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

betraying you, and that . . . uh . . . uh, well . . . why do you give a fuck about one’s genital apparatus?
    F RANCK: Excuse me?
    B ILLIE: Yes, you understood me correctly . . . What do you want me to say instead? Prick? Cunt? Tit?
    F RANCK (???): ???
    B ILLIE: Oh . . . Are you following me or not? You don’t understand what I’m trying to say or is it just that you don’t want to? Girl or boy, it matters, like, when picking the color of a baby’s room, for clothes, for toys, for the price of a haircut, for the kinds of films you want to see or the sports you want to play or the . . . beats me . . . things where being a girl or a boy makes a difference . . . But in this case . . . feelings . . . the things you feel and come directly from your gut before you think of them . . . the things your life is going to depend on after, like, how you see your relations with others, who you love, to the point that you are ready to be wounded, to pardon, to fight, to suffer, and everything, frankly, but what does . . . uh . . . your anatomical form have to do with it, I ask myself . . . and I ask you too, for that matter . . . If Camille’s your teammate, what the fuck does it matter if you’re a boy in order to play her? And plus it’s not even at the Académie Française but in a stinkin’ junior high class in a stinkin’ town . . . Okay? Why does it matter to you? To say Camille’s words out loud, it’s the opposite of risky. She’s tough, that girl! She can take it! She’s even ready to fuck up her life in order to follow her principles. Have you met many others like her? Me, zero . . . So you don’t fool with love, okay, but in exchange, assure me, you at least have the right to fool with the rest, don’t you? Or, if not, we all should just go to a convent right away, it’ll be simpler! Nah, but it’s true. It drives me nuts, all that! The whole mess drives me nuts, all the time! Drives me nuts! And your excuse about a girl and a boy, that . . . I’ll tell you right now, it’s crap. That doesn’t hold water for a second. You’ll have to do better.
    Silence
    More silence.
    Still silence.
    F RANCK: It’s not the Académie Française, it’s the
Comédie
Française
. . .
    B ILLIE (
still upset that she had to wrack her brain to say so poorly what was so important to say
): Who gives a fuck?
    Silence
    F RANCK: Billie, do you know why you absolutely have to play Camille?
    B ILLIE: No.
    F RANCK (
turning toward her in amazement
): Because at one point, Perdican can’t help himself and turns toward her to say, amazed: “You’re so beautiful, Camille, when your eyes light up!”
    Â 
    The conversation stopped there. First, because we had arrived in front of his doorway and second, because whereas Camille had rejected Perdican straightaway, reminding him that she had no freaking use for compliments, I, on the other hand, since this was the first compliment I had received in my entire life, I . . . I didn’t know how to take it. Really. I didn’t know. So I acted, like, totally deaf so as not to spoil anything.
    Then he indicated his house with his chin and said:
    â€œOf course, I could invite you in for a min—”
    I was already in the middle of answering “oh, . . . no, no,” when he cut me off:
    â€œâ€”but I won’t because they don’t deserve you.”
    Â 
    And that, of course, was something completely different from Perdican’s claptrap . . .
    That was the blood the Indians exchanged with each other when they cut a vein.
    It meant: You know, little crude and illiterate Billie, I understood you, your explanation earlier, and my team it’s you.
    And that’s that.
    La, la, li li . . . la la . . . 1