Читать книгу The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller - - Страница 16

JULY 13, 2015

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Hands burrow into my armpits, close on my upper arms, strong as a vise, pressing into me. Hurting me so I want to yell. But I can’t because my mouth is full of water, my lungs burning, chest, flesh heavy as lead. The hands squeeze me, wrench my flesh, and I am fighting tooth and nail, fighting for all I am worth, sucking the water deeper and deeper, my nose, my throat on fire.

And then the hands haul me to land and I flop on the concrete oven shelf at the side of the pool, its grit raking my flesh, then I lie still, weirdly still, no longer fighting at all.

The field of my bright-light-spotted burning blur vision darkens. Something is over me, on me, blocking out the sun. Someone. Vaguely, I see a tanned face, dark eyes, lips. Then the lips are on mine, blowing, and strong hands pump my ribs. I cough, splutter up water, choking, wheezing for air. Lips press mine again, soft and hot against my freezing lips, breathing harsh life into me. I cough harder. More water comes out. The man moves, turns me on my side. It strikes me that he is fully clothed in black and I have the surreal thought that the ghost of Johnny Cash just saved me from drowning.

My ears pop and the world shrieks again. Voices crash against my eardrums, angry, cacophonous. Waves of sound, argument, some angry exchange in French happening over my head that I am way too out of it to translate. The squall of words ends as suddenly as it started. The hands are on me again, under me, lifting my waterlogged floppy fish body. Johnny Cash cradles me against his black-clad chest. I blink and stare up like a baby. His face is all I can see and he is beautiful … and familiar somehow.

He frowns down at me and I hear my voice all high and dreamy. “Am I dead?” My own voice betraying me.

He grins and says, “That’s terrible.”

“What?”

He’s laying me down on a towel at this point, my own towel under the olive tree. Other faces jostle behind him to look at me. Noémie, Freddie, Sophie, Romuald. They are blurry, out of focus. Then I see Freddie, who nearly drowned me, and I look away, look back at Johnny Cash. Less Johnny Cash now that I’m gazing up into his dreamy brown eyes, more James Franco. He has the tousled dark hair, a stubbly beard, and cute crinkles in the corners of his eyes.

“Terrible,” he murmurs, leaning close to my face so only I can hear, “to almost drown and then the first words you come out with are cliché.”

I smile up at him, even though my ribs ache and my eyes sting and my throat burns. “So the next time I have a near-death experience I should—” cough “—stop watching my life flash in front of my eyes and take a minute to come up with a better line?”

“Ah, irony. You must be feeling better. I am officially no longer needed here.” He pretends to get up and then kneels down closer, grinning again. He smooths strands of hair from my forehead, then turns to Noémie and says something brusquely in French I don’t catch.

“Mais non!” says Noémie 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.”

“Noémie’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.

“But of course.” That charming smile again. “Didn’t she say I was coming today?”

“No.”

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.

“Are 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?”

“Yeah, 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.