We live in the 11th arrondissement, which is the most densely populated urban neighborhood not just in Paris but in all of Europe. I know because I looked it up. Grabbing the handlebars of my bike, I push open the wooden door that leads out onto the bustling street. The barrage of sound that hits my ears is akin to waking up one morning and finding that someone has set up a carnival outside your bedroom door. On the street I pedal full tilt toward the high school. Behind me, the whole building complex feels as though it was built in far earlier times, like when Napoleon Bonaparte was out conquering foreign lands and dealing with his own complex.
So far, Paris has been like every other big city in the world: a place full of anonymity. I’m an ant and the city is someone else’s picnic. It’s not exactly what I was hoping for when I left New York. I’m not sure what I was expecting beyond making some real friends for once in my life, but I was hoping to stand out more. Even though the tourist season is winding down, the student population is big enough that I still blend in. You know, when I’m not wearing a milk-stained T-shirt with the words American Idiot plastered in the middle of it. The reason I packed this shirt was out of a sense of ironic rebellion. Now it just seems cliché.
In any case, the city itself is one big history lesson in architecture and urban planning. There’s no such thing as a run-down building, at least not that I’ve seen, and it seems like there’s an immaculately manicured park around every corner. The best, and sometimes the worst, part of the city are its smells. Any number of mouth-watering aromas from the local bakeries, pastry shops and delis contrast with the occasional open sewer grate or smell of cigarettes. Open-air market stalls crowd the sides of the already busy streets. They pop up this time every morning, but today ― even though it’s a beautiful late summer morning and the crisp air is brisk against my face ― I have to ignore them. The tree-lined streets and market stalls are nothing more than obstacles in my path, and the smells of baked goods and coffee only make me think of my empty fridge and my hunger. There’s just something about a wrong-footed start to a day that has a way of ruining my outlook. It casts a shadow of negativity on the rest of the day. Part of it is self-fulfilling prophecy, no doubt. I let the negative thoughts eat away at me. But most days I’m pretty sure it’s just fate out to ruin me.
The high school is a thirty-minute bike ride away. It’s a historic building attached to and surrounded by modern retail outlets. The contrast of the school’s elaborate ironwork and dressed masonry with the glossy glass and simple sandstone of its neighbors makes the building stand out. Like somehow, despite being there for hundreds of years, it doesn’t belong here. Cornices and consoles are adorned with wrought stone reliefs. Period cast-iron railings frame the lower portions of the windows. It seems fit more for nobility than for the sneaker-clad students who now sit in its classrooms and gather outside on the wide sidewalk.
When I arrive, I more or less throw my bike against a short metal barrier, lock it up, and race inside to my first class. I’m so late. By the time I navigate my way through the corridors and find the right room, the class is already well under way and the room is crowded with senior students. In France, they call this year terminale. Like it’s the end of the road. I try my best to sneak in quietly, but the ancient wooden door betrays me, slowly creaking at first but then slamming shut with a thudding crash. The only thing I can do is meekly give the teacher a glance and an apologetic half-smile. He nods toward the classroom without breaking his stride, signaling for me to enter, and I move to one of the few available seats at the back of the room.
In my feeble attempt to plunk down without calling further attention to myself, the chair scrapes noisily against the floor, making me drop my backpack. While fumbling to catch it, the chair topples to the floor, me with it. Crash! The eyes of everyone in the room turn toward me. Embarrassed? You bet. Even the teacher halts in mid-sentence to stare at me as girls stifle giggles. I can almost hear the sound of eyeballs rolling as I right my chair, pull down my cap, and try to become invisible by shrinking as deep as possible into the hard wooden seat. Could this day get any worse? As the attention returns to the front of the class, I glare at my traitor backpack and try to decide if I should focus all my quiet energy on taking out my laptop. I’m far too fazed for notes right now, so I take a deep breath and try to listen to the professor’s intro to psychology.
On the whiteboard are multiple textbook definitions. One in particular catches my attention: “Social Psychology: The branch of human psychology that deals with the behavior of groups and their influence on the individual.” This class would have been helpful much earlier in my life. If only there were a handbook to deal with the elaborate and confounding social rules around cliques. I could have even made do with the SparkNotes version. IRL social situations have never really been my strong suit. There’s something about the safety of a computer screen that’s been a comfort to me in my interpersonal dealings with, well, anyone. In any case, first impressions are hard to shake, so I kind of write off this class as a means of meeting any new friends. Thankfully, the rest of the morning passes without any more embarrassing moments.
By lunch hour I’m starving, so I duck into the Starbucks across the street for a sandwich and a frap before heading to the courtyard at the back of the school. On the manicured grass other students hang out, make out and fake out (soccer is the predominant sport on any given field in this city). I spread myself out under the warmth of the late summer sun, and while I’m reaching into my backpack a soccer ball knocks it out of my hands and spills my sandwich onto the ground. As I sit up, trying to salvage my food from the wreckage, a shadow falls over me. I raise a hand to shield my eyes from the sun while looking up at the backlit figure.
“Desolé,” a guy’s voice says in heavily accented French while I glance down at my mangled lunch.
“De rien. It’s nothing.”
When I pick up the ball, there’s a moment of hesitation. Tossing it over would only flaunt my lack of athleticism, so I stand up and pass it to the shadow in as manly a way as I can: firmly and surely.
“Thanks,” he says, switching to English. “Hey, aren’t you in Berger’s psych class?”
“Yeah,” I respond, surprised at being recognized. I’ve always considered myself a blend-into-the-woodwork kind of guy. Then I remember my epically embarrassing appearance in that class earlier today. Who wouldn’t have noticed me?
“I’m Josh.”
I nod. “Connor.”
He’s got that clean-cut look that you see in school brochures. Everything about him screams all-star athlete, including the blond-as-wheat hair and sky-blue eyes. He’s wearing a faded blue T-shirt with what looks like a Canadian maple leaf in the middle of a bull’s-eye. One of the guys in the group calls after him. Something about a throw-in.
“You play?” Josh asks, indicating the ball before he tosses it expertly to his friend.
“Uhh, not so much,” I stammer.
“Not your game, hey?” he says casually.
“Yeah, my games usually involve some sort of controller.”
He laughs and gestures over his shoulder at a group lounging in the shade of a tree. “Why don’t you come hang with us? I’ll introduce you to everyone — well, at least I’ll try. First days, eh? Hard to keep track of all the new names.”
I grunt noncommittally and, after gathering up my things, I follow him across the lawn. As we approach, I get my first glimpse of what looks to be a group of perfectly average American teenagers, with one exception: a girl whose natural hair color is obliterated by a blazing cherry red. When Josh rattles off names, hers is the one I remember: Madison. I can’t seem to reconcile it with her appearance. She’s got rebel written all over her. At least in my books. It’s not just the dye job, but she’s also got an eyebrow piercing and a general disregard of norms like wearing matching socks. I can’t pinpoint her looks exactly, but I know she’s multiracial by the almond shape of her eyes, the high cheekbones, the sun-kissed skin. It’s as I’m staring that I notice her hazel eyes are like a hawk’s. When they meet mine, I have to look away.
“So, where are you from?” Josh asks.
I point to my American T-shirt but immediately regret doing so as I remember the milk stain and the word Idiot next to it. Madison looks at the logo with a smirk before returning to her book. In an attempt to recover, I point to Josh’s T-shirt and say, “Let me guess, Canada?”
He grins appreciatively. I’ve met enough Canadian tourists in New York City to know they don’t actually live in igloos and punctuate all of their sentences with the word “eh.” Tempted as I am to throw around some light-hearted jibes about how they pronounce the word “about”, truth is it’s actually nice to be speaking English, and I don’t want to balls-up my first opportunity at making new friends. Instead, I plant myself on the lawn next to Madison. She’s lying on her stomach, legs stretched out behind to expose thigh-high stockings beneath a red mini kilt. One stocking is red and the other is striped black and white. By the images on the pages alone I can tell that she’s reading Lone Wolf and Cub, one of my all-time favorite graphic novels. All I want is to be able to say something clever without coming off as too much of a geek, but all I can focus on is the scent of vanilla wafting off her. While I stare at the open book, thinking and taking a bite out of my flattened sandwich, her eyes flash over me again.
“Can you read Japanese?” she asks. “Or are you just looking at the pretty pictures?”
“I’ve, um, read it in English,” I reply feebly between chews. “You’re at the part that sets up the whole story arc. It’s pretty epic. One of the most influential manga series. Ever.”
When I point to a panel, my hand brushes against hers. She stares at the point of contact like she’s going to burn me with laser vision, so I withdraw quickly. There’s a moment of awkward silence and then Josh joins us. Setting down the soccer ball by his side, he paws at the book to glance at the cover.
“Another comic?”
“It’s not a comic,” Madison corrects, flipping the page. “It’s manga. Highly influential stuff, actually.”
I don’t know if she’s making fun of me or not.
“Sorry!” he says, raising his hands in playful surrender. Something about their dynamic tells me this isn’t their first day of school together. “You know, every once in a while you could get your head out of your book to talk.”
“Connor and I were having a perfect conversation before you came along.”
“Really?” He casts a furtive look over at me. “And what were you talking about?”
“The epicness of this book,” she replies.
Still not sure.
He hesitates before following up with me. “You read comics, too?”
“It’s ... manga,” is all I can manage.
Nodding slowly, he says “Right,” drawing out the word.
“So, Madison, you must be in the L stream,” I observe.
The L stream is for all the humanities kids who opt to study a number of foreign languages. Hey, I never said it was a particularly astute observation. She flips a page, eyes focused on the book, before finally responding.
“You’re a regular Nancy Drew, aren’t you?”
Now she’s definitely making fun of me.
“She’s a linguistic genius,” Josh says.
“Shut up,” she snipes. “Just because you’re barely literate in two languages doesn’t make everyone else a genius.”
“I’m not saying everyone else is,” he insists, taking her snark in stride. “Just you.”
“Well, cut it out. You’re making Connor uncomfortable.”
I don’t argue the point. “So ... what part of Canada are you from?”
“Kind of all over the place,” he replies cryptically as he spins the ball in his hand.
Madison plucks a strand of grass and uses it as a bookmark so she can turn to me. With the midday sun above us, her skin sort of radiates a healthy honey complexion. Up close, I see her eyebrow ring has a cherry design at the end of it.
“What Josh is trying to say is that we’re army brats,” she tells me.
I grin. “Canada has an army?”
Her jaw drops in equal proportion to her eyebrows rising. “Are you for real?”
With a face-palm, Josh mutters, “Don’t get her started, Connor.”
Too late. She splutters for a little bit. Her eyelashes flutter, eyebrows knit, and she bites her glossy lower lip. I’m tempted to let her off the hook by admitting that I’m joking, but she’s kind of cute when she’s aggravated. “Have you never heard of the War of 1812? Seriously? We totally pwnd your asses.”
“Canada wasn’t even a country in 1812,” I retort.
She hesitates, her eyes scanning mine. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Smartypants.”
“I was just kidding,” I finally confess.
“You’d better be! We’re not your backwoods cousins, you know.”
“I know.”
I try to suppress a smile. Madison removes a ring from her thumb and pulls it apart. It’s some kind of a puzzle that she toys with, but I don’t want her to catch me staring again, so I focus on eating the rest of my sandwich and washing it down with the frap.
“So, what’s your story?” Josh asks, leaning back on his elbows by her side.
I shrug. “Why do I have to have a story?”
He flashes a smile of perfect teeth. “Because everyone does.”
“Oh, let me guess!” Madison cries. Those hawkish eyes of hers rake across every inch of me, and I feel my pulse quicken under her scrutiny. “You grew up in some über-posh neighborhood. Your parents are hardcore white-collar. Like, they sit on boards and rub elbows with the muckety mucks. Every once in a while they’ll check in to make sure you’re not on drugs. You’re going to an expensive private school. Girls think you’re cute but they can’t figure you out, so you’ve probably never been kissed.”
“That’s some imagination you’ve got, Madison,” I say, wondering for the first time in my life how much of an open book I am to other people.
“Prove me wrong.”
“I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan,” I start and quickly add, “in a totally average brownstone. At best, we’re upper middle class. I wasn’t cut out for public school, so my parents enrolled me in ― yes ― a private French IB school. But I’m not blue-blooded enough to associate with the celebrity and rich kids or poor enough to fit in with the kids on bursary. Everyone else is too busy climbing the social ladder to notice the likes of me. Neither of my parents came from money. They don’t know or hang out with anyone famous, and they’re way too busy with their day jobs to volunteer their free time on committees. And finally, I don’t kiss and tell.”
“How was I not right?” She looks to Josh for affirmation. “Was I not right?”
“Yes, you were right,” he acknowledges.
“I beg to differ,” I say.
“Says the silver-spoon,” she remarks while putting the ring back on, having completed the puzzle.
“Well, what’s your story?” I volley back.
“I already told you: we’re army brats.”
“That’s not a story. That’s a sentence.”
“Ugh! Fine, what do you want to know?”
“Where’d you grow up? How do you know each other? The basics. I feel like I gave you my whole life story.”
She casts me a wry look. “If that’s the whole story, your life is pretty lame.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
“Whatever,” she says. “I’m from Montreal originally. My parents have been dragging me around the planet since I was three. Because of them I’ve never lived in a city for more than a few years. So, for my seventeenth birthday I emancipated myself from my parental units. As for Josh―”
“Woah, back up a step. That’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it?”
She sits up, stowing her book away into a canvas rucksack. With her face turned away and bangs shading her eyes, I can’t tell if she’s angry or just doesn’t want to talk about it. “Not everyone gets to lead a charmed life.”
When she stands, our eyes follow her, and I know the conversation is over. Madison calls the shots. Some court, somewhere, saw fit to let her be an adult. And all we can do is play along. Getting up and collecting our own backpacks, we follow her back inside. I pause to toss my garbage in a metal trash bin, but they keep on walking, so I have to jog to catch up.
“How’d you two meet, anyway?”
Josh doesn’t get further than the word “We―” before Madison cuts him off.
“We met in Germany at the start of high school.”
Neither of them is looking at me, so I have no idea if there’s any innuendo in what she’s just said. Have they been friends since freshman year, or have they been dating since then? Side by side, they’re kind of a study in contrasts, but that doesn’t really mean anything. The saying that opposites attract had to come from somewhere, right? In any case, it doesn’t exactly matter. My Facebook relationship status has been steadfastly “single” since I opened my account. I think about asking anyway, and maybe she gets a read on me again, because she quickly redirects the conversation.
“What are you doing next weekend?”
Studying, I guess. What a lame answer, though. “I don’t really have any plans.”
“You do now,” she declares. “We’re hitting up the parade next Saturday.”
The last time I was at one of those, I was six years old and perched on my dad’s shoulders over a massive crowd, waiting for Santa to finally show up while practically freezing my toes off. Somehow I can’t reconcile that memory with the sophistication of Paris. “Parade?”
“The Paris Techno Parade?” Her tone makes me feel small.
“Um...” It’s not exactly my type of music, but I can’t help nodding agreeably. “Cool.”
She pulls a phone from her schoolbag. “Give me your digits.”
It’s going to take some getting used to her bossy personality. Maybe this is how Josh became friends or whatever with her. He had no choice. As I give her my contact info, I kind of feel that way myself. Regardless, I’m just glad to have my first break in the social scene here in Paris. It’s not like it’s going to kill me to step outside my comfort zone.
*** Just a reminder that I'll be posting two chapters each week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you simply can’t wait, you can buy the complete book and the rest of THE MAGDEBURG TRILOGY at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks, and anywhere books are sold. Your support is appreciated. Thanks for reading! ***