Billie by Anna Gavalda, Jennifer Rappaport Read Free Book Online Page A

convince me that she’s the one who’s right . . . That he’s a loser next to her . . . That love is really super beautiful and that we shouldn’t fool with it and so forth . . .
    F RANCK (
really troubled to see Billie really troubled, but speaking quickly with his arms in the air
): But . . . but it’s only a play! It’s a game! It’s not like we’re before a judge or a career counselor! It’s theater, Billie! It’s . . . it’s entertainment!
    B ILLIE (
who doesn’t answer right away; who tries to find the right words; who guesses without really understanding that her role, the only true role she had to play, was the one she was playing now, and everything else [Camille, Rosette, Perdican, God, Musset, Madame Guillet, romanticism, the romantic life, romantic theater, the idiots in class, the stinky graffiti, the mean whispers, the groups of girls who move away when she approaches them, the insults, the rumors, the gobs of spit that fizzle out in the wind, the groups of boys that approach him when he tries to move away, the problems with the art teacher last year, the words that disgust everyone and that no one ever forgets, the junior high diploma, the end of junior high, the factory job, the stores all shut up, the houses for sale, the future with no prospects, the future with no hope, the welfare application already filled out, the TV already on, and so on] is, well, real easy compared to what was bothering her now; who therefore says nothing; who gathers together everything her shitty life had given her till then, everything she’s seen, lived, suffered, and heard in and around the Morels, everything it has taught her about humanity, those people without faith, without law, without pride, without morals, without anything; those violent people, stupid, alcoholic, and mean, who keep churning out babies, whom they couldn’t give a fuck about, kids whom they show how to piss in barely consumed beer cans, to shoot a rifle at barely born kittens or to wipe their asses with barely read letters from city hall, who have smoked in their faces nonstop since they were little, who let ashes fall on their kids’ school notebooks, who slap them just for the hell of it and who make them sleep alone and in the trailer without heat when they want to chill out or fuck each other to make more children whom they don’t give a fuck about, and so on . . .
)
    F RANCK (
worried
): You’ve stopped talking. Are you angry?
    B ILLIE (
who is not entirely focused but too bad, who goes for it anyway and will do it the way she always does it, off the cuff
): No, but it’s just, I . . . I don’t understand you . . . And I don’t speak for you, actually . . . I say “you” but it’s not you, it’s . . . it’s beyond you . . . It holds for everyone . . . There are many occasions in life where you can say what you think and say it properly . . . say it with words that already exist . . . to use a character invented by someone else to smuggle in things that you too find precious . . . to say who you are . . . or who you would like to be . . . and to say it better than you would ever be able to say it if you didn’t already have close at hand sentences that were already so beautiful . . .
    F RANCK (
?!?!?
): . . .
    B ILLIE: But . . . uh . . . don’t make that face! You see that I don’t have the words! So don’t purposely act as dumb as me! It’s what I’m trying to tell you, it’s that when you have a thing in you that can help you live . . . to truly live . . . something, like, to aspire to and to inspire you until you die . . . because it was there before you and will still be there after you . . . Yes, a thing that will speak about you when you no longer exist and without ever