by Lucy Silag
“Edith Piaf? Jeez, Alex, what happened?”
Her headphones, combined with the oversized hooded sweatshirt she’s got on, make her look sort of tough. She’s got a haggard look on her face, like she’s seen it all in her short life so far. It’s unlike Alex to be so dejected.
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Alex smirks at us. “Nothing happened. I’m just feeling sick lately.”
“It’s freezing in here,” Jay comments, and I realize that whatever is wrong with Alex, it’s not very sensitive of us to bring Jay into it—she barely knows him
“Jay, I’m really sorry,” I say hurriedly. “Can you give us a minute alone with Alex?”
“Sure,” Jay says gamely, though I know he’s impatient to get down to business.
Zack plops down next to Alex, closing the open window behind her. “Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
Alex shrugs. “Not much, as you can see.”
I look around her room. The scene is grisly. There’s a fetid, rotting-food smell emanating from under the bed. Clothes are strewn everywhere, empty cartons and cigarette packages that were tossed near the waste basket but did not quite make it inside.
“Alex, are you ok?” I ask, suddenly aware that we’ve found Alex in the midst of a deep depression. Her face is thin and her eyes cloudy with undisclosed troubles.
“I’m fine,” she snaps. “What brings you here to disturb my tragic malaise, anyway?”
“You can tell us, Alex,” I coax her.
“Is it about George?” Zack asks, gently pushing her face towards his. “Did something happen?
“Ha!” Alex snarls. “He wishes.”
“Is it because your mom didn’t come to Paris for a visit?” I ask.
“No! I told her not to come. I hate her.”
Zack and I exchange a look, thinking that maybe we should come back later, when Alex is feeling better. Poking out from the piles of magazines on Alex’s nightstand is an envelope whose return address is clearly that of the Programme Americaine. That must be her Final Comp grade. Is Alex depressed over how she did on the test? Or is it something worse?
Jay knocks on the door. “Can I come back yet?” he asks.
“Yes,” Alex calls to him. “It’s fine.”
Jay comes back in, and we tell him to show Alex the postcard he got from PJ so early this morning.
“We think she ran away; that she’s in some sort of trouble.”
Alex snorts. “Right. The only trouble with PJ is that she’s a giant dork,” she says meanly. “After all this time, haven’t you guys learned at least that much?”
“Alex!” I scold. “We’re all really worried about her. And she is not a dork.”
“Alex,” Jay interjects. “You know France better than any of us. If we have any chance of tracking PJ down, of helping her with whatever happened to her, you are it. You out of everyone on the program can make this happen.”
“Why do you say that?” Alex asks, perking up just slightly.
“That’s just the kind of girl you are,” Jay says. “I barely know you and I can see that whatever Alex wants, Alex gets. Am I wrong?”
Alex sighs heavily and puts her head in her hands.
“You are wrong,” she corrects him. “But that doesn’t matter. You need me, so I’ll help you. I hate to say it, but as you can see, I obviously have nothing better to do. Isn’t that funny? All these plans, and none of them worked out how I thought they would.”
Jay hugs Alex, then Zack, then me. “Alright!” he exclaims. “I knew you’d come through!”
“Let’s do this,” Alex says determinedly. “She couldn’t have gotten to Paris without me. I can definitely get her back here.”
“What?” we ask, confused.
“I’ll explain another time,” Alex brushes us off. “Let’s just work on finding crazy old PJ, wherever that girl might be. At least this gives me something to do since I stupidly told my mom not to come to Paris. What was I thinking? Christmas is going to be so boring without her.”
“God,” Zack says, his eyes resting on mine. “If you’d told me four months ago, I’d be spending Christmas Day sitting in a stinky bedroom plotting how to bring a Vermont hippie back to Paris, I’d have told you to eat me.”
“That’s how Paris works,” Jay says. “You never know how things are going to turn out.”
“Yeah,” Alex says. “Haven’t you learned that, Zack?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve learned,” Zack says. “I’ve learned that a pretty girl who smells as bad as you do right now is a girl in distress. Why don’t you take a shower? It’s Christmas, darling. Do it for us.”
Alex glares at Zack. “I do not smell anything but fabulous.”
“Girl, you smell like a pack of cigarettes threw up on you.” Jay’s face is solemn, but his eyes sparkle.
“You guys,” I say. “What are you doing for Christmas morning?”
“My family’s still sleeping,” Zack says.
“Mine, too,” Alex says.
“Mine didn’t go to bed till it was light out,” Jay agrees.
“Weird tradition, huh?” I say. “Staying up all night on Christmas. You guys want to come over and meet my parents? And Brian? And Vince? We could open presents, be together the way Americans are on Christmas. Before the sun goes down again.” Paris is so much farther north than San Diego. Right now, on the shortest days of the year, the dusk settles before four P.M. “And we could figure out how to find PJ.”
“Would we ever!” Zack shrieks. “We finally get to see Prince Charming!” he remembers this morning, and his eyes widen. “Oh, yes, Livvy. I definitely want to come over. I’ve been dying to meet Vince!”
“Is there gonna be food?” Jay asks.
“Yes,” I laugh. “Elise made breakfast before she left to spend the day with her own family. There’s plenty. Do you want to join us?”
“Definitely. I’m starved.”
We all look at Alex. “Your real family is going to be there? And your boyfriend?” she asks me.
“Yup,” I say. “Except I don’t think Vince is my boyfriend anymore.”
Alex’s interest is piqued. “And what’s your mom like?”
“She’s great,” I say honestly, remembering how proud she was when I finally told her my news. “She’ll love you. Vince will, too.”
“Then I’m in,” Alex says. “I could use a little love today.”
“I think we all could,” I say, giving her a hug and pushing her toward the shower. “We’ll wait in the kitchen.”
I can’t help it. I grin at Zack. If he can keep my secret about Thomas for a few more days, at least until my family and Vince go home, I can keep the secret that I am just catching on about. Zack is head over heels for Jay.
I shake my head. Will Paris always be so crazy? Will it always feel like a big, extraordinary ballet, with a million emotions pulling at each moment?
I stop smiling. We’ve got to find PJ. She could use a little love, too, however cheesy that sounds,
Just as soon as my parents get on that plane, I promise myself, we’ll make sure she knows how much support she has here. She can’t have gone far. Right?
27. PJ
The Escape
Olivia would run directly to Mme Cuchon if I ended up on her doorstop in the middle of the night. Zack would spill the beans to someone, if not Mme Cuchon, by the time the sun rose this morning, and Alex . . . we all know Alex. Would she really have welcomed me with open arms?
I considered Sara-Louise and Anouk, or maybe Mary. Not for the first time, I wish I’d made friends with one of the French students at the Lycée. One of them might have been able to keep my secret. The Americans will all have to come clean about how much they know of my whereabouts at some point; for all their sakes I decide not to let them know anything.
The last thing I ever wanted was another scandal. If I told anyone what M. Marquet did, how he acted when I was alone with him in my bedroom, he might follow through
on his threat to get me sent home to Vermont. It might even make the papers. A newly elected magistrate, with an ambitious wife and lofty political goals . . . L’Express would have a field day. Once cast out of France, where would I even go? Home? To be the pity case, the pariah, of our town? The girl with the missing sister and the locked-up parents, forever wallowing in the shame of her family?
Pas de chance.
In the middle of the Gare du Nord is a giant timetable of all the trains running today. It hangs above the tracks, fluttering as the numbers and letters change to update the schedule. The station must be five stories high, and just covered enough to protect the train tracks and the waiting area from snow or rain. It’s as freezing in here as it is outside. There are pigeons flying around, and about a dozen kiosks are scattered all over, selling baguettes and cigarettes and magazines. It’s so old-world, like a black and white movie on A&E. First thing Christmas morning, it’s virtually empty.
I clutch my passport. FLETCHER, PENELOPE JANE, it reads, my photo smiling out from its inside cover. When I took this photo, I’d never had reason to have a passport before. My dad drove me down to the Kinko’s in Burlington in his truck and slapped down a fifty-dollar bill to get a half a dozen sets of photos taken. We needed them for the passport, for the student visa, for the Lycée student ID card. When we came home and showed them all to my mom, she couldn’t decide which one was more beautiful.
“My girls are the prettiest girls in town,” my dad said proudly. “They look just like their mom.” My mom kissed him on the cheek and gave him that googly-eyed look they always used to share.
That was last spring before school had even let out for the summer. Annabel and Dave were probably playing guitar on the porch like always. If I remember really hard, I can hear them harmonizing an old camping song from where we were standing in my mom’s cramped kitchen, the baskets of strawberries she grew in our garden waiting to be washed in the sink. I didn’t have a care in the world. I was headed off to France in the fall, with parents who loved me and loved each other. My sister and her boyfriend, whom I’d loved since we were all little kids, were getting married on the Fourth of July. When she moved out, I would have my own room.
I was numb, heartbroken, terrified after everything came crashing down. I didn’t want to go to Paris anymore, not with this happening.
My dad explained it to me after Annabel fled. “I had one last stash to get rid of, and then we’d be free and clear,” he told me. “I didn’t want all those meds to go to waste. The people we sell these drugs to need these drugs. Some of them will die without them; and some will live for a long time with a lot of pain. Why should the government, private businesses, get to make such a steep profit off of a basic human right like that?”
“You don’t have to explain it to me, Dad,” I said, more forgiving than my sister. That was why she ran, because they’d sold the prescription drugs even though they’d told her they’d stop before I found out.
“We never even booked the flight,” I told them the morning before I was supposed to arrive in Paris. “You guys need me here. I can’t leave you guys.”
“Just go to Paris,” my dad said, handing me an envelope full of cash. “I’ll never forgive you if you don’t do it. And whatever you do, just stay out of trouble.”
I had never wondered why my dad didn’t pay for anything with a check, or why my parents didn’t have any credit cards. They’d always had cash on them, giving it to me to pay for school field trips, for books, whatever. They’d had me send my Programme Americaine payments by Western Union, in my own name. I’d never thought about how they would pay for the plane ticket. I’d never even been to an airport before I got to JFK in New York.
“You, too,” I said, breaking down into sobs.
My mom drove me down to the Greyhound station to catch the bus to New York, watching for cops in the truck’s rearview mirror the entire time. I wanted to scream at her, but also just sit with her and hold her hand and tell her it was all going to be fine. That this, too, shall pass.
“My baby girls, grown up and long gone,” my mom whispered.
“That’s what happens,” I wanted to say, “when you risk our safety, when you risk our freedom.” And by the time I talked to Dave from Paris, the cops had their arrest warrant. I made it out of Vermont in the nick of time. And the whole time, I wondered what would have happened, what misery we all could have avoided, if I’d just never made them stop so I could pee.
Voie 8. My train is boarding.
I have my pick of empty seats this morning. Not a lot of travelers this early on Christmas morning. I take a spot next to the window.
Madame Bovary lies in my lap. Annabel loved this book, and wanted me to read it before I went to Paris.
I flip through the old paperback, the cover bent out of shape and the pages beginning to fray at the edges. What was Annabel’s deal about this book, anyway?
Deeper into the story, far past where I’ve gotten in the book, Annabel made notes in the margins. I stop when I see that she’s circled something.
Looking over my shoulder, reassuring myself that no one is watching or can see what she’s marked—Rouen. I don’t know where Rouen is, but I repeat it over and over to myself, knowing it will help me find Annabel.
We push out of the Gare du Nord, rumbling through the train yard, littered with old railcars covered in graffiti. I notice bold red letters painted on the side of one of the cars. It reads:
A LA LIBERTÉ.
The End
I’m forever grateful to the following people, who have contributed so much to the project of writing Beautiful Americans:
My incredible agent, Molly Friedrich, and her wonderful staff; Lexa Hillyer and Ben Schrank at Razorbill, who are both amazing and brilliant; Jane Smiley, Doug Wagner, Julia Dexter, and Lindsey Pearlman for their insightful early reads, Liz Berliant and Kirk Reed for their patience as I fact-checked to write characters who hail from places I’ve never been; Phoebe Silag and Brian Lane for being generous experts on all things French, and Alison Rich and Gretchen Koss at Doubleday and Spiegel & Grau, who employed me by day as I worked on the novel at night. Razorbill and Penguin also have a large team behind them that I am equally fortunate to work with, and I am so lucky to be a part of this imprint and publisher. I look forward to getting to know you and your readers as the trilogy continues.