The entire car vibrated as Moose’s friend sped over the cobblestone streets of Juliette’s neighborhood. The tiny Peugeot only had front seats; I was on the passenger side, and Moose was in the cargo space behind, sitting yoga-style, hunched over and head hanging, his friend scolding him. “Your father taught you better than this. And toward a woman, no less!”
But I was hardly listening. I sat there with my heart racing, my stomach churning, remembering the look on Juliette’s face and fretting about whether Moose’s invitation had been serious or not. Because I needed it to be. I needed his team to take me on, I needed for them to find me a place to stay. I needed this to be real or else I was on the next flight back to Montreal, my tail between my legs…
Moose’s friend pulled the car onto a sort of highway called the Périphérique, the ring road that circled the city. Scooters and motorcycles zipped by on all sides, weaving between speeding cars and giant eighteen-wheelers, everyone honking. Moose’s friend was still dogging Moose, and when I looked back, Moose’s eyes were glassy.
And I’ll be honest, I felt like I was about to cry too. “Look,” I said, but neither of them seemed to notice.
“Look,” I said again, only louder, and Moose’s friend settled down. “I’m sorry to have gotten you guys into that mess. I didn’t know. I mean, I just didn’t know.”
I felt Moose’s hand on my shoulder. “No worries, mec. It’s okay.”
We rode in silence, surrounded by revving engines and honking horns. After a while Moose said, “I haven’t even introduced you yet. Matt, this is Yazid, a grand frère.”
A big brother? I thought Moose had told me he was the oldest in his family. But that would explain the reaming out the guy had given Moose.
Yazid freed a hand from the wheel for me to shake; in the crazy Paris traffic, I kind of wished he hadn’t.
“I work security for the city of Villeneuve-La-Grande.” His smile was really warm. “I also coach the Diables Rouges bantam flag team. If all goes well when you meet Marc Lebrun, maybe you’ll give me a hand with them.”
Apparently I hadn’t completely blown it. Well, at least not with the Diables Rouges.
Yet.
“Marc Lebrun?” I asked.
“He’s our club president,” Moose said. “I called to tell him you were in town and interested in joining the team.”
Meeting the club president?
This was going to be like a job interview. I’d only ever had one job—the summer before, I’d worked for my high school’s grounds crew because my dad said that living with Mom was making me soft and too careless about money. There was no interview because my dad is the head coach. I just showed up.
Moose must have sensed my nervousness. “Marc’s really great,” he said, and he clapped me on the back. “Don’t sweat it. He’s looking forward to meeting you.”
Yazid pulled off the highway into an industrial zone: giant cinder-block buildings that looked to be abandoned factories; in the distance, high-rise projects. It was my introduction to Villeneuve, and I thought it looked like a sci-fi set, desolate and gray.
“I didn’t know you had a big brother,” I said to Moose, “much less one who plays and coaches for the team.”
“A big brother?”
Both Moose and Yazid laughed.
“I introduced Yazid as a grand frère, but he’s not my big brother.”
Yazid explained. “We grands frères, me and other guys from the neighborhood, watch out for the younger ones. You know, with all the drugs and gangs, the violence.” He looked pointedly in the rearview at Moose. “We try to steer them away from trouble.”
“Leave it alone, Yaz,” Moose said.
“Why should I?” Yazid said. “You afraid of what your friend’s going to think?”
I glanced back at Moose, hunched over in the too-tight cargo hold. Moose and drugs and gangs? Really?
I realized I didn’t really know Moose. We had gotten close real fast in Montreal. I’d introduced him to Céline and most of my friends, and we’d kept texting after he went back to France. But sitting in this car with him and a big brother who wasn’t his big brother, driving through I Am Legend-land, I became keenly aware of how little I really knew about him. Nearly nothing. Just that he was my age and loved football and that we got along.
Yazid turned toward me. “Moussa got expelled from school today. That’s why we arrived so late to pick you up.”
“On God’s head,” Moose protested, “I didn’t do anything.”
Yazid rolled his eyes.
“Okay, look,” Moose said. “A friend got sick and couldn’t go back into the school. I had to take care of him, so we skipped out.”
“A friend?” Yazid said, staring down Moose in the rearview mirror. “Anyone I know?”
Moose didn’t answer.
“Use your head, jeune! You’re on probation already.”
“On probation?” I asked.
“At school, yes,” Yazid said. “He punched out one of his classmates last fall.”
“The punk stole my bike!” Moose said, but I was thinking, Moose? On probation and a brawler? What else didn’t I know?
“The principal knew who did it,” said Yazid. “You would have had your bike back, no fuss. Instead, the principal called your father. How did that work out for you?”
Moose was quiet.
“Lucky for you, he called me instead of your father today. Getting expelled for two days would be the least of your worries. It’d be back to the bled for you.”
“The bled?” I asked.
“Back to the sticks,” said Yazid, as much for Moose’s benefit, to emphasize the point, as for mine. “Algeria, to his father’s village in Khabylie.”
“No gangbanging there, I imagine,” I said.
“No football,” Yazid said, “no university—nothing to look forward to but tending orchards and sheep. Is that what you want?”
“It’s your choice,” I said, “either gangbanging or the bled.”
“Gangbanging?” Moose said. “Stop, okay. I’m not in a gang. I beat up a kid, that’s all.”
I could see he was kind of pissed at me too, but I didn’t care. I was just relieved to know he wasn’t someone I didn’t know.
“But you’re right, Moussa,” Yazid said. “Let’s not spoil Matt’s arrival. You and I will continue this conversation later.”
Yazid pulled the car into a parking lot in the middle of the high-rise projects. I recognized them as the ones I’d seen from the window of the RER train heading into town from the airport, and they were even worse up close. A sort of metal-and-concrete ghetto, dingy white and gray cubicle apartments one on top of the other, laundry hanging on lines from windows, satellite TV dishes in place of potted plants. There was graffiti all over, on walls and benches. Here and there a gangly, leafless tree.
“Villeneuve, mec,” Moose said, smiling. “Home.”