Alex follows the same routine, walking from her bed in the guest house into the main lodge overlooking the garden. Flashing lights of cherry and sapphire paint themselves across the walls in watercolor-like strokes, shifting and dancing in tune with the sirens. Class doesn’t wait, and life doesn’t wait, not even when tragedy blows down your door like a big bad wolf who waltzed into town. Lively yet defeated bodies fill the street as amber morning sunlight washes over tear-stained faces. All Alex can do is take it all in, questioning the cause for such a ruckus before remembering the flashing red and blue lights of her own life, the terrible truth hanging over her: Heming and Mack and Jones. 

Today, she’s meant to go to class, see her friends, and behave as if nothing has gone awry. She will have to look Mack in the eyes and talk to him in some French-bullshit prompt their professor has put on the board. She will talk about politics, soccer, or perhaps the sociopolitical context of soccer in France. They’ll talk about anything meaningless in the absence of speaking about the truth. 

Except Alex won’t be talking about anything in French today. Not with Mack– who is seated next to Heming at Heming's insistence–nor with anyone in the classroom. Within twenty-five minutes of class starting, sleepiness still stuck between the students’ eyelashes, the program director calls their professor, asking for Alex to meet her downtown at her office on Jaques Jean Rue to discuss something that’s happened on the street. 

On the street…, Alex thinks to herself, her mind drifting to instances when she’d been cat-called or followed on her way home. She thinks of the miles spent walking through Grenoble and the things she’s seen, nothing apparently comparable to the mess of mourners at the end of her driveway this morning. Their director, a short, bubbly, English woman named Miranda, tells her what exactly the nightmare of police tape and lingering families originated from. 

In France, as Alex learns, when somebody dies, in an unnatural way particularly, it’s normal for the family of the deceased to gather in the last place the fallen was alive. In this case, where a man was shot and then burned alive in his car at the end of Alex’s driveway– a drug trade gone wrong, Miranda surmises, the street outside her house was merely congested with family members and police. There’s no danger to her or her host family, Miranda ensures her, but is she comfortable continuing with the program? Does she feel safe? Is there anybody that she wants to talk to– a licensed mental health specialist, maybe– to help her process the feelings she could be having? A terrible violence, a brutal murder, happened not fifty yards away from her, so how does she feel? In addition, would she mind giving a statement to the French police?

Did she hear a gunshot in the middle of the night? At around 2 in the morning? What about the screaming? Could she hear the man screaming as he died engulfed in flames? No, she was asleep, her mind stuck on the assault and acts of violence that infiltrated her own inner circle. No, she didn’t hear the screaming, or the gunshot, or the lick of the flames, or the moment the world around her decided to challenge every notion of security she had left.  

Because, truly, when did it happen? Was it when she screamed in the streets of Genoa, begging to be let inside, while Heming took something sacred from Mack? Was it when her ankles rolled on the beaten-down path on the way back home from the Beach Club, her hand sliding into Mack’s and simultaneously letting go of another’s who couldn’t love her right but loved her nonetheless? Maybe it was when the train pulled into the station in Grenoble, her fate sealed before she even dropped her bags at her tired, terrified feet. It felt like coming to France was meant to change her, as every twenty-something study abroad experience was meant to change them. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be like this, though. A brutal and violent deconstruction of every belief she had in love, humanity, beauty, and pacifism. Grenoble saw her arrive on May 2nd, sunk its teeth into her, and wouldn’t let go until she learned her lesson, whatever fucked up lesson that was. 

She sits at the dinner table that night, her favorite meal from home dressed and ready on the plate. Her host mom knows buttered pasta is her favorite, just as she knows Alex ended a relationship and a friendship the day before. The French families get paid to host students with them for an academic term– however long that is– but Pascale wasn’t getting enough money to deal with the sunken-eyed American girl before her. It’s a pity, thinks Alex, Pascale will never get to really know me. She’ll only know this version of Alex: her face gray, her mind sick, and her heart broken. Alex is quiet, mumbling niceties with a regularity: “C’est très bien,” “Je l’adore!!,” “Merci beaucoup pour fais notre dînner ce soir.” Pascale responds with tender-hearted soft smiles, sympathy behind her eyes. 

The dilemma of Mack and Heming keeps her awake on that Wednesday night. When she’d returned to class earlier in the morning, Heming and Mack sat idly next to one another, trading jokes and Heming whispering in Mack’s ear, flirtatious undertones dictating his intentions. This only confirmed the truth she didn’t need to be reminded of: Mack had no idea what happened to him on Friday night. Watching the pair of them in class acting as though nothing was wrong solidified the conversation that needed to be had. The next day, she knew she needed to talk to Mack about what happened and reap the consequences of justice. A wave of nausea rolls throughout her body as she runs to the closet-sized bathroom in her guest house, emptying her dread into the toilet. 

As she lay there on the ground, scents of late evening fresh air wafting inside through an open window just above her head, she thought about how much had changed in the past week and how she’d fallen so far from herself in just the span of a few days. Loveless and abused, picked-at scabs that are becoming an abscess, Alex thought Europe was supposed to be a formative experience for college students. She was led to believe that she would learn the importance of cultures other than her own and discover a new sense of independence, the lessons and scenes playing out with the glimmering skyline of Parisian architecture displayed behind her. Were these growing pains? Change is meant to be difficult– more than difficult even–but this felt like more than she bargained for. There were still five weeks until she’d return to the United States, and each day left hung over her head like a guillotine.

She got thinner; she got sadder. These were the two constants. 

The days were long, and so were the months, time refusing to bend into the shape of playing cards. No, these weren’t the cards she played. Yet, she was stuck with them. She didn’t make her bed, yet she had to lie in it.