angrily on the soft, sucking sand under the blue, walking faster, harder against the weight of water. It pushes me towards the beach. I push back, fingers skimming the playful licks of wavelets angrily. And when I’m deep enough, I dive, swim hard and fast for the aqueduct, wanting to get away from all of them, have some space for once.
I swim butterfly, half underwater. As it deepens, it changes from the color of pale sea glass to a murky, dark green. One time I surface inches from the orange fiberglass prow of a canoe that speeds past my head, the canoeist never seeing me at all. Today, I don’t give a fuck. I just plunge back into the cool green murk and head for the aqueduct, coming up for air at the rocky base of the middle foot. Rolling on my back, I scull idly between clumps of white rock, watching water shadows dance on the concave belly of the bridge. My sulk ebbs away. Everything falls away. I am nothing more than the fierce blood in my ears.
Something touches my hand. Not just touches. Grabs hold of. I panic, lurching upright, swallowing about a pint of water, choking. Through the red haze, I see Freddie’s pale face, smirking.
“I gave you a shock, hein?”
“Fuck!” I splutter.
“It is time pour manger.”
He scoops his hand to his mouth, miming eating. “Émilie she has made le petit déjeuner.”
He keeps grinning widely. I’ve decided that his face annoys me. “Couldn’t you just have called me instead of … creeping up on me?” The last words come out with a splutter of river bile. My chest burns. I don’t even bother trying to hide my annoyance. It’s the imbecile way he keeps smiling. It’s the fact that he came to get me for lunch instead of Raphael.
As we swim back, I keep my distance, but he keeps swimming into me. It’s like he’s bumping into me on purpose. And there’s no reason for it, because he’s a strong swimmer, a swim-team-type swimmer. He can only be doing it on purpose, the big stalker. The more I try to wriggle away from him, the more he torpedoes me, knocking into my ribs one time so hard I know I’ll bruise.
“Stop it!” I hiss.
He just grins wider than ever until all I can see is the gap in his teeth and the gleaming wet pallor of his high forehead, his bony nose. And then when we’re just near enough to shore to stand, he grabs my waist.
“Get off!” I shriek, slapping him, kicking him.
“I know you like me because you check my phone. Are you stalking me a bit, Quinn?”
“Are you fucking serious? Put me down,” I say in the voice I use on bad dogs and pollsters.
“If you say so.” He does, but in the same movement, he whips me around to face him and kisses me, his tongue squirming between my lips.
I push him away and run to shore. My face pulses. I want to be sick. I expect everyone to be staring, to look horrified and tell Freddie off. But no one seems to care. Noémie’s just lying with her sunglasses on, plugged into her iPod. Émilie is fanning flies from her sunbaked picnic. Only Raphael is looking at the water, his arms crossed over his sinewy chest, eyes studiously unfocused.
I’ve begun to think Freddie is some kind of sociopath, who kissed me for no other reason than to humiliate me. Who tried to drown me. Who’s definitely the person text-stalking me. When he walks up and kneels in front of me and pinches my cheek, I slap his face, hard.
He falls back into the sand with a surprised little cry.
“Mon Dieu!” says Émilie. “Quinn, what have you done?” She stands up suddenly, glaring down at me.
Her anger is shocking. I’ve only seen her face look passive and happy. Now it is dark. Crumpled next to her, Freddie sobs like a child while Noémie and Raphael stay right where they are, staring as the scene unfolds.
“He pinched my cheek,” I say. “He shouldn’t do that. And before, he grabbed me in the water and kissed me. And I think that he’s—”
“What do you expect when you dress like that?” she says, looking me up and down. “You are asking for it un petit peu, n’est-ce pas?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone’s in a bikini …”
She leans over me and takes the skin of my wrist and pinches it with her nails. “There,” she says, her eyes mean and narrow. “Now you know how it feels.”
Behind her, Freddie smiles through his tears.
JULY 31, 2015
I sipped my Jack Daniel’s, my reflection vanishing by degrees as I eked out the last drops. I needed every last drop after my phone call to Quinn’s father, the great Professor Perkins. I’d called him to head off someone else telling him that there was an aunt type hanging around his daughter. To cover my ass, I’d pretended to be one Mademoiselle le Mesurier, the local contact for Quinn’s study abroad program, crossing my fingers that no one from the program had been in touch with him already.
“Bonjour, Professor Perkins,” I began in my best impression of a French accent. I explained my “role” and expressed my condolences for what had happened as well as my assurance that we were providing all the support we could.
“While I thank you for your call, I must inquire as to what it pertains?” he asked, his voice charmingly polite and yet so unconcerned it sent a chill through me.
Surely he must be devastated about all this, I thought; even if Quinn wasn’t a daddy’s girl, she was his daughter.
“And what day do you plan to come for Quinn, monsieur? I ask because, of course, we shall send someone to ze aéroport.”
Huffy silence on the other end of the line. Then—
“Well, of course … ahem … I’m grateful for the offer. So helpful of you. I just don’t know when I can be there, because, you see, my wife is very pregnant, so not until after the baby’s born at the least and even then …”
I put him out of his misery by thanking him for his time and expressing my hope that he would contact the program if he needed anything. I even gave him Mademoiselle le Mesurier’s real phone number, because by now I was sure he wouldn’t bother. I’d been worried about Leo flying to his daughter’s side and blowing my cover in the process, but I needn’t have been. He was a cold fish, that much was clear—one that wouldn’t swim over here anytime soon. But instead of being relieved, I just felt sad for Quinn, so lonely in her hospital bed. I wished I could go back to the hospital to sit with her.
I comforted myself with the company of Mr. Daniel’s and the contents of Quinn’s blog. There I read about the ups and downs you might expect on a teenager’s first stay far from home: tension with her host; a rocky relationship with her French exchange; unwelcome advances from the local lothario, a kid named Freddie. And then there was something darker: threatening messages from an anonymous stranger, apparently including footage of someone being suffocated.
I’d taken a look at her Snapchat app and found zip, just as she said. The messages erased themselves, hence the appeal
