The Secrets of Boys (7 page)

The girl in the polo shirt raised her hand.

“Oui?”
Madame Briand called on her.

“Have you ever been to the Montréal Independent Film Festival?” she asked, her voice laced with smugness.

“Actually, no, I have not,” Madame Briand replied.

“Oh, you should go! I went last year and it was fabulous. You Canadians have so much talent!”

“Why, um …
merci
? ” Madame Briand seemed to be deciding to take this as a compliment.

Cassidy couldn’t believe it. If this program was so damn prestigious, why couldn’t they find a French teacher who was actually French?

“And now let us all get to know each other,”

Madame Briand continued. “We will go around the room and introduce ourselves—
en français, bien sûr
—

and tell the class a little something about ourselves.

Also in French, naturally.”

Cassidy cringed as the students began introducing themselves. Most of them said simple things, like that they liked to ski or they had a brother named Phil. But the girl who thought Canadians had talent introduced herself as Cecilia, and went on to say that she had traveled the world with her parents, was also taking Italian and Japanese, and wanted to go into international politics.

Cassidy found herself wishing Cecilia would hurry up and go
somewhere
international and never come back.

As it got closer to her turn to speak, Cassidy’s hands began to get clammy. Just the thought of talking in front of everyone made her want to puke. She wondered what would happen if she suddenly opened the window and jumped out. But that would not only draw attention to her, but probably would also get her a broken leg, so she’d be stuck in French class
and
hobbling around on crutches for the rest of the summer. What could be worse?

Then the door to the classroom opened and Cassidy forgot everything, including her own name. The guy who walked in was a dead ringer for Chad Michael Murray, but not quite as tall, and with crazy brown hair that seemed to defy gravity and spike up in all directions like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical outlet. He entered the room with the kind of easy confidence basketball players display running up and down the court, and the corners of his lips curled up in an impish smile as he surveyed the class.

He wore paint-spattered jeans and a short-sleeved black button-down shirt. Cassidy could just see the edge of a tattoo on the tight brown bicep peeking out from under the edge of his sleeve and wondered dizzily what it was. But the most arresting thing about him was his eyes. They were the color of the Pacific Ocean first thing in the morning, a deep, mysterious green with miles of meaning underneath.

He said something quickly to the teacher in French—

the only words Cassidy could catch were “sorry,” “late,”

and “wrong room.” Was this guy actually going to be in her class?

Madame Briand turned to the group and beamed.

“Crickets,” she said.
Crickets?
“I’d like to introduce Zach Weston. He’ll be your TA this summer, and I’m sure he’ll be an enormous help in the classroom. Zach is a student at NYU, but he spent last summer studying abroad in Paris.”

Benjy was rolling his eyes at Cassidy again, but she barely noticed. She was too busy taking in the way Zach’s chin angled into a point and the amazing mag-netism that seemed to electrify the air around him.

“Hi, everyone,” Zach said, smiling. Was it just her imagination or was he looking straight at her? “Glad to be here.”

Madame Briand looked at Zach like she wanted to adopt him before instructing the group to resume introductions. Cassidy stared at the back of Zach’s neck as he took a seat in the front of the classroom, at the tiny golden hairs skimming his smooth brown skin. Her palms were moist and clammy, and not just because she was nervous about talking to the class. She hadn’t felt this kind of instant attraction to someone since she first saw Eric ride a fifteen-foot wave at Point Dume. In fact, even though she’d been thinking of Eric a few moments before, she could barely picture him now. Everything was just so … foggy.

“Et tu?”
Madame Briand was saying. And then, louder:
“Comment t’appelles-tu?”

Cassidy looked up to realize the whole class was staring at her. Great. She’d been so into drooling over Zach, she’d practically forgotten where she was.

“Je m’appelle
C-Cassidy Jones,
”
she stammered, realizing she hadn’t thought of anything to say after that. She dug frantically in her head, trying to remember a single one of the French phrases she’d learned in school. But maddeningly, she could only come up with
voulez-vous
couchez avec moi ce soir
. Asking Zach to sleep with her that night wouldn’t be the most appropriate thing to say.

“
Bonjour,
Cassidy!”

Cassidy looked up just in time to catch the end of her name coming from Zach’s lips. This time, he was looking right at her, and he was definitely smiling. The warmest, most dazzling smile she’d ever seen.

June 26

Dear Cassidy,

Hey, how’s it going?

So I made it out to Idaho in one piece, but I can’t
promise you I’ll come back in one. Our “base camp”

is at the top of a mountain that the bus could barely
drive up because the road is so steep and winding, I
guess because they don’t want us to escape or something. Not that I know where I’d escape to, since the
nearest town is fifty miles away. Our lodgings kind
of resemble a federal prison. We’re in this concrete
dorm with creaky bunk beds, and at first I was
pleased to see I’d gotten a bottom bunk—until I met
Lloyd, the guy above me, who weighs three hundred
pounds and says he was busted for “dust,” whatever
that is. He tosses and turns all night, and every time
he rolls over it sounds like a five-car collision, so if
I’m not making much sense, it may be because I’m
sleep-deprived.

We had our first “group” this morning. They’re
all into doing things outdoors
(
even going to the
bathroom—that’s what the creepy outhouses are for. I
guess indoor plumbing is too much to ask for
)
, so we
had to sit around in a circle in this grove of pine
trees. In case you were wondering, shorts and pine
needles do NOT mix. Anyway, I’m a little freaked out
by the other kids here. We all had to say what we’re here
for and, suffice to say, I was embarrassed to admit I’m
here for pot that I don’t even smoke. Everyone else was
doing like twelve tabs of Ecstasy every night or smoking
crack. You know how when we say, “Are you smoking
crack?” we’re usually joking? Yeah. Not these kids.

Some of them have
actually
smoked crack. A lot of it.

Which doesn’t exactly make you a pleasant person to be
around, as it turns out.

Lloyd wanted to know if I’d smuggled anything in,
which would be hard, considering they had dogs sniff-ing our bags when we got here. Even my Cadburys
were confiscated!

Anyway, I have to go. I have “KP,” which means
slopping gruel into everyone’s plastic bowls for dinner.

Our silverware is plastic too, I guess so we don’t kill
each other with it.

The secret of this boy is that he wants to go home. I
hope your summer is better than mine so far, but I
don’t see how it couldn’t be.

Cheers,

Joe

Cassidy had to admit that her summer was going a
little
better than Joe’s was, even though they were barely at the end of June. It turned out that Madame Briand’s “cultural immersion” policy included a lot of field trips, and Cassidy was actually kind of psyched that the first was to the J. Paul Getty Museum, featuring an exhibit of French impressionist art on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. As she followed the teacher’s voice through the cool, echoing marble halls, she wondered why she didn’t go to museums more often. She couldn’t decide which she loved more: losing herself in the deep, richly colored paintings or being able to just stand there and think her own thoughts without having to talk.

“And here is a Degas.” Madame Briand pointed to a picture of a girl in a pink tutu. “He was obsessed with the French ballet, but most of all with the children.

They were called
les petits rats
—the little rats.”

“That’s what I call my kid brothers,” Benjy whispered in Cassidy’s ear. “And they don’t wear tutus, either.”

Cassidy rolled her eyes. Ever since they’d gotten to the museum, Benjy had attached himself to her side as if he were assigned to be her own personal not-very-funny stand-up comic for the duration of the trip. Every time he leaned in to subject her to another lame attempt at wit, the cheesy smell from the Brie he’d eaten on the way over wafted into her nostrils. Not that she was trying to hang on Madame Briand’s every word or anything, but she kind of wished he would just shut up and let her enjoy the exhibit.

Cassidy glanced over at the most beautiful piece of artwork in the room—Zach. He was standing a bit away from the rest of the group with his thumbs tucked casually into his belt loops, smiling his usual bemused smile. In the week since she’d first seen him, Cassidy couldn’t figure out what his exact purpose in the classroom was. Occasionally he joined the conversation, his deep, soft voice sending shivers up Cassidy’s spine. But he didn’t talk nearly as much as, say, Cecilia, who Cassidy was more than ready to ship
par
avion
as far away from Malibu as humanly possible.

Every once in a while Zach led a discussion, but mostly he just sat up front, angled half toward the class and half toward the teacher, quietly driving Cassidy crazy with his undeniable sexiness.

Sometimes she thought he was looking at her too.

But only sometimes.

She watched as his eyes slid toward her, locking with hers.

Ugh, he caught me staring again.
Her face burst into flames as she looked frantically around the room for something to focus on that didn’t turn her insides into sweet, mushy Quaker maple brown sugar oatmeal.
The guy probably thinks
I’m
Looney Tunes, she thought miserably.

Her eyes landed on a painting that covered almost an entire wall, and showed people in Victorian garb enjoying a sunny day in the park. From where Cassidy stood, the people appeared blurry around the edges, but as she walked toward the painting to take a closer look, the image separated into thousands of tiny dots, like the pixels in an image online that hadn’t fully loaded. There were hundreds of shades, none of them blended, and Cassidy found it fascinating.

She didn’t know how long she’d been lost in the painting when someone came up behind her. Why couldn’t Benjy just go away? She stared stubbornly ahead of her, noticing the subtlety of the colors even as she tried to will him out of her personal space.

“C’est belle, non?”
he finally said.

Benjy speaking French when he didn’t have to—now
that
was a first!

Except that it wasn’t Benjy. It was the low, raspy voice she spent all day, every day aching to hear. Zach.

Suddenly Cassidy was afraid to turn around. Afraid that if she did, Zach would see the deep red flush spreading across her cheeks and realize the effect he had on her.

“Um, yeah,” she murmured, still facing the painting.

“It’s really nice.”

Nice?!?
That was what you said about a Hallmark card, not great art. But it was hard to come up with anything better with Zach so close she could feel his breath on her neck as he spoke. No wonder she was turning into a bigger space cadet than Trishelle from
The Real World:
Las Vegas
. She hoped he couldn’t see her shivering.

“It’s a style called pointillism,” he said. “Tiny brush-strokes all coming together to form a whole. It doesn’t make any sense from up close, but when you get farther away, the picture comes out. Seurat pioneered it.”

“I wish I could do that,” Cassidy said quietly.

“Yeah? Are you an artist too?”

Only if drawing dumb little cartoons counts as art,
Cassidy thought.

“No, not really. I just like to draw sometimes.”

“You know, from the way you’re standing,” said Zach, his voice so low he was nearly whispering, “I can’t tell if you’re talking to me or the painting.”

Cassidy laughed out loud before she could catch herself. “Well,” she countered, “you’re standing so close that if I turn around now, I’ll be stepping on your toes.”

“This better?” Zach took a step back and Cassidy found herself facing him. From that close it was impossible to concentrate on anything but the fascinating symmetry of his face. Who knew people could be that hot? Cassidy felt her confidence draining away again. She was back to square one, staring like an idiot. How could she possibly have a crush like this when her heart belonged to someone else? That just didn’t make any sense to her.

“I noticed you were checking out that painting for a while,” Zach continued. “It’s not every day you see someone who really appreciates art. It really got on my nerves when I was living in Paris. All these idiotic American tourists who only went to the Louvre to snap a picture of the
Mona Lisa
. It’s like they were looking at art without even really seeing it.”

“No offense,” Cassidy said, finally finding her tongue, “but weren’t you kind of an idiotic tourist? I mean, you are American and all.”

Instead of being offended, Zach threw back his head and laughed.

“It’s true,” he said. “You totally called me on it. What are you going to accuse me of next?”

“I don’t know,” Cassidy mused. “Maybe standing here talking to me when the rest of the class you’re supposedly TA’ing has moved on to the next room?”

“Hey, I know a worthy student when I see one,” Zach said. “I mean, haven’t you already benefited from my expertise?”