Exhibit A—I had a boyfriend once. I was fifteen. He was fifteen. He had green eyes and floppy hair and liked The Killers, and if that doesn’t guarantee a life of shared bliss, I don’t know what does. We were going to get married. Move to the West Village and have zero children and drink tea and live a life of bohemian ennui. It didn’t happen. Green-eyed Boyfriend was expelled for pouring lighter fluid all over the bike stands and setting them on fire. Not even to protest anything. Just because. It was okay, though, because he didn’t know we were getting married. I never actually talked to him. The height of our romance consisted of me ignoring him all the way through chemistry, and the instant I heard about the bike stand incident I was over him anyway. People who are dumb enough to light bike stands on fire are not people I want to share a lifetime of bohemian ennui with.
Exhibit B—Two years earlier, when I was thirteen, I went to the library and checked out all the books on sociopaths and bizarre human psychology I could find. The librarian probably thought I was deranged, but I wanted to be sure. I figured if I had a medical reason to be mean and angry, things would be simpler. It turns out having medical reasons to be mean and angry doesn’t actually help you become less mean and angry. It doesn’t fix you.
I lean my head against the window of the black Mercedes and watch the landscape rush past. It’s an endless conveyor belt—frosty green fields, gray sky. We’re whooshing along a six-lane highway. Behind us are two more Mercedes, long, low cars with tinted windows. Ahead is another. We’re like a shiny, furiously speeding funeral procession.
Jules is lying on the seats across from me, staring up at the ceiling. Professor Dorf and a driver are up front behind darkened glass. Will, Lilly, and Hayden are one car behind us. I’m starting to regret this arrangement. Jules is much too effusive for me. He has this way of laughing loudly and then looking at me cautiously, like the only reason he laughed is because he wants me to laugh, too. I don’t like that kind of pressure. Still, I guess it’s better than being in the other car. Lilly’s trying to drag Will out of his shell. I don’t know what Hayden’s doing. He didn’t stick with Orangina for long on the plane ride, and his reaction to all the drinks was to become very slow and buzzy, and speak in short, dramatic sentences about the sky and the tarmac. But maybe he’s knocked out cold by now, which is more than I can say for Jules.
He’s just being friendly, Anouk. He’s just a nice person. It’s possible. But this is where Exhibit B comes into play. I don’t believe in the whole “‘people are basically good deep down”‘ notion. I think deep down is where people are the worst.
“And so for our social sculpting class this one guy got a bunch of horse manure and mixed it with plasticine until it was this really glossy brown, almost like chocolate, and he put it in a bear-shaped mold and called it ‘Poo Bear,’ get it? It was, like, a commentary on how culture is packaged to look appealing but is basically crap. It was brilliant.” He raises his eyebrows in admiration and looks out the window.
“Except Winnie-the-Pooh is not crap,” I say. “Winnie-the-Pooh is transcendent.”
“What? It’s not about Winnie-the-Pooh, it’s—You’re missing the point.”
“He was making a pun on ‘Pooh Bear’. So that’s inevitably part of the point. And I think it’s a stupid one. ‘People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day’? That’s brilliant. If Mr. Social Sculptor wanted to be all clever and subversive he should have made a shampoo bottle out of crap, called it ‘ShamPoo,’ and it could have been a commentary on all the toxic chemicals in commercial shampoo. Then he could pretend he’s a crusader against multinational cosmetic corporations instead of just skewering children’s books he’s probably never read.” I click my tongue. “Missed opportunity there.”
“Don’t you study art history?”
“Is that a legitimate question, or are you trying to shut me up?”
Jules laughs. I know he’s doing that inquisitive little sideways look right now.
I keep my gaze fixed on the landscape outside. We landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport about 10 A.M. Paris time and were whisked straight from the tarmac to our waiting motor-cade. We didn’t even have to go through Immigration.