The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller

“Look …” I began in a firmer voice.

“Stop that!” A man stepped between us. He was beautifully dressed, in a dark suit and fedora. Inspector Valentin. He glared at our reflections in the mirror. “Get out.”

“Sorry,” I said, stumbling up. I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be rumbled. And here it was, flung from the hotel, never to be allowed back in the hospital.

“No, not you, Mademoiselle Perkins,” said Valentin. He turned to the journalist, glowering, and said something angry in French.

She retorted just as angrily, her glossy red lips spread in a defiant grin. Valentin took out a piece of paper and flashed it at her. Whatever it said made Aurelia get up and move at speed from the bar. She hurried back to the table where the other hacks slumped with their beers, almost breaking a kitten heel. When she was out of earshot, Valentin climbed into the chair she’d vacated.

He took off his hat and laid it on the bar. “I am sorry about that.” He smiled apologetically.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting used to it,” I said, gulping down the last few drops of whiskey, suspicious that he had changed his tune so much since we met in the café.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Journalists in the case are behaving reprehensibly—sneaking into the hospital, telling lies to the nuns to get information, and worse, sneaking in here to bother the girl’s relatives. I have told this woman she will face jail time if she pushes this further. Terrible, n’est-ce pas?”

“The worst,” I said, gulping. There was something about him that made me nervous. I didn’t know if it was my justified fear that he was onto me, or his annoying gallantry.

As if to underscore that point, he summoned the barman and ordered two more whiskeys.

“Is one of those for me?” I asked.

“It’s the least I can do,” he said, patting my arm.

Back to that again. I just wanted to go up to my room and take a shower and dream up my next move on the case, but I remembered Bill saying I should press my advantage wherever I could. When the Jack Daniel’s came, I chinked my glass on his.

“To … this place,” I said, for want of a better toast.

He stopped midchink. “The Napoléon? St. Roch? Be more specific.”

“To St. Roch, your beautiful town.”

He rolled his eyes and downed the whiskey in one. “Mon Dieu. If you only knew the reality. This town is nothing but trouble.”

Quinn Perkins

JULY 16, 2015

Blog Entry

There’s a sense of dread that settles on a house; not just houses with creaking roof beams and forbidden Bluebeard doors, or even houses where you get pinched on the wrist for sticking up for yourself with guys. You know what I mean. The fear: that weird foreboding, the plinky-plink of horror movie sound effects, the camera zooming out giddily as you realize how bad things are.

I remember it from the days after Dad left, watching my mom drift around with her bandaged wrists, her eyes blank as the windows of a derelict house. She tried to protect me, never crying where I could see. She reorganized the things in their bedroom over and over as if it would bring Dad back, or hide him away. Later, in group therapy, I found that was one of the signs that someone was planning to kill themselves: putting their affairs in order. She gave Dad’s suits away to a neighbor and, in a moment of sheer eccentricity, repotted all our houseplants in the park across the street with his Louis Vuitton shoes buried underneath.

I’d ask if she was okay; she’d say she was so tired. I knew what she meant, even if I didn’t yet know the word to explain the endless creep of her fatigue, or mine, or our shared need to sleep hours into the day; the secret cutting we both resorted to, a little slice on the inner thigh to relieve the pain inside and a SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aid to cover our tracks.

If I blamed my dad for leaving us, he blamed me for inheriting the shame of Mom’s illness. Worse than that: he blamed me for watching her slide down into the darkness and doing nothing to stop it. Or maybe he was just projecting his guilt onto me—at least, that’s what the therapist said to make me feel better. The day Mom died, the air was so thick with fear I couldn’t see straight, and every moment leading up to the one in which I found her was a little car crash: the world slowing down for the collision as if it wants to watch just a bit more carefully. The shards of glass hitting you so gradually you don’t notice that you are bleeding until later. Like when your guilt-stricken dad has slung you in the nuthouse for six months to “get well.” If there’s one thing you get in a psychiatric hospital, it’s time to dwell.

Whether because of the weird texts, or what happened yesterday (and the day before and the day before that), or just my meds not working, the fear has come to visit me once more, falling fine and plentiful as dust in an abandoned building. I lie in bed. It settles on me. I get up in the morning and it clouds my vision.

Today someone left a book on my bed. A weird kind of bloodthirsty guidebook about some local caves called Les Yeux. When I went to take my turn in the bathroom, there was nothing on my bed except for rumpled-up covers, my iPod, and earbuds. When I came back, there was the book.

Flipping through it, I don’t really grasp a lot of the French. But I get the gist. There were murders there long ago. Witches walled into the rock. All the illustrations inside are really disturbing. I mean, I know I watch horror movies by the fuck-ton, but this is like a how-to guide for Spanish Inquisition wannabes. I stand spellbound for I don’t know how long, clutching the book with sweaty hands, hearing the plinky-plink music, feeling the shaky zoom-out camera.

A knock on my door. I drop the book. Noémie pokes her head around.

I bite it off. “You put this here?” I hold up the book.

She shrugs. “No.”

I take a step towards her, hands shaking. “Know who did?”

“No. Are you … okay?” She swallows nervously.

“Yeah … I just feel like. I don’t know. Someone put this here to freak me out or something.”

She closes the door behind her. “Listen. What happened yesterday—”

“You going to tell me off, too? Because Freddie’s an ass-hat and I’m glad I slapped him. I mean, you know that creep sent me texts and this awful video. And then he kissed me and the other day he almost drowned me …”

Noémie puts her hand on my arm. Her eyes are soft. “Hey. I know. I know. He is always like that with every exchange that comes here,” she says, shaking her head, and rubs her hands over her face. “Like touching them in the pool, quoi. It’s gross. I have no reason why Maman is not stopping him.”

I swipe angrily at a tear running down my cheek. “Then why do you invite him along to everything?”

She shrugs. “St. Roch is small small. Everyone knows everyone and there are not always other young people to hang with. Maman asks someone like Freddie so there will be young people for you to meet.”

“You serious? He’s—”

“Hey, look, let’s have fun today. Just us!” She smiles wide, suddenly throwing everything into being cheerful. “We may take the bus to the town and go shop.”

It melts my heart a little to see her work so hard to distract me. Maybe she feels like we got off on the wrong foot, too, though I still have my doubts. “Won’t your mom mind? She seems pretty strict …”

Noémie rolls her eyes. “She’s the worst. I know. But she’s not here today and tonight she’s staying with her boyfriend. Raffi is in charge, en fait. And he is not here either. So I say we do what we want. Go wild, quoi!”

It turns out Noémie doesn’t go wild by halves. In St. Roch, we shop and we eat ice cream. We tie up our T-shirts to show our midriffs and compete to see who gets the most wolf whistles. We take in zero tourist attractions and many bars where guys keep buying us beer. I never do this back home. I mean, I’ve maybe used a fake ID once, but it didn’t look like me, and the second a doorman confronted me, I freaked and ran away. Somehow Noé makes me bold and I no longer care if what I’m doing is wrong. Boys ask for our numbers and names and we give them fake ones, laughing behind our hands. We drink demand shots. Red Bull and vodka, Jägermeister, Sambuca. Every time I slow down or get sleepy, Noé starts her Little Miss Crazy routine again.