Life Eternal

ACCORDING TO MADAME GOÛT, FRENCH was an irregular language, a secretive language; the language of Monitors. The last three letters of almost every word were silent, which had the strange effect of making all words sound alike, regardless of their meanings. Everything was about accent, pronunciation, performance; as if the entire language were a disguise, designed to make us blend in with everyone else.

The other girls called it romantic, but I thought it insincere. The Latin Dante spoke made his love for me feel ancient and timeless, as if it could never die. What I didn’t realize until later was that French had depth, too; the trick was to hear the words that weren’t spoken.

Our classroom was in the attic, where it was oppressively hot, comme l’état de Vichy, our professor joked, saying it would improve our throaty accents.

Madame Goût was a slender woman in her fifties who wore high heels and belted dresses. She had a gap between her front teeth and spoke with a thick French-Canadian accent. Her favourite word was “Non”, which she said in a definitive kind of way, to make sure we all knew when we were wrong.

“There are too many tenses and cases in Latin. It makes you think too much,” she said, gesticulating quickly. “There is no love in it, no emotion, no joie de vivre! With French, it just spills out.”

The heat rattled through the radiator, punctuating Madame Goût’s lecture. Next to me, Anya was taking notes, pushing her red braids aside when they got in the way of her pencil. As the professor wrote a list of pronouns on the board, I could hear Clémentine whispering to two of her friends.

Madame Goût must have heard, too, because she put down the chalk and turned around, her heels rapping against the floor. “If you insist on whispering in my class, I would rather you share it with all of us.”

The sharp edges of Clémentine’s shoulders shifted beneath her shirt as she faltered. She looked starched and pressed, her collared shirt crisp as an envelope.

“We were talking about the Île des Soeurs. About the women who used to torture the Undead there.”

Madame Goût groaned. “Of course Monsieur Orneaux would say that. He is what we call un homme, un vrai. A man’s man. Like most men, he is not interested in the endeavours of women,” she said, waving her hand in the air. “He does not know anything,” she muttered. “I have been telling them time and time again that he is not qualified to teach.”

“The truth is that women were the founders of our entire Monitoring society.” Madame Goût lowered her voice. “And the women you speak of are les Neuf Soeurs, or the Nine Sisters.”

Turning to the blackboard, she erased all of the pronouns scrawled across it. She then picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down the following names in a swirling cursive:

Gertrude Fine

Marie Champierre

Victoria Limon

Joséphine Klein

Prudence Beaufort

Ester Olivier

Chrisette Longtemps

Alma Alphonse

“They were a secret society of female Monitors,” she said. “A sisterhood.” Smoothing out her skirt, Madame Goût went to the door and closed it. “It started in 1728 in Paris, as just a group of friends. Brilliant Monitors, young, incredibly smart, and all husbandless, which was very uncommon at the time. They called themselves les Neuf Soeurs, after the nine muses in Greek mythology.”

“It is believed that they were behind most of the early Monitoring advances – Monitoring schools, hospitals, the convent on the Île des Soeurs. But most famously, they were the protectors of a secret.”

Madame Goût clasped her hands together. “That’s where the facts end. The rest we can only guess at. The prevailing rumour is that they had discovered the secret to eternal life.”

My pencil slipped from my fingers and dropped to the floor. I felt Clémentine’s eyes on me, watching my reaction. I tried to hide my surprise.

Madame Goût continued. “It has long been speculated that since children can defy death for twenty-one years, there might be a possibility that adults could defy death indefinitely. The myth of immortality has powerful allure.”

Immortality. The word floated around my mind like a feather. This is it, I thought. This is the solution that Dante and I have been looking for.

“As the story goes, once les Neuf Soeurs found the secret to eternal life, they decided they could never use it. They were frightened by the power they held. Eternal life is perverse, unnatural. A world without death is even more frightening than a world with death. The beauty, the magic, the éphemérè…it would all be lost. So before they died, the Soeurs supposedly made a pact to let their secret die with them.”

The room went so still I could hear the footsteps of the professor in the classroom across the hall as he paced.

The professor tapped her finger on the table. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the secret was never about immortality to begin with; maybe it was about a family heirloom or a dirty rumour. It all depends on what you want to believe.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, raising my voice over the sputtering heater. “If les Neuf Soeurs was a secret society, then how do you know so much about them? Or is it all made up?”

Madame Goût raised an eyebrow, as if she had anticipated my question. “Oh, but it’s not. At first, no one knew anything about them.” She stood behind her chair and leaned on its back. “Until they died.”

Madame Goût’s expression grew solemn. “They were killed. Each found murdered at home in France in 1732. That was how their identities were discovered.”

Madame Goût motioned to the list of names on the blackboard as a murmur rose over the class.

“There are only eight names here,” I said, breaking the silence. “Who was the ninth sister?”

“Ah, yes. The ninth sister. I told you that each of the Soeurs was killed at her home. Well, only eight bodies were found.”

“No one knows. Some believe she died. Others believe that she used the secret and is still alive, guarding it from evil.”

“No one has been able to confirm her name or anything about her identity. Other than this.” Madame Goût’s heels clicked against the floor as she walked to her desk and removed a heavy book from the lower drawer. Flipping through it, she opened to a painting and passed the book around the table.

“This is the only painting we have of the Sisters. Many believe this was painted just days before their deaths. It is very famous; you will find it in all of the books about les Neuf Soeurs.”

When it came to me, I traced my finger across each of the Soeurs, their black eyes boring through the page as they stood in a parlour, each wearing a plain house dress. They were of varying ages, some in their twenties, others not much older than me. On the far left was a girl with wild brown hair and narrow eyes. She looked the youngest. Half of her face was obscured in shadows. Perched on her arm was a yellow bird.

“The girl on the left,” Madame Goût said. “That is the ninth sister. The lost sister. Many Monitors searched for her, but all they knew was what half of her face looked like, from the portrait. But after years of nothing, everyone assumed her dead.”

“I will leave that to Monsieur Orneaux to explain. I believe it’s his area of expertise. Latin is, after all, the language of the Undead.” Leaning over her book, she turned the page. “Now, back to français.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Madame Goût said, raising her index finger. “I never said that.”

“Oh, but of course they have. It’s one of the most controversial stories in Monitoring history. Many Monitors have lost years of their lives searching for la Vie éternelle, or Life Eternal, as many of us call their secret. It is the Monitors’ version of the lost city of Atlantis. The Holy Grail. The Fountain of Youth.” Madame Goût shook her head. “And you’ve seen how many of those have turned out to be true.”

“Quiet, please,” she said, rapping her knuckles on the table. “That’s enough futilités for today.”

As she continued her lecture on pronouns and gender, I thought back to the plane ride with Dustin, when I had blurted out the word canary. Could that have had something to do with the Nine Sisters?

That evening in the dining hall, I was pouring myself a glass of milk when a voice tickled my ear. Caught off guard, I nearly dropped the carton on the floor.

“You seemed awfully interested in the Nine Sisters today,” Clémentine said over my shoulder. “What I’m wondering is why someone who supposedly already defied death is so intrigued by talk of the secret to immortality.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m just a normal person and all the rumours are a lie?” I said, keeping my chin up as I walked to the condiments section.

Clémentine followed me. “No. See, I don’t think you’re normal, either.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, and shrugged her off as I walked towards the table in the corner where Anya was sitting.

“I know you have a secret,” Clémentine said as I left her behind. “And I’m going to find where you buried it and dig it up.”

When I got back to my room after dinner, it was so quiet I could hear footsteps coming down the hall, and then the sound of Clémentine’s door unlocking. I was setting down my bag when a sudden cold breeze blew in from the windows. I ran to the other side of the room, hoping it was Dante, but of course it wasn’t. Clémentine’s words crept into my head. If she ever found out about Dante… I didn’t even want to think about what would happen.

Closing the window, I went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. While I was leaning on the sink, waiting for the water to get hot, I heard someone knock on Clémentine’s door. I assumed it was some of her girlfriends, so it surprised me when I heard a boy’s voice.

Noah? I thought. The same Noah who hit me with a bicycle, who had flirted with me? The Noah who had spilled a bouquet of daffodils all over the street. He had bought them for Clémentine?

Pressing myself against the wall, I listened to him whispering to her, to her whispering back. To the sound of a bra strap snapping against skin. To Clémentine giggling. To the silence when they kissed.

Closing my eyes, I imagined that it was me in there with Dante, but Noah’s voice kept drowning him out. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I started crying.

I wasn’t jealous of Clémentine; it wasn’t that. Or maybe it was. As I stepped into the shower, gripping the tile, I wished, just for a moment, that I could be her, that Dante could be Noah, and that when I went back to my room, he would be there waiting for me. But I knew I could never have that.

The shower curtain billowed as I reached over my shoulder and, with delicate fingers, touched the indentation on my back. The pain was shrill and shaky, like the high note of a soprano, but I held my finger steady until it calmed to a long, low ache. It was all I had left of him. And in five years, when he was gone for ever, I wouldn’t even have this, unless I did something now to change my fate. As my hand slipped to my side, I hung my head back, letting the hot water cascade over my body until I couldn’t tell if I was crying any more, and the bathroom was filled with so much steam that it was hard to breathe.

My room was cold when I shut the bathroom door behind me. Clutching my towel, I went to my desk and pulled my history book off the shelf. I flipped through it until I found the section on les Neuf Soeurs. The painting Madame Goût had showed us in class stared back at me from the page. I studied the shadowy girl with the canary, wondering who she was and what had happened to her. But the text didn’t help. It only mentioned the few facts Madame Goût had already told us, and spent the rest of the chapter talking about their influence on Monitoring culture and society.

Had they really found the secret to immortality? I had to know. And if it existed, I had to find it. But where was I supposed to start? Skipping ahead, I spotted a photograph of a stone carving on the bottom of the page. It was a simple thing – a small bird entwined with what looked like vines – yet still, it was enough to make my chest seize.

My breath grew shallow as I leaned back in my chair, unable to believe what I was seeing: the same bird that had flashed into my mind on the aeroplane with Dustin. The Canary Crest of the Nine Sisters, the caption read.

Switching on my desk lamp, I looked closer, but I was right: it was the same bird I had seen when I’d blurted out the word canary.

Did this mean that the visions I’d been having, the information I’d suddenly known, all had to do with the Nine Sisters?

A crisp swirl of air blew in, turning the pages of my book. But hadn’t I just closed the window? I stood up. The window was indeed still shut, yet the air was streaming in, coiling around my wrists, my arms, my chest, until I let out his name like a breath. “Dante.”

Acting on an impulse, I ran to the wall and turned off the light. And standing in the middle of the room, I closed my eyes and took a tiny step to the right, and then an even smaller step to the left, until I could feel the stream of air reaching up my legs.

I threw my towel aside and got dressed as quickly as I could, combing my wet hair with my fingers as I ran down the stairs and out the door. At the school gates, a group of boys were joking around with a security guard.

“I – I have to go,” I said, and squeezed through them. I disappeared into the winding streets of Montreal.

I didn’t know where I was going; my only guide was the chilly passage that connected me to Dante. It was hard to follow. I kept getting distracted by death that I sensed nearby: crowded markets, hospitals, and churches with modest graveyards. I made a left, followed by two rights, but then lost my way. I turned around and retraced my steps, holding my breath until I could feel him.

Eventually I found myself at the far end of the old port, at a fisherman’s wharf. The air was raw and cold, like the inside of a freezer, and filled with sounds of the ocean at night: the chug of the water splashing against the dock, the boats swaying in the marina, their lines clinking against their masts like chimes.

By the pier was a wholesale shack filled with beautiful two-metre-long fish hanging from the ceiling, their scales reflecting the fluorescent light in oily shades of red, orange and purple. I felt their pull on me as if they were the Undead. A weathered man in rubber boots and gloves wheeled a barrel of smaller fish up the dock. Lowering my head, I walked past him, watching the moon’s reflection ripple on the water, when a cold hand grabbed my wrist.

I knew I had found Dante from the way his presence enveloped me, seeped into me, filling my lungs with the scent of the woods clinging to his clothes, the pine so sharp that for the first time in months I could remember what it felt like to walk through a forest at dusk.

“Nowhere in this city is safe,” he said, and pulled me into the shadows between two oversized boats, his hand on my ribs, his breath soft against the back of my ear, as we waited, hushed, for the last workers to leave.

The dock rocked beneath our feet as Dante led me to the end of the platform, where a small white boat called The Sea Maiden was docked. Its sails were rolled up.

“Ours tonight,” he said. Before I knew what was happening, he lifted me up as if I were weightless and carried me into the boat, my feet knocking a handle of the steering wheel, making it spin and spin. I clung to his neck, burying my face in his hair, in his shoulder, not wanting him to let me go.

“I miss you,” I said, as if I were imagining all of this. “I miss you,” I repeated, already anticipating when the night would be over and he would be gone.

He carried me to the middle of the deck, where a set of stairs led down into the cabin. I held on to the collar of Dante’s shirt, touching the curves of his neck as he stepped over a pile of life jackets and into the hull of the boat.

He tightened his grip and flipped on the light switch. Strings of tiny lights lit up the perimeters of the windows. A plush red bench lined the room, which was walled with panels of dark wood. Laying me down on the cushions, Dante stood back and looked at me.

He kneeled by my side. Picking up my right leg, he gently unlaced my shoe and slid it off. My toes curled as he moved to my left leg, slipping my other shoe off and placing it on the floor.

The boat creaked as he looked up at me, his eyes somehow desperate. His fingers tickled my skin as he ran his hands up my thighs, reaching beneath the pleats of my skirt. Something within me ached. I closed my eyes and felt him grasp the waist of my tights and peel them off, one leg at a time. I let out a shallow breath as he kissed my bare knees, the cool air of the marina making my skin prickle.

Swallowing, I nodded, his question making me want him even more. “Don’t stop,” I said, my voice cracking as I unbuttoned my cardigan and slipped it off my shoulders.

He kissed my neck. And slowly, he unbuttoned my shirt, his breath dancing across my skin until I was clothed in nothing but a bit of cotton and lace.

Sitting back, he took me in, his eyes roaming across my body, bare and pale in the evening light. Beautiful, he mouthed, as if his lips had acted without him. He lowered himself on top of me and moved his hands across me, tangling his fingers in my hair, feeling the smooth lines of my hips, my ribcage, my collarbone, until everything inside me went limp.

He turned away just before our lips met. “Careful,” he whispered into my hair.

And even on that tiny couch, in a cramped cabin in the stomach of a boat, everything seemed to fit together, as if he were the inverse of me. The cavity of his chest, the curve of his waist, the weight of his legs on top of mine – they filled the hollowness within me, and I breathed him in until I could smell the wet air, the dusty cushions beneath us, the salt on his skin as his stubble grazed my neck.

We stayed up into the night, whispering, touching, as if no time had passed between us, as if the last two weeks had been nothing but a pause in the middle of a long, rolling sentence.

“I think I found an answer,” I breathed over my shoulder, my voice barely audible as I told him about Zinya’s prophecy, the Nine Sisters, and the canary. “If the legend is true, then their secret could still be out there. If we find it, then we can use it to give you life again.”

I waited for Dante to press himself against me and tell me we were saved, but he remained still. “But all of that is just speculation,” he said finally. “How do you know the ninth sister didn’t let it die with her, or that immortality exists at all?”

His voice hit me like a splash of cold water, and I felt myself grow stiff. “Because it has to. A vision of a canary flashed into my mind on the aeroplane. That has to mean something. Zinya said the visions would lead to the answer to my soul. What if all of my visions are clues leading to the secret of the Nine Sisters?”

“You promised me when we were behind the cathedral that you wouldn’t follow your visions.”

“I never promised,” I said. “And besides, I’m a Monitor. I can take care of myself.”

Bewildered, I hugged my arms to my chest. “Why are you saying these things? Don’t you even want to try?”

I searched his face, trying to understand why he was acting this way. “Then why aren’t you happy?”

“I am happy,” he said, as if I had hurt him. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up about something that might not even exist.”

“But that’s all I have,” I said. “When you’re gone, it feels like a piece of me is missing. If I lose you, what’s left?”

Dante put a hand to my cheek and guided my face to his. “You won’t lose me,” he said. “I would never let that happen. I promise you.”

He tangled his legs with mine, his fingers stroking my shoulders, his lips pressed against the back of my neck. Outside, the wind was strong, making the boat beneath us tilt and sway, pulling our bodies apart and then pushing us back together until I drifted to sleep in his arms. Sometime around midnight, I stirred, hearing him whispering in my ear. “I love you,” he murmured, thinking I was still asleep. But he didn’t need to say it, because I already knew.

I awoke the next morning alone. Sitting up, I turned to the space beside me where the shape of Dante’s body was still imprinted in the cushions. I touched it even though I knew it would be cold. I shouldn’t have been upset; I knew that he would have to leave by midnight, before the Monitor sweep. But no matter how hard I tried, I knew I would never get used to his absence.

Out the window, it was a dull rainy day. I gathered my things, the boat creaking as I steadied myself and tried to put on my clothes. I was about to leave when I picked up my sweater. Lying on the floor beneath it was a note. It must have fallen when I first got up.

I smiled and clutched it to my side, feeling that Dante was still with me as I climbed out into the drizzle.

When I got back to the dormitory I went straight to Anya’s room. She opened the door just as I was about to knock, appearing in the doorway in a black jumper and purple tights. Her red hair was pulled into a loose braid.

We didn’t have a plan when we set out. I figured we could just follow what I’d done in my vision: buy a bouquet of flowers, go to the reception area, and tell them we were visiting room 151. It wasn’t anything brilliant, but we were going to a hospital. How hard could it be?

We travelled there by foot, Anya holding a wobbly umbrella between us as we traipsed through the puddles. The Royal Victoria Hospital was just as I remembered it: a sprawling lawn leading up to a massive stone building, the flags on the spires waving in the wind. Inside, the building had glossy floors and clean white walls. A line of nurses sat behind the reception area, typing. I walked towards them, Anya’s wet shoes squeaking behind me.

“Hi,” I said to a nurse with big hair. “We’re here for visiting hours.” I placed the bouquet of flowers on the counter for emphasis.

She typed something into her computer, and then frowned. “What’s the name of the patient you’re visiting?”

After typing something else into her computer, she leaned back in her chair. “Pierre LaGuerre?”

It sounded so silly when she said it out loud. “There is no patient here with that name, and there never has been, according to our records.”

“What are your names?” The nurse’s voice was stern as she picked up a pencil.

Anya kicked me just as I was about to answer. “Our mistake,” she said. “We must have gotten the wrong hospital.”

The nurse stood up, but before she could respond, Anya grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the exit.

She led me to a mall, where we took an escalator down, down, down, until we emerged in the underground level. The halls were tiled in grey and lit with bright fluorescent lights that made me shield my eyes. People bustled around us, shopping, drinking coffee, heading towards the food court, which stank of hot oil.

I followed Anya as she wove through the tunnel system, taking a left and then right, past a Metro entrance, a perfume shop, and a huge grocery store, until we made it to a tunnel that had been almost completely blocked off by cement slabs.

“I think this is it,” she said, stepping past a shallow puddle of orange water.

“How do you know about this?” I asked, sucking in a breath as I pressed myself against the side of the tunnel and followed her.

“All of the Russians here know about them,” she said, leading me through a dank corridor lined with rust. “We were the ones who built them. Well, not me, but, you know, Russian immigrants. When I was little, my father used to take me through all the barricaded tunnels.”

At the end was a narrow stairway that led to a single door. Anya pushed it open with her shoulder. It opened into a long storage closet in the hospital. Kicking away a box, I stepped over a mess of supplies – gauze, syringes, boxes of latex gloves – until I made it to the far door, lined with light.

“Let’s use these,” Anya said, and picked up a sheet of visitor stickers. Writing the name Tanya on one sticker, she peeled it off and stuck it on her shirt. She then wrote Dasha on another sticker and stuck it on my chest. Together, we crouched by the door, listening to the footsteps outside, and when there was a lull, we snuck out.

We found ourselves in the geriatrics ward – a drab place, its overhead lights buzzing in silence. It felt vacant and cold, as if it were inhabited by death. Trying to act inconspicuous, Anya and I walked towards the elevators. A bell dinged and we stepped inside.

It was crowded with two nurses standing by a patient on a stretcher. He was an old but robust man, his bare arms still muscular, his beard a deep grey. He wasn’t dead, but sleeping; I knew because I couldn’t sense him. Anya stared at him as I pressed the button for the third floor, which was labelled Paediatrics.

I groaned. “He could be your grandfather,” I said. “Your great-grandfather.”

“I think older men are sexy,” she continued. “Their chest hair. I love it.”

I put my hand up. “Just – stop – no more. Let’s focus,” I said, eyeing a nurse as she talked on the phone.

Everything was just as I remembered: the drawings on the walls, the crayons and picture books in the waiting room, the hum of machines beeping, nurses chatting, shoes tapping against the floor. A line of bedrooms.

Then room 151. “Someone’s in there,” Anya said, peering through the window. Standing on my toes, I peered over her shoulder. A single bed stood in the middle of the room, and a boy was lying in it, the sheets tucked around his tiny legs.

The room was still, save for the breeze from an air-conditioning vent, which blew up beneath a potted plant, making its leaves quiver. The same boy from my vision was asleep in the bed, his arms riddled with patches and tubes, as if he had been turned inside out.

“Just – watch him while I go under, okay?” I took out a piece of notebook paper and a stick of graphite from my coat. The plastic tiles felt cold and slippery as I kneeled on the floor.

Pushing away a knot of wires, I slid underneath the bed, which was nailed to the floor, my body just fitting in the narrow space. I patted the ground with my hand until I felt something rough and cold, like metal. I traced its edges with my fingers: it was in the shape of a circle. And placing the piece of paper over the area, I rubbed the page with graphite to make an impression of the surface, hoping that I was doing it correctly.

I emerged with a sneeze. We both froze, waiting for the boy to wake up, but he didn’t move.

“So what is it?” Anya asked, pulling dust out of my hair as we looked down at the rubbing I had made. It was an oval plaque of some sort, engraved with the following inscription:

to arrive there

follow the nose of the bear

to the salty waters beneath;

Beneath the words was a crest depicting a small bird. I felt my heart skip. “It can’t be,” I whispered, gripping the paper.

“It’s a canary,” I said, tracing its wings. “The crest of the Nine Sisters.”

Before I could say anything more, the small boy shifted in his bed, making Anya and me jump. “Let’s talk about this somewhere else,” I whispered, and made for the door.

Glancing down the hall to make sure no one was looking, I took out the paper. “Some sort of riddle. A set of directions,” I said, pointing to the first line: to arrive there. Suddenly, I looked up. “Maybe it’s a set of directions to the secret of the Nine Sisters.”

I looked to Anya, expecting her to be excited, but instead she said, “I don’t know. It seems too easy. Why would it be beneath a hospital bed?”

I watched the dial of the elevator tremble as it moved down the floors towards us.

“The last line ends with a semicolon, not a full stop. Maybe it’s incomplete.”

Anya looked sceptical. “All of that stuff is a legend, though. We don’t even know if any of it is true.”

“It’s a stretch, I know, but this exists, right?” I said, staring down at the page. “What else could explain this?”

I pointed to the bird at the bottom of the page. “This is the exact same crest that’s in our history book, under the Nine Sisters. I looked them up last night.”

Anya shook her head. “It can’t be. It has to be a fake, or a crest that looks just like it.”

She gazed at the paper as if she feared it. “How could you have seen that in a vision?”

As she studied me, a smile spread across her face. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“So what do you propose, then?” I asked, taking offence. “We just ignore it?”

She sucked on a lock of red hair. “Fine,” she said. “Let me see it again.”

The elevator dinged, and a down arrow lit up. Once the doors closed, I took out the rubbing.

“So we have to follow the nose of the bear to the salty waters beneath,” I said, reading the final two lines.

I crossed my arms. The nose of the bear. That couldn’t be referring to a real bear. Maybe it meant an etching on a building, or a rock formation that looked like a bear… And the salty waters probably referred to the ocean…

“But Madame Goût said that the Nine Sisters vowed to let their secret die with them so no one would ever find it,” Anya said. “So why would they leave a riddle leading to it?”

I didn’t know, and before I could say anything more, the elevator doors opened to the ground floor.

My eyes travelled up from the right leg of his trousers, cuffed as if he had just come from riding a bicycle, to his collared shirt, unbuttoned at the top, to his auburn mess of hair.

He looked at my name tag. Quickly, I ripped it off and crumpled it in my hand, hoping he hadn’t read it.

“Nothing,” I said, giving Anya a look. She did the same. “Why are you here?”

I swallowed, staring at his dimples, at the dark red stubble on his cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. She’s been here for a while. I like to come every so often to say hi, even if she can’t hear me. I was actually on my way here when I ran into you on the street.”

“You were?” I said, inexplicably relieved to realize that the flowers weren’t for Clémentine, but for his grandmother.

“No one, really?” he said, letting out a laugh. “What are you doing here, then?”

As I searched for the right answer, Anya piped in. “Sampling the cafeteria.”

“We were just leaving,” I said, grabbing her arm. “We have to get back to campus for a…”

“It’s girls only. A private thing,” Anya said, making my face go red with embarrassment.

“I hope your grandmother feels better,” I said, just as the doors closed. Together Anya and I ran back to St. Clément, splashing through the puddles collecting on the flagstones, and into the dormitory.