The Distance from A to Z by Natalie Blitt

playing a trick on me, or faking me out?
    â€œIt’s fine, just give me a minute.” He rolls his shoulders back and forth, and even from behind him I can hear him wince. It shouldn’t hurt to make that motion.
    â€œAre you sure—”
    â€œI’ll be fine. Just stop.” Zeke’s voice is still strained, but now there’s a tinge of anger in it and I shift back. I don’t get it. I don’t get what’s happening.
    â€œI’m really sorry, Zeke. Really. I didn’t—”
    â€œNo, I’m sorry. I recently injured my shoulder so it’s a little sore. I’m sorry for reacting like that, though. You didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault.”
    It would be so much easier for me to believe his statement if his back wasn’t still to me, if he wasn’t massaging his shoulder with his opposite hand.
    â€œDo you want me to get you some ice?”
    He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine.”
    When he finally turns back around, he gets to his feet, doesn’t meet my eyes. “Pourquoi français pour toi?” he asks. We walk along the lake and I can’t help but notice that he’s now put me on the side of his good arm. Just in case.
    Why French?
    â€œI fell in love with the movie Amélie when I was fourteen,” I say, my French still halting but the words gaining ground slowly in my mouth. “I loved that view of Paris, the beauty of it. And I loved Audrey Tautou. I wanted to be her. I still do.”
    I pause because I feel like I’m saying too much, but it feels different saying it in French. Almost like it doesn’t count.
    â€œAll I remember are those crazy orgasms,” Zeke says, and while part of me wants to tackle him to the ground for polluting my perfect movie, I pretend instead that I don’t hear him. I’ve already injured him once in this half hour; I shouldn’t push it.
    â€œThe Paris in that movie became my happy place,” I continue, though I can’t help but catch the double meaning. Not to mention Zeke’s obvious smirk. “I mean, the place I started going to when I didn’t fit in anywhere else.” I’m surethat means something else too, but I push past it, my words gaining steam as I go. “It got to the point that I’d watched the movie so many times that I didn’t even need the subtitles. I’d taught myself enough French to understand it.”
    There are baby ducks by the side of the pond and I pause for a moment to watch them go by.
    â€œWhen did you start taking classes?” Zeke uses the French word courses instead of classes , and I make a note of it on the page. Quand as-tu commencé à prendre des cours en français?
    I chuckle, both at the question and with the relief that we’ve moved on from his fascination with the orgasms in my favorite movie. “Um. I never did. My school didn’t offer French so I learned it on my own. I used my birthday money to pay for language courses online, and then I just worked on it. I read kids’ books. Watched TV shows on the internet. Anything I could get my hands on.”
    â€œYou taught yourself French? Completely?”
    â€œComplètement.”
    â€œTu es remarquable.”
    You are remarkable.
    â€œMy family is obsessed with sports. So when they’d start talking at the dinner table, I started conjugating French verbs in my head. I’d rip out pages from an old copy of Le Nouveau Bescherelle , and I’d sit with verb tenses on my lap, practicing. And on the El going to school, or in the back ofmy parents’ car, I’d have my Larousse dictionary in my lap, and I’d translate ads and signs into French. I know it’s kind of dumb.”
    â€œIt’s not dumb.”
    I shrug. “It’s not terribly useful in this country. Spanish or even Mandarin would make more sense. But there’s something about how it’s totally not practical