Page 76 of Saint Céline
By nine, I had made a girl from the equestrian team feel forgiven for spilling soda on her skirt. I had convinced two boys not to start a fight over something neither of them actually cared about. I had made Lila laugh so hard she grabbed my arm and declared in front of everyone that I had to come to everything from now on.
And Katherine stayed beside me through all of it. She didn’t enjoy herself and she didn’t know where else to stand.
She followed half a step behind me from the kitchen to the pool room to the terrace, her hand sometimes brushing my sleeve when the crowd shifted too quickly. When people spoke to her, she answered either too bluntly or too quietly. When they asked what she thought of someone’s outfit, she gave the actual answer. When a boy named Miles tried to flirt with her by saying she looked “intellectual,” Katherine asked him if he meant that as a compliment or an apology.
He did not know what to say.
I laughed and touched his arm before the silence could turn awkward.
“She does that,” I said. “It means she likes you.”
Katherine looked at me sharply.
Miles looked relieved. “Oh. Cool.”
He walked away smiling.
Katherine leaned close to my ear. “It absolutely did not mean that.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because now he thinks you’re charming.”
“I don’t want him to think that.”
“Yes, you do.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again.
Because she did.
We both knew she did.
Later, on the terrace, Lila handed me a drink and asked whether people in France partied differently. I had never been to France. I had never been anywhere. But everyone turned toward me, waiting, and the attention moved through my body like warmth.
So I smiled and said, “They pretend to be more elegant about it, but they’re worse.”
Everyone laughed.
Katherine stared at me from the edge of the group. Awe looked too much like resentment on her face sometimes.
When the conversation moved on, she pulled me toward the railing.
“You just made that up.”
“Yes.”
“You said it so easily.”
“You told me Americans think all French people sound the same.”
“That doesn’t mean you should improvise foreign sociology.”
I laughed, but she did not.
Her eyes searched my face with a strange intensity.
