Owning It

by Leah Marie Brown

  Julia doesn’t wait for a reaction. She grabs her suitcase and heads up the stairs. We leave our art kits where they are, grab our bags, and follow her. Gunthar, following close behind Julia, bangs his head on a low-lying beam at the top of the stairs.

  “Scheisse!” He rubs his forehead with his free hand and curses again. “Scheisse.”

  The attic is divided into six rooms—a common area, bathroom, and four bedrooms. The two larger bedrooms are designed to house two people, with double beds and wardrobes. The smaller rooms each contain a twin bed and are situated below the eaves, with steep, sloped ceilings and porthole-sized windows.

  “I am claiming my territory,” Julia says, walking to one of the larger bedrooms and tossing her suitcase on one of the beds. “No offense, but I am not here to make braid buddies. I won’t be sitting around in my jammies and eating s’mores. I am here to improve my art.”

  People-pleaser Rigby is about to follow her into the room when Julia pushes the door shut with her foot. A second later, the sound of the lock clicking into place echoes in the attic. It’s like a big exclamation mark at the end of her bold statement.

  Rigby looks at us through wide eyes.

  “Is it me, or is she just the rudest person ever?”

  “She’s definitely raining on our Paris parade.” I instantly feel guilty for voicing such an ungenerous thought. The soothing sensei on my Positive Vibes! app would recommend I balance the negative with a positive. “But I bet she will hop on the float just as soon as she gets some rest.”

  “She is, how you say, arrogante,” Giorgio says.

  “She’s confident.”

  Turning the negative into a positive.

  “What’s wrong with s’mores?” Rigby asks.

  “Like, not a thing,” I smile. “I dig s’mores.”

  “Me too!” Rigby returns the smile, but there’s still a shadow of pain in her expressive eyes.

  “I’ll be your braid buddy, Rigby.”

  “You will?”

  I push my glasses up my nose and nod.

  “We take the small rooms”—Giorgio carries his suitcase into a room with a single bed—“so you can be braid buddies, no?”

  “No,” I say, rolling my daisy case into the room. “The ceilings are way too low for you guys. Gunthar will bruise his spätzle every time he gets out of bed.”

  “My spätzle?” Gunthar asks from the doorway.

  “Your noodle.”

  He frowns, so I make a fist and knock on my head.

  “Ah, mein kohlkopf !”

  “You take the big room, no?” Giorgio asks.

  “Are you kidding?” I flop on the bed and stare out the round window just over the iron headrail. “A garret room with a view of the Parisian skyline is my happy place.”

  “She is very small,” Giorgio says, holding up his fingers as if measuring an inch.

  “She is cozy.”

  “And there’s less space to clean,” Rigby says, carrying her suitcase into the room beside mine.

  “Danke,” Gunthar says.

  “No worries.”

  Giorgio carries his suitcase out of the room, and I close the door. I pull my iPhone out of my purse and send a text to Mom and Pops, letting them know I am safe and sound in Paris. Then I snap a picture of the view outside my window and send it to Fanny on the free texting app I downloaded before leaving Colorado. Thankfully, the gallery offers free Wi-Fi (pronounced we-fee in France) because Mom turned off my account when I told her I was leaving on a jet plane to Paris. I prepaid for one month of the cheapest international plan so I could make emergency calls.

  Fanny’s response hits my phone in seconds.

  TEXT FROM STÉPHANIE MOREAU:

  Didn’t I tell you life would look better after you stepped out of your onesie?

  Chapter 11

  Laney’s Life Playlist

  “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors

  “Happy” by Never Shout Never

  TEXT FROM THEO WILDE:

  Have you done it yet?

  TEXT TO THEO WILDE:

  Done what?

  TEXT FROM THEO WILDE:

  Rocked the Paris art scene.

  TEXT TO THEO WILDE:

  I just got here.

  TEXT FROM THEO WILDE:

  Right. So I’ll give you another day.

  I unpack my clothes, kick off my flats, and am chilling on my bed, listening to a guided meditation on realizing your dreams when someone softly knocks on my door.

  “Come in.”

  The door opens, and Rigby sticks her head in.

  “I thought I heard you moving around,” she says, coming into my room and gently closing the door. “I can’t sleep. Wanna blow this Popsicle stand and take a walk?”

  “Shyeah!”

  I jump up, slip my feet into my flats, and grab a sweater from the dresser, a vintage store find made of cashmere and embroidered with ladybugs. I think the ladybugs add a whimsical touch to my outfit—a polka-dot Peter Pan collar dress with black tights.

  We hurry down the stairs and out the door into the courtyard. The late-afternoon sun is flirting with the clouds, slipping coyly behind one and then another, and a chilly spring breeze is flirting with the delicate petals of a potted hydrangea atop a bistro table in the center of the courtyard. Purplish-blue petals float on the breeze before swirling to the ground.

  We walk across the courtyard and exit a set of heavy, blue-painted doors into the street.

  “Was there somewhere you wanted to go?” I ask, slipping my arms into my sweater and buttoning it up to my collar. “Or do you just want to wander and see what serendipity has planned for us?”

  “Let’s wander.”

  We walk by boulangeries, the scent of buttery bread hanging seductively in the air, like perfume spritzed before the arrival of a lover, and fleuristes, their buckets of flowers artfully arranged beneath green canopies.

  We come to a brown storefront with a wrought-iron sign: a cherub holding an ice cream cone and the words Amarino, Artisenal Gelato.

  We look at each other and grin.

  “Bienvenue Amarino!”

  A pretty girl in an apron greets us.

  I order two scoops of amarena et chocolat—cherry and chocolate. Rigby orders two scoops of amarena et fiordilatte—cherry and Italian vanilla. The girl behind the counter scoops the gelato with a little paddle, molding it on the cone until it resembles a flower in bloom.

  I think of the FroYo Theo and I would get back in Boulder, artlessly dispensed from large humming machines, like Play-Doh squeezed out of a plastic Play-Doh extruder, and decide I prefer my frozen dairy desserts served with panache.

  We take our cones and continue exploring the Marais.

  “So how did you get the name Rigby?” I say, licking my cone. “I’ve only ever heard it in the Beatles song Eleanor Rigby.”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Rigby?”

  “Eleanor.”

  “Wait.” I stop walking and grab her arm. “Your name is Eleanor Rigby?”

  She nods. “Eleanor Rigby Larson.”

  “Serious?”

  “As Whistler’s mother.”

  We keep walking.

  “Your mom must have been crazy about The Beatles.”

  “Moved to the compound, drank the Kool-Aid crazy.” Rigby keeps walking. “She holds candlelight vigils at the park near her store every year on the anniversary of John Lennon’s death.”

  “Way to represent, Moms!”

  “You think?”

  “Totes.” I pluck a fat cherry out of my cone and pop it into my mouth. “It sounds like your mom is a free spirit.”

  “The freest.” She holds her cone out to offer me a bite, but I shake my head. “What about you? How did you get the name Lavender? Are your parents hippy-dippies, too?”

  I snort. “I wish. They conceived me while they were visiting a lavender farm in the south of France—their idea of a wild time before joining the rank and
file of academia.”

  “Your parents sound pretty amazing.”

  “My parents are pretty amazing, but . . .”

  “But?”

  I hear my mom’s voice in my head, saying, “Now, Laney, isn’t it time you gave up your prepubescent diversions and acted like an adult?”

  “They’re academics, especially my mom. She just doesn’t have an artist’s soul, you know?” Rigby nods her head, so I continue sharing my tale of woe. “She doesn’t get me. Sometimes I think I see a tiny flicker of light in her eyes, a glimmer that tells me there is a bohemian just trying to break out of those conservative clothes, but . . . nope. I think my mom came out of the womb clutching her twelve-year plan. What about your mom?”

  “My mom is cool,” Rigby says. “She supports my art and is proud of me for making it into the Artistes en Résidence Program, but she doesn’t support my . . . lifestyle.”

  “Oh, I get it. There are a lot of parents who don’t accept the LGBT plus community. I think that will change as . . .”

  “What?” Rigby laughs. “I am not part of the LGBT community.”

  “Then what’s the deal? Do you read wicked-trashy erotic fiction, get blitzed on the weekends, and shoplift Nutella?”

  Rigby laughs again. “Why would anyone shoplift Nutella?”

  “Oh, it’s a problem.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Totes.” I shiver, but it’s not from the gelato or the cool spring breeze. I am randomly remembering Monsieur Tall, Dark, and Hot’s flirty gaze, and it’s doing things to me. “I heard on NPR that, like, there is a shortage of hazelnuts. People all over the world have been stealing jars of Nutella.”

  “Shut up!”

  I put my hand over my heart and raise three fingers in the air in the Girl Scout pledge of honor. “Some Nutella nuts lifted eleven thousand pounds from a parked cargo truck last year. Swear it.”

  Rigby shakes her head. “Well, I can promise you I don’t jack jars of Nutella in my spare time.”

  “I didn’t think you looked like the sort.”

  “I’m more of a Goober girl.”

  “Ohmygod!” I grab her arm. “I love Goober!”

  “Me too.”

  “Whoever thought to put peanut butter and jelly in the same jar—”

  “Genius.”

  “Right? Goober on white bread with the crusts cut off and a bottle of Sunny D.” I close my eyes and moan. “Old-school fat fest. It would be faster to inject fifty ccs of sugar directly into your veins, but—”

  “—but then you wouldn’t have the fun of sticking your knife into the swirls of peanut butter and strawberry jelly.”

  “Exactly!”

  We are laughing as we link arms and hurry across the busy rue de Rivoli. We keep walking until we come to a tree-lined road leading to the river.

  “So, if you aren’t a Nutella nabber, what’s the deal with your mom?”

  “She doesn’t like Matthias.”

  “Who is Matthias?”

  “My boyfriend. We met in college but never dated. We ran into each other eighteen months ago, and he asked me out on a date. We went to lunch and spent the next eight hours talking.” She sighs one of those dreamy, I’m-in-love-love-love sighs. “We’ve been inseparable ever since.”

  “So why is she harshing your Matthias mellow?”

  Rigby laughs. “Harshing my Matthias mellow. That’s a good one. I am going to use it the next time I talk to her.”

  “You’re welcome.” I grin. “So, she doesn’t like Matthias. What’s wrong with him? Does he sniff glue? Wear your panties? Drive an SUV? Vote republican? Hate The Beatles?”

  “He’s a man.”

  “Okay?”

  “That’s it. He’s a man, and she doesn’t like men.”

  “She must have liked them at one time, because you’re here. That, or she made a deal with the fey ones to bring her a pixie child. You look like a little pixie with that haircut. It’s adorbs, by the way.”

  She touches her head. “Really? Thanks. I just got it cut.”

  Rigby explains that her mom doesn’t hate men, not exactly. She simply doesn’t believe a woman should alter her life in any way for a man.

  “She’s a card-carrying, bra-burning feminist who believes women should pay their own way, hold their own doors, and keep their own names after marriage.” Rigby takes a deep breath and exhales. “Actually, she doesn’t even believe in marriage. She thinks it’s an archaic, chauvinistic tradition meant to subjugate women. She says women cheapen their worth when they exchange their autonomy and power for a ring.”

  “Are you engaged?”

  “No,” Rigby says, handing me her gelato so she can button her sweater. “But she says I’ve changed since I started dating Matthias.”

  “Don’t we change a little every time we let a new person into our lives?” I think about how I became aware of my lack of focus after I met super-focused Fanny. “Friends should broaden our horizons and challenge us to be better than we already are, especially boyfriends.”

  “I agree.”

  She takes her gelato back and tells me how Matthias scored a suit job with Starbucks Corporation right out of college. She says he worked in Seattle until three months ago, when the company transferred him to Paris.

  “He’s part of a team tasked with running a multimillion-dollar campaign to make Starbucks more appealing to the café culture.” She smiles, and her eyes sparkle with pride. “Apparently Europeans think Starbucks’ employees are impersonal and the coffee is mediocre. Matthias is studying the variations in coffee consumerism in Europe and coming up with brilliant ideas to make the stores more appealing to the French. It’s serious anthropological marketing.”

  “It sounds like it.”

  I don’t tell Rigby that I am pretty anti-Starbucks. I think it is a bottom-line-oriented, soul-sucking corporation that propagates conformity. Also, after Starbucks bought Teavana, they started sourcing the tea from cheaper, less healthy sources. They totally messed with the Samurai Maté blend, my fave. The spicy peppercorns were gone, and the lead value was way, way up.

  “I can’t drink their coffee because it makes my stomach ache, but last spring my mom bought me a Cherry Blossom Green Tea Matcha Frappuccino. I died.” If I wasn’t anti-Starbucks, I would have become a Cherry Blossom addict. No lie. “So, this internship will let you see the OOYA more.”

  “Ooyah?”

  “Object of your affection.”

  “Totally,” Rigby says. “I am swinging on stars.”

  The existence of Matthias the Marketer tells me my love-dar is way off. I was picking up life forms on planet Giorgio, but it must have been a blip because Rigby is way gone for Matthias, like crazy out there gone.

  We are walking down a narrow road not lined with cafés and bistros. Rigby grabs my arm and squeezes it.

  “Ohmygod. There he is.”

  “Who?” I look around. “Your boyfriend?”

  “No, your boyfriend.”

  I snort and take a bite out of my cone, getting some chocolate gelato on my nose. “I don’t have a boyfriend. If someone kept track of my love life in a checkbook, I would be in the red. Like way, way in the red.”

  “I think someone wants to make a deposit.”

  I follow her gaze, and my cheeks flush with heat. Flushy-crushy heat.

  Monsieur Tall, Dark, and Hot, the suitsexual from the gallery, is sitting at an outdoor café, watching me devour my cone. He smiles, the slow, confident smile of one proficient in the art of seduction. A smile that says, “I am in no hurry. I will savor this moment as I am savoring my wine and you are savoring your gelato”.

  My stomach drops to my flats, and I look around to see if he is smiling at someone else, maybe his French supermodel girlfriend just returning from a lingerie shoot. It’s a reaction worthy of a John Hughes heroine. Remember that scene in Pretty in Pink when Andie is in the library working on a computer and she receives a message from Blain, the OOHA (object of her
affections)? Remember how her eyes widened and she gasped? How she looked around the library to make sure she wasn’t the target of a cruel high school prank? Right now, Andie is my Hughes spirit heroine.

  Monsieur Tall, Dark, and Hot’s cell phone is sitting on the table. It rings, but he doesn’t immediately reach for it. He continues to stare and smile.

  “I think he wants to talk to you,” Rigby says. “You should go over there.”

  I look at Rigby. “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe paint myself blue and walk around with a loaf of bread strapped to my head Salvadore Dalí crazy, but not slice off my ear Vincent van Gogh crazy.”

  Rigby grins and waggles her eyebrows, and I can’t help but laugh. She’s definitely going to be my PBFF.

  When I look back at Monsieur Tall, Dark, and Hot, he has his cell phone pressed to his ear and is jotting furiously in a notebook.

  I clutch Rigby’s arm and pull her down a narrow, cobblestone street, away from Monsieur Makes-Me-Flushy-Crushy hot.

  We make another turn and find ourselves in the shadow of the spires of the Cathédrale Notre Dame. We both stop walking and stand in the shadows, staring up at the headless statues of the twenty-eight kings of Judah.

  “Did you know the heads of the twenty-eight kings of Judah were chopped off during the French Revolution?” Rigby asks.

  “Yes,” I say, continuing to walk toward the southernmost point of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the Seine. “Did you know the heads were found in 1977 and are on display in the Musée de Cluny?”

  “Shyeah.”

  We continue walking until we arrive at the end of the Île de la Cité. I point to a green park behind the cathedral.

  “Do you know what used to stand on that spot?”

  “The Morgue,” Rigby says. “Art students from the nearby Académie would sneak in at night to study and sketch the corpses.”

  “Eugène Delacroix is rumored to have purchased corpses so he could use them as models while he was painting Liberty Leading the People ”—I ball up my napkin and toss it in a nearby garbage can—“which was put on display at—”