The Plane That Never Crashed

The Email

We are a couple minutes out of Paris when someone switches on the TV, the channel is, of course, set to the one and only station my dad watches and is currently changing stories. A broad shouldered, athletic looking man with a blonde-ish grey receding hair-line is in answering journalists questions for some celebrity scandal. He's framed a French model for cheating on her ex, and the thing is, no one even cares, they broke up two years ago.

My father shakes his head muttering about, "Gossip creating imbeciles."

"Who's that?" I ask between purges.

My dad snorts, "Just a fool into creating drama, his reputation feeds off it." Which isn't really the answer I was looking for.

"The thing is," Mathilde explains from where she is safely in the passengers seat, away from the vomit, "He's good at making up propaganda so people pay him to do it for them, and he has quite a few supporters. Thirty six million on instagram, in Europe, alone. His name is Julius Hubert is his name."

When I get back to school at around five pm Charlotte is acting weirdly nice to me, she choses to sit down next to me when we go into the common room to study and offers for me to copy her homework maths, since I didn't do it on the weekend The only logical explanation I can come up with for why she is acting so nice is that Min talked to her over the weekend, which doesn't fit either because Charlotte went to her holiday house in Bern for the weekend. The school asks that we are all back at the school by dinner-time on Sunday so the last kids are walking through the gates at ten to seven. Dinner is quiche lorraine with a side of potato or sausages and leek soup and freshly squeezed pear juice. I sit with Min and Charlotte, which is pretty standard. Dinner is interrupted when an assistant chef decides that we should all sing the head chef 'joyeux anniversaire' to the head chef, a chubby Italian Man named Elio. Let's just say some people here belong in a choir, and others, like me, do not sound quite so pretty. Min is one of the better sounding ones and so is Charlotte, although that might just be because French is her first language.

''I only just realise,'' Min whispers are the song ends, ''His fingers are the exact same size and shape as the sausages.''

I snort and roll my half-eaten sausage of the end of the plate, into a napkin, ''Yeah, I am not eating that anymore.''

''Don't worry, he still has ten fingers.'' Min replies, taking a big spoonful of soup out of her bowl and then burning her tongue on it the second it hits her mouth, ''Soups...still...hot!'' She fans her mouth like crazy while the soup sloshes out the corners of her tinted pink lips as her face goes bright red and I notice that Leo is standing behind us.

''Umm...hi.'' Charlotte and I both say at the same time. Min says nothing which creates an even more awkward tension at our table then there had to be.

I expect Leo to tell me something but instead he turns to Charlotte and says something in French that I can't understand. I glare at both of them and hope I don't look jealous or something stupid like that. 

Min nudges me, ''Char Char asked you whether you knew Leo.''

''Oh,'' I look up to see Leo returning to his usual table and Charlotte staring at me expectantly. ''Not really, he waited for me after math class.'' The math class you ditched me after, I'm tempted to add.

''That's cool I guess.''

''Yeah,'' I guess, who does she think she is, the President? 

Min shoots us both a warning look as chocolate soufflés with strawberries and cream are served for dessert, and when I've finished I don't bother wait for either of them. S'pose Charlotte is back to hating me.