Maybe in Paris

by Rebecca Christiansen

  My whole body is like, oh, so this is kissing.

  I quickly find that good kissing puts me in a trance. The only thing I care about is being as close as possible. When my arms can’t hold him tight enough, I find myself scrambling into his lap just to get closer. For a second, I despair when he breaks free, but my whole body bursts into happy shivers when I find he only broke the kiss to cover my neck and shoulders in matching kisses. I realize I’m being weirdly quiet so I make a noise to let him know how happy I am and then it echoes in the cave and scares me.

  Gable plants one last, slow, lingering kiss on my lips and sits back. His eyes are half-closed, dreamy, as they take in my face. I must look shocked and wired. That’s how I feel.

  “Hi,” he whispers.

  “Oh, hello,” I whisper back.

  “How are you?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Never better.”

  I grin and a giggle escapes, echoing. Gable laughs and clamps his lips shut afterward.

  “Don’t,” I say, touching him. “Just let yourself smile.”

  He won’t stop biting his lips. I try to force his jaws apart and he starts laughing, exposing his beautiful ivory teeth.

  “Why do you hide them?” I ask.

  “My teeth?” he asks. “Because most of ’em aren’t real.”

  “What?”

  “They’re implants,” he says. “I lost most of my teeth when I was younger. Couldn’t afford a dentist, they … well, they jumped ship. I had to get a ton pulled. So yeah. When you spend most of your life having people stare at you for it, you tend not to like smiling.”

  I murmur, “That sounds horrible. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs.

  “But they’re beautiful. I would never guess they aren’t real. I would just think you had amazing brushing and flossing skills.”

  He laughs and I’m so close to him it makes me bounce. “Then I’m ashamed of them for making me a liar.”

  “I don’t think you’re a liar. Unless you’re lying about this, right now.”

  “What’s this?”

  I gesture between the both of us. I’m still sitting in his lap, facing him, my legs clamped tight on either side of him, his arms wrapped around me, supporting me. I imply the kiss, everything.

  “I would never jerk you around on purpose.”

  “But you might do it accidentally?” I joke.

  “Well … I kind of forget where the ladder we came down is,” he admits.

  We both laugh, frantically, and then quickly sober up.

  “I really, really would rather not get lost down here,” I say. “What if we get attacked by cave dwellers? What if there are monsters down here? What if we slowly starve to death?”

  “Calm down,” he says with another laugh. “The worst things down here are the piles of bones.”

  I think he quickly realizes that was a horrible thing to say.

  “Oh God. I’m sorry. Please don’t let your eyeballs pop out.”

  “I’m okay,” I say, “as long as we get the hell out of here like, yesterday.”

  “And we will, I promise,” Gable says. “Now why don’t we start with you getting off me?”

  I climb awkwardly out of his lap and stand, brushing imaginary dust or lint or something off my pants. Must pretend this is no big deal, must pretend this is no big deal …

  “Should we douse the candles?” he asks. “Or leave them going? I don’t think there’s much of a fire hazard down here.”

  “If the candles all burn down, the next explorers won’t have any light.”

  “I guess you’re right. Well, start blowing.”

  He turns the flashlight on and I blow on each candle to extinguish it. Gable gets a little show off-y, trying his hand at pinching the still-burning wicks.

  “Doesn’t hurt too bad,” he says.

  “Stop it!” I resist the urge to slap his hand away as he does it again. “Stop it, you’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Won’t.”

  “Do it on your own time,” I tease. “I don’t feel like hanging out in a French hospital. Now get out of my way, I’m blowing.”

  “You certainly are,” he says, muffling a laugh.

  “Ew!”

  It’s a good thing we’re joking and keeping things light, because the darkness is starting to stifle me. With every candle we blow out, we re-mask more artwork. I leave Notre Dame for last, because it’s the last we discovered and the last I want to lose. Finally we’re in a dark room, with no sign of the beauty to be had. Only blackness.

  Gable reaches for my hand and leads me back to the first room and to the ladder.

  “You found it pretty fast,” I remark.

  “I told you I wouldn’t let you get lost,” he says. “You climb up first. I’ll keep the monsters at bay behind you.”

  I roll my eyes before I start to climb, but when he can’t see me, I unleash my grin. I’ve never had anyone want to battle the monsters back for me. I’ve always been the protector, never the protected.

  Everything is going swimmingly until my legs turn to jelly halfway up the ladder. Pain shoots through my thighs to my shaking knees. My hands grip the rung so tight I’m terrified my knuckles will shatter and I’ll fall, despite my every effort to cling to life. Inevitable. Good-bye.

  Levi.

  “You can do it,” Gable says, voice light and full of goddamn optimism. “One step at a time, you can do it.”

  I shake my head. He can’t see it in the dark—of course he can’t—but now my voice won’t work. I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears, but it doesn’t matter. It’s dark, dark, dark all around me.

  “Keira?” He touches my calf, so gently. “Up and out, okay?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. You have to.”

  My arms tremble now. The only things keeping me on this ladder, and they’re going to fail me. My teeth chatter. It’s so cold.

  There’s a click from below me. I glance down. Gable, one arm holding him to the ladder, has maneuvered the flashlight out of his pocket. It illuminates the rusty, dirty, wet walls around us. We’re in a tiny tube barely wider than our bodies. The dark beneath Gable is chasing us. It’s so, so dark. I loop my arm around the ladder, let it support my body. My muscles unclench a little. I can stay like this, can’t I?

  Light floods down from a tiny circle twenty feet above me. I can see the sky—a bird flashes across the circle. I suck in a shaky breath. Maybe I could stay here, in the dark, and it would be comfortable and safe, but I can see the sky.

  I grip the ladder again. My foot takes a step.

  “That’s it, Keira, you’ve got it. One … two … three, up.”

  He keeps counting. My body keeps working, finding its determination. I’m still shaking and shivering and my mind is a tunnel even narrower than the one we’re in, but I’m moving steadily upward now. The bright circle grows and grows.

  “We’ve got this,” Gable soothes as we move. “Don’t you worry, we’ve got this.”

  And we have. Soon we’re both climbing back out into the grungy courtyard. It could be a palace courtyard, for how happy I am to see it. My strength abandons me and I sprawl on the pavement. I breathe the air—real, fresh, whipped by wind, not held captive and stale underground—as Gable drags the manhole lid shut. He sits beside me, strokes my hair.

  “You did it,” he says. “I knew you could.”

  I just nod and close my eyes. Recover.

  Breathe.

  After that adventure, we can’t stop. We take the metro to Montmartre and fulfill one of my life’s ambitions: eat lunch at the café where Amélie was filmed. Gable buys me a painting from one of the artists hawking their wares. It’s Notre Dame, painted in a Monet-like style, with big brush strokes and light, soft colors. Then, inspired, we go to Notre Dame. We climb the bell towers to the top. The wind tosses our hair and Gable kisses me in full view of the Parisian skyline.

  As evening starts to fall, we grab some crêpes, and as
I’m biting into my signature Nutella, I remember.

  Levi.

  “Shit, oh my God, Gable,” I gasp, almost dropping my crêpe. “I told Levi I would be back at two. It’s almost seven! Shit.” I stand and whip out my phone for what must be the first time all day: seventeen missed calls from Levi. “I have to go back right fucking now.”

  “Could I … I mean, do you want me to come?” Gable asks. “I’ll totally understand if you don’t want me there, but …”

  “No, come with me,” I say. I’m terrified of what Levi will say—have the hormones interfered with all your cognitive functions, you idiot? Maybe he won’t freak out in front of Gable.

  We take the metro back to the Place d’Italie and walk up the street to Hoteltastique. All along the journey, I call Levi’s phone, but it rings and rings and goes to voice mail every time, even though he was calling obsessively before. God, Levi.

  When Gable and I are in the elevator, I realize that Levi might be wearing underwear or—gulp—even less. He might have vending machine snack wrappers all over the place, dirty socks tossed all over the floor, any manner of disgusting stuff.

  “Um, I’d better go in first,” I say when we get to our door.

  When it’s open, you can see down the center of the room, which includes the ends of the beds. The blankets are mussed up and thrown about, as usual, but Levi’s feet aren’t hanging off the end. A French cop show is on TV, the volume so loud it hurts. I step further into the room and turn off the TV.

  Levi isn’t in his bed. He isn’t on the tiny balcony. I knock on the bathroom door and push it open, but he isn’t there, either. His phone sits on the TV stand, screen lit up with all the missed calls from me.

  “Levi?”

  No answer.

  My heartbeat batters at every pulse point like it could break my skin. I brace myself in the bathroom doorway as the fear builds.

  Where the hell is he?

  “Keira?” Gable calls. “Can I come in?”

  “Um, yeah, yeah.”

  His shoes shuffle on the carpet. The front door bangs shut.

  “Is something the matter?”

  I nod. I can’t stop sweeping my eyes over the bathroom. The sink. The bathtub. The bathmat.

  “Levi’s gone,” I whisper. It echoes and I can’t stand it. I back up, smack into Gable, but I’m too freaked to be dazed by more physical contact. “He’s gone, he’s not here. Where the fuck is he?”

  “Did he go out for food?”

  “He doesn’t like going out alone, he would have waited for me, even if he was starving!”

  “Okay, take deep breaths,” Gable says, setting my painting carefully on the desk chair. “Deep breaths, yeah?”

  I nod.

  “Those are the shallowest breaths I’ve ever heard.”

  In, out. In, out.

  In … out.

  He squeezes my arm. “Okay?”

  I nod.

  “Now, if we’re sure he’s not here, we need to go downstairs and ask the front desk if they’ve seen him,” he says in a calm, stable voice I couldn’t hope to replicate.

  I follow him back down the hall and to the elevator and almost jump when I see my reflection in the mirror. My skin is ghostly gray.

  We approach the front desk, where the guy I think is the manager shuffles papers around and whistles. Gable looks at me, but when I don’t make a move to speak, he asks the man, “Excusez-moi, monsieur. Anglais?”

  He nods with a smile that feels so wrong.

  “Have you seen my brother?” I ask. “H-he isn’t in our room, and he’s very unlikely to go anywhere on his own.”

  The man narrows his eyes, searching his memory.

  “Tall?” he asks. He mimes muscular gorilla arms. “Big boy? Glasses?”

  “Yes! Yes, that’s him.”

  “He did leave,” he says. “Perhaps two hours ago.”

  Gable grabs me by the arm before I even realize I’m falling backward. The manager’s forehead is creased with a million lines.

  “Is there something wrong?” he asks, eyes flicking between Gable and me.

  “Yes,” Gable says. “Her brother is … well, he has some mental issues, I think, and he doesn’t know Paris very well—or at all.”

  The manager gives a curt nod and turns to address me. “Mademoiselle, do as much as you can to look for your brother,” he says. “Check your room, check local shops. If the immediate area turns up nothing, we will contact the police directly.”

  I nod even though I want to shout we need to call the police right now, right now, right now! Levi doesn’t just go places on his own, but I know you can’t just jump to the conclusion of “missing” right away.

  We return to the room with the manager, whose name is Yves, only because he insists we find any possible clue or lead. He opens the closet, as if Levi would just sit in there.

  “Perhaps he went to the store?”

  “No, he hasn’t left our room in … like, a whole day. He was probably hungry. I was late coming back.” I shake my head, but it doesn’t clear the tears that block my throat.

  “It’s not your fault,” Gable says.

  The hell it’s not.

  I keep coming back to the bathroom. I don’t know if I think he’s just going to appear somehow—maybe I’m insane now. His toothbrush is here, his kiddie toothpaste is here, his colorful pills in their little dish are here. How could he not be here?

  “Is this his?”

  I whip around. Yves is holding up Levi’s battered Star Wars wallet.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  He hands it to me and I wrench open the Velcro. Everything’s still here. His debit card. The emergency credit card Mom insisted he carry. A single American dollar.

  But no metro card.

  “He took his metro pass,” I murmur. If it’s missing from his grubby wallet, he could be anywhere in Paris.

  The next step: Gable and I run across the street to Margot and Nico’s bakery.

  The second I walk into the bakery, the bell above the door tinkles, and Margot emerges from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. Her pleasant smile folds into a look of alarm. “Keira, mon Dieu, what is wrong?”

  I open my mouth but no words come out, until one does. “Levi.”

  “What?” She looks at Gable, and I can tell she immediately accepts him as part of the team.

  “Levi is missing,” Gable says.

  Margot drops her dishtowel to the mosaic floor.

  “Non,” she says softly. “When last did you see him?”

  “This morning, when I left to go meet Gable,” I say on an inhale. “I was late getting home and I think he went out to look for food.” Exhale. “H-he has his metro pass, he could be anywhere.”

  She covers her mouth with her hand. After a moment she says, “I haven’t seen him. I’m so sorry.”

  I close my eyes. Her hand finds mine.

  “Do not worry. We will do everything we can to help you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We scour the immediate neighborhood, and when that turns up nothing, we go back to the bakery. Margot fires up the espresso machine. I sit with my phone in hand.

  The equivalent of 911 in France is 112, but I can’t seem to make my fingers dial. Is it the right time? Don’t you have to wait twenty-four hours or something before you report someone missing? I’m sure there are exceptions to be made. I picture Levi’s pills up in our room, doubting very much that he took ones he needs with him. He’s out there, without medication, and I don’t know what that means, but my throat closes up just thinking about it.

  “Keira, you must call,” Margot says softly, placing the steaming mocha in front of me. “The sooner, the better.”

  I nod. My eyes sting, blur, and a single tear drops onto the screen of my phone. I wipe it away.

  “Should I call my mom first?”

  “Police first,” Nico says. He’s been wringing his hands since he joined us.

  “Your mom would p
robably want to know you’re seeking help right away,” Gable agrees. “You don’t want her to panic.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I murmur.

  My fingers finally pick out the three digits they need to dial.

  They connect me to an English-speaking operator when my French fails. I tell the woman on the line everything. Brother, gone. Autism, mental illness, no meds. No knowledge of French or the area. The operator is very matter-of-fact. I tell her our names, the hotel we’re staying at, where we are right now. She tells me she’s dispatching police and the media will be alerted. She tells me to contact the American embassy.

  When I hang up, my stomach unknots itself. Just a little.

  “There you go,” Margot says when I finally sip my drink. “Feel better?”

  I nod, even though I don’t. Not possible. Not when this is my fault.

  Gable tries to rub my shoulder and calm me down, but I find myself edging away from him. I let him draw me away from Levi. How could I make this mistake again?

  “Now call your maman,” Margot reminds me gently.

  All my breath comes shuddering out as I laugh weakly. “Do I have to?”

  “If you don’t, we will,” Nico says with a grim smile.

  I go to my contacts in TextAnywhere and hit CALL when I find her name. It rings twice before she answers.

  “Hi, Keira!” Her voice is full of life for once. Even though it’s, like, 5 a.m. in Shoreline.

  I can’t believe I have to ruin her this way.

  “Mom,” I say, and I hate how weak I sound. “I have something bad to tell you. Maybe you should sit down.”

  “What’s going on, Keira? Is it—”

  “Don’t even guess,” I tell her. “I’ll just—I’ll just say it. Levi is gone.”

  “Gone. Levi is … gone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I went up to our room and he isn’t there. I was late coming home, and it’s just not like him at all to go anywhere on his own. The manager of the hotel saw him leave a few hours ago but no one has seen him since. He doesn’t have his phone.”