Steph parked the 205 with the top down near the train station. This was a functional, century-old building with a clock high on the wall that read 4:10 p.m. Clémence remarked that they were super early. Steph didn’t even hear.
She had been waiting and getting herself ready for ages. These last few days she had been careful to drink her two daily bottles of Contrex mineral water. She had lain out in the sun, but not too much, an hour at most, patiently building up her tan so as to get the perfect smooth suntan, a golden skin with a few pale marks on her naked body, a memory of her bikini.
The moment Steph got out of bed, she stepped onto the scales feeling vaguely worried. She liked to eat and party. She enjoyed staying up late and tended to drink a lot. So she had started watching her weight to the ounce, tracking how much sleep she got, and taking great care of her body, which was prone to extraordinary changes, depending on the moment, the light, her fatigue, and what she’d had to eat. She polished her nails, made up her eyes, treated her hair to two shampoos, first one with seaweed, then one with eggs. She gave herself a facial. In the shower, she scrubbed her skin with coffee grounds. She entrusted her legs and pussy to her beautician. She was clean, appetizing, calibrated to the millimeter.
Today, she was wearing a brand-new tank top, a striped Petit Bateau number that was so tight, Clémence asked if it was designed for a six-year-old.
“We’re gonna have to wait for hours,” said Clem, who was already feeling bored.
“Of course not.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but we are.”
They went to Platform 2, which was completely deserted. The girls both had long hair and were wearing Converses and skirts. The train would arrive at 4:42, with a two-minute stop, maximum. The Heillange station hardly served any purpose anymore, but survived as a matter of principle because the deputy mayor had made it a political issue, because a town without a train station was nothing at all. On the shabby walls, illegible posters gave the schedule of the regional TER trains, which no longer stopped here. The advertisements were six months old. The weather was horribly oppressive. Clémence decided to go wait in the shade. A feverish Stéphanie took to staring at the point on the horizon where the tracks converged.
She felt happy. She was about to get her reward.
Steph had been sweating blood these last few months. She had always skated through life, doing as little as possible. Merely acting doleful and looking cute were enough to get her through most situations. Except that as exam time approached, her father had suddenly started harboring unexpected ambitions. Or maybe he’d begun to panic about Steph’s future. Whatever the case, he’d read her the riot act. Unless she passed her baccalauréat with honors, he said, she could kiss her car and her vacation goodbye.
“You’re kidding, right?”
She still remembered the moment when he lowered the boom. She was standing in the kitchen, eating a strawberry Yoplait. That’s probably why she would hate that flavor for the rest of her life.
“I’m just warning you, that’s all,” he said. “Either you pass with honors or you won’t get a car.”
“But I already took the written driving test.”
“So what? I saw your girlfriend’s father at the stadium yesterday. She’s going to take a préparatoire course in Lyon.”
That bitch Clémence! Always slaving away on the sly. Whereas with all her screwups, Steph was now up against the wall.
“But she’s been working like crazy ever since elementary school!”
“So what were you doing all that time?”
“That has nothing to do with it! Where in the world is this coming from? I can’t make up ten years in three months, that’s nuts.”
“I’ve talked it over with your mother. That’s the way it is. Also, you’re going to finish your college applications. That’s been dragging on for weeks.”
“Okay, fine.”
“When?”
“I’ll get to it.”
“Today!”
“Jesus…” Steph groaned.
In disgust, she tossed her Yoplait in the garbage, spoon and all.
The ultimatum hit especially hard because she’d just found a little Peugeot 205. It had 140,000 miles on the odometer, but it was red and a convertible—and her parents had said yes. She and Clémence had been dreaming nonstop about what they would do with it. And now the dream was imploding just like that, right in their remodeled kitchen.
Ever since he’d started aiming for the mayoralty, Pierre Chaussoy had developed a rabid appetite for conformity. It had gotten so bad that Steph’s mother could hardly go out in a miniskirt anymore. And now he wanted an offspring with diplomas. He was less of a pain when all he cared about was cars and getting a new coupé every year.
All things considered, the threat to Steph’s vacation was the most serious. If she bugged her parents long enough, she would eventually wind up getting a car. It was essential for getting around here, and cheap, so they wouldn’t give her a hard time. The vacation, on the other hand, was something else. They’d grumbled about it from the start. The plan was a pretty big deal. The Rotiers owned a fabulous house in the Basque country near Biarritz, a sheepfold facing the ocean, to which they invited a chosen few every August. Stéphanie and Clémence had scored invitations for the first time this year, a signal honor.
It should be said that Steph and Simon were now pretty much seen as a couple, despite the breakups, psychodramas, reconciliations, and separations that were their standard operating procedure. She was his girlfriend, and that was that.
Starting in April, Steph’s life became a sedentary nightmare. She had been counting on passing the baccalauréat with a B– average, thanks to helpful coefficients in English and sports on the oral exams. But her dad’s demands had thrown her into homework hell. Worse, she was practicing for her driver’s license at the same time.
So for weeks on end, Steph endured a series of exhausting days. She got up at six and studied before breakfast, especially history and geography, subjects that demanded an unreal amount of memorization. Yalta, the United States, Japan, the Missile Crisis, the Trente Glorieuses…was there no end to this crap? She bought Bristol index cards, writing notes in blue ink and emphasizing dates in red. She had some Muesli and orange juice and continued studying in the car on the way to school. Then she had classes, followed by tutoring in math.
In her major, every subject counted, even philosophy. Plato’s Republic, seriously? Who dreamed up these insane programs? In a country ravaged by unemployment, socialism, and Asian competition, were younger generations really expected to be interested in that ancient bullshit? In the library, Clémence got a good laugh when she saw Steph aim two fingers at her temple, but that didn’t help her understand the allegory of the cave.
After a while, she decided to focus on “annales,” well-edited little study guides that summarized everything you needed to know to avoid being humiliated on exam day. She underlined the main points but was so anxious that she wound up highlighting practically every single line. Sometimes, when she got the blues, she would fold her arms on her desk and bury her head in them. The weather was beautiful and Roland Garros would be on TV soon.
In the evening, Clémence would drop Steph off at the driving school. Her instructor, who wore Bermuda shorts and Pataugas boots, would drape his arm around her headrest. For the whole driving lesson, she had to endure the smell of his armpits and the sweaty presence of this car-crazed clown. It was enough to make you weep. The guy had an especially disgusting way of teaching parallel parking. As she was pulling in, he would slide close, watch the rearview mirror, and mutter, “Yes…Yes…No…That’s good. A little to the right. Gooood. Yes.” What a creep! Once, she yanked the handbrake and ditched him, stalking off without a backward glance.
When she got home, Steph went at it again, studying until nine, if not later. Clémence came over and they would cram together. The girls also spent a fair amount of time figuring out college majors. Steph had never taken much interest in her orientation. She was now discovering a whole nebula of programs in the liberal professions, secondary degree tracks, dead-end paths and useless bachelor’s degrees, and technical diplomas that led to well-paying jobs with no hope of promotion. Clémence, on the other hand, had those career paths down cold, had been preparing for them since forever. Steph was only now discovering that there was no such thing as destiny. In reality, you had to build your future like a construction game, one brick at a time. You had to make the right choices, because you couldn’t afford to take a path that required a great deal of effort and didn’t lead anywhere. Clémence had all this stuff at her fingertips. Her father was a doctor, and her mother, an education inspector. Those people had practically invented the game.
At times, Steph would space out. Her mind wandered. She started thinking about Simon Rotier, wondering what he was doing. She hardly had a second to devote to him, and, knowing Simon, he probably wasn’t sitting around twiddling his thumbs. Whenever they ran into each other in the hallway at school, she couldn’t help demanding to know what he’d been up to. Their conversations quickly turned nasty. Also, that slut Virginie Vanier was buzzing around him, with her big teeth and her big tits. Too bad. Steph had to stay focused. Honors. The car. The vacation. The Basque country. Once there, she would go swimming every day. They would go surfing, have barbecues, party nonstop. She and Simon would fuck in the shade of the pine trees, with the taste of salt on skin, the rustling of the wind, the ocean so close.
“And itchy sand up your ass,” added Clémence.
Steph grinned. She no longer saw her friend the same way. Now that she was thinking about her future, her options, and the way careers were made, she was suddenly becoming conscious of a new fact: the world belonged to the students who were the first in their class. All those kids, the ones people mocked for being followers, timid, brown-nosers, and conscientious, had the right idea from the very beginning. If you want a crack at the good jobs and later an exciting, respected life with couture suits and pricey heels, it isn’t enough to be cool and well born. You have to do your homework. This came as a real shock for Steph, who had largely relied on her basic don’t-give-a damn attitude and a fondness for sliding and board sports.
With all this studying, strange things started happening in her head. Shortcuts, surprises, insights. Up to now, she had always thought the disciplines she was taught to be diversions, pastimes for channeling the young. But once the force feeding started, it changed the way she saw things. Steph would’ve had trouble defining this turnabout. She felt both more confident and less certain. Under pressure, a brief Eureka! would sometimes light up her mind. Or, to the contrary, some obvious truism would fade away before her very eyes. The world was becoming fragmented, ramified, infinite.
Gradually, she began to enjoy it.
And a terrible worry hit her. She was belatedly realizing that her view of success was totally fallacious. Her parents’ ideal, with their idea of exponential comfort—the chalet in the mountains and the condo in Juan-les-Pins, their need to be well-connected and have status—she now clearly saw as pathetic. To be successful, it wasn’t enough to sell luxury cars and know all the rich people in town. That was a horizon for small-timers and the perpetually confused. A cocooned place that hung by a thread. Steph’s folks thought themselves lords, but they were actually mediocre stewards for a rule operating elsewhere.
With Clémence, Steph was starting to see the big picture. France’s real decision-makers went through the préparatoire courses and private academies. As early as elementary school, society started sorting its children, picking the most promising ones, the ones best suited to reinforcing the status quo. The result of this systematic selection was a prodigious underpinning of existing power. Each generation produced its batch of gifted people who were quickly converted and duly rewarded, and who went on to strengthen inheritances, revive dynasties, and consolidate the huge architecture of the country’s social pyramid. In the end, merit wasn’t opposed to the laws of birth and blood, as had been imagined by jurists, thinkers, the rebels of 1789 or the black hussars of the Republic. It actually disguised a huge winnowing operation, an extraordinary power of agglomeration, a continuous shoring up of existing hierarchies. It was a very clever system.
After hours of studying, beating herself up, eating Pepito sandwiches, and sitting inside while the sun was shining, Steph came to despise the entire edifice. She and Clémence got enormously worked up, wanting to overthrow the whole system and go live cheaply, listening to music on some faraway beach. This revolutionary ardor barely disguised their fatigue, their laziness, and the fear that they would fail and find themselves at the bottom of the ladder. In May, they were still burning with this feeling of injustice. Then came the exams. Steph passed with an A average. Her baccalauréat with honors in hand, she quickly reconciled with the ways of the world. Nothing remained of her political fervor, including the quickly jettisoned notion of joining the young socialists. Delighted, her father bought her the little red car.
While they were waiting, other travelers had joined the girls on Platform 2. Clémence did her best to ignore them. Steph could hardly keep still. Then the train appeared.
Steph immediately ran to the last car. A moment later, Simon stepped down carrying his suitcase, looking fresh. He took her in his arms and they shared a deep kiss.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she said.
“Me too.”
She looked at him. He smiled. She immediately sensed that something was off.
“I have my car,” she said.
“Cool.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Did you get a haircut?”
“Yeah.”
They joined Clémence and headed out. Simon insisted on sitting in the back with his suitcase, and they got under way.
Steph had dreamed of this moment dozens of times. They would get into the convertible. They were young, beautiful, and free. She had even made a custom cassette tape for the car’s player, with songs by the Beach Boys and Mano Negra. But instead of that, Simon was acting distant, Clémence was feigning indifference, and she herself felt burdened and unwell, as if she were having her period and had just eaten a couple of Snickers bars.
“So, how was it?”
“Cool.”
“What did you do? Did you go to concerts?”
“For sure.”
“Did you see the Eiffel Tower?” Clémence asked with a straight face.
“Yeah.”
“Super.”
Steph kept asking questions. She already assumed there was some girl behind Simon’s laconic answers. But all in all, that was a lesser evil. The Basque country was calling. Distance would quickly make him forget his accidental Parisienne. Besides, Simon went to Paris pretty regularly. He had cousins there. If he had in fact found himself a girlfriend, Steph would just have to keep an eye on him. He said “Paris,” but the cousins in question actually lived out in Rueil-Malmaison. She was a top executive with Danone; her husband worked for Matra, in La Défense. They had three children. Judging by the photos, they looked a lot like the Triplés, the insufferable blond kids in the cartoon strip that ran in Figaro Madame.
“So what did you do there?”
“Nothing special.”
“Did you have friends? Did you go out?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean, ‘Yeah’?”
Steph checked the rearview mirror. Simon was wearing his Quiksilver glasses and looked very superior to everything, as usual, and that indifference drove her completely crazy. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to matter to him, and right away. She fell silent, in a hurry to be alone with him. She would do whatever he wanted.
Then Simon spoke up.
“By the way, Biarritz isn’t happening,” he said offhandedly.
“What?”
Clémence spun around in her seat, and Steph almost stalled the car.
“We aren’t going. It’s off. I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Clémence.
“Are you serious?” asked Steph.
“C’mon, talk. What the hell is this shit?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s the way it is. The trip is off.”
Steph brought the car to a screeching stop on the shoulder. Another car passed them, honking furiously. The girls gaped at Simon, incredulous. He actually didn’t seem all that sorry.
“Explain yourself at least.”
“It’s nothing. Drive on, I’ll tell you about it.”
Steph set the hand brake instead. Simon looked around the area where they had stopped. It was one of those ambiguous zones where scattered houses with little gardens, fences, and colored shutters formed an intermittent archipelago. There were highway signs, electric wires, spaces between people. It wasn’t the countryside, but neither was it a town or a housing development. A bus stop shelter maintained the fiction of a link with civilization. Two old people were waiting there—since when?
“So?”
“I’m sorry,” Simon repeated, about as convincingly as before.
“What part of ‘We want an explanation’ don’t you understand?” asked Clémence.
“It’s complicated.”
“Get out of my car,” said Steph.
“You’re joking.”
“Yeah. We’re dying of laughter. Get out, right now.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain it to you. It isn’t my fault.”
Simon told them what had happened. Julien, the oldest of his cousins, was due to go to the West Coast of the United States for a whole month that summer. It was a big deal and had been arranged a long time ago. But he’d had the bad luck to break his leg roller skating. So Simon stepped in to take his place. He was leaving in three days; his bags were already packed. A month with a family of psychologists in Carmel, California. It was a golden opportunity; no way was he going to pass it up. He was very sorry.
“So you’re just ditching us?” asked Steph.
“Well, what would you want me to do?”
“You could start by drowning in your own vomit,” suggested Clémence.
“How long have you known?”
“A week.”
“And you didn’t warn us?”
“You realize we made all our plans around you, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I’m really sorry. That was just it. I actually didn’t know how to tell you. I’m really sorry, girls.”
There he was, sitting on his ass, with his white polo shirt and his little head hiding behind his glasses. Steph hated him so much, especially because she couldn’t help thinking him cute. That was her drama. For nearly two years now, Simon had made her life a living hell. They had broken up a dozen times. And not just because she caught him kissing other girls at parties. He lied all the time, stole money from his parents, got bombed on TCE, and never kept his word. And the worst was that he always managed to land on his feet. Steph had always been the one to initiate their reconciliations. She told herself stories about crazy love and attraction/repulsion, like Dylan and Kelly in Beverly Hills, 90210. Simon was tortured, selfish, and sexy. In short, a real asshole.
“You know, I always said he was a born loser,” observed Clémence.
Steph was thinking hard. Things couldn’t just spiral out of control this way.
“What about your brother? Couldn’t he open the house for us?”
“You can always ask him,” answered Simon sarcastically.
“You’re a truly sick individual,” said Clémence.
“You gave me no choice,” he said, frowning. “I knew you were gonna give me a hard time. I’ve been wondering for days how I was going to break the news to you.”
You had to admit that Simon had a kind of genius for getting himself out of tight spots. You criticized him for something, and two seconds later you found yourself apologizing. Steph had gotten her head turned around so many times, she’d lost count. But this time, she wasn’t falling for it.
“You’re gonna take your little suitcase and split.”
She opened the door and tipped her seat to let him through.
“I’m not getting out here. This is the middle of nowhere.”
Steph looked around. It would take Simon at least an hour to walk to town. With his suitcase and in this heat. The idea pleased her enormously.
“Come on, raus! You’re getting out, now.”
Clémence was silently jubilant. With ill grace, Simon finally got out of the car. He started walking toward the bus stop, occasionally looking over his shoulder in the hope that they would say, “No, it’s okay, we’ll drive you home.” But Steph was too disgusted. She thought about Simon’s hands on her ass, her crotch, everywhere. Shit.
“What a loser,” said Clémence.
“No shit.”
Stéphanie got back in the car, released the hand brake, and headed for Heillange under a cement-like sky, in the thickness of July. She drove quite fast, without caution, without pleasure, without a word. Their vacation was fucked. Their last one as high schoolers. A brand-new sadness rose in their tight throats.