Aix Marks the Spot

by Sarah Anderson

  Of course, Seb’s shortcut was as ridiculous as Seb himself. How someone so wild could make it this far in a freaking literature degree, I will never know. The guy starts climbing down a sheer cliff face in his flipflops. No one wanted to follow until he pointed to the trail marker painted on the side of the stone, and you laughed and said that someone had to go first.

  So of course, I did. I wanted to impress you so badly it hurt. I didn’t know at what point in that hike you went from being my tote buddy to someone I wanted to know on the deepest level of my soul. Maybe it was when you responded to your stomach with velociraptor noises. I don’t know. But I climbed down that cliff, letting Seb guide my feet to the footholds.

  And then, of all things, this three-legged dog trots down the cliff. Three legs! I had never seen anything like it. The entire crew was laughing and clapping. If a three-legged dog could climb Seb’s stupid cliff, we’d be ridiculous for failing.

  After the cliff, things got far easier. We followed the trails left by wildlife, finally reaching that uncomfortable pebble beach, but the sun hit the water so perfectly that it might as well have been heaven. As if god himself was smiling upon us, there was not a tourist, or even a local, anywhere in sight. Just us.

  We swam, ate the bounty we had so carefully carried over the cliffs, broke out the rosé in our plastic cups, cheered our good fortune and booed our strictest professors. There were some caves you wanted to explore on the way down, and I offered to come with you, desperate to show you I was as brave and cool as I thought I was.

  I don’t know who kissed who up in that cave. We only had a minute before Seb and some others arrived to explore too, and the moment was over. But in that kiss, I fell totally and irrevocably in love with you.

  There. That should give you everything you need to find the place.

  Love,

  Your (not so) secret admirer.

  I put the letter down, shaking.

  Dad. Dad had written the letter to you, planning an adorable anniversary present you never got to find. If any of my boyfriends had given me this, I would have married him on the spot.

  Well, if any of my relationships had made it past the two-month mark. Current record was 47 days.

  My hands were trembling so much, I stuffed them under my legs to hold them still. I felt as if I had just intruded on an intimate moment. The letter was not meant for me, and it was like I had stolen the joy from someone else. These feelings were not for me. My stomach knotted with the guilt.

  The letter sat on the bed, continuing to exist, defying my imagination. I could not have conjured up something so beautiful even in my wildest dreams. My heart was so full, I felt as if I could soar.

  And then, it hit me. If this letter could make me, a random girl, feel as if she could fly, then maybe, just maybe, it could make you, the person who was meant to read it, pull through this.

  I had to call you. I had to show you this magnificent letter, to prove just how much dad loved you, even all the way back then. Especially then. In my mind, after you read it, you would push yourself off the couch and wrap your arms around dad, completely cured.

  All my mistakes wiped clean.

  The phone was in my hand before I could even think. I opened up contacts. Recent calls. I was ready to hit that green button, and then…

  A new thought pushed through. This was the start of a treasure hunt, which meant there were more letters like this one out there. Out beyond the confines of this room, there were five clues and a treasure intended for you to find.

  Seventeen years ago, though.

  I fell back onto the bed, the gears in my head spinning in a wild intense whirr. What were the odds they were still out there? What were the chances I could find them, solving all of dad’s clues along the way, get all the letters, and send them to you? That would quintuple your chances of recovering completely. And finding the treasure… not only would you be fully healed, everything else would be fixed, too.

  I would be forgiven for hurting you in the first place. For destroying all of our lives.

  But there was one major hurdle in the way of finding the clues: one, I had no idea what anything meant. Blackcurrant beach? I didn’t even know there were beaches here until a few minutes ago. Well, I knew there was Nice and Monaco and so on, but those were far away, right?

  Which brought me to problem number two: distance. If I had my car, there wouldn’t be an issue, but I was in France, too young to be on the road by their standards, and of course no idea where I was going.

  I sunk deeper into my pillows. So much for that plan.

  But I had no other choice. The universe had given me this one chance to fix my mistake, and I had to take it. This would be my only shot. And if I failed, I would never make things right.

  I had to call in reinforcements.

  “Come on, please, you’re the only person I know here,” I begged. I’d let you guess who I called, but then again, he was the only guy I knew here.

  “What exactly you want from me?” Asked Valentin.

  “I need to get out of Lourmarin,” I stammered, “I need to find a place called Blackcurrant Beach. I’ll bike over.”

  “No, it’s fine, I’ll come to yours.”

  “You know where I live?”

  “Everyone here knows where Colette Martin lives,” he said, as if that cleared anything up. “I’ll text you when I reach the gate, so you can let me in.”

  “You sure it’s no bother?”

  “Mom has been complaining about how much time I spend in the house. This will get her to stop bothering me.”

  “Awesome.” I found myself grinning. “I’ll wait for your text.”

  I hung up and rushed to put things away. Not that it was my house, and not that I was bringing a strange boy into my room - wait, why I was I bothering? If Mamie was anything like my mom, she would definitely not approve.

  Maybe I should text him and tell him not to come at all. I hadn’t even asked her if it was alright to invite a stranger into her home. I hadn’t asked her if she knew about the letter, either.

  But you had never received the letter. Something between Dad writing it and actually giving it to you had gone drastically wrong. Something between him and Mamie, which broke their relationship forever.

  She couldn’t know about the letter. There was no way I could ask her without tipping my hand. Then again, she probably would judge me for not having asked in French.

  I got Valentin’s text a few minutes later, way faster than I had expected. When I reached the gate, he was leaning against an old white scooter, helmet propped up on his head, shading his eyes from the sun so he could read his phone screen. I let him in.

  “Hey,” he said, looking worried. “You ok?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I am,” I said, though my heart was racing a mile a minute, beating so hard in my chest I thought it was going to burst out and just keep on beating, like in an old horror movie. “Why?”

  “You look… ignore me.”

  He pushed the helmet back down and hoped back on his bike, which puttered to life with a little less enthusiasm than a toy version of one.

  “Need a ride up?” he asked.

  “Me? Ride on that?” I snorted. “Yeah, no.”

  “What? You think I’m going to get in an accident? On twenty meters of gravel?”

  “I just… no thanks,” I repeated. I would have to touch him for that, and though I quite liked the idea, I liked it too much for this to be a good plan. “I’ll close the gate. Meet you at the top.”

  He rode up, the bike sputtering as the tires spun on the gravel. When I reached him at the old fountain, he was pulling off his helmet, his brown hair slicked down with sweat.

  “This is so cool,” he said, “being in Colette Martin’s garden. This is insane!”

  “I thought you said everyone in town knew her?” I asked, “you haven’t been here before?”

  “Maybe I made a mistake. I meant that we all know of her. You know how famous she is.�
� I shook my head, and his eyes bulged. “You don’t know how famous she is! She’s Colette Martin! Author of Sens et superstitions? Or Se Fondre Dans Le Sud?”

  Again, I shook my head. Grandma, a famous author? I knew she wrote, and I had seen her books lying around, but I never thought she was actually famous. I had never heard her name used outside of the family anyways.

  “Ques’ce que tu fais la?”

  The woman in question came storming out of her house, hands on her hips. Valentin put his helmet down on the seat of his scooter, smile wiped from his face. He looked terrified, and for good reason: Mamie’s hair was flying out away from her, an orage if I ever saw one.

  “C’est Jamie qui m’a invité,” he said, nervously, “Pour, eu…”

  “Cours de Français,” I interjected, shooting him a nervous look. It would have been a poor French class back home if I hadn’t learned how to say the words ‘French Class’. My pronunciation was crap, but instantly it turned Mamie’s frown into a gasp of surprise.

  “Un cours?” she asked, “Jamie, c’est toi qui a organisé ca?”

  “Je apprends Français,” I said, slowly enunciating every syllable. Maybe she had asked me about food or the weather, I don’t know, but I had to answer something. “Il apprends Anglais. Conversation?”

  He learns English. I learn French. The perfect cover, since, technically, it wasn’t a lie. And apparently, exactly what Mamie had wanted to hear. She marched up to us, proudly putting her hands on my shoulders, leaning down to kiss my forehead. I could feel her gently shaking as she took her hand back.

  “Je suis fière de toi, ma puce,” she said. And I didn’t need a phrasebook to tell me she was proud of me: I could feel it in my very bones. This was the Mamie I wanted to know, the one who actually seemed to like me.

  “Venez, je vous prepare le gouter,” she said, waving for us to follow, “Tu t’appelles comment?”

  They chatted in French, Valentin blushing and babbling nervously. I guess he must have liked her books. Mamie sliced us the baguette Jean-Pascal had bought that morning, putting it in a basket on our tray, along with a massive jar of Nutella. It hadn’t been opened yet.

  “Je l’ai prise pour toi,” she explained. I nodded, trying to split the words in my head. Toi meant me, so I guessed she had bought the jar just for my visit. Or had asked Jean-Pascal to bring it.

  Mamie was an odd woman. She could spoil me with sugary treats one second, then abolish me for not speaking French the next. Luckily, she seemed to appreciate the effort I was making - even if it was a total lie.

  In the end, Mamie didn’t care at all that there was a boy in my room: so long as he was teaching me French, I suppose everything was permissible. I blushed thinking of some other French words I knew, lyrics to a certain Moulin Rouge song, which involved some voulez vous.

  “Alors,” said Valentin, peeling back the golden film and spreading the Nutella on thick, “is that what you called me over for? A French class? For your information, my English is perfect, thank you.”

  “Perfect?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Better than your non-existing French.”

  “Fair enough,” I replied, spreading myself my own Nutella slice. Was it just me, or did it taste better than American Nutella? Smoother, sweeter. Maybe it was the fresh bread that it was smeared on. I didn’t care what had happened to it, it was simply magical.

  “So, why am I here?” he asked, already done with his entire slice.

  “Because you told me not to come to yours.”

  “If you’re not going to tell me, I’m going home.” He took another slice of Nutella nonetheless, showing me he had no intention of living up to that threat.

  “It’s because of this,” I said, getting up to retrieve the letter from where I had stashed it in the desk drawer. “My father wrote my mother a letter seventeen years ago, before he left France and never came back. It’s a treasure hunt.”

  “Oh! A chasse au trésor.”

  “A hunt is called a chase?”

  “A chasse, yes,” he explained, going for Nutella slice number three, “which, ironically, is also the name for the toilet flush. You see? I’m a good French teacher.”

  “Chase ‘o treasure,” I said, “it sounds like an Irish pastime.”

  “But you won’t forget it this way,” he said, chewing his bread. I was starting to lose any belief I ever had in the sexy Frenchman stereotype. Maybe it just didn’t apply to teens.

  But then he smiled again, and I felt my heart race inside my chest all over again.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “I want to find these letters dad left my mom. To make her feel better.”

  “Better about what?”

  “About her spine being damaged,” I said, cringing at the harshness of my words. Valentin stopped chewing.

  “Is she alright?” He seemed genuinely worried about her, despite never having met the woman before. There was an earnestness in his eyes I had never seen before.

  “She will be,” I said. You will be, once I finish this hunt, I’m so sure of it my heart aches. “She was in a car accident, but she’s recovering. She’s learning to walk again. It’s slow, and it hurts. I’m only here because there’s no room for me at home while she’s in therapy.”

  “Merde, I’m so sorry,” he said, standing. He reached as if to hug me, but dropped his hands, realizing as I did that we didn’t know each other well enough for that. Just telling him this made me feel closer to him, but it was still weirdly too soon.

  “Anyway. I need to find this next clue. Finishing the treasure hunt dad made for her will cheer her up. The treasure will change everything.”

  “Are you sure?” he said, forcing a smile. I didn’t like how pitying his gaze had just become. “It has been, how long, sixteen years?”

  “Seventeen, I think,” I said, “but I have a good feeling about this. We won’t know they’re there until we try.”

  “We?” he asked, sitting again, “wait. I did not say anything about going on a treasure hunt.”

  “Oh come on, please?” I begged, “I don’t know anything about anywhere, here. I don’t have a car, I don’t speak French…”

  “I don’t have a car either.”

  “But you don’t even know where we’re going!”

  “And you do?”

  I let out a breath of frustration. I don’t know why I expected this perfect stranger to just drop everything and join me on this quest, but he was my only hope.

  “I need to find a place called Blackcurrant beach,” I said, pointing at the letter. Not that he could read it from over here. “It’s where the first clue tells me to go.”

  “Blackcurrant beach,” he repeated incredulously, “it’s in English? Or has it been translated?”

  “The whole letter’s in English.”

  “Then it had to be a play on words. But I don’t know what a Blackcurrant is in French.”

  “Oh,” I said, my heart sinking. I had thought the Frenchman would be a wealth of knowledge. But it sounded like I was back to square one without even beginning. And I had already shared my Nutella with him.

  “I can google it?”

  He looked up at me, his phone already in his hand, and for a split second I thought he was going to apologize. But why would he? He hadn’t done anything wrong, I just… if I had told any of my friends back home about a secret treasure hunt, they would have come running. Valentin’s go-to response seemed to be ‘not possible.’

  “No Wi-Fi,” I said, “and I don’t think my mother would have had a smartphone 17 years ago, anyways.”

  “You don’t have whiffy?” he asked, incredulously, “Merde.”

  He held out his hand. It took me a minute to realize he wanted the letter, but when I did, my heart went from slowly sinking to plunging into my gut. This was my letter. Well, it was your letter, and I was already trespassing by reading it myself. It felt like showing him might jinx the entire operation. But at least he seemed like he wanted to help, just a
little bit.

  “There might be other clues in there,” he suggested, “have you seen how long it is?”

  “It’s just…” I paused. There weren’t any actual words for this. Not words that I knew of. “It’s personal.”

  “If you want my help, you have to help me help you,” he said.

  I gingerly handed him the paper and leaned back against the desk, watching him read. Had dad invited you up here for Nutella, when you were first invited over? Did he lean on his desk the way I did now, talking about books and raving about confusing languages?

  “Oh! Si tu pouvais lire dans mon coeur, tu verrais la place où je t’ai mise!”

  “What now?”

  “If you could read my heart, you would see the place I have given you there. Flaubert. I just… I can see why you want your parents to have this back. It’s beautiful.”

  I watched him read again, the words fluttering through my mind.

  “Port Miou,” he said suddenly, poking the letter so hard the paged ruffled. I cringed, feeling as if he had poked me right in the chest. “I got it! They went to Cassis!”

  Miou was a real place? I thought it was another pun of dad’s. Something weird to do with cats, maybe.

  “What does that have to do with blackcurrants?”

  “I think cassis is the French word for that kind of berry. You know, like a blueberry, but black?”

  “And that’s a beach?”

  “Well, Cassis is a town, which has a beach,” he explained. “If you pronounce the ’s’ at the end, it’s the fruit. If you don’t, it’s the town. But tourists and Parisians all pronounce it Cassissss. Which is so annoying: I mean, you don’t pronounce it Parissss, do you?”

  “I mean, we pronounce the s…”

  “In English, maybe, but not in French. It would sound stupid.”

  I thought about it, running all the instances of Paris through my head. It didn’t make much of a difference either way.