I know. It gets easier; I promise.
“I like our new housekeeper,” I told her. “She’s intense, but she’s been super nice to me. She helps me with my French, and she worries about my safety and stuff.” I thought Mom would appreciate knowing that. I told her about my date with Nick at Le Shopping and the shoe in the fridge when I got home. The air around me eddied, like Mom was chuckling. Smiling, I shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot. If you sat on these church chairs for too long, your butt fell asleep.
“I haven’t told Dad about Madame Dupuy’s vampire thing,” I said abruptly, sliding the pendant back and forth on the chain. Thezing-zingsounded loud in the silent church.
The important thing is that she wants to keep you safe.The words formed in my head. I sat there a while longer, waiting to see if she’d say anything else, but there was only silence.
“Bye, Mom,” I said at last, getting up and shaking out my legs. “Thanks.”
I walked out the doors and paused, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the sun. Littles shrieked as they played tag in the park across the street, and a painting on its gate caught my eye. I crossed over for a closer look. A little-kid pigeon, holding its mother’s wing, waved at me. Amazing. I’d have to tell Nick that Le Bec had put a piece up in our neighborhood.
Chapter 7
Eleven Weeks Ago
Back before Lily and Mina had persuaded me to join them on debate team (“Please,” Lily begged, “we are suffering a criminal lack of estrogen on the team. You have to join so we won’t be the only girls”), before I spent all my free time on research and practice debates, I used to do a lot of printmaking. I liked it because you don’t have to be a great illustrator to make interesting art. We’d learned linocut and silk screen in art class, and then I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole, watching hours of printmaking tutorials. I learned how to do stencils and monotypes, gelli prints, cyanotypes, and drypoint, but collagraphy fascinated me. I liked its immediacy and portability. You could take a piece of cardboard and a glue stick, find some interesting textures and shapes—leaves, window screen, string, cardstock cutouts—glue them to the cardboard, ink it up, and pull prints. Cleanup was minimal,unlike screen printing. Collagraphy was incredibly flexible, too. I could make a plate, pull a print, add more elements to the plate, pull another print, and keep doing it until I got a keeper. With most other forms of printmaking, you had to make a completely new plate if you wanted to change something in the image. I loved how every print was a reflection of a moment and a place. I could be intentional with it, too, cutting out shapes or letters to make posters or T-shirts.
So when I woke up Saturday morning with the image of a croissant surrounded by the words “Epic Pastry Quest” lingering in my head, I decided to make team tees for us. Martine had made a spreadsheet—complete with checkboxes—of pastries and the addresses of their pâtisseries, along with meetup dates and times. Noor had drawn a map of our destinations and illustrated each stop with its corresponding pastry. It was a big, coordinated campaign, and it required T-shirts. We were meeting up later that afternoon, after Noor closed her caricature stand, for the first stop on our quest: the réligieuse. Nick came over after his Saturday-morning school session to help me with homework and ended up helping me with the printing, too, sliding the shirts over a piece of cardboard to prevent wrinkles and print-through. He held each shirt steady while I inked the plate with croissant-colored ink, placed it, and burnished it down. When I pulled the plate off the first one, he looked at me, his mouth open in amazement. “You continue to be magical, mademoiselle. I am awestruck by your hidden skills.”
I smiled at him, delighted. “It’s not really magic. I just have the knowing of the process.”
“The knowing of the processisthe magic. And the doing of the process.” I promised him I’d bring him back a réligieuse. “Two,” he said. “One for printmaking help and one for homework help.”
—
“They tiedthe box up with an actual ribbon,” I said, holding up the small white box that contained Nick’s pastries. The shopkeeper at Vanille et Chocolat had wound magenta ribbon around it, dividing it into four quadrants, and then secured the bunny-ears bow on top so you could use it for a handle. We were walking to the Métro. The réligieuses had been heavenly, and then it had felt so special when they’d wrapped up my to-go order like a present.
Martine gave me a puzzled look. “Of course they did. That is how you take pastries home.”
I laughed. “In Portland, you get an environmentally friendly brown cardboard box, but nobody does it up with ribbon and makes it festive. Portland says,It’s just food—fuel for the next protest march. Make it sustainable, sure, but no need to get fancy.Paris says,I beg to differ. Nice things should seem like a celebration.Paris knows that sometimes the only thing standing between you and the abyss is the pretty ribbon on the pastry box.”
Martine laughed. “You sound very French.”
“I think I’ve found where I belong.” I looked around at the street crowded with people. “You know, I’ve always thought Portland was a good place to live—green, close to the ocean, close to nature—so it’s a little weird how hard I’ve fallen for this place. It’s so relentlessly urban. But there’sa different future here for me than I’d have in Portland. And I think the Paris future is the one I want. Not to get away from people and city life, but to be at the vital center of it. I want to be where things happen. I want tomakethings happen.”
“And you want those things to be embellished with a pretty bow, yes?” Noor’s mouth quirked with a smile.
“Yes, I do, now that I know it’s an option. I feel bad, though.” I pointed at the rolled-up T-shirt she was carrying. “I should have put it in a pretty bag or at least tied a ribbon around it. I’ll have to remember that presentation standards are higher here.”
She laughed. “It is enough that you made them yourself.”
“I wish I could draw,” Martine said. “You and Noor create beautiful things. I just make boring spreadsheets.”
“That spreadsheet is a thing of beauty,” I informed her. “And I have seen many a spreadsheet. I love your information hierarchy and how natural it feels. I love the checkboxes. I love the way you use color to group information. I love your font—so elegant and readable. And the hyperlinks to explanations of each pastry are genius.” She smiled. “Also? If you want to make fun art, you don’t need to draw. This kind of printmaking”—I pointed at her shirt—“is super friendly to all art-skill levels. It doesn’t care if you don’t draw. You just find some interesting textures, glue them to a piece of cardboard, ink it, and print it. Voilà—art.”
“Can you show me?”
“Absolutely.”
“I think Youssef would enjoy it also.”
“I bet Nick would, too. We could do a workshop. Noor?Do you want to take a break from making fabulous street art and make fabulous collagraphs?”
“I would love to.” The street was getting crowded, and we drew closer together. I concentrated on being a tank.
“Great. When should we—” Suddenly I was grabbed and wrenched sideways. It happened so fast that it took me a couple of seconds to realize a hooded figure was grasping my arm so hard it hurt and pulling me away from my friends. I made a startled little “Oh!” and Noor turned her head.
“Tosh!” she cried, and reached out for me, grabbing my free hand with both of hers. Martine reached for me as well. I stumbled on uneven pavement and fell to my knees, breaking my attacker’s grip. Tosh and Martine helped me up.
