resulted in their seat no longer being available. And here I thought that coming to class twenty minutes early would make the whole thing less apparent.
And worse even, when Marianne walks in, she looks at the whole group of us as though we are middle school students playing a prank on the substitute teacher, switching our seats so she’d get the names incorrect. At first it seems as if she’ll shrug it off, but then when she’s getting reports from the various groups on their weekend in Montreal, she becomes exasperated that we’re all in the wrong spots, partners far away from one another.
And then everybody—except Zeke, thankfully—turns to look at me when she asks us to move back to our places.
It’s a miracle I don’t cry when I give the report on the places where Zeke and I experienced French in Montreal. I don’t look at Marianne, or at Zeke, but I read from my notebook the types of conversations we had, the new words we’d incorporated into our vocabulary.
I stay on script. I don’t mention the time after the movie; I skip right over to the next day walking through Old Montreal, the trip to the game of soccer in the park. For someone who loved Montreal as much as I did, I give no indication of it based on my tone of voice. I’m flat, I’m uninspired, but I don’t cry, I don’t waver, and I don’t run out of the room.
And then I carefully breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth as Zeke does his part of the talk, filling in the spaces I missed. The whole thing would have been better if we’d coordinated as other groups had, but it’s not a disaster. Thankfully the pounding of my heart blocks out the words that Zeke speaks, and I remain silent until the end of the class.
“Abby, est-ce que tu peux rester après pour me parler?” Marianne says as she dismisses the class. I turn by instinct to Zeke, but that’s a mistake. He’s just as confused as to why Marianne wants to talk with me after class, but more than that, it’s that split-second look that drowns me.
“Do you want me to stay?” he whispers, his voice almost lost under the scraping of chairs against the hardwood floors.
I want to say yes. I want him to be here in case it’s bad news, in case she wants to tell me she isn’t writing me a recommendation or that there’s a problem with something else. Maybe I’m failing the class and she needs to warn me—
Except.
“I’m okay.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he continues, the tips of his fingers grazing my elbow, and that slightest touch is a shock to my system as though it has been weeks and months since the last time we touched.
“I’ll see you later.” I pick up my books and shove them haphazardly into my bag, papers crumpling.
“Abby, I really want to talk with you.”
“I can’t right now,” I mutter, eyes focused on Marianne. I’m not sure if he says anything more because I’m walking away, even though I hate every step.
She waits to speak until everyone has left, time enough to put away her magazines and computer, all of them going into their appropriate spot in her bag, nothing bent or ruined. Time enough to think through every disastrous possibility until I’m half-sure the world is ending.
Apparently I have an overactive imagination.
When the last person has left—Drew, of course, though Zeke was second to last—she turns to me with a smile on her face.
“Ne t’inquiète pas, c’est rien!” She laughs, and I echo the sound, even though I wish she’d told me not to worry before I became a shaking mess. “I just wanted to speak with you about your plans for university.”
“For university?” Although the word is the same in French and in English, I still feel like I’m missing something.
Marianne nods slowly, the hint of a smile buried there. “I know that you’d like to attend the Paris School in the spring, which I think is a lovely program, but I’m more interested in what you are thinking about following that.”
I’m still reeling from the conversation when I make my way down the stairs to the bright sunshine outside Lederer.
The bright sunshine that always makes me sneeze. Multiple times. Sneeze . . . I don’t even know how to say it in French.
Sneeze.
Yawn is bailler. Sneeze is . . .
“A tes souhaits,” a voice comments from behind