Beautiful Americans (34 page)

“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?

The Escape

O
livia 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?

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.