“Anouk,” I say. “Didn’t you read your folder?”
Lilly’s smile splinters a tiny bit but somehow she keeps it in place through sheer force of will. I look at her curiously. She doesn’t seem brilliant. She doesn’t seem like she can climb a wall or scuba dive, either.
“That’s a cool name,” she says. “Is it Russian?”
“What?” It comes out annoyed. I slip my headphones down my neck. “No. Dutch, I think. Or Flemish.”
“Ooh, my aunt lives in Flemings!” Lilly says. “Yeah. In Wisconsin.” She touches my knee and gives me another smile, like living in Flemings, Wisconsin, is an accomplishment.
It is. I don’t know how anyone does it.
“Congrats to your aunt,” I say, moving my leg. “No, really, Flemings, Wisconsin. Wow.”
Lilly’s eyes go sharp. For a second I think she’s angry, but nope: it’s the same look she gave Will before deciding to not-hug him. Only this time she’s decided that whatever my problem is, it’s not going in the good-deeds-for-later folder. It’s going to be dealt with now. She pulls her scuffed-up chucks onto the sofa, wraps her bedazzled arms around her knees, and starts talking. It’s like watching waves come in on a beach, or someone vomiting after a party: endless, and you wonder where it all comes from.
Will looks over at us, slightly alarmed. Now he gets up and moves to a different sofa. Take me with you! I want to scream, but he’s not so good with mental telepathy. And Lilly’s not done with me.
She talks about baking quinoa vegan brownies. Her alternative-hippie parents who she clearly adores. A 3-D-looking tattoo of a fly on her arm, which she now realizes was a bad idea because it makes her look like she has the plague or is demonically possessed. She was grounded for getting that tattoo, and when she was done being grounded she got a second tattoo on the sole of her foot. She sang The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” in her high school’s talent show and didn’t win. She doesn’t actually show me the tattoos. And why is she still in high school?
I throw my head back and stare up at the little lights and air conditioners in the ceiling. Lilly’s barely even breathing between paragraphs. I’m assuming she’s too enraptured by her own stories to care that I’m being socially abominable. Her voice becomes a buzz in the background. Everything becomes a buzz. The air-system, the jet engines, the clinking of glass—all of it fades into a single flat line of sound.
I sit up. Glance around. It’s so weird. Like an eerily slow-moving dream. Hayden is lying on a sofa, sipping Orangina from a straw. Will and Jules are sitting next to each other, and Jules seems to be trying to make conversation, and Will seems to be trying not to die of awkwardness. I look to the sliding panel that separates us from Dorf and the rest of the jet. The glass is frosted, shot through with clear strips. I see a sliver of Miss Sei—a leg, some skirt. One eye wide, watching me.
There’s a beeping, sudden and shrill, and sound envelops me again. The captain’s voice breaks through the speakers: “Miss Sei, Professor Dorf, we’re coming up on some turbulence. Would you like to—”
A commotion on the other side of the glass. The speaker goes off in our compartment, but I can still hear it, muffled, in the one ahead of us.
I shiver. Lilly looks over at me, questioning. I slide my earphones back on and turn the music up loud.
Aurélie du Bessancourt, August 29, 1789
Mama returned to her chambers well past midnight. I heard her on the stairs, the noisy clatter of her shoes as she hurried up them. Her door creaked shut and an airy, velvet hush descended. But still the chateau seemed to groan and shift, as if some small object at its heart was pacing, unable to come to peace.
The next morning Mama joined us for breakfast. Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes oddly watery. I should have realized something was not right. Were I not such a fool, I would have silenced my sisters with a severe look and we would have eaten quickly, communicating solely through glances and the tapping of silverware, and then fled to dusty, unused guest rooms where we could discuss the matter in private. But I wanted dreadfully to hear tales of the new palace. When my sisters crowded around her I joined them, asked Mama if the palace was very large, and how many candles it must take to light the hallways, and was it warm in the depths, or bitter cold, and was there a salle d’Apollon like the one in Versailles?
She would not speak a word. She sat gingerly at the table, peeling an orange with a paring knife, cutting it into neat, jewel-bright wedges, and when the servants brought her a bit of fried liver in a painted china dish, she blanched and pushed it away. We continued to chatter mercilessly. We would not cease. And after a while Mama began to weep, putting her hands to her ears, and the orange lay on the table, a knobbly spiral of peel, and the rich flesh within hacked to bits.