Stephanie Perkins: Anna and the French Kiss

My mother leaves. I am alone.

I feel it coming, but I can’t stop it.

PANIC.

They left me. My parents actually left me! IN FRANCE!

Meanwhile, Paris is oddly silent. Even the opera singer has packed it in for the night. I cannot lose it. The walls here are thinner than Band-Aids, so if I break down, my neighbors—my new classmates—will hear everything. I’m going to be sick. I’m going to vomit that weird eggplant tapenade I had for dinner, and everyone will hear, and no one will invite me to watch the mimes escape from their invisible boxes, or whatever it is people do here in their spare time.

I race to my pedestal sink to splash water on my face, but it explodes out and sprays my shirt instead. And now I’m crying harder, because I haven’t unpacked my towels, and wet clothing reminds me of those stupid water rides Bridgette and Matt used to drag me on at Six Flags where the water is the wrong color and it smells like paint and it has a billion trillion bacterial microbes in it. Oh God.What if there are bacterial microbes in the water? Is French water even safe to drink?

Pathetic. I’m pathetic.

How many seventeen-year-olds would kill to leave home? My neighbors aren’t experiencing any meltdowns. No crying coming from behind their bedroom walls. I grab a shirt off the bed to blot myself dry, when the solution strikes. My pillow. I collapse face-first into the sound barrier and sob and sob and sob.

Someone is knocking on my door.

No. Surely that’s not my door.

There it is again!

“Hello?” a girl calls from the hallway. “Hello? Are you okay?”

No, I’m not okay. GO AWAY. But she calls again, and I’m obligated to crawl off my bed and answer the door. A blonde with long, tight curls waits on the other side. She’s tall and big, but not overweight-big.Volleyball player big. A diamondlike nose ring sparkles in the hall light. “Are you all right?” Her voice is gentle. “I’m Meredith; I live next door. Were those your parents who just left?”

My puffy eyes signal the affirmative.

“I cried the first night, too.” She tilts her head, thinks for a moment, and then nods. “Come on. Chocolat chaud. ”

“A chocolate show?” Why would I want to see a chocolate show? My mother has abandoned me and I’m terrified to leave my room and—

“No.” She smiles. “ Chaud . Hot. Hot chocolate, I can make some in my room.”

Oh.

Despite myself, I follow. Meredith stops me with her hand like a crossing guard. She’s wearing rings on all five fingers. “Don’t forget your key. The doors automatically lock behind you.”

“I know.” And I tug the necklace out from underneath my shirt to prove it. I slipped my key onto it during this weekend’s required Life Skills Seminars for new students, when they told us how easy it is to get locked out.

We enter her room. I gasp. It’s the same impossible size as mine, seven by ten feet, with the same mini-desk, mini-dresser, mini-bed, mini-fridge, mini-sink, and mini-shower. (No mini-toilet, those are shared down the hall.) But . . . unlike my own sterile cage, every inch of wall and ceiling is covered with posters and pictures and shiny wrapping paper and brightly colored flyers written in French.

“How long have you been here?” I ask.

Meredith hands me a tissue and I blow my nose, a terrible honk like an angry goose, but she doesn’t flinch or make a face. “I arrived yesterday. This is my fourth year here, so I didn’t have to go to the seminars. I flew in alone, so I’ve just been hanging out, waiting for my friends to show up.” She looks around with her hands on her hips, admiring her handiwork. I spot a pile of magazines, scissors, and tape on her floor and realize it’s a work in progress. “Not bad, eh? White walls don’t do it for me.”

I circle her room, examining everything. I quickly discover that most of the faces are the same five people: John, Paul, George, Ringo, and some soccer guy I don’t recognize.

“The Beatles are all I listen to. My friends tease me, but—”

“Who’s this?” I point to Soccer Guy. He’s wearing red and white, and he’s all dark eyebrows and dark hair. Quite good-looking, actually.

“Cesc Fàbregas. God, he’s the most incredible passer. Plays for Arsenal. The English football club? No?”

I shake my head. I don’t keep up with sports, but maybe I should. “Nice legs, though.”

“I know, right? You could hammer nails with those thighs.”

While Meredith brews chocolat chaud on her hot plate, I learn she’s also a senior, and that she only plays soccer during the summer because our school doesn’t have a program, but that she used to rank All-State in Massachusetts. That’s where she’s from, Boston. And she reminds me I should call it “football” here, which—when I think about it—really does make more sense. And she doesn’t seem to mind when I badger her with questions or paw through her things.

Her room is amazing. In addition to the paraphernalia taped to her walls, she has a dozen china teacups filled with plastic glitter rings, and silver rings with amber stones, and glass rings with pressed flowers. It already looks as if she’s lived here for years.

I try on a ring with a rubber dinosaur attached. The T-rex flashes red and yellow and blue lights when I squeeze him. “I wish I could have a room like this.” I love it, but I’m too much of a neat freak to have something like it for myself. I need clean walls and a clean desktop and everything put away in its right place at all times.

Meredith looks pleased with the compliment.

“Are these your friends?” I place the dinosaur back into its teacup and point to a picture tucked in her mirror. It’s gray and shadowy and printed on thick, glossy paper. Clearly the product of a school photography class. Four people stand before a giant hollow cube, and the abundance of stylish black clothing and deliberately mussed hair reveals Meredith belongs to the resident art clique. For some reason, I’m surprised. I know her room is artsy, and she has all of those rings on her fingers and in her nose, but the rest is clean-cut—lilac sweater, pressed jeans, soft voice. Then there’s the soccer thing, but she’s not a tomboy either.

She breaks into a wide smile, and her nose ring winks. “Yeah. Ellie took that at La Défense. That’s Josh and St. Clair and me and Rashmi. You’ll meet them tomorrow at breakfast. Well, everyone but Ellie. She graduated last year.”

The pit of my stomach begins to unclench. Was that an invitation to sit with her?

“But I’m sure you’ll meet her soon enough, because she’s dating St. Clair. She’s at Parsons Paris now for photography.”

I’ve never heard of it, but I nod as if I’ve considered going there myself someday.

“She’s really talented.” The edge in her voice suggests otherwise, but I don’t push it. “Josh and Rashmi are dating, too,” she adds.

Ah. Meredith must be single.

Unfortunately, I can relate. Back home I’d dated my friend Matt for five months. He was tall-ish and funny-ish and had decent-ish hair. It was one of those “since no one better is around, do you wanna make out?” situations. All we’d ever done was kiss, and it wasn’t even that great.Too much spit. I always had to wipe off my chin.

We broke up when I learned about France, but it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t cry or send him weepy emails or key his mom’s station wagon. Now he’s going out with Cherrie Milliken, who is in chorus and has shiny shampoo-commercial hair. It doesn’t even bother me.

Not really.

Besides, the breakup freed me to lust after Toph, multiplex coworker babe extraordinaire. Not that I didn’t lust after him when I was with Matt, but still. It did make me feel guilty. And things were starting to happen with Toph—they really were—when summer ended. But Matt’s the only guy I’ve ever gone out with, and he barely counts. I once told him I’d dated this guy named Stuart Thistleback at summer camp. Stuart Thistleback had auburn hair and played the stand-up bass, and we were totally in love, but he lived in Chattanooga and we didn’t have our driver’s licenses yet.