Beautiful Americans

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful Americans
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2009 Lucy Silag

 

All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Silag, Lucy.
Beautiful Americans / by Lucy Silag.
p. cm.
Summary: Four high school students on a study abroad program in Paris hide
secrets, party, and revel in the glamor of the city, until one of them disappears.

eISBN : 978-1-101-01994-8

[1. Foreign study—Fiction. 2. Missing persons—Fiction. 3. Secrets—Fiction.
4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Paris (France)—Fiction. 6. France—Fiction.]
I.Title.
PZ7.S5793Be 2009
[Fic]--dc22
2008021075

 

 

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SEPTEMBER

Au Revoir,
New York

T
he New York City skyline glitters outside my open window, the late summer breeze flowing off the East River and into my third-story bedroom. My mom’s calling me from the stairwell, but I can’t tear myself away from the view of my city right now, all lit up with the nostalgia of summer ending.

A horn honks from the street outside. I shake myself out of my reverie and scan my bedroom, wondering if there’s anything else I need to stuff into my Vuitton duffle bags. I drop to my knees, remembering a few last things.

In the back of my bottom desk drawer is my Jeremy collection—letters, demos, even an old red handkerchief that he used to keep in his pocket to wipe off his face after his rock shows. He’d get so sweaty when he played under all the lights.

There’s stuff in here that I haven’t looked at in ages, but suddenly I don’t want to take the risk of being so far away, needing to have it and not being able to.
What Alex Wants
, for example—what if I want to listen to the CD he burned for me, a mix of rough cuts he made on Garage Band with ironic old songs he knew I’d like? Even the title of the mix was a joke between us. I pestered him for weeks to burn me some of his stuff, and on the last day of sophomore year at Brooklyn Prep, he handed me this CD.

“As if that’s an easy thing to ascertain,” he deadpanned, “what Alex wants.”

I glance up at my calendar hanging next to the window. Each month has a print of a vintage photo of a Paris scene. For September, the photo is of a man and a woman hanging their legs over the banks of the Seine, their feet bare and the woman’s too-adorable white pumps sitting next to her. Today’s date is circled a dozen times with a black Sharpie. Today’s the day of my escape, my starting over.

“The car’s here, Alex!” My mom bursts into my room. I shove the handkerchief and the CD into my tote bag before she can see them. “Aren’t you ready to go?”

My mom stops in her tracks. “Oh, my,” she says, her fire-engine red lips spreading into a smile. “I can see that you are most
definitely
ready for Paris. Spin.”

At her command, I rise to my feet and twirl in a circle in front of her, showing off my linen high-waisted Thakoon pants paired with a nautical-stripe tank and my favorite red stiletto heels. “You are so gorgeous,” Mom says. “Now come! Paris waits for no one, not even you.”

We clatter down the stairs and out the front door, breathlessly struggling with my two enormous bags, each of us trying not to fall over in our high heels and laughing hysterically. A black town car idles on our quiet tree-lined Brooklyn Heights street. In the distance, I can hear the chatter of the people strolling the Esplanade as the sun sets, remarking on the view of downtown Manhattan, how beautiful New York is.

Right now, I can’t even see the city as anything but a place that
isn’t
Paris. Paris is where I am meant to be. All of the ups and downs of the last year were just a rehearsal for all the great things to come in Paris.

“All right, my darling,” Mom says. I take a deep breath, knowing I will cry when Mom tells me how much she is going to miss me. “Time to go.” She twists one of the large rings on her fingers, a habit she has when she’s sad or nervous.

The thought of my poor mom, banging around in this big, drafty townhouse all alone for the next nine months turns my Louboutins to stone. I
absolutely
cannot go to Paris, I think rashly. My mom will never survive it! We’re never apart for more than a week, when she goes to report on the fashion shows in Rome, L.A., Milan, and Paris for
Luxe
and can’t take me with her.

But then she smiles. “I can’t wait for you to get to Paris!” Mom giddily throws her arms around me with wild laughter. I bury my face in her long dark hair, cloudy with the scent of Chanel perfume. “Go make me proud!”

“But Mom,” I say, wriggling away for a second. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? Really, truly sure?”

“Yes, yes, yes, of course!” Mom smacks my butt and points to the car. “Now go!” With one last hug and kiss, she pushes me toward Paris.

Thrown off balance by the heft of her push, I stumble a little bit. The way she’s hustling me to the car, you’d think she was thrilled I was leaving.

“One last thing,” she says when I roll down the car window and look up at her, trying to get myself to grasp that this is it, I’m leaving. Paris is finally happening.

Mom hands me a thin, creamy envelope. “For you,” she says. “It’s not what you think,” she winks. “Now seriously! Go. I love you, darling.”

She’s right. It
isn’t
what I expected. Mom usually sends me on a trip with a wad of cash and her American Express Black Card. Since the Amex card is already safely tucked into my camel-colored leather Hogan tote bag, I thought I’d find a few hundred euros slipped in with a note on my mom’s heavy monogrammed stationery. Instead I just find the note.

 

Now I’m crying for sure. I look out the window, but we’ve already pulled onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and my mom is long behind me. It’s too late to tell her again how much I love her and how much I am going to miss her. It’s also too late to ask her for some cash for the trip! I chide myself and get to work fixing the eyeliner I smeared as I was reading her note.

 

The brightly lit, lofted International Terminal at JFK airport is abuzz with thousands of people heading off to all corners of the globe—Beijing, Budapest, Buenos Aires. I scan the monitor for Paris. My flight is on time. I realize with a start that while I’ve flown without my mom plenty of times before, this is the first time I’ve been on my way to
Paris
without her. It’s odd. I can’t say it feels bad, but I’m too distracted, too anxious to get to Paris to be proud of my independence.

In line at the French Airways counter, we move ahead slowly. I text my cousin Emily, a brand new freshman at Georgetown. GOOD BYE!!!! I brag. SEE YOU AT CHRISTMAS!! KEEP IN TOUCH!!! The thing is, Emily’s been miserable since she got to college. What she wouldn’t do to be getting on this flight with me. Instead she’s desperate to rush a sorority and can’t get a single guy to take her on a proper date.

What’s taking me so long to get to the front is a tall blonde girl having some sort of argument with the check-in counter personnel. Her face is unsmiling but nonetheless very, very pretty. Thin, sharp hipbones jut out above her loose, faded jeans. The girl turns around to pull a thick stack of papers out of a retro brown camping backpack that looks like it was unearthed from a time capsule buried in 1970. I can see she’s wearing no jewelry or makeup. Just a mane of waist-length, disheveled blonde hair accessorizes her dazzling features—the most arresting of which is a wide, strawberry mouth with full lips set in a strange and downtrodden expression.

The girl is waving around a fistful of hundred dollar bills, but the French Airways clerk just shakes her head and frowns.