Me:…
Me:I need to tell you something
Noor:I am listening
I told her about leaving the apartment, the unhoused man, meeting Le Bec, and then my dumpster dive of shame.I didn’t leave anything out. I told her how Madame Dupuy’s silver pendant had burned me. The filigree patternbranded on the pad of my index finger still throbbed.
Noor:Can you see yourself in the mirror?
Me:I don’t think the mirror works. I almost bit that guy, and I’m craving blood
Her reply bubble pulsed for a long time, and I wondered if I should have told her.
Noor:Silver burns me, too
Me:Ugh. I’m so sorry
Me:I’m so angry at Le Bec. He acted like what he did to us was some great thing. He stole our lives
Noor:What will we do?
Me:Have you noticed it comes in waves? Like you’ll be fine and then you get a wave of vampire mode? If we could prevent those waves, I think we could manage this
If we didn’t control it, I couldn’t go back to school. I’d have to tell Dad, who’d probably think I had PTSD or something. I’d have to tell Madame Dupuy, too. That was a scary thought.
Noor:The pommade stopped the urge to eat my fingers. Maybe that would help to manage this
Me:I’m going to try it at school. If it works there, I think we could control our cravings and be normal
I’d also need to have a plan for what to do if it failed.
Knowing that Noor and I were in this battle together helped. The menthol pommade helped, thank goodness. And my friends showing up for morning break every day helped, too. I don’t know if I could have kept going to class if they hadn’t done that. With them I could be the Tosh I wanted to be: human and happy. Or at least human. Happy wasn’t always possible with Professeur Joubert. “Help,” I croaked Wednesday morning when I met them at break.
“Tough morning?” Nick asked, kissing me.
“Ugh,” I rasped. “We had to do oral presentations again. From memory. I forgot an entire paragraph and fumbled around like an idiot, trying to remember what came next. Then my voice gave out. It was disastrous.”
“You’re not an idiot,” he said. “Oral presentations in French officially suck. Even French kids hate them.” Everyone nodded.
Martine blew a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth like a beautiful dragon. “I think you need an excursion,” she said. “Something to take you outside yourself.”
Youssef smiled. “An excursion is always good.”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “We can adventure to the farthestreaches of Paris, relax on the sunny quays of the Seine, or summit Montmartre. Whatever mademoiselle desires.”
I sighed. “It sounds wonderful, but I’m still on house arrest, remember?”
“We’ll engineer a jailbreak.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Intriguing. Tell me more.”
The plan was simple and brilliant. I’d bring a note to school the following day from Dad saying I had a medical appointment Friday. “Tu sais, it is not really from your father,” Youssef said, giving me an exaggerated wink.
“Really?” I replied, deadpan, and returned his wink.
Friday morning, Madame Dupuy would walk me to school as usual. I’d wait until she was out of sight, and then, rather than going into the building, I’d casually join the morning pedestrian stream headed toward the Pont de l’Alma and meet everyone at Princess Diana’s shrine. We’d head out from there. It sounded wonderful: a whole morning with my friends. I hesitated, though. If I got caught, Dad would yank me out of school and not let me out of my room till I was eighty. But I liked that tickle of risk. It made me feel alive. “Okay,” I whispered.
Nick did a fist pump. “Where do you want to go?”
