Oh my. He’s English.
“Er. Does Mer live here?”
Seriously, I don’t know any American girl who can resist an English accent.
The boy clears his throat. “Meredith Chevalier? Tal girl? Big, curly hair?” Then he looks at me like I’m crazy or half deaf, like my Nanna Oliphant. Nanna just smiles and shakes her head whenever I ask, “What kind of salad dressing would you like?” or “Where did you put Granddad’s false teeth?”
“I’m sorry.” He takes the smal est step away from me. “You were going to bed.”
“Yes! Meredith lives there. I’ve just spent two hours with her.” I announce this proudly like my brother, Seany, whenever he finds something disgusting in the yard. “I’m Anna! I’m new here!” Oh God. What. Is with.The scary enthusiasm? My cheeks catch fire, and it’s all so humiliating.
The beautiful boy gives an amused grin. His teeth are lovely—straight on top and crooked on the bottom, with a touch of overbite. I’m a sucker for smiles like this, due to my own lack of orthodontia. I have a gap between my front teeth the size of a raisin.
“Étienne,” he says. “I live one floor up.”
“I live here.” I point dumbly at my room while my mind whirs: French name, English accent, American school. Anna confused.
He raps twice on Meredith’s door. “Wel . I’l see you around then, Anna.”
Eh-t-yen says my name like this: Ah-na.
My heart thump thump thumps in my chest.
Meredith opens her door. “St. Clair!” she shrieks. She’s stil on the phone. They laugh and hug and talk over each other. “Come in! How was your flight?
When’d you get here? Have you seen Josh? Mom, I’ve gotta go.”
Meredith’s phone and door snap shut simultaneously.
I fumble with the key on my necklace. Two girls in matching pink bathrobes strut behind me, giggling and gossiping. A crowd of guys across the hall snicker and catcal . Meredith and her friend laugh through the thin wal s. My heart sinks, and my stomach tightens back up.
I’m stil the new girl. I’m stil alone.
Chapter three
The next morning, I consider stopping by Meredith’s, but I chicken out and walk to breakfast by myself. At least I know where the cafeteria is (Day Two: Life Skil s Seminars). I double-check for my meal card and pop open my Hel o Kitty umbrel a. It’s drizzling. The weather doesn’t give a crap that it’s my first day of school.
I cross the road with a group of chattering students.They don’t notice me, but together we dodge the puddles. An automobile, smal enough to be one of my brother’s toys, whizzes past and sprays a girl in glasses. She swears, and her friends tease her.
I drop behind.
The city is pearl gray.The overcast sky and the stone buildings emit the same cold elegance, but ahead of me, the Panthéon shimmers. Its massive dome and impressive columns rise up to crown the top of the neighborhood. Every time I see it, it’s difficult to pul away. It’s as if it were stolen from ancient Rome or, at the very least, Capitol Hil . Nothing I should be able to view from a classroom window.
I don’t know its purpose, but I assume someone will tell me soon.
My new neighborhood is the Latin Quarter, or the fifth arrondissement. According to my pocket dictionary, that means district, and the buildings in my arrondissement blend one into another, curving around corners with the sumptuousness of wedding cakes.The sidewalks are crowded with students and tourists, and they’re lined with identical benches and ornate lampposts, bushy trees ringed in metal grates, Gothic cathedrals and tiny crêperies, postcard racks, and curlicue wrought iron balconies.
If this were a vacation, I’m sure I’d be charmed. I’d buy an Eiffel Tower key chain, take pictures of the cobblestones, and order a platter of escargot. But I’m not on vacation. I am here to live, and I feel small.
The School of America’s main building is only a two-minute walk from Résidence Lambert, the junior and senior dormitory. The entrance is through a grand archway, set back in a courtyard with manicured trees. Geraniums and ivy trail down from window boxes on each floor, and majestic lion’s heads are carved into the center of the dark green doors, which are three times my height. On either side of the doors hangs a red, white, and blue flag—one American, the other French.
It looks like a film set. A Little Princess, if it took place in Paris. How can such a school real y exist? And how is it possible that I’m enrol ed? My father is insane to believe I belong here. I’m struggling to close my umbrel a and nudge open one of the heavy wooden doors with my butt, when a preppy guy with faux-surfer hair barges past. He smacks into my umbrel a and then shoots me the stink-eye as if: (1) it’s my fault he has the patience of a toddler and (2) he wasn’t already soaked from the rain.
Two-point deduction for Paris. Suck on that, Preppy Guy.
The ceiling on the first floor is impossibly high, dripping with chandeliers and frescoed with flirting nymphs and lusting satyrs. It smel s faintly of orange cleaning products and dry-erase markers. I fol ow the squeak of rubber soles toward the cafeteria. Beneath our feet is a marbled mosaic of interlocking sparrows. Mounted on the wal , at the far end of the hal , is a gilded clock that’s chiming the hour.
The whole school is as intimidating as it is impressive. It should be reserved for students with personal bodyguards and Shetland ponies, not someone who buys the majority of her wardrobe at Target.
Even though I saw it on the school tour, the cafeteria stops me dead. I used to eat lunch in a converted gymnasium that reeked of bleach and jockstraps. It had long tables with preattached benches, and paper cups and plastic straws.The hairnetted ladies who ran the cash registers served frozen pizza and frozen fries and frozen nuggets, and the soda fountains and vending machines provided the rest of my so-cal ed nourishment.