Anna and the French Kiss Free Read Online
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
chapter one
chapter 2
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter vii
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
affiliate 11
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
affiliate fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
affiliate seventeen
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter twenty
chapter 20-one
affiliate xx-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-4
affiliate twenty-5
chapter twenty-half-dozen
affiliate twenty-seven
chapter 20-eight
chapter xx-nine
chapter 30
chapter 30-ane
chapter thirty-two
chapter thirty-three
chapter xxx-four
chapter thirty-five
chapter thirty-six
chapter thirty-seven
chapter xxx-eight
chapter thirty-9
affiliate forty
chapter forty-1
chapter forty-two
chapter forty-three
affiliate twoscore-four
chapter forty-five
chapter forty-six
affiliate forty-seven
Acknowledgements
Dutton Books
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Published by the Penguin Group | Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, United states of americaA. | Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue E, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) | Penguin Books Ltd, fourscore Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England | Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Dark-green, Dublin 2, Republic of ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) | Penguin Grouping (Australia), 250 Camberwell Route, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Grouping Pty Ltd) | Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Customs Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, Bharat | Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a partition of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) | Penguin Books (Southward Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa | Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business organisation establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Perkins
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in whatsoever form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any data storage and retrieval system at present known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or circulate.
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Published in the United States by Dutton Books,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
world wide web.penguin.com/youngreaders
eISBN : 978-i-101-44549-5
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Jarrod, best friend & true love
chapter one
Here is everything I know about French republic: Madeline and Amélie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no thought what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis. I'1000 not certain what they did either, but I retrieve it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to practise with Bastille Day. The art museum is called the Louvre and it's shaped like a pyramid and the Mona Lisa lives there along with that statue of the woman missing her arms. And there are cafés or bistros or whatever they telephone call them on every street corner. And mimes. The food is supposed to be good, and the people drinkable a lot of wine and fume a lot of cigarettes.
I've heard they don't like Americans, and they don't like white sneakers.
A few months ago, my father enrolled me in boarding school. His air quotes practically crackled over the phone line as he declared living abroad to exist a "skilful learning experience" and a "keepsake I'd treasure forever." Yep. Keepsake. And I would've pointed out his misuse of the word had I not already been freaking out.
Since his announcement, I've tried yelling, begging, pleading, and crying, but nothing has convinced him otherwise. And now I have a new educatee visa and a passport, each declaring me: Anna Oliphant, denizen of the U.s. of America. And now I'm hither with my parents—unpacking my holding in a room smaller than my suitcase—the newest senior at the Schoolhouse of America in Paris.
It'due south non that I'm ungrateful. I mean, information technology's Paris. The City of Light! The near romantic city in the globe! I'grand not immune to that. Information technology's simply this whole international boarding schoolhouse thing is a lot more about my father than it is about me. Ever since he sold out and started writing lame books that were turned into fifty-fifty lamer movies, he's been trying to print his big-shot New York friends with how cultured and rich he is.
My begetter isn't cultured. But he is rich.
It wasn't always like this.When my parents were even so married, we were strictly lower middle class. It was around the time of the divorce that all traces of decency vanished, and his dream of beingness the next great Southern writer was replaced by his desire to be the next published writer. So he started writing these novels set in Minor Boondocks Georgia about folks with Good American Values who Fall in Love and then contract Life-Threatening Diseases and Dice.
I'm serious.
And it totally depresses me, but the ladies eat it up.They honey my father'due south books and they dear his cable-knit sweaters and they love his bleachy smiling and orangey tan. And they accept turned him into a bestseller and a total dick.
Two of his books have been fabricated into movies and iii more are in product, which is where his real money comes from. Hollywood. And, somehow, this extra cash and pseudo-prestige have warped his brain into thinking that I should live in France. For a yr. Alone. I don't understand why he couldn't send me to Australia or Ireland or anywhere else where English is the native linguistic communication. The but French word I know is oui, which ways "yes," and only recently did I learn it'south spelled o-u-i and non w-e-e.
At least the people in my new schoolhouse speak English. It was founded for pretentious Americans who don't similar the visitor of their own children. I hateful, actually. Who sends their kid to boarding school? It's so Hogwarts. Only mine doesn't accept cute boy wizards or magic candy or flight lessons.
Instead, I'grand stuck with ninety-nine other students. At that place are 20-five people in my entire senior form, equally opposed to the six hundred I had back in Atlanta. And I'm studying the aforementioned things I studied at Clairemont High except now I'm registered in beginning French.
Oh, yeah. Beginning French. No dubiety with the freshmen. I totally rock.
Mom says I need to lose the bitter gene, pronto, but she'due south non the ane leaving behind her fabulous all-time friend, Bridgette. Or her fabulous job at the Royal Midtown 14 multiplex. Or Toph, the fabulous boy at the
Imperial Midtown 14 multiplex.
And I still can't believe she's separating me from my blood brother, Sean, who is but seven and mode too young to be left dwelling alone after schoolhouse. Without me, he'll probably exist kidnapped by that creepy guy down the route who has dingy Coca-Cola towels hanging in his windows. Or Seany will accidentally eat something containing Red Dye #40 and his pharynx will bully up and no one volition be in that location to drive him to the hospital. He might even die. And I bet they wouldn't let me fly home for his funeral and I'd accept to visit the cemetery alone next twelvemonth and Dad will have picked out some god-awful granite cherub to become over his grave.
And I promise Dad doesn't expect me to fill out higher applications to Russia or Romania at present. My dream is to study picture theory in California. I desire to be our nation'south greatest female moving-picture show critic. Anytime I'll exist invited to every festival, and I'll have a major paper column and a cool television testify and a ridiculously pop website. So far I but take the website, and it's not so popular.Yet.
I only need a little more fourth dimension to work on it, that'south all.
"Anna, it's time."
"What?" I glance upward from folding my shirts into perfect squares.
Mom stares at me and twiddles the turtle amuse on her necklace. My father, bedecked in a peach polo shirt and white boating shoes, is gazing out my dormitory window. It'southward late, but across the street a adult female belts out something operatic.
My parents need to render to their hotel rooms. They both have early morning flights.
"Oh." I grip the shirt in my hands a little tighter.
Dad steps away from the window, and I'k alarmed to observe his optics are wet. Something about the idea of my father—even if information technology is my male parent—on the brink of tears raises a lump in my pharynx.
"Well, kiddo. Guess you're all grown upward now."
My body is frozen. He pulls my stiff limbs into a carry hug. His grip is frightening. "Take care of yourself. Study hard and make some friends. And sentry out for pickpockets," he adds. "Sometimes they piece of work in pairs."
I nod into his shoulder, and he releases me. And then he's gone.
My mother lingers behind. "You'll have a wonderful twelvemonth hither," she says. "I just know information technology." I bite my lip to keep it from quivering, and she sweeps me into her arms. I try to breathe. Inhale. Count to 3. Exhale. Her peel smells like grapefruit body lotion. "I'll call you the moment I get domicile," she says.
Home. Atlanta isn't my abode anymore.
"I love you, Anna."
I'm crying now. "I love you, besides. Accept care of Seany for me."
"Of course."
"And Helm Jack," I say. "Make sure Sean feeds him and changes his bedding and fills his h2o bottle. And make certain he doesn't requite him too many treats because they make him fat and and so he tin't become out of his igloo. But make sure he gives him at to the lowest degree a few every day, because he nevertheless needs the vitamin C and he won't drink the h2o when I use those vitamin drops—"
She pulls back and tucks my bleached stripe backside my ear. "I love you," she says once more.
Then my mother does something that, fifty-fifty afterwards all of the paperwork and airplane tickets and presentations, I don't run across coming. Something that would've happened in a year anyhow, once I left for college, but that no matter how many days or months or years I've yearned for it, I am still not prepared for when it actually happens.
My female parent leaves. I am alone.
chapter two
I feel it coming, only I can't cease it.
PANIC.
They left me. My parents actually left me! IN France!
Meanwhile, Paris is oddly silent. Even the opera singer has packed it in for the dark. I cannot lose it. The walls here are thinner than Band-Aids, so if I break down, my neighbors—my new classmates—volition hear everything. I'm going to be ill. I'thou going to vomit that weird eggplant tapenade I had for dinner, and anybody will hear, and no one will invite me to spotter the mimes escape from their invisible boxes, or whatever it is people do here in their spare fourth dimension.
I race to my pedestal sink to splash water on my face, only it explodes out and sprays my shirt instead. And now I'one thousand crying harder, because I haven't unpacked my towels, and moisture clothing reminds me of those stupid water rides Bridgette and Matt used to elevate me on at Six Flags where the h2o is the incorrect color and information technology smells like paint and it has a billion trillion bacterial microbes in information technology. Oh God.What if there are bacterial microbes in the water? Is French h2o even safe to beverage?
Pathetic. I'm pathetic.
How many seventeen-yr-olds would kill to leave home? My neighbors aren't experiencing whatsoever meltdowns. No crying coming from behind their bedroom walls. I grab a shirt off the bed to blot myself dry out, when the solution strikes. My pillow. I collapse confront-offset into the sound bulwark and sob and sob and sob.
Someone is knocking on my door.
No. Surely that's non my door.
There it is again!
"Hello?" a girl calls from the hallway. "How-do-you-do? Are you lot okay?"
No, I'm not okay. Go Away. But she calls again, and I'm obligated to crawl off my bed and answer the door. A blonde with long, tight curls waits on the other side. She's tall and big, simply not overweight-big.Volleyball player big. A diamondlike nose ring sparkles in the hall light. "Are y'all all right?" Her vox is gentle. "I'yard Meredith; I live next door. Were those your parents who just left?"
My puffy optics signal the affirmative.
"I cried the first night, likewise." She tilts her head, thinks for a moment, and then nods. "Come on. Chocolat chaud."
"A chocolate evidence?" Why would I want to see a chocolate testify? My mother has abandoned me and I'g terrified to leave my room and—
"No." She smiles. "Chaud. Hot. Hot chocolate, I can make some in my room."
Oh.
Despite myself, I follow. Meredith stops me with her manus like a crossing baby-sit. She's wearing rings on all five fingers. "Don't forget your key. The doors automatically lock behind yous."
"I know." And I tug the necklace out from underneath my shirt to prove it. I slipped my primal onto information technology during this weekend's required Life Skills Seminars for new students, when they told us how easy information technology is to become locked out.
We enter her room. I gasp. It's the same impossible size equally mine, seven by 10 anxiety, with the same mini-desk, mini-dresser, mini-bed, mini-fridge, mini-sink, and mini-shower. (No mini-toilet, those are shared down the hall.) But . . . unlike my own sterile cage, every inch of wall and ceiling is covered with posters and pictures and shiny wrapping paper and brightly colored flyers written in French.
"How long have y'all been hither?" I inquire.
Meredith hands me a tissue and I blow my olfactory organ, a terrible honk like an angry goose, but she doesn't blanch or make a face up. "I arrived yesterday. This is my fourth twelvemonth here, and then I didn't have to go to the seminars. I flew in alone, so I've just been hanging out, waiting for my friends to show up." She looks around with her hands on her hips, admiring her handiwork. I spot a pile of magazines, scissors, and tape on her flooring and realize it's a work in progress. "Dandy, eh? White walls don't do it for me."
I circle her room, examining everything. I quickly detect that most of the faces are the same five people: John, Paul, George, Ringo, and some soccer guy I don't recognize.
"The Beatles are all I heed to. My friends tease me, but—"
"Who'southward this?" I point to Soccer Guy. He's wearing blood-red and white, and he's all dark eyebrows and dark hair. Quite good-looking, really.
"Cesc Fàbregas. God, he's the nigh incredible passer. Plays for Armory. The English football club? No?"
I shake my caput. I don't keep up with sports, but maybe I should. "Nice legs, though."
"I know, right? Y'all could hammer nails with those thighs."
While Meredith brews chocolat chaud on her hot plate, I learn she'south besides a senior, and that she only plays soccer during the summe
r because our school doesn't have a program, but that she used to rank All-State in Massachusetts. That's where she's from, Boston. And she reminds me I should call it "football" here, which—when I retrieve most it—really does make more sense. And she doesn't seem to listen when I badger her with questions or paw through her things.
Her room is astonishing. In add-on to the paraphernalia taped to her walls, she has a dozen china teacups filled with plastic glitter rings, and silvery rings with amber stones, and glass rings with pressed flowers. Information technology already looks equally if she's lived hither for years.
I try on a ring with a rubber dinosaur attached. The T-rex flashes ruby and yellowish and blue lights when I clasp him. "I wish I could accept a room similar this." I honey information technology, merely I'm besides much of a neat freak to have something like it for myself. I demand clean walls and a clean desktop and everything put abroad in its right identify at all times.
Meredith looks pleased with the compliment.
"Are these your friends?" I place the dinosaur back into its teacup and point to a movie tucked in her mirror. It'southward gray and shadowy and printed on thick, glossy paper. Clearly the product of a school photography class. Four people stand before a behemothic hollow cube, and the abundance of stylish black wear and deliberately mussed hair reveals Meredith belongs to the resident art clique. For some reason, I'm surprised. I know her room is artsy, and she has all of those rings on her fingers and in her nose, but the rest is clean-cutting—lilac sweater, pressed jeans, soft voice. Then at that place's the soccer thing, merely she's non a tomboy either.
She breaks into a wide grinning, and her olfactory organ ring winks. "Aye. Ellie took that at La Défense. That'south Josh and St. Clair and me and Rashmi. You'll meet them tomorrow at breakfast. Well, everyone only Ellie. She graduated last yr."
The pit of my stomach begins to unclench. Was that an invitation to sit down with her?
"But I'm certain you'll come across her shortly plenty, because she'south dating St. Clair. She's at Parsons Paris now for photography."
Anna and the French Kiss Free Read Online
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