Château Éboule (English)

trois

June 10, 2016

Dear Larry,

My sister let me borrow her makeup, because I told her I began my mission with Mathieu.

I really hadn't, though. All we shared was a similar enemy and destination, and it wasn't at all like I was planning on talking to him again. I kind of felt guilty for lying to my sister, until I remembered that she did it all the time.

And you'd almost say that I shouldn't stoop to her level, but then she's taller than me so how could I?

I'm very small. I've been told I'm the average height and weight of a fourteen year old boy, but I still feel very small in both factors. Everyone just seems to be taller and heavier than me. Everyone seems to express so much more maturity and eloquence, besides the bratty teenage girls, and all the Nuclear Families, of course. Like with Mathieu, I feel vastly peasant-esque in the presence of the world.

We were eating dinner that evening at the circular table in the very Frenchy-Country-looking living room of our cottage. It was a very small room, and it was very quiet. The lights seemed to be glowing extremely dim, so it reminded me of the lamp-lit twilit alleyway in the town that night I ran into Mathieu. The walls were flowery and old. The ceiling was dusty hardwood. The floor was even dustier hardwood. The food was overcooked, and my fat, idiot dad was absent from the table.

"I think after this," my mum began, her mouth full of soggy carrots, "we could take a little side-trip to Paris, or to Burgundy, maybe visit Catherine and her family. You know, before we go back to Suffolk."

All the adults had been in a "Parent Conference" that entire day. I just thought you ought to know.

"Count me out," my sister said. She was picking moodily at her food, a long crevice down her chest, her eyelashes drooping with mascara.

Oh, have I told you? My sister made a boyfriend, here, at Château Aider, and it isn't Mathieu. It's one of the sons of Hillary and Thomas, the cheating couple from Wales, and my sister is convinced that her boyfriend Mike is the only one of the five children who isn't addicted to pot. I think she still expects me to continue my mission, though. I think Mike is just a temporary replacement for Mathieu - a bench-warmer.

That reminded me of a time I used to play sports. I think I was about eight years old, and I was on a football team. I actually enjoyed football at that time, one of the only things I really hated about it was how itchy and sweaty it got beneath the shin pads. The other only thing I hated was that I never actually played the game.

The coach was a really big man, even bigger than my fat dad. But the coach was more muscle than fat, and then when muscle couldn't fill out the scope of his largeness I was pretty sure the rest was just air. Air from his held-in farts, I'd imagine. Anyways, he was a really scary bloke, but he was probably one of the kindest, most fun adults I had ever met. Nevertheless, though I held him in a very particular and meticulously cleansed corner of my heart, he had no sympathy at all for me, probably because I sucked at football.

So there I arrived at every game, on sunny days and on cloudy days, on scorching hot days and on freezing, wet days, and through all of those days I only sat on the bench. Not even when Oscar Ellis had twisted his knee and the next sub, Kai Weatherton, had gotten terrible allergies on the field, was I able to play. Not even. We were one player short, and nobody even asked about the quiet, sitting boy on the bench. I wasn't sure at that point if I was a tangible person or just the ghost of one, and I almost was about to flip the bird - something my parents did often to each other - at the coach just to test my hypothesis, but I didn't, because I suddenly felt how hot my cheeks were - I was angry.