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In which our hero gets something he’d almost forgotten he wanted.
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“There,” Garland said, “between those two.”
It was a fifteen-minute white-knuckle drive later and we were in Bayeux, ditching Rémy’s hatchback on a residential street a few blocks north of the city center. I parked between two other hatchbacks—I think eight out of every ten cars in France are hatchbacks—in front of an endless row of three-story beige apartment buildings, and while Parker and I grabbed our bag from the hatch, Garland began rather indiscreetly tampering with the license plate on the yellow car in front of ours.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, but he shushed me and proceeded to switch Rémy’s plate with the one he’d just removed.
“Let’s move,” the old man said once he’d tightened the last screw, and we left the car with the keys in the ignition. “They’ll be looking for a bright green hatchback with Rémy’s tag number,” Garland said once we’d rounded the corner, “but they’re not going to find that car in Bayeux now are they?”
“I guess not,” I said, though I didn’t share his certainty that swapping two license plates had us out of the woods. In fact, I was still quite certain a team of French special forces would sweep in at any moment to arrest us or shoot us or maybe both. I wasn’t homesick, but I wanted to go home. I’d signed up for helping an old man find his girlfriend, not shooting at cops and blowing up cars and swapping license plates to stay one step ahead of the law.
“We need to split up,” Garland said once we reached a bridge crossing the Aure, the narrow river that runs through Bayeux. “They may not be looking for us yet, but they will be soon, and when they do they’ll be looking for two kids with an impossibly handsome older gentleman. You two meet me at the train station parking lot in one hour.”
“You said we shouldn’t take trains,” I said.
“We’re not taking the train, son, but if I told you my plan you’d get all upset like you do.”
Just the mention of a plan that would upset me upset me, and I cursed and pulled my hair and began walking in small circles mumbling that I wanted to go home. Garland knew he was losing me, so he looked around and pulled Rémy’s pistol from his coat pocket.
“What the—” I began to say, but he hushed me with a finger, wiped the fingerprints off the gun, and tossed it into the green water. “We won’t be needing that anymore,” Garland said, then turned to me and asked, “You feel better now, son?”
I watched the ripples on the Aure fade as Rémy’s pistol sank to the bottom, then said to Garland, “I guess.” I still didn’t see how things would end well, but at least now we’d lowered our odds of dying in a shootout. “But if you’d got over your aversion to littering a little sooner we’d be in a lot less trouble.”
“Maybe, but we’d also be under arrest,” Garland said and tousled my hair. “Now you two go buy us some new clothes and I’ll see you at the train station in one hour.”
“What are you,” Parker asked Garland, “size 6?”
“You flatter me dear. Train station. One hour. Don’t be late.” Then he turned and hobbled off down the sidewalk.
“Let’s go, Edwin Green,” Parker said, grabbing me by the hand and leading me alongside the Aure into town.
We walked in silence for a while, but as we passed through the branches of a willow Parker inexplicably began singing “The Humpty Dance.”
“How are you not freaking out?” I said. “You almost shot a policeman.”
“If I had a dollar for every time I almost shot a policeman,” she said.
“This isn’t funny. We’re in a shit-ton of trouble.”
“No, Edwin Green, we’re not. I may be in trouble, and Garland is definitely in trouble, but you’ve done nothing wrong. I swear I would have brought Buzz Booker had I known you’d worry so much.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and she squeezed my hand. I’d forgotten she’d been holding it the entire time. Then she kissed me on the cheek and said, “That’s okay. Now will you try and relax and enjoy yourself a little. You’re in France, you jackass.” She pointed ahead toward a small waterfall between a row of moss-covered medieval buildings. The buildings were blanketed with pink and white flowers, as was the waterwheel which no longer turned in the current, and ahead in the distance were the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral—not the one you’re thinking of though—apparently every town in France has one. It was perhaps the loveliest place I’d ever set foot; however, I struggled to appreciate the vista because Parker Haddaway had just kissed my cheek and rendered the rest of the world irrelevant.
We kept walking and stumbled out onto the Rue Saint-Jean, a narrow, bustling street full of shops and cafes and people, and in a matter of maybe ten minutes I’d gone from wanting to go home to wanting to stay with Parker in this French town forever.
“Come on,” Parker said, “clothes,” and I followed her through the crowd to a store called I.Code, but as we walked inside my phone buzzed. It was Fitz.
“I should take this,” I said.
“Okay, Edwin Green, but I’m going to pick out your outfit.” She spun me around and lifted my shirt to see the size of my jeans, then slapped me on the ass and walked into the store. An old French woman saw the whole thing and scowled at me like I'd said something bad about soft cheese, so I walked farther down the street to avoid her glare and answered my phone.
“It’s happening,” Fitz said.
“What’s happening?”
“What do you think, Green? You’re famous,” he said. “All three of you are famous.”
It took a full five seconds before I remembered why I’d actually come to France. I hadn’t thought about Sadie Evans since we’d escaped from Charles de Gaulle, which, not counting sleeping hours, was by far the longest I’d gone without thinking about her since Black Saturday.
“I tweeted that video you sent me,” Fitz continued, “and all the news networks picked it up, and they haven’t stopped talking about you all morning. It’s crazy. They’re not even making us do work at school. We’re just watching you guys on the news.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“Good? Dude, this is all you’ve talked about for twelve months. Your YouTube videos, they all have millions of views now. Millions.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Yeah, shit.”
I’d walked back toward the clothing store and saw Parker through the window. She held up a short red leather mini-skirt and I gave her a thumbs-up. She shot me the bird and I laughed and Fitz said, “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “So, have the networks made the Sadie Evans connection yet?”
“Not yet,” he said, “but I’m sure they will soon. Want me to tweet them?”
I was still watching Parker through the window and said, “What?”
“Do you want me to tweet them, about Sadie?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to—”
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
“Dude?”
“What?!”
“Green, some guy on CNN just said you guys shot a cop.”