The American Girl by Kate Horsley Read Free Book Online Page A

angrily, her pouty lips twisting in disgust. “I hate you.” She turns away, her arms folded.
    The boy frowns. “Forgive my sister,” he says. “She has not taken care of you.”
    â€œNoémie’s your sister?” I say, surprised. And then I realize why he looks so familiar: it’s Raphael, the Sorbonne student whose photos I’ve been admiring for months.
    â€œBut of course.” That charming smile again. “Didn’t she say I was coming today?”
    â€œNo.”
    Noémie turns around just far enough to interject. “You are an asshole, Raffi. Maman is expecting you Sunday. She will lose her mind.”
    He smiles back sweetly at her. “But, dearest sister, my college term has ended, and I heard from Maman there was a nice new American exchange staying all summer, so I thought I’d come entertain her.” He winks at me.
    We ignore Noémie as she pretends to vomit.
    â€œAre you staying all summer?” I want to kick myself for my obviousness.
    He shrugs. “Well, maybe, if I find something fun to do. Otherwise, I will go back to Paris. It can get quite boring here, you know?”
    â€œYeah, really.”
    When Raphael tells me that he is nineteen and at college in Paris studying film, I try to pretend I don’t already know everything about him. He finds out where I’m from in the States and seems really interested, asking about Boston and my college plans and what music I like. All the while, just at the edge of my vision, I see where Noémie sits scowling. Freddie is sitting next to her on her towel and every so often he just stares in my direction.
    It makes me shiver under the shade of the olive tree, so that I find it hard to focus on what Raphael’s saying, about how he’s seen everything by Tarkovsky ever, and loves the Beastie Boys for their irony, and worships Tom Waits because he is God. I try to hold up my end of the conversation, but my mind keeps circling back to the bad things that have happened. I mean, come on. The texts have been weird. The video was megaweird and scary. But this near-drowning incident makes three.
    Three weird, scary things in two days. And Freddie is starting to seem like he just might be stalker suspect number one. Maybe he dunked me like that because he wanted to scare me? Well, he’s succeeded.

Molly Swift
    JULY 31, 2015
    B ack in my room, I dragged off my wet clothes with a sigh, lay back on the bed in my underwear, and looked at my phone. Three A.M. Jesus. There was a message from Bill that just said, Call me . I texted him back saying I had pay dirt for him and tried to send him some of the photos. When I couldn’t get them to send with the spotty Wi-Fi, I threw my phone down in disgust and lit another cigarette. Hanging out the window, I looked down at the street below, its potholes and drift of trash, the occasional tourist or bum shuffling by.
    I held my phone all the way out the window, as far out as I could manage, attempting to catch a few rays of their three-star internet. As if Bill sensed my moment of vulnerability through the transatlantic airwaves, my phone burred into life, “Jolene” playing on the ring tone. My partner-in-crime’s raddled face smiled at me under his name and number. I answered, immediately noticing a shifty tone to his voice when he said hello.
    Bill was a journalistic giant in his day, a hero of the Watergate era, and he likes a good exposé as much as he did when he was my media studies lecturer. I was in night school then, a last-ditch attempt to salvage an education after years of expulsions and reform schools and ultimately dropping out of college to attend the School of Life. Bill was one of that institution’s most curmudgeonly alumni, so we hit it off. I wanted to be him; he saw a chance to work again by using me as his eyes and ears, his proxy out in the world. He’d be right at home in this era of whistleblowers and