Die for Me (2 page)

LIFE WITHOUT PARENTS WAS NOT GETTING ANY
easier.

I had begun to feel like I was encased in a layer of ice. I was cold inside. But I clung to the coldness for dear life: Who knew what would happen if I let the ice thaw and actually began to feel things again? I would probably melt into a blubbering idiot and return to being completely nonfunctional like I had been for the first few months after my parents died.

I missed my dad. His disappearance from my life felt unbearable. That handsome Frenchman who everyone liked the moment they looked into his laughing green eyes. When he saw me and his face lit up with an expression of pure adoration, I knew that no matter what stupid things I might do in life, I would always have one fan in this world, cheering me on from the sidelines.

As for Mom, her death ripped my heart out, like she had been a physical part of me that was dug out with a scalpel. She was a soul mate, a “kindred spirit,” as she used to say. Not that we always got along. But now that she was gone, I had to learn to live with the big, burning hole that her absence left inside me.

If I could have escaped reality for just a few hours at night, maybe my waking hours would have been more bearable. But sleep was my own personal nightmare. I would lie in bed until I finally felt its velvety fingers sweeping my face with numbness and I would think,
Finally!
Then a half hour later I was awake again.

One night I was at my wit's end, head on my pillow and eyes open, staring at the ceiling. My alarm clock read one a.m. I thought about the long night ahead and crawled out of bed, fishing for the clothes I had worn the day before and slipping them on. Stepping out into the hallway, I saw a light coming from under Georgia's door. I tapped on it and turned the doorknob.

“Hey,” Georgia whispered at me from upside down. She was lying fully clothed on her bed, her head at its foot. “Just got home,” she added.

“You can't sleep either,” I commented. It wasn't a question. We knew each other too well. “Why don't you come out for a walk with me?” I asked. “I can't stand lying awake in my room all night. It's only July and I've read every book that I possess. Twice.”

“Are you crazy?” Georgia said, rolling over to her stomach. “It's the middle of the night.”

“Actually it's kind of the beginning of the night. It's just one o'clock. People are still out on the streets. And, besides, Paris is the safest—”

“—city on earth.” Georgia finished my sentence. “Papy's favorite saying. He should get a job with the board of tourism. Okay. Why not? I won't sleep anytime soon either.”

We tiptoed to the front hall and, with a quiet click, eased the door open and shut behind us. Once down in the vestibule, we paused to slip on our shoes and then walked out into the night.

A full moon was hanging over Paris, painting the streets with a silver glow. Without a word, Georgia and I headed toward the river. It had been the center of all our activities since we began coming here as children, and our feet knew the way.

At the river's edge, we went down the stone steps to the walkway that stretches miles through Paris along the water and set off east over the rough cobblestones. The massive squatting presence of the Louvre Museum was just visible on the opposite bank.

No one else was in sight, either down on the quay or up at street level. The city was silent except for the lapping of the waves and the sound of the occasional car. We walked a few minutes without speaking before Georgia stopped abruptly and grabbed my arm.

“Look,” she whispered, pointing toward the Carrousel Bridge crossing high over our walkway some fifty feet ahead. A girl who looked to be about our age balanced on the wide stone handrail, leaning perilously over the water. “Oh my God, she's going to jump!” breathed Georgia.

My mind raced as I gauged the distance. “The bridge isn't high enough for her to kill herself.”

“It depends what's under the water—how deep it is. She's near the edge,” Georgia responded.

We were too far away to see the girl's expression, but her arms were wrapped around her stomach as she looked down into the cold, dark waves.

Our focus quickly shifted to the tunnel under the bridge. Even during the day it was creepy. Street people slept under it when the weather was cold. I had never actually seen anyone in it as I speed-walked through its putrid dampness to the sunlight on the other side. But the old soiled mattresses and dividers made out of cardboard boxes made it clear that, for a few unfortunate souls, the tunnel was a prime spot of Paris real estate. And now, from its otherworldly darkness came sounds of a scuffle.

There was a movement from the top of the bridge. The girl still stood motionless on the rail, but now a man approached her. He walked slowly, carefully, as if not to alarm her. When he got a stone's throw away he stretched out an arm, offering the girl his hand. I could hear a low voice—he was trying to talk her down.

The girl whipped around to look at him, and the man held up his other hand, stretching both arms toward her, entreating her to back away from the edge. She shook her head. He took another step toward her. She wrapped her arms tighter across her torso and jumped.

It wasn't really a jump. It was more of a fall. As if she was offering her body up as a sacrifice to gravity and letting it do what it would with her. She arced forward, her head hitting the water seconds later.

I felt something tug my arm and realized that Georgia and I were clutching each other as we watched the horrific scene. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Georgia chanted rhythmically under her breath.

A motion at the top of the bridge drew my eyes up from the water's moonlit surface, where I had been watching for any trace of the girl. The man who had been trying to coax her down was now standing on the edge of the bridge, his widespread arms transforming his body into the shape of a cross as he threw himself powerfully forward. Time seemed to stop as he hovered in midair like a giant bird of prey between the bridge and the black surface of the water.

And in that split second, a streetlight by the water's edge flashed across his face. Recognition jolted through me. It was the boy from the Café Sainte-Lucie.

What in the world was he doing here, trying to talk a teenage girl out of a suicide attempt? Did he know her? Or was he just a passerby who decided to get involved?

His body sliced cleanly through the surface of the water and disappeared from view.

A shout erupted from underneath the bridge, and crouching silhouettes appeared in the murky blackness of the tunnel. “What the—!” Georgia exclaimed. She was interrupted by a flash of light and a sharp clanging of metal as two figures began to emerge from the darkness. Swords. They were sword fighting.

Georgia and I seemed to remember at the same moment that we had legs, and began sprinting back toward the stairway we had come from. Before we could reach it, a man's form materialized from the darkness. I didn't have time to scream before he caught me by the shoulders to stop me from mowing him down. Georgia froze in her tracks.

“Good evening, ladies,” came a smooth baritone voice.

My eyes tried to refocus from their goal—the stairway—onto the person keeping me from getting there. “Let go,” I managed to sputter in my fear, and he immediately dropped his hold. Stepping back, I found myself inches away from another familiar face. His hair was hidden beneath a tightly fitted black cap, but I would have recognized him anywhere. It was the muscular friend of the boy who had just dived into the Seine.

“You shouldn't be down here by yourselves this late at night,” he said.

“There's something going on back there,” Georgia gasped. “A fight.”

“Police procedure,” he said, turning, and applied light force to our backs, steering us rapidly toward the stairway.

“Police procedure with
swords
?” I asked, incredulous, as we jogged up to street level.

“Gang activity,” he said briefly, already turning to head back down the stairway. “I would get as far away from here as you can,” he called over his shoulder as he took the stairs a few at a time. He sprinted toward the tunnel just as two heads surfaced from the river near the bank. I felt a surge of relief when I saw them alive.

The guy who had steered us away arrived just as they reached land and pulled the jumper up to safety.

A howl of pain shattered the night air, and Georgia grabbed my arm. “Let's get out of here.”

“Wait.” I hesitated. “Shouldn't we do something?”

“Like what?”

“Like call the police?”

“They
are
the police,” she said uncertainly.

“Yeah, right. They sure don't look like police. I could swear I recognized those two guys from our neighborhood.” We stood looking helplessly at each other for a second, trying to make sense out of what we had just seen.

“Well, maybe our neighborhood's under the surveillance of a special undercover SWAT team,” Georgia said. “You know, Catherine Deneuve lives right down the street.”

“Yeah, right, like Catherine Deneuve has her own hot-guy SWAT team trolling the neighborhood for celebrity stalkers with swords.”

Unable to contain ourselves, we burst out laughing.

“We should not be laughing. This is serious!” Georgia giggled, wiping a stray tear from her cheek.

“I know,” I sniffed, composing myself.

Down by the river the girl and her savior had vanished, and the fighting sounded farther away. “See, it's over anyway,” Georgia said. “It's too late to do anything even if we wanted to.”

We turned toward the crosswalk just as two figures sprinted up the stairs behind us. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw them approaching at full-speed and grabbed Georgia's arm to pull her out of the way. They ran past, missing us by mere inches—two huge men dressed in dark clothes with caps pulled down low around their faces. A glint of metal flashed from beneath one of their long dusters. Leaping into a car, they started the engine with a roar. But before they drove off, they pulled up beside my sister and me and slowed to a snail's pace. I could feel them staring at us through the darkened windows.

“Whatcha looking at?” Georgia yelled, and they peeled off down the road. We stood there for a moment, stunned. The crosswalk light turned green, and Georgia hooked her arm through mine as we stepped out into the street.

“Weird night,” she said finally, breaking our silence.

“Understatement of the year,” I replied. “Should we tell Mamie and Papy about it?”

“What?” Georgia laughed. “And spoil Papy's ‘Paris is safe' delusion? They'd never let us out of the house again.”

WHEN I STEPPED OUTSIDE INTO THE COMFORTING
security of daylight the next morning, the events of the previous night seemed unreal. There had been nothing about what we had seen on the news. But Georgia and I couldn't let it go that easily.

We discussed it more than a few times, although we got no closer to understanding what had taken place. Our theories ran from things as mundane as Dungeons & Dragons fanatics playacting outdoors to the more dramatic (and laugh-inducing) scenario of time-traveling damsels and knights.

Although I continued to do all my reading at the Café Sainte-Lucie, I hadn't seen the mysterious group of gorgeous guys again. After a couple of weeks, I knew all the waiters as well as the owners, and many of the regular clients became familiar faces: Little old ladies with their teacup Yorkshire terriers, which they carried around in their handbags and fed from their plates. Businessmen with expensive-looking suits talking endlessly on cell phones and ogling every pretty girl who walked by. Couples of all ages holding hands under the tables.

One Saturday afternoon I was squeezed into my regular table in the terrace's far left corner, reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
. Although this was my third time through it, some passages still brought tears to my eyes. As one was doing now.

I used my dig-fingernails-into-palm trick, which, if it hurt enough, could keep me from crying in public. Unfortunately, today it wasn't working. I could tell my eyes were getting red and glassy.
This is all I need—to cry in front of my regular café crowd just as I'm getting to know them,
I thought, peering up to see if anyone had noticed me.

And there he was. Sitting a few tables away, watching me as intensely as he had the first time. It was the boy with the black hair. The scene from the river, with him leaping off a bridge to save someone's life, felt like it had been nothing but a surreal dream. Here he was, in broad daylight, drinking coffee with one of his friends.

Why?
I almost said it out loud. Why did I have to get all teary about a book while this too-cute-to-be-true French guy was staring at me from a mere ten feet away?

I snapped my book closed and laid some money on the table. But just as I started toward the exit, the elderly women at the table next to mine stood and began fiddling with their massive pile of shopping bags. I fidgeted impatiently until finally one of them turned around. “So sorry, dear, but we'll be another minute. Just go around us.” And she practically shoved me toward where the guys were sitting.

I had hardly gotten a step beyond their table when I heard a low voice coming from behind me.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” someone asked in French.

I turned to see the boy standing inches away from me. He was even more handsome than he had seemed from afar, though his looks were sharpened by that same flinty coldness I had noticed the first time I had seen him. I ignored the sudden jolt in my chest.

“Your bag,” he said, holding my book bag out toward me, balancing the strap on two fingers.

“Um,” I said, thrown off by his proximity. Then, seeing his wry expression, I pulled myself together.
He thinks I'm a total idiot for leaving my bag behind.
“How kind of you,” I said stiffly, reaching for the bag, as I tried to salvage any remaining scrap of confidence left in me.

He pulled his arm back, leaving me grasping air. “What?” he asked, amused. “Why be angry at
me
? It's not like I swiped it.”

“No, of course not,” I huffed, waiting.

“So . . . ,” he said.

“So . . . if it's okay with you, I'll just take my bag now,” I said, reaching out and catching the straps in my hand this time. He didn't let go.

“How about an exchange?” he offered, a smile twitching the corners of his mouth. “I'll give you the bag if you tell me your name.”

I gawped at him, incredulous, and then gave the bag a hard tug—just as he let go. Its contents spilled in a heap across the sidewalk. I shook my head in disbelief. “Great! Thanks a lot!”

As gracefully as I could, I got down on my knees and began cramming my lipstick, mascara, wallet, phone, and what seemed like a million pens and tiny scraps of paper into my bag. I looked back up to see him inspecting my book.

“
To Kill a Mockingbird
.
En anglais!
” he commented, his voice tinged with surprise. And then, in slightly accented but perfect English, he said, “Great book—have you ever seen the film . . . Kate?”

My mouth fell open. “But . . . how do you know my name?” I managed to utter.

He raised his other hand and showed me my driver's license, which featured an exceptionally bad head shot. By this point my humiliation was so great that I couldn't even look him in the eyes, although I felt his gaze burning into me.

“Listen,” he said, leaning closer. “I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to make you drop your bag.”

“Stop flaunting your impeccable language skills, Vincent, help the girl to her feet, and let her take her leave,” came another voice in French. I turned to see my tormentor's friend—the guy with the curly hair—holding out my hairbrush, with an expression of mild amusement creasing his razor-stubbled face.

Ignoring the hand “Vincent” was extending to help me up, I staggered to my feet and brushed myself off. “Here you go,” he said, handing me my book.

I took it with an embarrassed nod. “Thanks,” I replied curtly, trying not to run as I made the quickest possible exit out of the café and onto the street. As I waited for the crosswalk light to change, I made the mistake of glancing back. Both of the boys were staring my way. Vincent's friend said something to him and shook his head.
I can't even imagine what they're saying about me,
I thought, and groaned.

Turning as red as the stoplight, I crossed the street without looking their way again.

For the next few days I saw Vincent's face everywhere. In the corner grocery store, coming up the steps from the Métro, sitting at every café terrace I passed. Of course, when I got a better look at each of these guys, it was never actually him. Much to my annoyance, I couldn't stop thinking about him, and even more annoyingly, my feelings were equally divided between self-protective cautiousness and unabashed crush.

To be honest, I wasn't ungrateful for the diversion. For once I had something else to think about besides fatal car crashes and what the hell I was going to do for the rest of my life. I'd thought I had it pretty much figured out before the accident, but now my future stretched before me like a mile-long question mark. It struck me that my fixation on this “mystery guy” might just be my mind's way of giving me a breather from my confusion and grief. And I finally decided, if that were the case, I didn't mind.

 * * * 

Almost a week had passed since my standoff with Vincent at the Café Sainte-Lucie, and though I had made my reading sessions there a daily habit, I hadn't seen a trace of him or his friends. I was ensconced in what I now considered my private corner table, finishing off yet another Wharton novel from the school syllabus (my future English teacher was obviously a big fan), when I noticed a couple of teenagers sitting across the terrace from me. The girl had short-cropped blond hair and a shy laugh, and the natural way she kept leaning in toward the boy next to her made me think they were a couple. But upon turning my scrutiny to him, I realized how similar their features were, though his hair was golden red. They had to be brother and sister. And once that idea popped into my mind, I knew I was right.

The girl suddenly held up her hand to stop her brother from talking and began scanning the terrace, as if searching for someone. Her eyes settled on me. For a second she hesitated, and then waved urgently at me. I pointed to myself with a questioning look. She nodded and then gestured, beckoning me to come over.

Wondering what she could possibly want, I stood and slowly made my way toward their table. She rose to her feet, alarmed, and motioned for me to hurry.

Just as I left my safe little nook against the wall and stepped around my table, a huge crash came from behind me, and I was knocked flat onto the ground. I could feel my knee stinging and lifted my head to see blood on the ground beneath my face.

“Mon Dieu!”
yelled one of the waiters, and scrambled over the toppled tables and chairs to help me to my feet. Tears of shock and pain welled in my eyes.

He ripped a towel from his waist apron and dabbed my face with it. “You just have a little cut on your eyebrow. Don't worry.” I looked down at my burning leg and saw that my jeans had been torn open and my knee completely skinned.

As I checked myself over for injuries, it dawned on me that the terrace had gone completely silent. But instead of focusing on me, the astonished faces of the café-goers were looking
behind
me.

The waiter stopped swabbing my eyebrow to glance over my shoulder, and his eyes widened in alarm. Following his gaze, I saw that my table had been demolished by a huge piece of carved masonry that had fallen from the building's facade. My purse was lying to one side, but my copy of
House of
Mirth
stuck out from where it was pinned under the enormous stone, exactly where I had been sitting.

If I hadn't moved, I would be dead,
I thought, and my heart raced so fast that my chest hurt. I turned back to the table where the brother and sister had been sitting. Except for a bottle of Perrier and two full glasses sitting in the middle of a handful of change, it was empty. My saviors were gone.