Frère Pierre

This was supposed to be fun, coming to Paris for Thanksgiving break. Hang out with Sylvie and Jean-Martin, just fun. Instead...it's depressing to be here and think about how much you gave up to be in that horrific little town. They are happier than ever.

You are not. O, the injustice of it all! Why again did you stay? For Stacey. Right. Yes. Right.

Going home tomorrow will be the biggest bummer ever. More of a bummer than the new smoking laws. The world, clearly, is out to get you.

Stacey's father procreated: now she's a big sister. You went to the city to see the baby - and shop at Barney's, of course, it's like the Holy Land - and then you looked at Stacey, and it was odd, that moment. Because you aren't dumb, you know that after high school, this probably won't last. She's too smart for someone like you, you're too restless for someone like her. When you are both all grown.

But for just a sec, just standing next to her and looking at a baby, it just - made you think about how in ten years, Stacey will be a great mom. And how you wish you'll know her then, in the way that - well. She'll be a wonderful mom.

And you bought some fabulous shirts at Barneys. Bravo.

If you went to SDS, would you be crowned Homecoming Whatever-They-Give-Juniors there tonight? SHS is so bullshit, with its worship of jocks. Logan wears sweatshirts with hoods and these awful t-shirts; if this was Stalton, he'd be...okay, he'd be on court, too, but someone at least would have had an intervention over those rugby shirts, gack!

This school...it's time for a trip to the city and Barney's. Stat.

You would give anything to take that fight back. Anything.

You would give anything to bring her back. Anything.

Why doesn't God barter? Why doesn't he accept trades or deals or swaps? Why can't you make a deal? Who made up the cosmic rules of the universe and said that you can't beg, borrow, steal to get what you want most?

Stacey back. Bring Stacey back. Let her be okay.

You'll--

I'll give anything. Bring my Stacey back to me.

You are now seventeen, which just seems boring. It's not the age that is considered "sweet" nor does it carry any societal implications. No voting. No military conscription. You could buy a ticket to an R movie, but that assumes that the Cinema at the mall actually checked IDs. Stacey made today wonderful and special, of course, and Maman and Papa were generous with gifts. But really, you don't feel any different than you did the day before. You are older, but you feel unchanged. You're just waiting for eighteen when something important happens. So this is the year in between. Sixteen, when you life changed. Eighteen, when it will again.

Until then, hello seventeen. What's in store?

The twins don't understand why you are going back to the States, but this is the right choice. Yes, Sylla is right: 90% of this is for Stacey, and yeah, the likelihood that you and her are meant to be or whatever is small, and it's possible that by November you will have had another spectacular fight and be broken up. Again.

But does it matter? Because right now you have her. Fates be damned! Fabulous nights in clubs, bashing around Paris, starting your modeling career early - this is stupid, this is lame, but you're sixteen and you really don't give a shit to be smart and rational or think about your future. Fates be damned, you are going back to the United States of America and that shitty town and the most wonderful girl!

Oh, God. You're willingly going back to Shittybrook.

Stacey's worth it, Stacey's worth it. Stacey's worth it...

And New York is just an easy train ride away. Le sigh.

On one hand.

Paris. Paris for the next two years. Sophisticated, wonderful Paris.

Sylvie and Jean-Martin. And no Anais ruining the curve with her unbearable perfection. And no Shittybrook, never again.

The shopping. The opportunity to start work in modeling. The fact you can smoke in bars. This city.

On the other.

Rachel and Laine and Kathleen and Amanda are all fabulous.

School sucks, but it sucks better in English then in French.

As much as you would like to be beyond them and enjoy when they are traveling and have the house alone or ignore you for hours on end while they work, you do love your parents and having them around. Most of the time.

And then there is Stacey.

On one hand, if you stay in Paris, the issue is resolved: it is ended. That is all there is to say.

On the other, if you go back, you have to deal with it. What is it? Her voicemail. The way you love her. But you have to muddle through how quickly she and so many jumped to the wrong conclusion about you. Do you want to? Is this more of a mess than its worth? Or is she worth it. Or is she part of the larger idea that for once in your life, you can't just skate by on the fact that you are a beautiful male with a great body and a charming smile and not everything will fall in place when you want it to? That if you can work it out with Stacey, maybe you're not the huge ass idiot that people have been implying your whole life: extraordinary face, nothing behind it?

On the other hand...

It is Paris...

Paris is wonderful, Paris is perfect. Paris is soaked in wine and booze and clubs that play trip-hop so loudly that you have to shout to be heard, and the lights flash so much that you can barely see the twins. Paris is where you can understand what everyone says, but you can't speak a word back, so Jean-Martin tells people that you are mute due to a freak gasoline fight accident, and when you laugh, he hits you because it gives the whole game away. Paris is where Sylvie glows, splashing her toes in the large pond in the Jardin Luxembourg and putting half of a sandwich on one of the small boats floating around, waving as her jamon drifts away. Paris is where you check out modeling agencies and debate whether or not finishing high school is worth it. Paris is where you can smoke, everywhere, everywhere, and in Paris, you are who you were meant to be.

You feel like you've plugged yourself into an outlet, recharging. Something was being pulled out of you lately, and Paris is putting it back in. Forget what Stacey yanked out. Forget Cokie. Forget Dori and all of her lies. Forget all of that. Forget stupid Shittybrook. You're you again. And it feels good.

Why do you have to go back?

Paris feels like home, doesn't it.

At the very least, it's thousands of miles away from Shittybrook. Here, you can leave it all behind.

Even Stacey. Maybe. Maybe her, too. And if you can't, you can go get a bottle of wine and drown her away. God bless liberal drinking laws, oui indeed.

Sylvie's just got back from the corner Tabac with more cigarettes. There's nothing as lovely as sitting on the balcony and looking at the Jardin Luxembourg with a nice bottle of white and a pack of unfiltereds and knowing that in the morning, you can do it all over again.

Paris feels like home indeed.

Fuck this.

You are out of this town.

Maman is so glad that you've decided to leave, she got tickets in business class.

Sayonara, Shittybrook. By this time tomorrow? You'll be in Paris.

Maybe you'll never come back. That'd be fine, too.

You can't fight it: Cokie isn't Stacey. You aren't naive enough to believe that Stacey is the only girl in the whole world for you, but right now - yeah, she is. But Cokie is beautiful and smart and there's a side to her that she doesn't ever show to the rest of the school that is positively lovely, but - there's no spark. There's that lack of needing to rip off her clothes and ravage her. She's just not Stacey.

Anais and Papa are in LA; she's got a small part in a film. It's just you and Maman in the house: the twins left for Paris the day after school ended. They send texts cajoling you to come - well, Sylvie mocks you, but Jean-Martin says to stop skulking around Shittybrook and get out of that awful place. Stop haunting the same town Stacey's in and hold onto a small slice of hope.

Maybe he's right. Maybe you need to get out of Shittybrook. Maybe find one of those other girls in the world.

Stacey treats you like you don't exist. Rachel hates you.

No matter what you do, you can't change this. How long will you keep trying? It's like slamming your head against a brick wall. You love Stacey, you do. But you won't be played for a fool, and by begging her to listen? You are turning into a cliche, some noodle-spined sissy. If she is going to hate you and believe the word of a girl who went on the boards and knifed Mary Anne, then fine. Fine.

Move on. You will move on. There are more girls at SHS than Stacey. Girls who won't think the worst of you.

You should talk to Cokie again, flirt with her again, see - if she'd be interested. You should. You really should.

Move on.

YOU DID NOT SLEEP WITH DORIANNE WALLINGFORD. WHAT IS GOING ON.

How can Stacey believe this shit!

You, sir, are cursed.

You told Stacey the truth, and the world didn't end. Admit it: you feel a tiny bit better that someone else knows. Just a tiny bit.

Things aren't better though. No, they aren't solved, but you suppose you could say that they are better, in the technical sense of the term. Your relationship with Jenny had a lot of arguments and break ups, but it was never this hard. This either means that you care for Stacey more or that you have actually regressed as a human as you aged.

Here's a truth. The likelihood that Stacey McGill is The One is small. You want to travel and model and never set foot in a college; she's smarter than you and one day, that will be something that will probably snap you in two. But somewhere in you, you know that she might be the great first love of your life, the one that teaches you what love actually is. So. Keep making it better.

Don't give up.

You are back with Stacey.

She is your girlfriend.

Is there anything as perfect as saying that?

A lot of guys would love to have this problem. Two girls that you care about: no. That you love. You love both Jenny and Stacey, you love everything about them. Get down on your knees tonight and thank God that the decision is being made for you: Stacey is here, Stacey and her intoxicating ways is here, and Jenny is there, far away, months away from the first time you'll be able to see her. By then, she'll have faded back into a ghost and she'll feel the same way about you. You talk less now, she's gone out on dates with that Neanderthal who's captain of the hockey team. There's no way that you two can survive: it will end, and you will both be sad, but that's just how it is.

You love her, and you love Stacey. Thank God you don't have to choose. By June, you'll be with Stacey, beautiful Stacey, the first love of your life. Next to Jean Paul Gaultier, naturally. But Stacey is energy and sass and sweetness and you want her. You love her. You are falling in love with her.

Why can't the human heart be incapable of loving more than one person at a time. Why must there be two perfect girls in the world. Thank God, thank God, the choice has been made for you, one mile of distance at a time.

Each day the town becomes more familiar. You are remembering the streets and the shops. You know how long it takes to drive from your house to Stacey's, Stacey's to school. Your house to Cabbages and Kings. Your house to the train station that takes you to New York for daytrips.

It's starting to feel like it's home. Like you belong here.

You hate yourself for this. But you don't know how much longer you can fight it. This is where you live now. You do.

You are popular already, but you expected this. You and the twins, since the moment you stepped into Shittybrook High, you've been popular. The way you dress, the way you carry yourselves, everything. You are different and you like being different and this makes people crowd to you.

Problem: how many names do you remember.

Stacey. Clearly. Her face is burned in your mind, this girl you - no, this can't be about her. Remember names. Mary Anne, because she spent an hour helping you around school. Dawn because of the environment kinship. The rest - a blur. Mary Anne's boyfriend is - tall and strong but his name just won't stick in your head. Or there is the girl named Darcy. You know "Darcy." But you can't remember her face, not at all. Do your drills every night, study the yearbook Sylvie stole from the library. You're starting to piece them all together. It's just so hard.

There are others with dyslexia and dysgraphia. You aren't alone here. But no one else in the Resource Room seems to have the same memory problems you do. It's like how you are the only one in the family who doesn't speak French because - honestly - you can't understand it. Italian has consistent orthography. French does not, and English and French are like timebombs in your head. You can master one, not the other. This sets you apart from Jean-Martin and Sylvie and Anais and Maman and Papa. You are the only one, silent when they speak.

Sylvie knows what it is like to be different, too. Take solace in this. She says a pretty face gets you the time to come up with a way to work in a world that wasn't made to be easy on you. So take it. The girls at Shittybrook High fawn over you, the guys stare at you trying to figure you out. Stay with the people you know.

And practice, practice. The rest will come in time. You will remember them like they remember you. You will.

You have to do this:

You finished your last exam at Stalton and all of the professors hugged you goodbye. They said that if your parents would let you come back as a boarding student, like almost every other kid, they would welcome you back home. You know better: your parents are total dicks. They'll never let you come back here. So those goodbyes are done.

So are the goodbyes to the people in Dixville Falls. Everyone who has watched you grow up. Sgt. White, the cop who busted you for driving when you were fourteen and made you paint his fence in punishment. Mrs. Lewis, who ordered in plantains into the grocery just for you so that you could make your facial mask. Ol' Sully at the gas station who always put a Baby Ruth bar on the counter for when you came in to pay for gas because you always, always bought one.

The house is packed and moved already, Maman and Papa completing the cycle of ass by kicking you and your siblings into the car at Too Fucking Early o'clock to drive to Shittybrook. There is one thing left before you have to leave your home.

Say goodbye to Jenny.

There will never be another girl like her. Maman and Papa are douchebags and you hate them. Hate. Hate! Hate like a person wearing a newsboy cap, hate!

How do you say goodbye?

You guess you don’t have much of a choice at this point.  They bought a house yesterday, something with a carriage house where Maman can have a studio.  From the photographs, it looks ugly.  And it’s one of those terrible towns, not in the city where exciting things can happen but not in the country, not like Dixville Falls.  You have serious hate for both of them, Papa and Maman.  And Anais and her stupid “career.”  You're tired of moving for all of them.  you will have to leave behind everything.  You have to leave behind Jenny, the first girl you’ve ever loved since Stacey McGill.  you can’t believe this shit. 

You already know that you will hate Stoneybrook.

Though, you don’t know.  For some reason it sounds kind of familiar.  Probably because some rich kids did something there.  Killed out of boredom.  It seems like that kind of place.

Did you say you hated it already?  Because you do.