The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller. Kate Horsley
settings meant you couldn’t see much: a profile picture of her with the Blavette boy and girl arm in arm on the beach with the sea behind them, tanned, grinning happily, Quinn in the middle, squeezed between the siblings. They must have been pretty buddy-buddy to get to the profile pic stage. Behind them lies Quinn’s cover image of herself standing in the middle distance on a Boston lake in winter, black-clad against the snow and ice, serious-faced, a forlorn contrast to her seeming happiness in France. The only other thing I could find is a little clip of her waving pom-poms at some high-school football game, blond hair bouncing. A different Quinn again. This version seems like the sort of popular airhead whose high-school yearbook reads like the story of her, whose bed would be surrounded by get-well cards. The “Mean Girl” type. I found myself wondering which image is the real her, or if any of them were.
Thinking back, I didn’t see one get-well card; and that fact only deepened the mystery surrounding her. The American news had said a lot about her father, Professor Leo Perkins, head of classics at Harvard. It also mentioned that she was an only child whose mother had died years before. A fresh Google search revealed a Spotify with a bunch of playlists and an Instagram with more pictures. I looked at her snaps of a pool, a beach, the woods, a club full of young people partying, trying to make sense of the captions—Picnic at the beach, Noé, Raffi and Freddie, Adventure at Les Yeux and the hashtags #funtimes, #selfie, #thuglife.
By two in the morning, the barman was yawning and giving me a weary look as he polished beer glasses and swept peanut shells off the bar and into my lap. Finally, even this exquisitely polite individual lost patience and asked me to go. I was about to head upstairs when I remembered that in my fearful rush, I’d forgotten my notes in the car. Good time to nip out for a smoke, anyway.
In the parking lot, I teetered along, suddenly realizing how drunk I was. It had been raining and the streets were gleaming. As I came closer to my car, I saw that the passenger door was ajar. Had I forgotten to close it? Kicking myself, I tottered closer, hoping that wasn’t where I’d left my file of clippings on the case.
It was only when I reached the car that my eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw that I hadn’t forgotten to close the door at all. Someone had jimmied it open with a piece of metal, or something—you could see it from the tiny scratches in the paint job around the handle. Pulling it open, I saw my file was gone.
JULY 13, 2015
Blog Entry
Today we went to the pool. Again. Noémie took her bike and I borrowed her brother Raphael’s. He’s been studying film in Paris at the Sorbonne, so doesn’t really live in the house anymore, but is coming home for the summer. He’s kind of the local hero in St. Roch, the all-star football player, the guy that got the scholarship. Some days he’s all you hear about, especially from Noémie’s mom, who’s fond of getting the family albums out. Noémie must get sick of it—I mean, I’ve only been here a few months and I’m already a bit sick of hearing how amazing and handsome and smart and athletic he is. At the same time, after looking at about a million photos of him over the last few months, I’m not sure I don’t have a bit of a crush on him. After all, I practically know him already.
So I borrowed the all-star’s bike and we cycled along the dusty country road dodging Vespas and farm trucks, the boy saddle punching my girl butt with each pedal stroke. And then we were there: the pool, with its rusted green fence, its siren song of blue, its golden boy flesh pulling us through the rose-tangled gates.
In St. Roch, the pool is the place to be. There aren’t many teens in this town, maybe twenty or so around my age and a little bit older. There aren’t any jobs either: some really big scandal happened years ago from what I’ve heard, and it almost shut the place down. Now it’s the southern French equivalent of one of those American ghost towns that used to rely on coal mining and then the mine shut and the people left. You might think that in a rural town surrounded by idyllic beaches, teens would tan there every day, but no jobs means no transport. You need a car to get to the beach and almost no one has one.
Plus, no adults go to the pool, so it’s like this secret clubhouse where kids can smoke and get up to mischief. When I saw the photos on the study abroad site, the town seemed so picturesque and “so French.” Over the past few months, I’ve come to find those advertising-perfect images funny in a sad way: they’re such blatant lies. In reality, this place is dying, everything around fading and breaking as residents abandon it and tourists find better places to go.
The kids I’ve met here feel trapped, as if they’ll never go anywhere else or find anything better to do, so they make things worse by vandalizing everything, even the pool, where, unless it’s raining, they all come after lunch and lounge on the burned grass around that little rectangle of blue. Surrounded by the looping hate speech of their graffiti, they smoke and gossip and flirt and play guitar, and they swim, dive, dunk, splash, all day every day, all summer long. I guess it’s okay, if you’re good at flirting and swimming and tanning, if you’re not feeling totally paranoid about who’s stalking you.
(I know, I know. You all said to chill out and relax, and if it happens again to tell an adult. But wouldn’t you be just a *tiny* bit freaked?)
We strolled in, not greeting anyone too enthusiastically, not letting our eyes fix on anyone beautiful, boy or girl. To me, the one outsider, they all look so at home there—as if they sprang up in the night, flesh fresh from the wrapper. Twenty pairs of fake Ray-Bans turning to watch us walk in before losing interest.
This early, the pool is empty except for two acid green noodles and a busted pink inflatable raft. We reach our usual spot under the olive tree and kick off our flip-flops, shake out our towels, ditch the baguettes Émilie made us take in the nearest bin. “Get Lucky” is playing on somebody’s minispeakers as we strip off, stretch out, already breaking out the tanning oil. As usual, a knot of sinewy guys is looking our way, their eyes popping like the Photoshopped colors of a soda ad because their skin is so brown. They’re hot, but all I can think is: Is it one of them?
One is offering his hands up to the service of our un-sun-creamed backs, grinning straight-white-toothed, eager and horny. This is Noémie’s doing, not mine. Berated at home and by her own account hated at school, she is Queen Bee at the pool. And it’s not hard to see why: she totally has that French chick thing going on: the smooth tanned skin, cool, short-cropped hair, beestings of tits (French titties, I call them). Lounging by the pool in her bikini, smoking American Spirit and shooting the shit, she’s all sang-froid.
The guy with the hands—Freddie is his name—takes pride in his work. It’s a weird feeling, but not a bad one. When he undoes my bikini top, though, and gestures that I should turn over so he can do my front, I shake my head, feel my face flush. Noémie rolls her eyes at me as if to say, Prude, or whatever the French is for that, and beckons him over. I want to tell him to tuck his tongue back in. He’s her flunky. Neither of us would ever date him.
After an hour of sunbathing—and you could set your watch by this—Noémie says, “Let’s play the game.”
So we obey her, playing the daily game of dunking each other in the pool, seeing who can hold their breath the longest. The St. Roch boys love these games of dunking. Me, not so much. But Noémie eggs me on, shooting me a disappointed look every time I try to drift towards the sidelines. She’s a pro at the old peer pressure.
I’m holding my own until Freddie comes up behind me and dunks me hard and for a long, long time. I start panicking. Chlorine burns my throat and eyes. Starts stripping out my sinuses.
Alone down there where no one can hear me scream, I flail, kicking his leg, clawing his arms. I start to think—no, I start to know I am drowning.