A Nice Fling is Hard to Find

A few hours later

Even the trip from the airport to the hostel was exciting.

“Can you smell it?” I asked Becca as we stepped out of the airport doors.

“Smell what?” she asked, sliding on her oversized sunglasses.

“The fresh pastries! The hot coffee! The Chanel perfume!”

“I smell the diesel fuel,” she said with a shrug.

Mike led us to our air-conditioned bus, and Becca and I moved to the back row and sat with our feet up. We cheered as we spotted the Eiffel Tower through the window. The driver sped along the highway like he had never heard the expression “speed limit,” and I squeezed Becca’s hand.

Now we are at the hostel, Les Quatre Saisons.

Which is ironic, considering this place looks nothing like the Four Seasons. Not that I’ve ever stayed at a Four Seasons, but I went to a wedding at one, and it looked nothing like this. And I bet the rooms were not dusty and packed with metal bunk beds.

Not that I’m complaining. I am not. I am very lucky to be in France. I had to beg, Beg, BEG my parents to let me come on this trip and do filing work at my mom’s office for four months to help pay for it. The trip was Becca’s idea to begin with. She wanted to just backpack across France, but my mother would have never gone for that. I’ll admit it even freaked me out. So this was the best compromise. And since it wouldn’t have been fair if Becca got to go to Europe without Tommy, here we all are. In Les Quatre Saisons. Stop number one.

There are six bunk beds in our room, which works out because there are eleven of us: ten girls and one leader, Joanna. The guys are in a room down the hall. For the first time ever I am sleeping on the top bunk. (Sure, I can hear my mother’s voice warning me that I might roll off and end up in a body cast, but I am ignoring her, thank you very much. Becca is beneath me. Next to us is Penny and Penni (I am not making that up) best friends from a neighboring Long Island ’burb. This is how Penny introduced herself: “I’m Penny with a Y! This is my B-F-F Penni with an I!”

I’d mock her for using BFF in a sentence, but I think I just used it a few pages ago.

But it’s not like I said it out loud.

Anyway, Penni with an I has blond hair and Penny with a Y is a brunette. They are wearing matching velour sweatsuits, rhinestoned flip-flops, and pigtails.

“I hate them,” Becca whispered as she unrolled her sleeping bag.

Becca never shies away from making snap judgments. She never shies away—or is shy—about anything. Compared to her, Tommy is so quiet.

The other six girls on our trip are Britney, Rori-Ann, and Carrie from Jersey, who  seem to be quite cliquey— (they have not spoken a word to anyone but one another and have already taped photos of their boyfriends on the walls behind their pillows); Max and Kristin from Toronto (they have about five cameras between the two of them and have already snapped about seven hundred pictures); and Abby from Miami (who has the most ginormous breasts I have ever seen. She must be a thirty-six triple D). Abby has to share a bunk with Joanna. Our fearless leader seems to have recently ingested at least six cups of café, ’cause she is bouncing off the bunk beds. She has already unpacked her sleeping bag, changed into shorts and a tank top, unpacked all her clothes into neat piles on her shelf, and lined up her shoes.

Just watching her is exhausting.

So tired. Eyes heavy. Think I might just close them for a