Ian waves him off likeno problemand gamely trots inside; even he’s back a few moments later, though, shaking his head in defeat. “Sorry, dude,” he says to Gabe. “No luck. They won’t do anything without credit card and ID, I think especially since we’re young. But you guys are welcome to stay with us till it’s time to head home.”
“Thanks, Ian,” Sadie says, reaching out and patting his arm in gratitude. Gabe grumbles his agreement, stuck now with the worst of both possible worlds. I’d feel almost bad for him—normally he’s so self-reliant that I know this must chafe—if it felt like he actually wanted my sympathy.
It seems like a full night’s sleep should have taken the edge off all our various interpersonal dramas, but somehow by the time we get to the embassy the temperature among the four of us is frostier than it was at last night’s dinner. EvenSadie is uncharacteristically quiet as she sits on a bench next to Gabe in the wood-paneled waiting room, picking nervously at the ends of her long flaxen braid and sweating in yesterday’s clothes. Gabe has barely said a word all morning, especially not to me, and the last dregs of our airport argument pulse like a hangover behind my eyeballs. The faster we all can get away from each other, the better.
Once we’ve finally been belched back out onto the sidewalk I slip my hand into Ian’s, squeezing purposefully. “Let’s hang out by ourselves today, okay?” I murmur. I want to be alone with him, for things to get back to normal between us; I want the vacation I planned for so carefully back in Boston. “Just you and me.”
Ian grins at that, like possibly he was thinking something similar. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “I’d love that.”
We make a plan to meet up with Sadie and Gabe at the house again later, then take the Metro to the Musée de l’Orangerie to see Monet’sWater Lilies. Afterward we walk along the Seine, where a million stalls are set up to sell battered secondhand books and fruit and tourist tchotchkes, key chains shaped like the Eiffel Tower and tote bags bearing Mona Lisa’s lovely, inscrutable face. I lean over the stone wall overlooking the brown, brackish water, hit with a strange pang of homesickness for the Charles back in Boston.
Ian bumps my shoulder with his own, warm and affectionate. “Did you know that Paris has more libraries than any other city in the world?” he asks.
“I didn’t, in fact,” I tell him, unable to hide a smile. “But if that’s true then it’s no wonder you love it here so much.”
Ian grins back. “So what’s next?” he asks, motioning to my phone wedged in my back pocket. “Per the app, I mean.”
I open it up, flick through the schedule; I shuffled some things around this morning, trying to make up for lost time. “Top of the Eiffel Tower,” I report, and he makes a face.
“What?” I demand, more defensive than I necessarily mean to be. “What’s wrong with the Eiffel Tower?”
“I mean, nothing,” he clarifies mildly, “if you want to be elbow to elbow with every other tourist in Paris.” He shrugs. “We can totally go if you want to. It’s just a little... you know. Cliché.”
“Okay then, fancy,” I tell him, sticking my phone back in my pocket.See?I want to tell him.I can go with the flow. “What do you want to do?”
Ian’s about to reply when my stomach lets out a loud, audible growl; he laughs, raising his eyebrows. “I mean, lunch, maybe?” he asks, and I laugh. “Just, like, a wild guess.”
He ducks into a shop to pick up provisions: a hunk of soft cheese and a baguette, plus a container of delicate red strawberries and bar of expensive-looking dark chocolate for dessert. We plunk ourselves down on the grass in a small park to eat, watching a gaggle of kids riding a menagerie of intricately painted carousel animals, a cheetah and an elephant and even a dolphin. Hundreds of tiny mirrored tiles catch the sunlight as tinkling, old-fashioned music fills the air.
“Back in Star Lake they do a carnival every summer,” I hear myself say, the force of the memory knocking me back a little, like I’ve lowered some invisible grate: the smell of funnel cake and the noisy hum of the generators, the squeal of kids barreling down the Fun Slide on burlap sacks. “Everybody in town turns out, it’s a whole big thing. This was the first year I missed it in...” I trail off, thinking about it. “Ever, actually.”
Ian raises his eyebrows, spreading cheese onto a hunk of bread with a plastic knife. “So it wasn’talwaysbad then,” he points out. “Star Lake, I mean.”
“I never said it was always bad!” I protest. “It’s nice, really. It was inTravel and Leisurethis year actually, it’s one of the hippest getaways in the Northeast.” I look at him for a moment, hesitating, all the fear and shame and trepidation from the last couple of years conspiring to keep me from saying anything else about it. Then I take a deep breath and forge ahead.
“All right,” I say finally, wiping my suddenly sweaty palms on my thighs. “You really want to know the deal about Star Lake?”
Ian sets his bread down. “Yeah,” he tells me. “I really do.”
“Okay,” I begin, before I can talk myself out of it. “So basically what happened is that I got kind of mean-girled there the last couple of years. Like, bullied, I guess is the word, although that always makes me think of a shrimpy kidgetting shoved into a locker or something, like you were saying yesterday. And that’s not what it was like.”
Ian nods. “Whatwasit like?” he asks.
“It was just... a few people trying to make sure I knew they didn’t like me,” I explain with an embarrassed shrug. “And guess what: I definitely knew. I got my car keyed. They egged my mom’s house right when I first got back from school.”
“Seriously?” He grimaces. “That must have been awful. And also, like, really smelly.”
“I mean, it did not smell good, no,” I admit, smiling a little. “Don’t get me wrong, a lot of it was my fault. I made things way harder for myself in a lot of ways—same as Sadie was saying about Sabrina Hudson last night, which is probably why I got so worked up about it. But it still really, really sucked.”
“Yeah,” Ian says quietly. “I bet.”
I let a breath out, slow and careful: my heart is beating harder even telling him this much, my voice shakier than it normally is. “So anyway,” I continue, “all of that is to say that I’ve just got a lot of bad memories around Star Lake. And every time I thought about going back there, or especially bringing you with me, it just felt, like, complicated and yucky and more trouble than it was worth.” I smile cautiously. “I like how I am in Boston, you know? I like how you think of me. I didn’t want to ruin that.”
“Okay,” Ian says, looking puzzled. “I kind of don’t get it,though. You thought I wouldn’t like you anymore because you got bullied back in your hometown?”
“No, I thought you wouldn’t like me anymore because—” I break off midsentence, adrenaline surging as suddenly as if I’d driven right off the road. Even now—no,especiallynow—there’s no way I can tell him the entire truth. As recently as a few days ago I probably could have come all the way clean, could have explained about my past while feeling reasonably confident it would stay there. But I threw that chance away forever the moment I lied to him about Gabe.
“I thought you wouldn’t like me because I was a mess,” I hedge finally, tearing the end of the baguette into crumbs instead of looking at him. The regret is physical, copper-bitter at the back of my mouth. “The kind of person who made the same mistakes over and over, you know? Who wasn’t careful.”
