One Paris Summer (Blink) (12 page)

They had a stare-off for a few moments before Thomas took a step away from me. She gave me a triumphant smile.

She’d told her friends to stay away from me. It didn’t require much of a mental leap to figure out that she’d told them to be mean to me too.

I’d had my share of encounters with bullies, and I’d never had a problem standing up for myself. But no one had ever hated me this much—and for no real reason. It made it worse that there was nothing I could do to escape her. At least not for the next seven weeks.

I was living in hell.

We continued on. If I thought the previous tunnels were long, these seemed to stretch on for an eternity. How many different ways could you stack bones?
Human
bones. It seemed disrespectful and morbid. Yet we kept trudging onward, passing through tunnel after tunnel until the tunnel we were in bended and doubled back.

We came to an altar built into the wall at a turn in the path, and the group stopped to read the words.

“This isn’t French,” Eric said. “I think it’s Latin.”

Eric and Dane had taken two years of Latin in our private school, so our little group waited—surrounded by bones—as they tried to read the inscription. Camille and Marine had wandered around the corner, out of view, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one eager for her to leave us. After the reprimand Thomas had received from her earlier, I was
shocked to see him make a beeline for me, leaving a grumpy-looking Mathieu with Julien.

“Are you feeling better about this place?”

I studied his face, sure he was up to some kind of trick, but I only saw friendliness. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances. “Won’t you get into trouble for talking to me?”

A sheepish look washed over his face. “Camille . . .”

“Yeah.
Camille
.”

Her gaze lasered in on me as she rounded the corner. “Did you call me,
baby sister
?”

Why had I forgotten that stone echoed? I hadn’t exactly been whispering.

“I was just mentioning to Thomas that I saw an amazing resemblance between you and this face right here.” I pointed to a random skull behind me. “Vacant stare, hollow cheeks. Empty head. It’s like the spitting image of you.” The southern drawl I’d picked up in Charleston grew thicker with my insult. Then, like the good Southern girl I’d become, I couldn’t help adding, “Bless your heart.”

Eric stared at me in surprise, but Dane laughed. “Good one, Soph.”

I ignored both of them and walked past her. As soon as I got out of this literal tomb, I wanted to get as far away from Camille and Dane as possible. Camille for obvious reasons and Dane because the guy I’d gotten to know over the last few days was not someone who interested me. The crash and burn of that dream was almost too much to bear when heaped onto the pile of everything else.

The group caught up to me. I caught a glimpse of Thomas, and he gave me a grin of approval. At least someone was on my side. The scowl Mathieu was giving him implied that
he
certainly wasn’t. And that disappointed me more than I wanted it to.

Julien moved in front of me and turned around, walking backward. “I dare you to touch one of the bones.”

His challenge shocked me. He’d rarely talked to me at all, so where had this come from? But then I caught Camille and Marine out of the corner of my eye, giggling.

I shook my head in disbelief. “No. Why would I touch the bones?”

“To prove you’re not scared.”

“What are we, preschoolers? They’re the bones of
dead people
. Why would I want to touch them?”

Marine laughed and said something in French to Camille. Sarah looked slightly horrified.

Julien shot a glance to his sister, then back at me. “Touch one, Sophie.” He reached his hand to the top of the dry-stacked heap, his hand hovering over a pile of what looked like arm bones.

Dane laughed. “Do it, Sophie.”

Eric’s hands fisted at his side. “Cut it out, Dane.”

Dane turned to my brother. “What? You yourself said she’s scared of everything. This is her chance to prove herself.”

I turned to stare at Eric in disbelief.

His eyes widened. “Sophie, I didn’t mean it like that. I—”

“Catch!” Julien shouted.

I shrieked in horror. An arm bone was flying in the air, coming straight for me.

I BACKED UP
, screaming, then bumped into the wall of bones behind me. The bone hit me in the chest, and I screamed again.

“Sophie!” Eric shouted and lunged for me.

A security guard rounded the corner and skidded to a halt, his gaze dropping to the bone at my feet. Then he started a scary tirade.

I watched him in horror, tears prickling my eyes. “What’s he saying?” I asked Eric, trying to keep my rising terror at bay.

“I don’t know. He’s talking too fast.” He sounded worried, and for some reason I felt better knowing he was just as scared as I was.

Camille moved toward the guard, pointing back at me.

“What’s
she
saying?”

His jaw set. “Nothing good.”

They continued the exchange before Camille spun around and addressed me with the fakest nice smile I’d ever seen. “I explained to the guard that you didn’t realize you couldn’t touch the bones. You picked up one and then dropped it at your feet and screamed. He’s agreed to let you go, but you have to leave right now.” Her smile widened. “He’ll escort you out.”

Eric was furious. “That’s not what hap—”

“This was an
accident
,” Camille stressed. “They have punishments for intentional misuse of the bones.”

Eric and Camille glared at each other for several seconds, a stepsibling stare-down. Eric backed down first, but he did so with a loud grunt.

“Fine,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go, Sophie.”

“Hey,” Dane said. “We’re not done yet, and you have to take me to see your dad. He’s giving me a tour of his church.”

Eric’s scowl darkened.

“You stay,” I said. “I’m not going to Sainte-Chapelle.” All I wanted was to go back home . . . but I had no home. There was no place I could go in this unfamiliar city that would feel like a refuge.

Eric’s face hardened. “You can’t go on your own.”

His statement only reminded me of what he’d said to Dane, about me being afraid of everything. And while there was undeniably some truth to what he’d said, his words still hurt. “You showed me how to take the train. I can find my way home.”

“Sophie.”

“I don’t
want
you to come, Eric.” I sounded hateful, but I was still pissed. “Give me the key.”

The guard spoke again, sounding angry.

“Mathieu can go with her,” Camille said, turning her attention toward him. “The paperwork
Maman
signed is on her desk in an envelope with your name on it. You can pick it up while you’re there.”

Mathieu’s startled gaze landed on me.

“Fine,” I said, reaching my hand out to my brother. “The key. Now.”

Marine snickered as Eric pulled the lanyard over his head and handed it to me. “Sophie, let me come—”

I turned my back and walked toward the guard.

“You better take care of my sister,” Eric sneered, presumably to Mathieu.

But Mathieu didn’t answer. He fell into step behind me as the guard walked in front of us, sending us occasional looks of disapproval. Perhaps he wanted me to look more contrite, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Once he led us to the surface—up a million and a half circular stairs—he lectured both of us in French, then turned around and left.

I pushed out a breath. For someone who rarely got into trouble, I seemed to be finding a lot of it in this city. “Do I want to know what he said?”

His brow lowered. “I hope you hadn’t planned on the catacombs again soon.”

“Not a chance.” I spun around, ready to cross the street to the train station, only to realize we were someplace other than where we went in. I sucked in a breath, trying not to panic.

I had a map.

On one of the days I’d stayed in the apartment, Eric had brought me a paper map with the streets and subway stations. “In case you decide to go somewhere around here while we’re gone. Then you can find your way back.” He’d put a star on the map to pinpoint the location of our apartment.

I dug it out of my bag and opened it up, groaning when I realized it wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. I had to know where I was to figure out how to get back.

“I can find the nearest Metro stop,” Mathieu said, grimacing at the large map I had unfolded. The middle kept sagging, but I tried to flick it back open.

“You go ahead,” I said in a snotty tone. His attitude in the catacombs had made it very clear what he thought of me. “I want to find my own way.”

He sucked in a breath and forced patience covered his face. “
You
have the key, and I have no desire to wait outside of Camille’s apartment building for the two hours it will take you to get back. If you’re even back by then. I’ll just stay with you.”

“Suit yourself.”

Confusion wavered in his eyes and he looked down at his jeans and T-shirt. “Why do I need a suit?”

If I hadn’t been so pissed, I would have laughed. “It’s an American thing. It means do whatever you want.”

“If I was doing whatever I wanted, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“That makes two of us.” He’d made it pretty clear he didn’t like me, so I was surprised that his words hurt so much. Maybe it was because I was still hanging on to the memory of our first two meetings. But that boy no longer existed for me. Camille had made sure of that.

“I just need to figure out where I am,” I muttered to myself. I’d noticed that most of the buildings on street corners were embedded with blue signs indicating the street name and the arrondissement number. The best way to figure this out would be to make my way to a corner.

Mathieu glanced around and took a few steps to the right. Was that supposed to be some kind of hint? I considered going the opposite direction, but why go out of the way just to prove a point? Besides, the direction he was heading in was obviously busier. The sign on the side of the building read
Avenue du General Lecleric
. I knew the entrance to the catacombs was on
General Lecleric
. Now, which way did I turn?

Mathieu leaned his shoulder against the building and released an exaggerated sigh.

I looked up the street on the map, then searched for the street—
Rue Remy Dumoncel
—feeling both shocked and victorious when I found it. Then I looked for the circled M. “Mouton Douvernet,” I said, proud of myself. It was on the 4 line, which was the line we’d taken to get to the entrance of the catacombs. I just had to take it to Saint-Michel station and get on the RER C.

I hated that station.

Mathieu grimaced at my pronunciation. “It’s
Moo-tahn Do-vernay
,” he said. “The
T
is silent.”

“That’s stupid,” I said, folding my map and stuffing it back into my bag. “Just about every freaking letter at the end of a word is silent here.”

“And yet millions of French-speaking people have no problem with it. English is full of nonsense words. Why does the word
colonel
contain no
R
s?”

I ignored him and took off in the direction of the Metro station. He fell in step beside me. We walked in silence, and I would have walked past the station if Mathieu hadn’t stopped at a street corner, waiting for the light to change so he could cross to the other side of the street. I tried to make it look like I’d meant to walk a few steps past him before I spun around and stood next to him. A slight grin tugged on the corners of his lips, and my irritation grew.

Butthead.

Thankfully I had my own tickets, so I descended the stairs ahead of him, put my ticket in the machine, grabbed it on the other side, and pushed through the turnstiles. My smugness quickly evaporated. The train went two different ways. Was I going toward
Porte de Clignancourt
or
Marie De Montrouge
?

Mathieu started to say something, but I held up my hand. “Stop!” I was set on doing this myself.

His groan didn’t sway me. I studied the map on the wall and determined I needed to go to the
Porte de Clignancourt
platform. When Mathieu followed, I felt ridiculously proud of myself. Unless he was purposely following me the wrong way to gloat. I considered asking him if I’d been correct, but I decided to just commit to my decision. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of my doubt.

The train was crowded when we got on, but I found a seat. Mathieu stood, holding the center pole. Once the train started,
I was gratified to see it was going toward
Saint-Michel
. Now I just had to find the right platform for the RER C.

I went the wrong way once we got off the train, and sure enough, Mathieu didn’t say a word.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was walking in the wrong direction?” I asked as soon as I realized my mistake.

“You insisted you knew where to go.”

I was feeling confident again until we got off the train and emerged onto the street. The Seine was on one side, the hourly cruise ships docked below. A busy street ran parallel to the sidewalk where I stood. I racked my brain, trying to remember the specific instructions to get to the apartment building, wishing I’d written them down. I was terrible with directions at home. Here, I was ten times worse.