear over the loudspeaker.

  The Nationals. They must have stopped for a game. God, how I hate the fact that I know this stuff. It only proves that it is possible to learn by osmosis. I should just play French recordings during every waking hour and then maybe—

  “—up four nothing and Santos isn’t up yet,” Si updates me.

  “Shut up,” I hear Jed yell. “You’re going to jinx it.”

  “You can’t jinx a team that doesn’t miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” I mutter, though I’m quite sure now they’re bickering with each other, and Si doesn’t even remember he’s on the phone with me.

  “Si!” I shout as loud as I can, startling passersby. “I’m hanging up! Hope the Cubs continue hitting well! Hope Santos homers!”

  “Shit, Abby! What the hell? You know better than to jinx them like that!” Now I can hear them both yelling at me through the phone, and I do what any good younger sister would do. I hang up.

  “Your brothers?” Alice guesses as I make a face at the phone and slide it in my bag.

  “Yup. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb. Each one more addicted to baseball than the other.”

  “And yet you’re grinning like an idiot.” Alice laughs, and I turn my sour face on her.

  It’s true. Talking to my brothers usually doesn’t put me in a good mood. Maybe it’s the distance. Or maybe because they are so completely, unabashedly themselves.

  “They’re good guys.”

  “How old?”

  “I think twenty-five and twenty-eight? I have a hard time remembering, especially since they act like they’re fourteen.”

  There’s a comfortable silence while I find us a cart selling iced coffees.

  “It’s sweet. The way you are with them,” Alice adds.

  I shrug. “Just before my mom got pregnant with me, she and my dad bought a small sports paraphernalia store. So a lot of their time gets sucked in to trying to make it successful. Si and Jed were really the ones who took care of me. I mean, not in a bad way, but they were home to make dinner, even if it was corn dogs and French fries. They read me stories, helped me with my homework, took me to movies. I mean, when it wasn’t baseball season.”

  “What happened when it was baseball season?”

  “Well, it was basically all the same things, except I tagged along with them to practices. And Si would help me with homework when he wasn’t at bat.”

  Alice shakes her head and it’s only now that I’m saying it, now that I’m seeing her reaction that it occurs to me how odd it was. Not that it wasn’t back then. But for the first time, being far away from them, it occurs to me how weird it must have been for them too, having their little sister tagging along to all their games.

  “Is that why you don’t like baseball?” she asks after a long moment. “Because your parents were always too busy and you had to follow your brothers around?”

  We move away from the cart and I think about my answer before I speak. It would be easy to say yes, the simple answer. Except it’s not true. Because back then, I lived for baseball. The hardest thing about getting my homework done at the games was that I was too busy watching my brothers’ teams play, too busy trash-talking the other team, jumping up and down when it looked like one of the guys on my brothers’ team was going to get on base before the ball landed in the first baseman’s glove, that someone was going to make it home. Half the time I lied about not having homework so I could be the official scorekeeper, filling out the little squares in the notebook with lines that would hopefully form diamonds, Ks on the opposing team’s list for strikeouts.

  “I think at a certain point I realized I outgrew my love for it. And the whole thing is exacerbated by my family’s devotion to the game. So, I do my thing and they do theirs.”

  It sounds so simple, but in reality it’s so much more heart wrenching.

  “So are you going to change the ringtone back?” Alice’s voice jerks me back into the present.

  I shake my head, because it’s still my brothers’ anthem. “But do you know how to make it less noisy
?”

  “Nope. I’m basically stuck in the dark ages.” Alice laughs, the braids that rest on each of her shoulders swinging back and forth. “I’m totally comfortable with any technology that was in use back then.”

  “Computer?”

  “Well, yes. Though I prefer my pen and notebooks.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “Yup, but I only use it as a phone.”

  She sticks out her tongue when I roll my eyes. “I couldn’t live without my e-reader,” I mumble, and she nods. “Otherwise I’d have filled the van with boxes of books instead of being able to live off a small collection of print books and a large collection on my dependable e-reader.”

  But I can imagine the appeal of going low-tech, the possibility of living like there wasn’t a need for constantly being in touch, being constantly reachable. Where there weren’t dinging text messages ruining a conversation.

  Which makes me think of Zeke and the phone he tossed, a little too hard, back into his bag.

  “Let’s go out tonight,” I say, the idea appealing to me more and more. I clearly need to meet more people, diversify the pool of boys I see beyond Zeke and Drew. It’s Day Two of the summer and it’s time for me to make sure I make something out of it. “I think there’s some sort of mixer scavenger hunt being planned all around campus. I’m supposed to do French conversation with Zeke after dinner, but I can’t imagine we’ll last too long. Maybe let’s meet up and go? I’ll stay with you the whole time, and it shouldn’t be too bad because it’s all over campus, so no cramped rooms.”

  Alice looks down, her long braids no longer in motion. Her right hand slides down the messenger bag strap until she’s clutching the buckle hard. “I don’t—”

  “Come on, let’s—”

  “Abby, no.” Her voice is strong and purposeful, and her eyes are now on me. They aren’t pleading; they’re serious. “It’s really not my thing. I’m barely comfortable with all this collective living. I need my space. I love hanging out with you, but meeting a whole bunch of people is way more than I can handle at this point. I’m still working up to being able to attend the Friday night poetry reading at my prof’s house. I’m worried if I go too fast . . .”

  I nod because it makes sense. I remember Si telling me that it’s always a mistake for young pitchers to get drafted out of high school, that so many rush it because they want the prize now. But then they wind up far more likely to get hurt; he sees them as his PT patients over and over. If only they’d gone to college instead, waited for their body to strengthen, worked on their technique, they’d have a much better shot.

  “Well, I can go with you to your poetry reading on Friday night if you want . . .”

  Soulful poets? Sign me up.

  Alice smiles. “I might just take you up on that.”

  FIVE

  ZEKE IS WAITING OUTSIDE THE oak doors of the cafeteria building at seven forty-five, as promised. His fingers are moving furiously across his phone screen and he doesn’t even notice I’m there.

  “Es-tu prêt?” I think I’m asking him if he’s ready but I’m not actually sure.

  “Un moment.” He hasn’t looked up but at least he’s turned to face me.

  I get out a notebook to begin charting out our word list. How many words do we need in order to prove we spoke to each other? Maybe if we get a really good list going, we can fudge the time commitment.

  “Pardon,” he mutters, putting his phone in the back pocket of his jeans. Judging from the worn fabric of the pocket that hugs the phone tightly, I’m guessing it’s his usual spot. Not that I’m checking him out.

  “So what do you want to do?” I ask. He’s not the Zeke of this morning’s class. Not even the angry Zeke I saw before. He’s different. I’m not sure how it’s possible to miss someone you only just met. Or the person you thought they were.

  He shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

  I don’t even know this guy. This is a disaster, and I need to do well in this course. If he isn’t going to talk, I’ll have to find a new partner. “Listen, you’re going to have to talk to me if we want to pass this class. And you might not care at all about it, but I do. I need this class, and I need this grade. So if you aren’t in, I’ll ask Marianne if I can switch partners.”

  “Pourquoi est-ce que tu crois que je ne suis pas intéressé?” Why do you think I’m not interested?

  But while I understand his words in French, all I really hear is the smirk, the snide roll in his speech.

  “Why are you even in this class? Did someone say it would be an easy A or something?”

  Can you even say un A facile? I don’t even have time to wonder because he stops walking abruptly, a deep scowl now on his face.

  “What’s your problem?”

  I can tell I went too far but I can’t back down.

  “This class is important to me. Really important. And if you’re here just to hang out and have a good time, I want a different partner. I want someone who’s serious about this.”

  “Have I given you any indication that I’m not serious?”

  I pause, searching for something that isn’t totally insulting. But scanning him from head to toe, all I see is the baseball cap, Tigers jersey, gym shorts, and athletic shoes that are clearly top of the line. All together it says all I care about is sports.

  “So you’re saying that because I look like a jock, I must not be serious about French?”

  The word jock sticks out like a sore thumb in his perfect rapid French and it makes me laugh. Maybe because he pronounced it like a French word: joque. The more I think about it, the harder I laugh. And maybe snort. A few times.

  “Is joque even a word?” I ask, being sure to pronounce it just as he did.

  He holds his angry look for another long moment and then shakes his head. “Tu es folle.” You’re crazy.

  “How about I look it up,” I say. “And then we can add it to our list.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Folle, je te dis, folle.”

  “Yes, I’m crazy, I know.” I flip through my Petit Larousse dictionary, the cover in tatters.

  “You know, I can just look it up on my phone.” Zeke sighs. “I don’t even think my grandparents were alive when that dictionary was last updated.”

  I recite the French letters in my head as I flip through the pages.

  Zeke looks at his watch. “We’ve been yelling at each other in French for a full ten minutes.”

  Jock. Sportif. “Tu es un sportif,” I tell Zeke, who plops himself on a bench facing the lake.

  “Why does that mean I don’t care about French?” He shields his eyes from the lowering sun as he looks up at me.

  The curls that escape from his cap are a sun-kissed blond, lighter than I remember his hair being. Though maybe his ends are lighter because they’re always in the sun, like the darker pink at the top of his nose. There’s a bump there where he must have broken it once.

  “Quel sport est-ce que tu joues?”

  “Why does playing a sport mean I don’t care?” he repeats in French, ignoring my question. Now that I’m paying closer attention, his French is strong, solid. He doesn’t pause between words like I do, searching for new ones.

  “How do you say ‘that surprises me’ in French?” I ask, switching languages.

  “Comment dit-on ‘that surprises me’ en français?” he corrects.

  I repeat, my eyes rolling for effect. And then I add monsieur at the end.

  His lips rise only on one side. “Ça me surprend.”

  I grab my notebook from my bag and go back to my list. Surprendre, surprise.

  “So why did you decide to learn French?” My French is halting, embarrassingly so. Apparently yelling in French is much easier. These words feel thick and awkward in my mouth, as though the muscles of my tongue and lips aren’t used to making them. Which they aren’t. But still. It’s going to be a long eighty hours if this conversation is any indication.

  “I love a woman named Emmaline, and she only
speaks French,” Zeke says, shifting his eyebrows up and down.

  Emmaline. In his flawless French accent, the name is fluid and lilting, conjuring images of a tall, long-haired beauty, a woman with the faintest trace of lipstick, a slim figure, and perfect skin. Stephie without the red hair.

  I should have known. Not an easy A but an easy lay?

  I snort at my own interior monologue and then try to cover it up with a cough.

  Smooth.

  “Did she fall in love with you?” I ask.

  Amoureux. In love.

  “Bien sûr,” he says: of course. “Apparently from the moment she saw me.”

  There’s laughter set deep in his voice, lightening his words. Like they’re both true and not true at the same time.

  “Even though apparently, I was spitting up at the time,” he continues. “Really, what else can you expect from a baby?”

  Un bébé?

  “But it’s a grandmother’s job to love her grandchildren.”

  “Emmaline est ta grand-mère?”

  “Oui.” Zeke smiles, and I can’t help it: I smack his shoulder.

  “Shit!” he yelps, and I can tell the moment he says it that he’s serious, that it really hurts. He swivels to the side so his back is to me.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I try to get around him to see his face but he keeps shifting.

  “I’m fine,” he says in English, but by his strained face, I can tell it wouldn’t be a good time to remind him we aren’t supposed to use any English during our French hours.

  “Are you okay?” I couldn’t have hit him that hard. Maybe he’s playing a trick on me, or faking me out?

  “It’s fine, just give me a minute.” He rolls his shoulders back and forth, and even from behind him I can hear him wince. It shouldn’t hurt to make that motion.

  “Are you sure—”

  “I’ll be fine. Just stop.” Zeke’s voice is still strained, but now there’s a tinge of anger in it and I shift back. I don’t get it. I don’t get what’s happening.