not quite there yet.”
I didn’t know how to say peanuts. And Zeke had to save me. Suddenly our rapid-fire French feels more like wishful thinking.
“Bien sûr. Merci, Marianne,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. I’ll work as hard as I need to. This will be my priority, not the feelings developing between me and Zeke. This is why I’m here. Not to flirt. Not to kiss. To become fluent. To get out of Chicago. To get to France. The combination of Hogwarts and The Secret Garden and Narnia, the place where everything will fit.
The place where I’ll fit.
And so when I see Zeke on the front steps of the building, his fingers scrolling messages on his phone, I don’t stop to talk to him. Right now, my priority is the library. Not talking to Zeke.
I work all afternoon at the library, decoding the poems I didn’t get to yesterday, reading Le Petit Prince. I want to text Colin about maybe seeing a movie together, check on Alice, wonder about Zeke, but right now French is my priority.
By five, I’m starving and almost prepared to eat my Petit Larousse dictionary. But despite how fuzzy I feel from lack of caffeine and a mounting headache, even I know that eating a dictionary published in 1971 is probably a bad idea.
I grab a tuna sandwich (sandwich au thon), an apple (une pomme), a chocolate cookie (biscuit au chocolat), and a Coke (thankfully Coke is a Coke in any language) from the cafeteria, and then head to the dorms. Except I’m so hungry that I grip my apple with the crook of my elbow as I try to simultaneously scarf down the sandwich and shove cookie pieces in my mouth.
Which is why it all winds up on the grass when Zeke says hi. Which, in his defense, he says because I’m about to walk into him. Apparently I’m no good at walking and eating at the same time.
But I’m so hungry I want to grab the food off the grass, and apparently that’s clear to Zeke because he quickly scoops up the food himself.
“I’m sorry,” he says, dropping my combination breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the garbage. Little does he know that I’m not above eating out of there either. Or gnawing on my own arm. “Let me take you to get more food.”
“Je dois . . .” I’m so tired and hungry I can’t even think of the word in French. I have to . . . “Study,” I finally say in English.
“Come, we’ll do our conversation log. I’ll even take notes for us.” He puts his left arm around me and directs me (il me dirige) toward (vers) the café (le café) that sits on the edge of campus. (I’m too tired to remember how to say that.)
Especially since Zeke’s arm is around me and it’s apparently messing with my brain’s ability to fire synapses properly.
And I will give up all sweets for a year so long as he doesn’t bring up Friday night’s kiss.
Thankfully Zeke doesn’t speak until we get to Sweetie Pies/Fake Angelina with its chipped formica tables. He orders us two burgers (which I nod my approval to), French fries (which makes me roll my eyes), and milkshakes (which unleashes my broadest smile).
“Quelle sort de milkshake est-ce que tu veux?”
“Milkshake?” I tease. “I’m quite sure that’s not the word. And chocolate.”
“Regarde dans ton dictionnaire. Tu dis milkshake on Français.”
And when I check my dictionary, I find that he’s right. But probably only because French people would never actually drink a milkshake, so there’s no need for a proper French word for it.
Our conversation actually flows as we wait for our food. I find that it takes the entire chocolate milkshake before my headache disappears, and I’m still able to finish my burger and fries. And steal a few of Zeke’s as well.
We trade stories about bad school blunders, about being embarrassed by our friends, about themed birthday parties (princesses, ponies, and unicorns for me; trains, football, and baseball for Zeke). And that prompts a discussion about gender politics and nature versus nurture. And when the waitstaff finally kicks us out for real (with much less of a smile than Marianne used when acting the part) we shift to conversations about siblings embarrassing us. I laugh until my sides hurt hearing Zeke talk about his sister’s attempt to style his hair with tiny braids, using beads and mini elastic bands. How it took hours of pulling to remove