At Thirteen, Hélène is a stuck-up little bitch.
At least that’s what her mother thinks, because she refuses to help out in the house, she is rude, she corrects her parents every time they make a grammatical error, gets angry for no reason, and lives in a bubble where Jim Morrison and Luke Perry are her gods.
Most of all, her mother hates Hélène’s snooty attitude, the way she acts like some princess who happened to wash up in the home of these peasants. Even as a little kid she would lecture her parents. And there’s not much chance of that changing, since, around her, all language is starting to unravel. So many things that she used to take at face value have become suspect. Kindnesses now look like manipulations. Honesty disgusts her. When her mother says Not everyone can become an engineer, for example, or when they tell her to finish her meal because there are countries where people have nothing to eat. Not to mention those clichés that are like the wisdom of the poor: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, Don’t think your shit doesn’t stink, Money isn’t everything. When her parents beat the drum for a simple life, using her cousins as an example, when they criticize ambitious people, nouveau-riche types, people who flout their success, when they exult the merits of hard work, manual labor, home improvement, people who know how to do things around the house, people who slip between the cracks, people who live from day to day, from hand to mouth. When they say we’re going to pack you off to the countryside, that’ll teach you to live, when they use the definite article in front of someone’s name—le Dédé, la Jacqueline, le Rémi—then Hélène feels something go taut inside her. Instinctively, unknowingly, she rejects all of this. Every sign of that lifestyle is a slap in the face. She would rather die than live like that, modestly, knowing her place. Yep, she’s a bigheaded, stuck-up little bitch.
Every Wednesday afternoon, she borrows her mother’s bicycle, even though she’s not allowed, and rides to the local library. The bike is too big for her, even with the saddle down, so she has to stand on tiptoe when the stoplight turns red, and for the whole of that journey, which is not very long, she is scared that she will crash into something and mess up the beautiful mountain bike. Her parents are at work; there is no way for them to know what she’s up to. So she leaves the little house like a tightrope walker, her imitation Doc Martens on her feet, and rides through the subdivision, down Rue Jeanne-d’Arc, her huge backpack strapped to her shoulders. Near the mayor’s office, she remembers to fasten the blue antitheft device to the bike, then goes into the tiny library that Cornécourt has haphazardly put together out of donations and bequests. A tall, tomboyish, very young woman, in a striped sweater, hair cut in a bob, says hello and calls her by her name. Hélène replies hello, ma’am. She doesn’t know this woman’s name despite the important role she plays in her life. Because the librarian lets her rummage through the aisles, she allows her to borrow twenty books when the maximum is ten, and she never gets upset if Hélène is late returning them. She has even recommended a few of her own favorite books. Matilda, for example. Hélène was eleven when she read that—and it was a shock. Ever since then, she has read like crazy, storing away knowledge, just like Matilda in fact. She reads in defiance of the whole world, her parents, other people, life.
She usually follows the same itinerary. She starts with the comic books—the candy aisle of the library. She adores Iznogoud—those books about the history of France with King François I and the assassin Ravaillac—and Yoko Tsuno. Next it’s novels: the Bibliothèque Verte collection, the 1000 Soleils collection, Jules Verne and Emily Brontë. She ends with the magazines. Of course there are old editions of wholesome, educational magazines like J’aime lire, Géo, and Historia. But one day Hélène comes across a pile of weird magazines that smell musty and turn out to be way more interesting. They probably came from someone’s cellar after a death or a house sale. Whatever their provenance, she is immediately drawn to them. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she begins flicking through them, one after another. She soon feels a little scared and…lots of other things. The pages are filled with naked people, disturbing science-fiction characters, adventures with big breasts, and even sometimes men’s things. She can’t stop turning the pages. She grabs five to start with and puts them on the counter, at the bottom of her pile. When she is about to note down the titles, the librarian says:
“Are you sure these are appropriate for your age?”
Hélène feels her face change color. She says yes and the librarian laughs before copying down the titles on a large index card. Twenty books and five editions of Métal Hurlant.
“Okay, you’re all set.”
Back home, Hélène hides the magazines under her bed and waits until the lights have gone out before devouring tales of John Difool and Thorgal while she lies on her stomach, pillow between her thighs. For a few days she squirms as she reads, afraid that someone will walk in but unable to stop. At the faintest noise in the hallway her heart races and she hurriedly turns off her bedside lamp. But, irresistibly, she returns to those old magazines that smell so bad and make her feel so good. Back at the library, she will borrow all of them and the librarian will stamp them all without blinking.
It is around this time that she discovers some books that her father hides in the drawer of his nightstand: Amok in Bali, Gold in the River Kwai, Requiem for Tontons Macoutes. These books all have the same sorts of covers: women in underwear wielding large guns and looking cool and sexy. The stories are stupid and repetitive, but at least she learns some new vocabulary. “Vulva,” “member,” “tumescent.” Very quickly she adopts the habit of skimming the pages in search of the good stuff. Clearly, books and desire are closely linked.
And then one Wednesday in November, the librarian says come and look. Together, the tall, boyish woman and the stuck-up little bitch wander through the aisles until the librarian bends down to scan the books on the lowest shelf, her fingers caressing the spines, then stopping at three volumes, which she drags from their sleep and hands to the girl.
“You’ll like these, I bet you anything.”
They are three novels by Judy Blume. Hélène has never heard of them before. But the librarian is right: she adores them. Stories about the first time, about love, about all sorts of great stuff that makes her want to really live. Hélène devours these first three Blume books in no time. Then she reads all the others.
But it is Forever that makes the biggest impression on her. This novel tells the story of Katherine, a seventeen-year-old girl who meets Michael at a New Year’s Eve party. It’s all a bit cornball, but it has a power that circumvents logic. From the opening page, she is completely captivated and her sole wish is that those two morons will fall in love. And then some serious things happen to the heroine. Hélène reads these passages with her heart pounding: the first steps, the mutual shyness, her breasts, his dick, it’s all so freaky and glorious.
Sometimes she wonders how it will go when her turn comes. She thinks about love the same way she thinks about a driver’s license: everyone does it, but she is somehow persuaded that she won’t be able to. She’ll never manage to change gear, look right and left, check the mirror, she’s too clumsy, too daydreamy, her mother is always telling her for God’s sake look where you’re going. Every time she washes the dishes, she breaks a plate. She can’t help it—she’s in her own little world. Occasionally she will still put her T-shirt on back to front or leave the house with toothpaste on her chin. She feels unfinished, and she can’t imagine herself in bed with a boy. She’ll never manage it, she’s certain. And just like that, she hates them, which isn’t difficult. They’re so immature, so stupid. Big, aggressive babies with wobbly voices. And their zits, their Adidas Torsions, their too-short jeans, their scooters, and the off-putting peach fuzz on their upper lips.
But she rereads Forever and the story does something to her, leaves its American imprint on her. Hélène dreams about going to university, about all those conveniences Katherine enjoys, the father and his two pharmacies, the skiing vacations, life with a giant refrigerator and air-conditioned cars, the attentive mother and her good advice, a cocooned existence that leaves space for everything else, the important stuff: cultivating within herself that curious something that swells like a huge carnivorous plant, spending all day thinking about the boy who goes to the nearby high school, inviting him home, waiting, daring, saying yes, being scared, he’ll be kind, it will be beautiful and with a curtain that barely stirs in the afternoon breeze, will she bleed on the sheets, apparently not always. She borrows this book four times and the librarian makes no comment. She is a discreet, diligent accomplice.
Meanwhile, at home, it’s not exactly America.
One Day, Charlotte Brassard has a birthday party at her house. The whole class is invited. Charlotte arrived at the start of the year with her father, who had just been appointed to an executive position at the pulp mill. Before that, he used to work in Germany and Norway, as Charlotte is constantly reminding everyone. Her mother is an economics teacher, although she has ended up a housewife because her husband has a career and they have three children.
Anyway, fourteen is an important age and a party will undoubtedly help Charlotte make friends in her new class at the Collège Jeanne-d’Arc in Épinal. Consequently, everyone is invited, without exception. When Charlotte hands the invite to Hélène, she doesn’t even look at it. She’s too busy chatting with her best friend, Camille Millepied, acting like Little Miss Perfect: smooth as a sugared almond, with her neatly bobbed hair and the gold chain hanging over her sweater and her bitchy little face. The classroom, however, is in uproar. Because the Brassards’ place is amazing. Some of them have been there already and claim they even have a pool table. The party will take place on a Saturday: the invitation says to get there at two in the afternoon and not to bring a gift. Hélène’s family panic when they see this, because they aren’t fooled by this polite convention. Obviously they will have to buy a gift—but what? What could people like that possibly need? What would they enjoy? Jeannot, Hélène’s father, suggests flowers: they’re simple and everyone likes them.
“It’s not her mother’s birthday,” says Hélène, instantly losing her temper.
“What about chocolates?”
“Ugh, chocolates are crap.”
“Oh là là!” her mother exclaims angrily.
Mireille is an energetic, short-haired woman, incapable of putting on weight. Her pale eyes are permanently ablaze with exasperation, aimed at anyone who is not lucky enough to be as energetic as she is, at clumsy people, at her daughter. She left school at fourteen, worked at a cotton mill, then took evening classes until she was promoted to the rank of office secretary. At twenty-five she was able to join a notary’s office, a fact that gives her great pride, even though her days consist mostly of sorting through papers and answering the phone. At least she understands legalese—“notwithstanding,” “given that,” “willful misrepresentation”—which is some distinction. Based on this fact, she is more or less convinced that she is the intellectual of the family, and looks upon her husband, Jean, in a slightly condescending way.
Not that he cares. He accepts this domination, which has its compensations and means he can avoid getting lumbered with anything related to paperwork (a category that takes in everything from Hélène’s notebooks to the family tax return, from Redoute catalogues to renting a place at the beach for their vacation). For his part, Jeannot likes mushroom hunting, pottering about in his workshop, going to hockey games at the stadium with his brothers, and cycling. He’s a wonderful cook: in the kitchen, he always has a Gauloises cigarette dangling from his mouth, and when he’s leaning over the stovetop, working on a blanquette or a soufflé, following the recipes, handwritten in purple ink, from a notebook he inherited from his great-aunt, Hélène can see the bushy tufts of hair emerging from the collar of his blue T-shirt, the same hairs he has on his biceps, while his head is already bald, and haloed by a cloud of gray smoke.
Jean is a good guy who has his limits; a pleasant-enough man as long as you don’t push him too far. He has also worked in the textile industry, at La Gosse, the same factory where Mireille used to work, but the factory was shut down, and after a few months of unemployment he had to accept a new job at a store selling paints, wallpaper, and flooring run by his brother-in-law—his sister’s husband. It’s not so bad there, even if his brother-in-law is a bit of an interfering busybody who spends more time posing in his Audi than he does actually working.
At the home of the Poirot family—at thirteen, the surname is a source of endless embarrassment to Hélène—there is always a hint of electricity in the air. Before, Hélène didn’t notice it. But now it really bothers her, the way her parents are always kissing, making out, making lewd remarks. Hundreds of times she’s seen them go to their bedroom in the middle of the day and lock the door. When she was little, she would scratch at the door and her mother would yell at her to go play. At night, she hears them sometimes. She covers her ears. It generally doesn’t last very long. They’re one of those strange couples who never weary of each other, still filled with lust after fifteen years of living together, despite the constant repetition, despite knowing each other’s bodies by heart. It’s kind of odd, when you think about it, that they never had more children. But Jean was too worried. How could he bring another child into the world when his job might be moved to Morocco or Turkey at any moment? And anyway, they were already quite old when they had Hélène—both in their thirties. Never mind; Hélène would just have to shine as brightly as several kids put together.
“I can’t turn up with some crappy gift,” she moans now.
“We’re not rich,” her mother snaps, although Hélène does not see the relevance of this statement. “If you’re going to be like that, you just won’t go.”
Hélène weighs the pros and cons: the shame of handing over some shitty present versus the horror of missing out on that teenage nirvana. Then again, what does she care? That Brassard girl is just a snooty snob. Hélène and her friends Béné and Farida can’t stand her.
“You could just take her a scarf,” suggests Jean.
“That’s not a bad idea,” admits Mireille, who knows they will be able to find something at Prisu without having to dip into their savings.
“All right, that’s settled,” says her father. “We’ll go on Saturday. I’ll have time then.”
“Do that, then,” adds Mireille, in a definitive tone that could be taken different ways.
All week long, Hélène and her friends talk about nothing else. This party is the event of the year. In class, everything is turned upside down. Charlotte’s popularity, of course, rises dramatically: everyone’s ultra-nice to her, even the boys make an effort, and for a few days class 4B is like Cape Canaveral just before a rocket launch.
“What time are you going?”
“Not too early,” says Béné. “I don’t want to be stuck there alone with her.”
“Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that!” exclaims Farida, who is often exclamatory.
“The best thing would be to get there just before three. That way, you don’t look like you’ve been waiting outside the door.”
They all imagine the party in their own way. For Farida, this birthday takes on the sparkling, dizzying appearance of a ball, halfway between Madame Bovary (they’re reading it in class) and Cinderella. Hélène sees it more like a chic, Dynasty-style cocktail party, while Béné mostly thinks about the sodas and candy, hoping inwardly for Curly peanut puffs and M&M’s, treats strictly rationed at home since the doctor diagnosed her as being overweight. Anyway, the excitement is so high that on Friday afternoon, at the end of their math class—the last of the week—even the teacher tells them he hopes they all have fun. At four o’clock they go their separate ways in a state of almost painful agitation. They all sleep restlessly that night.
At last the big day arrives. Hélène is still eating lunch when her father looks up at the kitchen clock, yawns, stretches, and says: “Well…we should get going soon.”
“What?” asks Hélène.
“To your friend’s house. Where is it, by the way?”
“But it’s not time yet.”
“Well, that may be. But I have other things to do, you know.”
“But I’ll be the first person there!”
“I have to stop at the Depétrinis to check out a leak. And then to see Doctor Miclos—he’s got a problem with his water heater. So we need to leave now.”
Jeannot can do a bit of everything. So much so that the Poirot family rarely calls for a tiler, a bricklayer, or a plumber. He gardens too. The proof of this lies behind their little house: a hundred square meters of onions, tomatoes, green beans, rhubarb, and parsley. Quite a few weeds too. In summer, Hélène has to kneel down and tear them out one by one, something she does grudgingly, with her Walkman blasting “Who Wants to Live Forever?” Who indeed. Anyway, all Jean’s little extras help them stay above water, so they are obviously more important than some kid’s birthday party. Very soon the discussion grows heated.
Mireille cuts it short: “It’s that or nothing. We’re not your servants.”
Hélène thinks she can always wait outside, hidden in a corner somewhere. On that November day, the TV weatherman forecast temperatures ranging between 43 degrees Fahrenheit in Strasbourg and 64 degrees in Bastia. Not unbearable. She puts on her fake Docs, wraps a scarf around her neck, picks up the gift, and puts on her coat and hat.
“You look like you’re on an expedition to the North Pole.”
“Whatever,” mutters Hélène. Her mother advises her to pipe down—she’s not at her friend’s house yet. The teenager grits her teeth and stares at the floor, seething. She is always being told to shut up, stay on the straight and narrow, keep her moods and her desires to herself. But they’re always there; inside her, they orbit like planets. Hélène wants them to burst out of her, but everything conspires to hold them in: school, her parents, the straitjacket of the world. Jean swaps his old shoes for a pair of loafers, the same horrible and hyper-comfortable ones that he wears when he’s gardening—well, he won’t be getting out of the car anyway—then puts on his velvet, sheepskin-lined jacket.
“All right, let’s go!”
He lays a heavy, fatherly hand on Hélène’s shoulder, and feeling that weight upon her she is briefly reassured. It’ll be okay, she tells herself, before suddenly being overwhelmed by an inexplicable sadness. She hates being like this, her feelings like clothes in a washing machine, her heart riding a roller coaster.
A little later, inside the red 309, Jean whistles along to the radio and his daughter loses herself in contemplation of his hands, which keep moving from the gearshift to the steering wheel and back, oblivious and thick-veined, the exorbitant curve of the thumb, the thin black line under the fingernails, their simple steadiness, then she turns to look out at the unchanging city beyond the windows. November is gray, from buildings to sky, and even the Moselle has lost its colors. The river flows under bridges with the slowness of oil. Like tears, she thinks. From time to time, an advertising billboard breaks this monotony with the gold flash of a perfume, the acid green of a meadow filled with cows. At last they come to their destination, outside a big house in the old suburbs: on a hill, looking down on things. Hélène kisses her father goodbye and thanks him. She breathes in his odor: aftershave, the skin still smooth, tanned like leather by the blade that slices off its hairs every morning.
“All right, off you go and have fun, I have work to do.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing, I’m okay.”
“Don’t forget the gift.”
The 309 Disappears and Hélène finds herself standing like an idiot before a long row of chic houses, the wrapped present under her arm. It’s not really cold, but she’s shivering a little bit anyway. She walks around the neighborhood for a while and gets the impression that everyone she passes is suspicious, that even the houses are staring at her. A little girl observes her from her bedroom, forehead glued to the second-floor window. Time passes slowly and Hélène’s hands and feet start to feel cold. Finally, she decides to go back to Charlotte Brassard’s house. Who cares if she’s early. She presses on the round golden doorbell and listens, shivering, to the two notes that echo bombastically within.
Charlotte herself comes to answer the door.
“You’re here already?”
Her classmate is wearing a Never Mind the Bollocks T-shirt, pink eye shadow, and lip gloss. Hélène thinks, is this a costume party or what? She also thinks, in her most secretive depths, that she wishes she could be like that too: pretty, classy, and a little bit punk. She hands Charlotte the gift. Charlotte says thank you and invites her in. Whoa, the ceilings are so high. Hélène walks through the house. There are frames all over the walls, on top of furniture: quite a few family photographs, with people smiling, living their lives happily, often on vacation. It kind of looks like a catalogue. Hélène notes a pair of twin boys, whose growth she can follow from diapers and pacifiers to black runs on ski slopes.
“Your brothers?”
“Yeah.”
Hélène manages not to say that she thinks they look a little odd. Then the two girls enter a sort of old-fashioned veranda overlooking a beautiful garden full of neat flower beds and gray-green trees. There are two long tables piled high with drinks, cakes, and candy, and in between them there’s a dance floor. To the side, the hi-fi awaits its moment on a pedestal table.
“That’s cool,” says Hélène.
“Yeah.”
“Ah!”
Madame Brassard appears behind them, also in T-shirt and jeans, her wrists bare except for an ultra-slim watch. On her right hand, a thick silver ring is the only ornament.
“Mom…” groans Charlotte.
“Oh come on, can’t I even say hello to your friends?”
Hélène quickly understands that Charlotte has negotiated her parents’ confinement during the party. But Madame Brassard is curious to meet her daughter’s new schoolmates, and this is her home, after all. Hélène barely has time to greet her before Charlotte drags her away.
“All right, let’s go up to my room until the others get here.”
Hélène follows her, eyes wide, through a hallway, up two flights of stairs, down another hallway. If she ever has to find her way out of here alone, she might well be in trouble. Then Charlotte’s bedroom. Above the bed, a magnificent bullfighting poster. One whole wall is covered with postcards: Jim Morrison, Rimbaud, Gainsbourg, Duras, only the coolest people. And some others she doesn’t recognize.
“Who’s that?”
“Yeats.”
“And her?”
“Virginia Woolf.”
Hélène leans in for a closer look and examines each image: the shadows, the hooked noses, the identical gazes. Each time, the same expression of desirable melancholy, of sadness melting on the tongue like candy cane. She, too, wishes she could belong in this black-and-white world, could write poems, novels, have fateful love affairs, find the right setting for a life with meaning. It is in these photographs that she would feel most at home, in these exemplary lives, these atmospheres that she finds difficult to describe but where she would, she feels sure, be happy. She has the same impression as she does when leafing through Madame Figaro at the dentist.
Meanwhile, Charlotte sits cross-legged on the carpet and relieves her boredom by braiding the threads of the shag carpet. This should make Hélène feel uncomfortable, but her curiosity overpowers her concerns for her host, so she continues her inspection, looking through the CDs, the knickknacks, evaluating her book collection: Jack London and Roald Dahl, Balzac and Little Women. On those shelves she discovers things that fill her with yearning like the thought of patisseries after school. American road novels, Cocteau, Anaïs Nin’s little pink books. She takes one from the small wicker bookcase.
“What are you doing?” Charlotte asks irritably, fearing that this guest will make a mess.
“What’s this?”
Henry and June. Hélène has come across that title somewhere before and she retains an impression of something pleasant, all-enveloping. She often feels attracted in this way to obscure things that she feels sure have some personal connection to her, even though she knows nothing about them. For example, she had that impression when she saw a photograph of Marlon Brando in the TV guide. Or when she hears the voice of Jean Topart at the end of The Mysterious Cities of Gold. These vocations at first sight, these mysterious affinities, leave a mark upon her, like a fingerprint on a clean window. It is both exquisite and torturous, because it eludes and tempts. She has to keep digging. All her desire is there, alert, ready to sweep her away.
“Nothing,” replies Charlotte.
But she makes the effort to get up and come over.
“Give it to me,” she says.
She takes the book from Hélène’s hands, puts it back in its place on the bookshelf, which once again looks implacable and forbidding. Then with her index finger, she pulls out another volume, also with a pink spine, close to the first one.
“This is her journal. It’s amazing. She tells all.”
“All what?”
“All.”
Charlotte hands the book to Hélène, who immediately turns to the back cover.
“She writes about her life, her meetings with loads of other writers. How she pisses everyone off.”
“Really?”
“There are some that are worse than that one. My mother’s got the whole collection.”
Charlotte has gone back to her bed. She sits down on it and opens the drawer of her nightstand.
“Here.”
She shows Hélène the cover of a slim little volume: a woman sitting, back to the camera, naked to the waist, wearing a hat adorned with a single feather. The thick font of the lettering makes her think of sex-shop windows. Beneath the woman’s raised arm, a few tufts of hair are shamelessly exposed.
“I stole this one,” Charlotte whispers.
Hélène sits next to her on the bed. The two girls are shoulder to shoulder, faces leaning over the book, their hair suddenly entangled.
“What’s it about?”
“They’re short stories. About sex,” Charlotte says in a low voice.
Hélène leafs through it. Certain words leap off the page. Suddenly it seems very hot in the room.
“Can I borrow it?”
Seeing the expression on her guest’s face, Charlotte recognizes the seriousness of a fellow reader. She should say no, obviously. She herself is not allowed to have that kind of book. She took this one from her mother’s personal hell, a corner of the large bookshelf where she hides forbidden texts behind her collection of art books. There are others there, even more terrible than this one. Charlotte will soon explain all this to Hélène. The two of them will go there to rummage through this treasure, laughing and red-cheeked, and will come up with a brilliant scheme to smuggle them out. In this way they will read Pauline Réage, Régine Deforges, Henry Miller, and a little bit of the Marquis de Sade, not to mention Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which will inspire them with nothing but a stodgy feeling of boredom.
But for now, Hélène is hanging on Charlotte’s every word. Her mother could come and knock at the door any second. The thought thrills them. Charlotte nods.
“Okay. But give it back to me in two days.”
“I promise.”
Hélène slips the book under her sweater. It is there now, cold and hard against her stomach. She can’t wait, and at the same time she does not want it to end, this moment between them, electric, on the verge of laughter, her chest full.
“I got you a really crappy present,” she admits. “I’m sorry.”
Charlotte bursts out laughing. She’s so cute, so precious, like an object. It’s like they’ve fallen in love, then and there, till death do them part, or at least until the end of the school year.
Soon afterward, the other guests start turning up and Hélène has to abandon her new friend to hang out with Béné and Farida.
“Whoa, this place is incredible.”
“Yeah, the thieving bitch.”
Hélène and Farida turn to Béné, mystified. But she just shrugs, and they will never know any more than that.
A little later, the entire class gathers on the veranda. The buffet is picked clean in no time. Charlotte opens the gifts that no one was supposed to bring, and then it’s time to dance. Boys and girls get a little frisky, but since Charlotte’s mother opens the door to check on them every now and then, nobody dares go too far with the slow dancing. Hélène does not dance. She and her two friends just watch. It’s strange seeing all these people that they’ve hung out with for so long, away from the context of school. The boys look even more childish, whereas the girls, who have made an effort with their appearance, seem at times like miniature adults. The afternoon passes in a haze of brushed skin, sideways glances, sarcastic comments, and brief moments of boldness. Like when Romain Spriet comes over to ask Farida if maybe she’d like to dance, and she refuses, even though she kind of wants to. But Béné is watching, and friends still count more than boys. At nightfall, Laurence Antonelli suggests they have a séance. So it is that most of the guests end up sitting on the floor around a few candles and a handful of Scrabble letters arranged in a circle. For several long minutes, they vainly try to summon spirits, caught between hysterical laughter and terror. Then suddenly all the lights go out. There are screams, a scramble of groping, a table is knocked over, and shards of glass stick into shoeless feet. There’s the sound of sobbing and Charlotte’s mother comes running. But it was all just a prank. They don’t have time to work out exactly what happened before the first parents arrive to pick up their offspring. It’s seven in the evening. The party is over. Oh well…it was good while it lasted.
It takes Hélène only three hours that night to finish the book she borrowed from her new friend. She finds it as beautiful as it is horrible. She is so shocked by certain pages that she reads them twice to make sure of her disapproval.
Hélène’s Parents Decided she would attend a private school because it was located close to the notary’s office where Mireille works and her bosses’ children went there. This speculative investment does have a few minor inconveniences, however, including the daily commute from Cornécourt, going to Mass four times a year in the school chapel, and hearing her parents go on about how much it costs. Other than that, it is not really any better or worse than anywhere else. Her mother drops her very early every morning, then she meets up with Béné and Farida in the yard around a quarter to eight, on the side near Rue des Passants, not far from a secondary door, less used than the main entrance, which makes them feel as if they are free and can escape anytime they like.
After that birthday party, though, Hélène starts acting differently. She now waits for Charlotte under the covered playground on the Rue Clemenceau side. Sometimes, her friend will bring her a new book or Hélène will return the one she has just finished. Most of the time, the two girls are happy to just chat. These are rushed moments, almost clandestine. With a vague feeling of guilt, they retreat to the back, near the trash cans, away from prying eyes. The friendship is like a love affair, a secret.
When the bell rings, Hélène runs over to join Béné and Farida. But they have seen what’s going on.
“Why the hell are you hanging around with that girl?”
Béné doesn’t mince her words. Farida treads more carefully, but this doesn’t stop her agreeing vehemently.
“Totally. Who even is she? She’s nobody.”
“Calm down, we’re not in prison.”
“You’re the prison,” replies Béné, looking all disdainful.
And she walks away, hips swaying as she carries her backpack. She’s wearing jeans and a track jacket in the colors of Olympique Marseillais inherited from her older brother, which is already too small for her. Last year, a guy who sat behind her in biology pulled at her bra strap, and Béné spat at him.
Even so, Hélène is a little bummed at seeing her friendship with Béné and Farida going down the tubes. The three of them have known each other since elementary school. They went camping last summer, the best vacation of her life—three days by a small river near Plombières—and Farida had a crush on Béné’s older brother; it was funny. They were together all day long, swimming, having barbecues. It felt like freedom.
She doesn’t know what’s going on, why what had been so precious yesterday has suddenly become so boring. She feels like that all the time these days. When her parents talk to her, it’s like her eyes roll up on their own, she’s not even controlling them. After dinner, she locks herself in her bedroom with her Walkman and her books. But even that room, the decor for which she’s spent years perfecting, gets on her nerves now. Two weeks earlier, she tore down the big poster of Madonna and pinned up some photographs of old Hollywood stars in its place; you can get a pack of a hundred for ten francs at the newsstand. She gazes at the beautiful gray faces of Warren Beatty and Marilyn, even though she’s never seen any of their movies. And there’s Brando too, of course. Inside her, something is changing. Little by little, Hélène grows more distant. She would like to know why, to understand what’s going on. Sometimes she breaks down and weeps, out of rage and impatience, desperate for life to speed up and at the same time sad that everything is changing. When she thinks that she still has four years before the end of school, she gets so pissed she wants to destroy everything. She counts the days to her eighteenth birthday, when she’ll finally be able to say I’m an adult now, so fuck you. Her life is like a pressure cooker. She can feel it building toward an explosion. She’ll never make it, she thinks, it’s too much, it’s not enough, and tears fall from her eyes even though she’s not even all that unhappy.
It Took a lot of cunning, and a long time to explain, but they’ve done it.
Hélène and Charlotte are holding hands, like two little Bambis on the ice, trying to keep their balance. They’re both wearing big wool hats, even if Charlotte had originally planned to wear a beret, before deciding that she’d look trashy. From a distance, they look like sisters. From close up too, in fact.
Their parents dropped them at two-thirty and will return to pick them up at five. It’s not much time, but they have to start somewhere. Outside the entrance, Charlotte’s mother shook hands with Hélène’s father. They were both friendly, smiling, obviously relieved that the other was a responsible person. We’re trusting you, because you’re big girls now, but move out of the way if it’s not going well. Already the two girls can’t take their eyes off the skaters inside.
To start with, they chose a quiet corner near the railing, to which they clung for quite a while, like two barnacles. Their cheeks turned pink and their noses dripped. They didn’t dare do much, unsure of themselves this first time, content to watch the others and listen to the music blasting from loudspeakers. It was cool.
“Apparently they turn the lights off at some point,” says Hélène.
“Yeah, there are spotlights. It’s like La Boum.”
Hélène giggles. She adores Sophie Marceau.
“Look over there…”
“What?” Hélène says.
“Those guys, look.”
There are three of them, no gloves or hats, chatting with two trashy-looking girls with big hair and blue eyelids, both of them plump but pretty. Sluts.
“They’re the guys from the hockey team,” Charlotte explains. “My dad takes me to the games sometimes—he gets free tickets through his job. The smallest one already plays for the first team. He’s sixteen.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Christophe Marchal.”
Hélène and Charlotte are at an age when a face can become a feeling. This happens to them with Christophe, but also with Mathieu Simon and Jérémy Kieffer, who are older, cute, and above all cool, because wanting to be kissed is also wanting to be part of a clique. The ones who matter have a bike or a scooter, they wear nice clothes and are invited to exclusive parties. Later, Hélène and her friend will spend delicious hours suffering on their bed, listening to Whitney Houston or Phil Collins, desperate and languid. They will learn the words by heart, sing them at recess, smoke in secret. Love songs were invented for precisely this, to dwell on intimate sufferings, to bring to life this shadow theater of grand emotions, a boy brushing up against you, the back of someone’s neck in biology class, whatever.
“We have got to go and see some games,” says Charlotte.
“Yeah, totally.”
“I’m warning you, I saw him first.”
Hélène laughs. “You can keep your little dwarf-boy.”
And they hug each other, falsely welded together by the little romance novel Charlotte has started to invent. For now, Christophe is not really a person. He is more like a poster, his distant perfection placing him among the stars pinned to their bedroom walls. In any case, it is delicious to want him, like viewing the world through 3D glasses.
Hélène gasps. The boy has just torn himself away from the little group with a graceful backward movement, and after a no-less-elegant U-turn, he heads toward two girls in puffer jackets standing at the other end of the rink. He flies over the ice, brushing past other skaters with diligent disdain, then brakes abruptly in front of the two girls, producing a jet of ice that sprays them in the face. They give him a perfunctory telling-off as they dust off their coats, but nobody is fooled. Hands in the back pockets of his jeans, his whole life ahead of him, Christophe swaggers around, alone in the world, intolerable and super cute.
“Who are those ugly bitches?” Charlotte asks with a pout of disgust.
Hélène snickers. But they don’t have time to chat for much longer. The lights go out and they hear the first piano notes, echoing deeply in the vast space above the rink. Then colored spotlights begin to sweep the ice. Immediately, couples start to dance, hand in hand, and while the glitter ball sprinkles its shards of light all around, Bonnie Tyler’s hoarse voice sings the first sad couplet. And then it’s always the same story, the same sense of urgency. The slow-dance section is soon over, like everything else. Tomorrow it will be Sunday, and boredom. They have to seize the moment. At the far end of the rink, Christophe Marchal has grabbed one of the girls by the arm and is pulling her along with him. She is blonde in that way only seventeen-year-olds can be, and it is weird and painful to see that glamour couple pass by them only two meters away. Hélène watches them and wants to die.
“Ugh, this is horrible!”
“Yeah, it sucks.”
Charlotte drags her friend away from the railing and they start to skate, unsteadily, arms outstretched, together in the blue-striped darkness. Hélène feels Charlotte’s hand squeeze hers.