Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [45]
“Go inside,” he says. “I’ll wait.”
No one’s waited for me to go inside since I was in first grade and I tell him that, but he doesn’t move. So I do as I’m told. Which is novel. He doesn’t drive off until I’m inside the courtyard, with the door closed behind me. I hear his engine rev and then fade away and for a moment I wish this was Hollywood instead of Paris, so I could throw my stuff on the ground and run yelling down the road after him and catch up with him at a traffic light and tell him what a fool I’ve been.
But it’s not. So I pick my way through G’s creepy statues and columns and fountains, trying not to trip over anything. Alone and in the dark. As always.
25
Dad’s not back. That’s something.
I sit down at the table, stare up at the ceiling, and wonder why everything I touch turns to shit. I’ve just messed things up with a really cool guy—the coolest guy I’ve ever met, actually. And that’s just in the last few minutes. I’ve messed up a lot more in the last two years.
I wish I could stop messing up but I don’t know how. What is it that mends broken people? Jesus? Chocolate? New shoes? I wish someone could tell me. I wish I had an answer. Once I asked Nathan what the answer was. I thought he might know, considering all he’s been through, but he told me I would have to find it for myself. That everybody has to.
I reach into my bag, take out my bottle of Qwellify and gobble three. That’s my answer. Take enough Qwells and I forget the anger and the sadness. I even forget the question.
G’s guitar is still lying on the table, right where I left it. I run my hand over the case, then take the guitar out and play for a bit. But it’s not happening. Because my mind’s not on music right now. It’s on the other thing inside the case—the diary—even though I don’t want it to be.
I’m thinking about that girl, Alexandrine. The newspaper clipping. Louis-Charles. And it feels like the pages are calling to me. It’s not a good sound. It’s like footsteps behind you in the dark or a door slowly opening in the house when you thought you were alone. I should leave it where it is; I know that. But I almost never do what I should.
I take Truman’s key off, unlock the false bottom, and pick up the diary.
23 April 1795
Our timing was terrible. We arrived in the town of Versailles in the middle of May 1789 only to find it teeming with grim and somber men.
Who are they? Are you a cabbage? Levesque the innkeeper shouted. They are the deputies of the Three Estates. They are here because France is bankrupt! What the wars have not taken, our bitch of a queen has!
My uncle had asked him who the important-looking men were and if we could have a cheap room. We have no money now, he said, but we’ll have plenty soon. We have the most wonderful puppets in France and will soon make a fortune with them.
Levesque laughed. No one wants puppet shows now, he said. They hanker only for the latest news from the palace. Will the clergy side with the commons? What has Mirabeau said? Will the king hear reason?
Please, can you let us have a room? my uncle asked again.
We had walked all the way from Paris with our skinny donkey Bernard pulling everything we owned in a wooden cart. We were tired and hungry, always hungry. My brothers were crying. My mother was trying not to.
Levesque looked us over. He sucked his teeth. Sing songs for my guests in the tap room at night and you can sleep in the stables, he said. Sad songs. People drink more when they’re sad.
The stables were not so bad. They were dry and there was clean hay to sleep in and the fleas there were no busier than the ones in Paris. Levesque took a liking to my uncle. Late at night, they would sit together in the barn, drinking and talking. I heard them from the hayloft.
The estates have argued into the night again, Levesque said once. The king orders them to work together to solve France’s money