Good things come in threes

Chapitre 1 : Lost cat

October 2021

It had started as a simple friendship, but it was already a bit strange, almost unhinged.

Elena was French, on an exchange student, or rather, on the run from her family. But what was supposed to be only a semester-long exchange, a way to escape for a while, had turned into a permanent transfer, a brutal clap of lightning that had shaken her vision of the future. She hadn't tried to make friends for the first two months; why get attached to someone she wouldn't see again? And suddenly she was being told she would have to stay in this country, because going home was no longer possible.

She had tried to make friends, a desperate attempt not to be alone in all this, but everything blocked her.
She didn't have confidence in her speech, in her command of the language, although excellent, and then how to answer questions, what to say when people asked her why she wasn't going home, why she was stuck here? No, having no one was simpler, she already didn't have anyone when she was in France, that wouldn't be a new thing.

And then, she tried to reassure herself, the Americans exhausted her, or maybe she wasn't making any effort, as Azzi, her neighbor at the table, kept telling her.
But it was true, they had the IQ of a farmed oyster and a lack of humor that frightened Elena, no sarcasm, a nonexistent dirty humor, or black humour, or she didn't know because they don't even have name for it, nothing. That's why Elena had quickly convinced herself that making friends was useless.

But still, it had nothing to do with France, when she simply didn't have any friends.
She was in another country, with a new phone number that cut her off from her rare old contacts, a language she spoke fluently but whose accent she couldn't quite grasp...
Everything seemed enormous, and she felt like she was disappearing into this American excess: everything in abundance, but never enough time for anything.

It was there, lost, that she had met Azzi—well, not really, but almost, more like meeting again, or finally being interested.

She was her table neighbor in "accounting", a subject Elena hated with all her soul, and which hated her just as much. The English terms got mixed up in her head and she wasted more time translating everything, trying to understand the language and the form, to succeed in understanding the substance. And then the calculations... she hated them, she got lost in other thoughts and forgot the formulas, the results... in short, a subject she didn't like.
Azzi also hated accounting, but she was a little better at it than Elena. At first, she had tried to help the Frenchwoman, but at that time, she had withdrawn into herself, convinced that it was only temporary, so she had said nothing and had rejected the other woman's attempts.

When Elena realized she was alone on the American continent and that no one would come for her, that she could no longer return home, her world collapsed.
And Azzi had reached out to her. Without judgment, without asking why she'd avoided her for two months. She'd helped her with the exercises, talked to her without rushing, and most importantly, most importantly, she hadn't asked her any questions.

It had been a long time.
Elena was solitary and withdrawn. She had accepted help with accounting, with simple little words, raised eyebrows, and pointed fingers. Few words, always few. She almost never used her voice, except to answer questions, but she almost never initiated conversations herself.
It didn't matter so much to Azzi; she spoke enough for two, and what better way to learn the language than to hear it spoken? Everyone spoke English to Elena, but no one made conversation with her. It was always complicated words, precise vocabulary: accounting, administrative, documents to fill out, lectures to take...

At first, Elena didn't listen to her, persisting as if hoping to be told it was a joke and that she was going to go home. Then, around October, when that prospect had really faded, when she knew she wouldn't be going home for Christmas, Elena had paid a little more attention to Azzi's words.