Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer: The Paris Journals

Pilar's Journal, Part 1

Pilar Sanchez is the daughter of a retired pop star and one of Colette's friends. Pilar is sweet and caring, but lacks somewhat in the confidence department. She's always found it much easier to obey her superiors than to question them. She's label-obsessed and spends much of her free time shopping -- and sneaking treats under the disapprovingly watchful eye of her image-obsessed mother. Buried beneath her seemingly shallow exterior is a passion for music -- a passion that most people will never even know is there. 

PILAR’S JOURNAL, PART 1

A slice of sunlight from the space between the curtains settled on my face. I don’t know how long it took before I woke up feeling like a thin line of my skin was being roasted.

My first thought was, If I get a sunburn, Hannah is going to make so much fun of me.

Can you get a sunburn through a window?

I tried moving to the other side of the bed, but then I couldn’t stop imagining a bright red streak across my cheek and nose, so after ten more minutes of tossing and turning, I got up and went to the bathroom. No sunburn, thank God.

I checked the schedule for the day. We didn’t have to meet in the lobby until ten, and it was only half past seven. Hannah would sleep until nine (or later -- she wasn’t big on punctuality) and Colette wouldn’t wake up until eight-thirty or so. I supposed I could get in the shower to give my hair time to dry, but if I made too much noise and woke up Hannah it would probably put her in a terrible mood for the whole day.

Well, okay. I’ve always wanted to be one of those super-efficient morning people. My mother is kind of like that -- she’s up at 5 a.m. every day, spends an hour on the elliptical, showers and gets dressed and checks her email correspondence and reads the news all before I’m finished making my way through a bowl of oatmeal in my pajamas with my eyes still half-shut.

Be like Mom, I told myself. Be like Mom.

The only problem was that I didn’t actually have any correspondence to catch up on. And I wasn’t sure if the hotel had an elliptical machine hidden away somewhere or not, but I definitely hadn’t packed workout clothes for Paris. 

I could go buy some, I thought. I pictured myself coming home from Paris five pounds lighter, telling my mother that, yes!, I’d finally had that big self-actualization moment she was always nagging me about. Thanks to world travel, I had achieved the ability to think and behave like a sophisticated adult.

Only I seriously doubted there were any stores open, selling workout clothes, before eight o’clock in the morning. And thinking about the tiny, quaint Hotel Odette, I sort of doubted they would have an exercise room anyway.

All right, without correspondence or fitness to worry about, that freed my time up for... breakfast.

I put on a pair of yoga pants (now, don’t suggest I wear those to exercise in -- these were strictly non-athletic yoga pants) and a hoodie (also non-athletic, before you ask) and some flip-flops and sneaked out past Colette, who slept flat on her back like a statue, looking both serene and awkward on the fold-out couch. 

The little cafe served a breakfast buffet, so when I walked in, the smells of the various foods crept into my head and made me feel famished. I started at the far end, intending to get myself a bowl of cereal and some skim milk, but then I passed the little platter of pastries and gave up. I took a blueberry tart and a chocolate croissant and then got myself a coffee. There were some French-speaking businessy-looking people in line behind me, and I watched as the woman balanced an apple, seven grapes, and a tiny wedge of cheese on her itty-bitty plate. Her eyes flickered to mine, which you couldn’t even tell was a plate anymore -- it just looked like a floating pair of giant desserts. I turned away before I could see the judgment on her face.