The Distance from A to Z

by Natalie Blitt

  “I’m really sorry, Zeke. Really. I didn’t—”

  “No, I’m sorry. I recently injured my shoulder so it’s a little sore. I’m sorry for reacting like that, though. You didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault.”

  It would be so much easier for me to believe his statement if his back wasn’t still to me, if he wasn’t massaging his shoulder with his opposite hand.

  “Do you want me to get you some ice?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine.”

  When he finally turns back around, he gets to his feet, doesn’t meet my eyes. “Pourquoi français pour toi?” he asks. We walk along the lake and I can’t help but notice that he’s now put me on the side of his good arm. Just in case.

  Why French?

  “I fell in love with the movie Amélie when I was fourteen,” I say, my French still halting but the words gaining ground slowly in my mouth. “I loved that view of Paris, the beauty of it. And I loved Audrey Tautou. I wanted to be her. I still do.”

  I pause because I feel like I’m saying too much, but it feels different saying it in French. Almost like it doesn’t count.

  “All I remember are those crazy orgasms,” Zeke says, and while part of me wants to tackle him to the ground for polluting my perfect movie, I pretend instead that I don’t hear him. I’ve already injured him once in this half hour; I shouldn’t push it.

  “The Paris in that movie became my happy place,” I continue, though I can’t help but catch the double meaning. Not to mention Zeke’s obvious smirk. “I mean, the place I started going to when I didn’t fit in anywhere else.” I’m sure that means something else too, but I push past it, my words gaining steam as I go. “It got to the point that I’d watched the movie so many times that I didn’t even need the subtitles. I’d taught myself enough French to understand it.”

  There are baby ducks by the side of the pond and I pause for a moment to watch them go by.

  “When did you start taking classes?” Zeke uses the French word courses instead of classes, and I make a note of it on the page. Quand as-tu commencé à prendre des cours en français?

  I chuckle, both at the question and with the relief that we’ve moved on from his fascination with the orgasms in my favorite movie. “Um. I never did. My school didn’t offer French so I learned it on my own. I used my birthday money to pay for language courses online, and then I just worked on it. I read kids’ books. Watched TV shows on the internet. Anything I could get my hands on.”

  “You taught yourself French? Completely?”

  “Complètement.”

  “Tu es remarquable.”

  You are remarkable.

  “My family is obsessed with sports. So when they’d start talking at the dinner table, I started conjugating French verbs in my head. I’d rip out pages from an old copy of Le Nouveau Bescherelle, and I’d sit with verb tenses on my lap, practicing. And on the El going to school, or in the back of my parents’ car, I’d have my Larousse dictionary in my lap, and I’d translate ads and signs into French. I know it’s kind of dumb.”

  “It’s not dumb.”

  I shrug. “It’s not terribly useful in this country. Spanish or even Mandarin would make more sense. But there’s something about how it’s totally not practical that makes it even more attractive in some ways. It feels like poetry, like a special secret.”

  I scuff my shoe in the dirt, suddenly embarrassed by all I’ve said, all I’ve said to Zeke of all people. But somehow I can’t yet stop. Because I feel like maybe . . .

  I stare at my well-worn Chucks, how they fit me perfectly, broken in just the way I like them. “The fact that there’s a whole country that speaks this beautiful language . . . Sometimes in my head, I picture France like some combination of Hogwarts and Narnia and The Secret Garden. And I know it’s ridiculous, that France is a real place with real people who are sometimes kind and sometimes shitty, but I just . . .” This is too much. “I just want to be able to speak the language.”

  We walk for a few minutes in silence as I try desperately to return my face to a color that isn’t bright tomato red.

  After that we make small talk about the places we’ve visited, our favorite cities. With a grandmother in Paris, Zeke tells me about a few of the trips to France he’s taken, his parents’ insistence on him speaking only French while he’s there, even with them. How his mother still makes him frequently switch to her native French to keep up his language acquisition.

  “So why are you in this class—course—and not Advanced French?”

  “Still trying to get rid of me?” he jokes.

  But I shake my head. Because when I said the words out loud, I realized how much I didn’t want to say them, didn’t want to give him any ideas.

  “My spoken French is much better than my written French, and my reading. And sadly I haven’t been back to Paris in a few years, so even my spoken French has been fading.”

  I want to grill him more about the places he’s been to in France, but I feel like I’ve already made myself so vulnerable with my impassioned speech about the French language. Did I really compare France to a blend of Hogwarts, Narnia, and The Secret Garden?

  Instead I think about what it would be like to have a grandmother who spoke French, a grandmother who loved what I loved.

  I can’t even imagine it.

  “Are you keeping the list going for Marianne? To prove that we’re really spending all this time talking?” I ask when we stop because Zeke wants a drink.

  “Bien sûr,” he says, providing the pad in which he’d apparently been taking notes. How did I miss that?

  As we approach the dorms, I glance at my watch. It’s been dark for the last little bit but I’m not prepared for what it says. “Mon dieu, il est presque onze heures!”

  “No way can it be eleven o’clock,” he answers, flipping out his phone. “Merde.”

  “That means we’ve been speaking for three hours.”

  Three hours out of ten. We’re a third of the way through our weekly requirement and it’s only the first day.

  “Un moment.” Zeke stares at his phone, swiping and tapping keys. After three hours of having his attention just on me, I can feel its absence.

  Absence. Absence in French. I love words like that. I put it on the list, just because I can.

  “Hey, man, I just got your message. Can we meet in five?” Zeke’s voice sounds completely different in English, and I can’t help it, I take a step back. “Great, great. Yup, definitely save me some.” He laughs and it’s not the way he laughed when I told him my favorite word in French: pissenlit. Dandelion. Or his: agrafeuse. Stapler.

  It’s a harder laugh. Rough.

  “I should go.” I’ve switched to English too, and it feels like I’m losing something. Now it’s the English words that feel awkward in my mouth. “Can I take the list so I can copy it down into my notebook?”

  “I was planning to type it and e-mail you a copy.” All in English. All technically fine. All completely different from the last three hours.

  “Okay.”

  “Au revoir,” he says. Until I see you again. I used to think it sounded so much prettier than see you later. But right now, with Zeke back to being focused on his phone, it doesn’t sound that terribly different after all.

  SIX

  TUESDAY MORNING, I WALK INTO the cafeteria to find Zeke with his arm around Stephie, waiting in line for eggs. Which makes me skip the hot breakfast aisle and grab cold cereal and a muffin. And coffee. Because I wouldn’t care if Zeke were making out with Stephie under the coffee tap; I still need it.

  When I get out of the line to pay, I make my way to the farthest table under the big leaded-glass window. I focus on eating my healthy high-fiber cereal with my black coffee. And my chocolate chocolate-chip muffin. I deliberately sit with my back to the rest of the room so I don’t see Zeke. When I turn back to the room, he and the redhead are gone. And I only have three minutes to get across campus for class.

  After that,
Zeke and I get into a daily pattern. We eat breakfast separately, though at the same time. He’s always at a table with three guys who look like they just came from playing basketball and anywhere between six and eight girls who flick their hair so much I’m not sure how stray pieces don’t make it into their food. And I sit by my window, watching the quad. We walk, separately, to class. I leave first, but he arrives at the building no more than thirty seconds later, sliding into his seat with a grin, looking like he just rolled out of bed.

  “Morning,” he says as Marianne walks into class.

  And each morning, I say, “Excuse-moi. Je ne parle pas anglais. En français s’il te plaît.”

  I’m sorry. I don’t speak English. In French please. Exactly what Marianne encourages us to say when a classmate speaks in English.

  And each morning his eyebrows waggle and he says, “Bonjour.”

  Hello.

  And each morning, I can’t help but shiver.

  And I hate that for the next hour I’m still annoyed until we break off into partners, and then I thaw. And then we joke and tease each other through to the end of class. And then he disappears for a few hours, and reappears freshly showered. And we spend the next few hours walking around campus and bantering in French.

  And then start again.

  French Zeke is fun and charming and maybe, maybe the kind of guy I daydream about a bit. But English Zeke is not. English Zeke wears a baseball cap and a lazy smile and his hand in some girl’s back pocket as he walks across campus.

  But whatever else is true, French Zeke is a great class partner. While his written French needs work, his spoken French is fairly flawless, especially as he gets into the groove of talking. And even after we pass our ten-hour minimum by early evening on Wednesday, he doesn’t hesitate to keep going. His phone stays buried in his back pocket and his focus remains on me and our assignments, both the required ones and the ones we do for extra credit.

  Hours and hours and hours.

  Des heures et des heures et des heures.

  And I love it so much that it hurts.

  By Friday, I’m weary to the point of collapse. I struggle through my walk across campus after breakfast, certain that the cafeteria workers replaced the caffeinated coffee with decaf, a beverage that has no business even being legal. My slower pace means that I can hear Zeke catching up to me as I cross campus, which means I can hear the annoying giggle that accompanies him.

  “Why can’t you skip class?” she asks, her voice high-pitched and cloying. This girl is built the way boys like girls to be built, all firm thighs and small waist, big boobs and shiny hair, but I swear if I were a guy, I would lose interest if a girl ever used that voice on me.

  “Sorry, I don’t skip. But I’ll look forward to catching up with you later?” So while he says no, his voice is definitely still flirty. And it makes me want to remove all my veins and use them to strangle myself.

  I don’t care about Zeke Martin.

  I don’t care about Zeke Martin.

  Provided he does his work in class, that he keeps his extracurricular activities to times that don’t interfere with our French speaking, I don’t care what he does. Or who he does. I keep telling this to myself.

  “But everyone skips . . .”

  If I wasn’t so freaking tired, I’d sprint to the front doors of Lederer just to get that damn voice out of my head. But then there’s giggling and more giggling and instead, I focus on not vomiting.

  Except then, when he sits next to me, he smells like girly perfume. And it makes me sneeze. Over and over.

  “Are you getting sick?” he whispers. This is the time when we’re supposed to be ignoring each other, giving me a chance to warm up to him. Marianne is passing out photographs that we’re supposed to use as prompts for an in-class writing assignment. Not only is he not paying attention, but he’s speaking in English.

  “I think I’m allergic to your effing girlfriend’s perfume.”

  “What?”

  “Monsieur Martin, if you have something to say, I’m happy to pause the lesson and wait.” Marianne’s French words are sharp, and I expect him to mutter an apology, but he doesn’t.

  “Excusez-moi. I’m concerned that Abby isn’t feeling well.”

  Abby ne se sent pas bien.

  Abby doesn’t feel well.

  Though ironically, it’s close to: Abby doesn’t smell good. Abby ne sent pas bon.

  “I’m fine,” I whisper urgently, the words in English because between the sneezing and the smell of perfume, I can’t seem to find any French words at all. Except sentir. Feel. Which is the same word as sentir—smell. I feel fine. I smell fine. “Je sens bien.”

  Crap. That’s I smell good.

  “Je me sens bien,” I correct under the faint noise of tittering behind me.

  “I’ll get you some water.” And before I can stop him, he steps out of class, the strap of my water bottle banging against his thigh. I stare down at my blank sheet of paper and sigh.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Zeke says once we’re finally dismissed from class.

  “Can we not talk about it?” I mean, it’s lovely that he fetched me some water and tissues. And that, given his water-splattered T-shirt, the wet ringlets of hair framing his face, and the pervasive smell of soap, I’m guessing he washed his face and neck. But it’s still mortifying. It feels like something you’d make up. Like, please don’t make out with my across-the-hall neighbor before class because I’m allergic to the smell of her on you.

  Even though as soon as he washed his face and neck, I stopped sneezing.

  “I assume since it’s Friday night that you don’t want to meet up tonight to work. Would you rather do the assignments this afternoon or later this weekend?” I ask.

  Zeke pulls out his phone, his head shaking as he taps the screen. Taking a deep breath, he exhales and drops his phone into his bag; then he reaches over to massage his shoulder.

  “What’s the deal with your shoulder anyway? Your leg seems better but your—”

  He looks up quickly, his eyes narrowing. “Nothing.” Rien. But his voice is no longer apologetic, no longer sweet. It’s hard. Rien. The word rips through our conversation.

  Because he’s lying. Il ment.

  Lying. Mentir. It rhymes with sentir. Smell. And se sentir. Feel.

  He smells like a girl’s cheap perfume; he lies; he’s the kind of guy I should stay away from.

  Sentir. Mentir. Reasons I shouldn’t care at all.

  Except—

  “Are you okay?”

  I speak in French because things are different in French. In French we’re not quite Abby and Zeke, the distance between the two an entire alphabet. We’re two people in love with a language that almost everyone we know doesn’t care about. In French I pretend he doesn’t look like a guy who’s into sports, that he doesn’t remind me of every guy who was once on Si’s or Jed’s baseball team, like Eddie and Ryan and every guy I used to go for.

  Guys like them aren’t trustworthy; they have legions of girls following them around. But Zeke is hurt. . . .

  “Seriously,” I continue, my hands coming up toward his shoulder, “have you had someone look at it—”

  “Drop it.” Zeke is using English and he’s not looking at me. His knuckles are white around the strap of his bag, his back tense.

  “You aren’t limping as much anymore.”

  “It’s none of your business. Just like who I date or whose perfume I smell like. Not your business.” He stands up abruptly, swinging his bag onto his back, the movement causing him to wince. “I’m not around this afternoon or tomorrow. So let’s see if we can whip out our assignment on Sunday. I’m sure you’ll welcome the time away from me.”

  And then he takes off, and it’s only in staring at his retreating figure that I still see traces of his limp.

  I spend Friday night watching French movies in my room. Amélie. Intouchables. Paris, Je T’aime.

  For dinner, I pour a box of water crac
kers on a plate and toss in three discs of Babybel cheese and a handful of grapes, clearly hitting all the major food groups. Alice decides to go to her poetry reading with a friend from class, and I almost tag along just to make sure she’ll be okay. But instead I make her promise she’ll call if she can’t make herself go in, even if she just wants me to sit beside her.

  By eleven o’clock, I want to call her and tell her to come back to our room because I’m lonely. But instead I pop in another movie, La Vie d’Adele, the very racy Blue Is the Warmest Color. It’s the first time I can really watch the movie about two high school girls falling in love without somehow worrying that my brothers will walk in.

  Except halfway through the movie Alice walks in.

  “Whatcha watching?” she asks, plopping on the bed beside me.

  Merde.

  “How was the poetry reading?” I ask, shutting my computer.

  “Incredible,” Alice says, dropping backward onto the mattress. “The people reading were amazing and there was a good vibe. I thought the whole thing would be terrifying but everyone there was so supportive.”

  I flick on my desk lamp and notice that Alice has that dreamy look on her face, her eyes closed behind her thick black glasses.

  Black glasses that are a lot like Zeke’s.

  Zeke who isn’t here.

  “Do you think you’ll read?”

  “Eventually. We start by doing it in a small group but toward the end of the course, we’ll have to do it at an open mic night.”

  She’s chewing her bottom lip. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get up there in front of a crowd—”

  “I’ll definitely come if you do,” I promise. “And I’ll sit in the front row, and you’ll just stare at me and it’ll be like nobody else is even there.”

  Alice smiles sadly, her gaze on my comforter and not me.

  “I’m excited to hear you read your poetry.”

  She glances over at me and I’m relieved to see her bottom lip has escaped her teeth with minimal damage. “So how was your study session with Zeke?”

  I’d tried to downplay all things Zeke but apparently Alice isn’t oblivious. Because she’s scanning the room as though she is expecting to find traces of boy. Except there’s nothing boy here because as far as I know, there hasn’t been a boy in this room since Si and Jed left me here on the first day of school.