The Art of Being Emily - Katie MacAlister Page 0,170

in a strangled voice. “Do not forget to listen to the Lesson One dictation tape as well. I will...er...check back with you in an hour or so, yes?”

“Dine and fandy,” I said brightly. “I should be through with my detailed, extensive call to my very important police father by then.”

He gave me a watery smile and limped out to the classroom. I spent the rest of the morning watching a stupid Learn French video tape that was boring except for a fake soap opera. I didn’t understand what was going on in it, but it was still fun.

Right after that is when Pascal came in to check on me. We chatted for a couple of minutes about the plans for the afternoon (trip to the Eiffel Tower), then he asked why I was in the library all by myself. I explained about the whole failing the test thing, and he laughed.

“You’ll do well on your own. I will stop by to see you often.”

“Oh, good,” I said, trying to sound like I was a GF to a really hot BF and thus not interested in him in a BF sort of way, yet still appreciative of the fact that he was majorly droolworthy. “Maybe you can help me. Olivier said he thought it would be best if I learned something called Survival French rather than Paris Vogue French, and since this videotape doesn’t seem to have Survival French lessons on it, I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be studying.”

“Ah, that’s just another way for saying the basic French you need to get around Paris,” Pascal said with another five star smile. “I will be happy to help you, if you like.”

So he gave me a couple of phrases that I wrote down, and made me say them until I had the pronunciation right. And I figured that since you don’t know any French, and you’re my BFF, you have to share my pain and learn one a day, too. So here you go, here’s the first Emily’s Very Cool French Phrase for People Who Don’t Speak French Well (EVCFPPWDSPW for short, although that’s not very short, is it? Maybe I’ll just call it Very Cool French and leave it at that):

Occupe-toi de tes oignons. This literally translates into “occupy yourself with your onions,” but it means mind your own business.

“Really? Onions?” I asked Pascal when he told me that phrase.

“Yes. It is a good to say when someone...eh...gets too close to you.”

“Too close? Oh, you mean like if someone does a butt fondle. Yeah. Handy phrase, that,” I said, thinking that I would be trying it out on Olivier if he thought he was going to grab cheek again. I looked down at my Survival French phrases that I’d written down. “OK, so I say bonjour whenever I go into a shop, ‘cause otherwise you’re being impolite, and the metro is called tromé...um...I can’t remember why.”

“Verlan,” Pascal said, pointing to a note I had made.

“Oh, that’s right. It’s like pig latin where you reverse the syllables. Gotcha. I think I’ve got the hang of this Survival French stuff! Very cool!”

“Tres looc,” he corrected. “Looc is verlan for cool.”

“Right. And bonjour in verlan is—”

“Jourbon!”

“Coolio! I mean, oilooc!”

He laughed again and told me I would do fine.

You think that’s weird? Get this—when we were at the Eiffel Tower (which is not nearly as big as I thought it would be, but still, the elevator ride up is fun and you do get to see a lot of Paris from the top), as we were standing on the observation deck, Sabine said, “Oh, la vache!”

I looked at Holly, who was standing as far back from the railing as she could get and still be on the Eiffel Tower (she has a thing about heights). “What did she say?” I asked in a whisper.

Holly whispered back, “She said, ‘the cow!’”

I gave her the Eyebrow of Inquiry. She pinched my arm. “You know, it’s like saying holy cow, or wow, or an exclamation like that. Honestly, Emily, I don’t know how you could have gone through two semesters of French and not learned about things like oh, la vache.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t start learning French in the womb like you English do. You’re serious, though? It means the cow?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes closed tight so she wouldn’t inadvertantly look down and end up ralphing up her guts.

“Oh, come on, you can look out at the distance. You can’t see the ground from