In tenth grade she dates an older boy, an eleventh-grader. They’re alone at his house, and he takes her to his parents’ room, where they stretch out awkwardly on the bed together, kissing, pressing their bodies together, breathing. They’re afraid and hot and full of desire. He pulls down her panties and touches her vulva with his fingers. He has hardly slid the underpants along her legs when she freezes; something breaks and spreads inside her, something filthy, filling her vagina and her throat; he has hardly touched her vulva when she suddenly feels so much pure hate that she could beat him to death. An instant later, she isn’t there anymore. He stops, sheepish and shamefaced before her motionless body. She excuses herself, gets dressed, and leaves. She breaks up with him the next day, over the phone.

 

There is a new girl in her class, Sigrid, who has purple Doc Martens and a devastating sense of humor. The two of them, along with Marine, who is repeating the school year, and whose father killed her mother with a rifle when she was little, and whose insolence and wit all the other students admire, form a tight-knit trio. They each belong to different groups of friends, but they often slip away to spend a few hours together at a café, solving the world’s problems, smoking, honing their rebellious minds, and laughing, laughing at everything, these three girls who understand each other so perfectly, who loved each other right away.

 

Marine never talks about her childhood, much of which was spent in prison visiting rooms, or about the return home a few months ago of the father/murderer. Marine is a blazing inferno of joy and intelligence.

 

Adélaïde never talks about the man in the stairwell. She never thinks about it. She lives just a few meters above where it happened, on the next floor up; every day she is more cheerful, more fearless. She twists and twirls and laughs, and never stays in one place.

 

Sigrid confides that her older sister was raped and killed by the Beast of the Bastille five years ago. She isn’t looking for condolences and doesn’t expect them to say anything; she mentions it only once, in the interest of honesty.

 

Bubbly, sparkling Marine dies two days after the school year ends, of a combination of anorexia, alcohol, sleeping pills, and irreparable sadness.

 

Sigrid transfers to a different school, and they lose touch.

 

Years later, the French National DNA Database, which Sigrid’s father helps to launch, will turn my life upside down.

I will think back on our unlikely trio, our Amazonian desires, our madcap dreams; our pure, wolfish joy.