All the Way by Marie Darrieussecq Page B

love it doesn’t hurt as much. And Delphine says that if you have light periods, you don’t bleed or hardly at all.
    Rose’s English exchange student is called Terry and he’s here for two weeks. He’s a creature from outer space. He’s eight inches taller than the rest of the village, and his hair is so blond, his eyes so pale, that you’d think he was visiting from the set of Village of the Damned . She practises pronouncing Terry , the soft ‘T’, the very soft ‘r’. Terry , with as much smoothness and elegance as possible, she allows the air to slip between the two syllables, with just a faint hint of the final ‘i’. She practises in front of the mirror, Terry . Then she says Christian . Terry . Christian .
    How to choose? No, Terry, no, she murmurs into the mirror, refusing to be kissed. Then she’s holding Christian’s hand for ages, agonising with him over this impossible dilemma. She kisses her reflection, Christian is the one, Terry is the one. She kisses the back of her hand, then the inside of her arm, it’s warmer, more realistic, using her tongue, wrapping her other arm around her waist.
    She’s allowed to stay at the carnival until half past twelve (the extra half hour on condition that she stays with Rose and Nathalie the whole time). She told her mother she’s sleeping at Monsieur Bihotz’s place, and told Monsieur Bihotz she’s sleeping at home.
    Rose lets Terry walk three feet in front of them. She rolls her eyes theatrically: ‘He’s really good-looking, but he’s so clingy!’
    He whips around when they laugh: ‘Excusez-moi?’
    They’re laughing so hard they have to stop under a plane tree. The guy smoking under the plane tree goes to their high school and he’s a bass player and he blows a kiss to Rose and Nathalie.
    She just puts her hands in the pockets of her jeans. But that looks dumb. Arms dangling, that’s even worse. She looks at her shoes, her summer pair, La Redoute mail-order, brown to go with everything.
    The English exchange student also has weird clothes but perhaps that’s just because he’s English. If he’s caught a plane to get all the way over here, he should be able to afford some fashionable shoes. The more she looks at him, the better looking he gets. Better built, more manly than the boys from around here, even if he seems a bit shy. And a movie star’s face. That look of anguish and sadness.
    She looks at his mouth, Terry , his upper lip. He always looks like he’s about to speak, but then he doesn’t. That lip keeps quivering—it’s an unusual shape, straight across, without that fold that ordinary mouths have—she watches it stretching like that, a hint of downy blond fuzz, sliding over impeccable teeth, hiding them, revealing them…She couldn’t care less about Rose and Nathalie, she couldn’t care less about the bass player talking to them, she could keep looking forever at the English exchange student’s upper lip, Terry’s upper lip.
    â€˜Bunch of faggots.’ Raphaël Bidegarraï greets them all. ‘Shit, you’re starting to look hot.’ He tries to touch her bum, to give her a special greeting, but she hops sideways and Nathalie cackles, ‘You should have seen your face!’ What face, what face was she making? A hurt face like her mother’s? The face of a stuck-up bitch—when Raphaël is just having a laugh. He’s really nice when you get to know him.
    There was that time at the swimming pool in Grade Five when he held her against the side and stuck his hands on her breasts and the shock paralysed her—she’s replayed the scene a thousand times, a good kick would have got him off her—and it’s the same Raphaël there in front of her now, with those same hands, one nonchalantly holding a smoke, the other in the pocket of his jeans. His appreciative