CLAIRE
PARIS
Six Years Earlier
Impatient knocks bang on my door while I’m brushing my teeth. I still, spit, and pad over to the door. After a quick peek through the peephole, I flip the lock and let the hinges swing wide.
Three disappointed faces stare at me.
“Really, Caldwell?” Mackenzie asks, hand on one hip.
“What?” I reply weakly.
“You can’t wearthat”—Lucy’s finger draws an imaginary circle around the oversized, holey Lincoln University T-shirt that falls almost to my knees—“out clubbing inParis.”
“Or, like, anywhere,” Mackenzie adds, equally aghast.
“Oh.” I squeeze the toothbrush handle tighter. “Well, I wasn’t sure if…”
Their plan to party tonight was hatched during dinner. I didn’t know if, one, I was invited to join them and, two, if I should join them.
My mom jokes that I’ve been parenting her ever since I arrived on January 5—her exact due date. Others have putit less kindly—called me rigid or controlling or bland. But following rules landed me here. In France, as one of the youngest members of the national soccer team. By far the most excitement in my ordinary twenty-one years on this planet. And an opportunity with no rule book to follow. Less than 0.0013% of people alive are Olympians. It’s not exactly a universal experience.
“We’re not taking no for an answer,” Gemma says, using my uncertainty as an opportunity to squeeze past me and enter my small room.
Lucy agrees with an emphatic nod. “We’re a team; we stick together.”
I doubt clubbing as a group is what our head coach meant when he expressed that sentiment earlier. I’m not really being offered a choice though, and a large part of me is relieved by it. If there was ever a time to get swept up in the current of spontaneity, the Paris Olympics are it.
“Where are the rest of your clothes?” Gemma asks, sifting through the contents of my suitcase. She drops a pair of athletic shorts atop a jean pair and aims an accusing look my way, like she already knows the answer.
“Uh, that’s all I packed,” I confirm.
Gemma snaps her fingers. “Mackenzie?”
“On it,” Mackenzie replies, darting out of my room.
“Are you done with that?” Lucy asks, nodding at the dripping toothbrush I’m still holding in my right hand.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Good. I’ll take that”—she plucks the toothbrush out of my hand—“so Gemma can do your makeup.”
By the time my makeover ends, my pores are invisible, and I’m wearing a dress I won’t be able to sit down in. I barely recognize the reflection staring back at me. My usual idea of dressing up is mascara and lip balm.
“Oh là là!” Lucy declares, pretending to fan herself.
I roll my eyes at her dramatics, but I’m secretly pleased. I’m also tipsy on the intoxicating cocktail of inclusion.Coolinclusion, specifically. I’ve been on teams with plenty of “popular” girls over the years, and we rarely exchanged words outside of practice.Responsibleandfundon’t easily coexist, especially in the cliques of high school and college.
“Let’s go!” Gemma declares, striding for the door. “I already ordered an Uber.”
I double-check I have my phone, euros, and the badge needed to get back into the building, then follow my teammates down the hallway.
Forty-five minutes later, we’re waved from our spot in line inside a dimly lit club.
It’s sophisticated. The air is cool and scented with expensive perfume. The first men I spot are wearing slacks and button-downs. A woman, wearing a shimmering silk dress, brushes past us, pulling a cigarette out of a sleek purse as she steps outside.
Nothing is similar to Watering Hole—the off-campus bar I’ve only been to twice since my twenty-first birthday, famous for its cheap beer and temperamental jukebox that rotates through a small selection of ’80s hits.
