The Casquette Girls
Read The Casquette Girls Online
Authors: Alys Arden
The Casquette Girls
Copyright © 2012, 2013 Alys Arden
Published by: fortheARTofit Publishing
Cover Design: Lucas Stoffel & Alys Arden
Cover Photo: Christina Deare
Map Illustration: Hellvis
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9897577-2-0
No part of this book may be produced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including copying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 11 Absinthe vs. Wheatgrass
Chapter 13 The Unexpected Muse
Chapter 17 Downtown Boys, pt 1
Chapter 18 Downtown Boys, pt 2
Chapter 19 La Fille à La Cassette
Chapter 21 Knowledge, Beauty, and Metal
Chapter 23 A Whirlwind Romance
Chapter 25 Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome
Chapter 37 Artemisia Absinthium
Chapter 40 Night of La Fée Verte
Chapter 41 Plight of La Fée Verte
Chapter 42 Flight of La Fée Verte
Chapter 43 La Fin de la Fée Verte
Chapter 44 Mourning of the Casquette Girls
This book is dedicated to the people of New Orleans – past, present and future. To the people who inspired the myths and the legends, to the people who continue to tell them, and to the people who continue to believe them.
Which ones are true?
Well, that depends on what
you
believe in.
“The city where imagination takes precedent over fact.”
William Faulkner
October 9
th
The day had finally come.
The feelin
g
coursed through my head, my chest, my stomach – until the tips of my fingers tingled, as if the sensation were trying to escape the confines of my nervous system.
My father and I were finally on our way home.
Trying not to let the anticipation drive me crazy, I leaned back in the passenger seat and took deep breaths, inhaling the smells of worn black leather and bubble gum. The combination always reminded me of sitting in the front seat as a child. I had always been up for a ride in my father’s prized possession because I knew there would be a sugary pink stick waiting for me in the glove box.
The city wasn’t exactly encouraging people to come home yet, but my father had always been a bit of a rebel. This fact, topped with endless nights of me begging and pleading,
had finally made those four little words slip out of his mouth: “Okay, let’s go home.”
As soon as he caved, I fled the Parisian boarding school my French mother had dumped me in while my father and I were “displaced.” She didn’t tell me goodbye. And I never looked back.
I wonder if she even knows that I left?
I landed in Miami late last night, and we wer
e
on the road by six this morning. I didn’t want to give my father the chance to renege.
Ten hours later, we were still purring down the interstate in his 1981 BMW.
But I didn’t mind the long drive. I had never been away from my father for that long. I had never been away from New Orleans for that long. It felt like years since the mandatory evacuation, but in reality it had only been two months – two months, two days, and nine hours since the Storm had touched ground.
The Storm had been the largest hurricane in the history of the United States. Scientists were still debating whether it should even be considered a hurricane because it had smashed all previous parameters used for classification. They didn’t even name it. Everyone simply referred to it as “the Storm.”
Economists were predicting it would end up being the greatest natural disaster in the Western world, and there were even rumors flying around that the U.S. federal government was considering constituting the area uninhabitable and not rebuilding the city. That idea was incomprehensible to me.
The media was all over the place about the devastation. We had heard such conflicting stories that there was really no telling what would be awaiting us (or not awaiting us) upon our arrival. Had our home been damaged, flooded, ransacked, robbed – or any combination of those things? Was it now just rotting away? I fiddled with the sun-shaped charm hanging from the silver necklace that nearly reached my waist, wrapping and unwrapping the thin chain around my fingers.
My phone buzzed.
Brooke 5:12 p.m.
Are you close? Text me as soon as you get home. I want to know everything, ASAP! xoxo
I quickly pecked,
Adele 5:13 p.m.
I will! How is La La land? <3
I didn’t exactly have a laundry list of close friends, but Brooke Jones and I had been attached at the hip since the second grade. The Joneses had been stuck in Los Angeles since the evacuation, and Brooke was freaking out on a daily basis because her parents were adjusting to the West Coast lifestyle at an alarming rate. Even the
thought
that her parents might permanently relocate to California made me cringe.
“Waffle House?” my father asked as we sped past the Alabama
State line into Mississippi. He proceeded down the exit ramp before I could respond.
* * *
A bell dinged when I opened the door of the infamous southern chain, causing all the employees to shout a welcome without looking up from what they were doing. My father headed to the bathroom, and I jumped into a booth, grabbing a napkin to wipe pancake-syrup residue off the table.
“I’ll be with ya in a second, darlin’,” a waitress yelled from across the narrow diner.
Johnny Cash blared on the jukebox, the air reeked of grease, and the fluorescent bulb in the overhead light gave everything a sickly tint. I couldn’t help but chuckle thinking about the stark contrast of this scene compared to my life just two nights ago: sitting in a café on the
Champs-Élysées,
eating a
Crêpe Suzette
with my mother. Well,
I
had been eating a
crêpe
. She would never have allowed herself to eat something as appalling as sugar.
Mid-chuckle, my eyes caught the gaze of a guy sitting solo in a booth across the aisle, slowly stirring a cup of coffee. Our eyes locked momentarily, and my cheeks started to burn. I let my long waves of espresso-colored hair fall in front of my face and grabbed a menu so I could pretend to focus on something. I tried to recall the last time I’d taken a shower – I'd been in transit for more than twenty-four hours at this point.
Oof.
I lifted one eye to find him still looking intensely at me.
He was probably a little older than me… and far too sophisticated to be sitting in this particular establishment among the tall hairdos and flip-flops. His black leather jacket was not the biker kind you might find in a diner in the Deep South – it was softer-looking, more fashionable. Possibly custom made. The jacket, along with his dark, slicked hair, made him appear part-James Dean, part-
Italian Vogu
e
.
For a split second I forgot where I was, as if stuck in some kind of Paris-Mississippi-time-continuum hiccup.
When I realized I was staring at him, I became instantly flustered. His eyes didn’t move, but the corners of his mouth slowly spread upward into an innocent smile.
Or maybe it was deceptively innocent
? Just
as my heart began to speed up at the prospect of finding out, my fork suddenly slid across the table, flew halfway across the room, and clanked against his ceramic mug. I had been so caught up in the moment I hadn’t even noticed myself flick it.
“Sorry!” I covered my face, mortified, and considered crawling underneath the table.
“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll bring ya a new one,” a waitress yelled.
As if I was worried about the fork. I’d nearly taken out the eye of the hottest guy within a fifty-mile radius.
I finally mustered the courage to raise my head and try to catch another glimpse of him, but all I saw was his mug on top of a ten-dollar bill. When I realized I’d been hiding my gaze from no one, I became even more embarrassed.
Of course he ran. I am obviously hazardou
s
.
“You okay?” my father asked as he slid across the orange leather into the booth.
“Yep, the jet lag must have just kicked in,” I blurted out, “but I’m super excited for cheesy eggs.”
“I thought you hated American cheese?” he asked suspiciously. “You always called it plastic.”
“Yeah, well, I guess something becomes more desirable when you can’t have it.” There were certainly no American-cheese-like products in France.
My heart rate began to drop back to a normal rhythm.
We ordered and then sat in silence while we waited for our food. My father turned his head to stare out the window. I knew he was too nervous to ask me about Paris, and I was not readily volunteering up any information. It was weird to spend your entire life with someone, be suddenly separated for two months, and then reunite. It felt strange that it felt strange being together.