Peter looked at her, cautious, waiting for another ridiculous question. When it didn’t come, he started again. “So, I just found out—”
“What is it that you wanted to tell me?” Kelsey jumped on him again before he could finish, her face innocent.
Peter couldn’t help but laugh, and said, “Oh my God, forget it! Check your email.”
“No, what is it? I promise I won’t interrupt.”
Peter made an I-give-up expression, and lifted his hands. “Check your email. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Okay…” Kelsey muttered, and brought up her browser to sign into Michelle’s email.
The newest was from Peter, and the subject line read: “Fwd: Your American Airlines Itinerary.”
American Airlines? Someone was flying.
Everything in Kelsey’s body seemed to speed up as she clicked into the email. It was a plane ticket. For Michelle. The date was next week. The point of origin: MCI, Kansas City International Airport. The destination: CDG, Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France.
She screamed, high and fast, and put a hand over her open mouth. She could hear Peter’s laughter, and clicked back over to his image on the screen.
“We were given a three-day leave. Sam and another buddy and me are going to Paris. And you are, too. So, there it is.”
Kelsey removed her hand from her mouth, and tried to keep her panic from showing. “How could you afford this?”
“U.S. military flies free on air force planes if we ride up top, with the cargo. Your ticket wasn’t so bad, trust me. I had some money saved up.”
“Peter, this is amazing, but I have school. My parents won’t let me. I don’t know where my passport is. I…”
Kelsey was shooting off excuses, all except for the most important one: It hadn’t been her dream to go to Paris, it had been Michelle’s. Michelle spoke French. Michelle loved art museums. Michelle sang Edith Piaf (out of tune, of course) in the shower.
“It’s only for a weekend,” Peter said hopefully. Disappointment was beginning to edge in on his open face, but he didn’t give up. “Come on,” he said quietly.
Kelsey’s heart was breaking. She had to look away, to think. Because Michelle’s ghost was back again, her outline and coconut smell, made of memories she’d never have, egging her on from the empty side of the porch. Come on, she heard Michelle’s voice echo in her head. For me.
Then she looked back at Peter, who was not pressuring her, just sitting in his pajamas with that faraway look in his blue eyes. “Please,” he said, his smile returning as if he already knew her answer.
“Yes,” Kelsey said, and the wind picked up, tossing her Art History notecards into a flock of white squares in the air, like a sign from something invisible, though she wasn’t sure if it was good or bad.
“Yes!” Peter shouted. He stood up and shouted, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Kelsey laughed at his antics and stood to catch the notecards, which were now scattered all over the porch. “Hang on!” she called to him.
“I’m going to bed before you change your mind,” she heard him say from the computer. “Good night.” The call dropped.
Kelsey had a lot to do.
Midnight rolled around, and Kelsey took her place at her parents’ door. She would tell them she wanted to go on a Prospective Student weekend at KU, where she would have to stay overnight in the dorms. She would ask them at their most vulnerable and sleepy, so they wouldn’t ask too many questions. She cleared her throat, so her voice would be soft and unassuming. She was wearing her old bunny slippers. It was all a part of the plan.
“Mom? Dad?” She cracked open the door.
Startled snorts from her father, and a quiet “What?” from her mother.
“Can I come in?”
Five minutes later, it was done, and her parents had gone back to sleep. Kelsey lay in her bed, her mind racing. Michelle’s passport, which she’d have to use to match the name on Peter’s ticket, was still in her desk drawer. She had Googled the details—the passport wouldn’t have been canceled unless her family sent in a request. And as far as Kelsey knew, they hadn’t. Even if she were to get questioned at the airport, she would cry and say she had taken it by accident. She would pack dark colors and high-heeled boots. She would let her eyebrows grow out. She could be Michelle—for a little while. For long enough to get there, then do the thing she was dreading. The only thing left to do was waiting for her in Paris, and though the time had finally come, the thought of it made her stomach feel like a nest of coiling snakes.
There, in person, she would tell Peter the truth.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The plane hummed to a crescendo and air began to close on Kelsey’s ears. She watched the cement meadow of Kansas City International speed past her, and wiggled her toes in her boots. They were cleared for takeoff. As the ground fell, her stomach dropped with it. She clutched the armrests tight and let her neck unhook, her head lolling on the hard cushion, hoping to sleep. She wanted time to pass quickly.
“Are you going all the way to Paris, or will you stop in Toronto?” the man next to her asked.
He had a French accent behind the veil of his breath. Kelsey had forgotten the way air could get trapped in airplanes. She hadn’t been on a flight since the Maxfield family trip to Costa Rica. Michelle had hated flying, and she hated sitting next to Kelsey. Every word out of her chatty mouth, her sister told her as she had put enormous headphones over her ears, was a new blanket of carbon.
“Paris,” she answered the man politely, and turned back to the shrinking scenery, grateful that Peter had booked her a window seat.
Now that they were gaining altitude, the pilot’s voice came on the speaker.
“Anywhere else in France?” the man asked, over the announcement, and she turned again. His eyelids drooped over black eyes and, below those, dark crescents in his skin. He had been handsome once.
“No,” she said, short.
“Why do you come to Paris?”
“To visit,” she replied.
“A boyfriend?”
Kelsey smiled, closemouthed, and said nothing. She tried to hide her face.
“It is a boyfriend, I can tell.”
“’Allo, passengers, this is your captain speaking. My name is Rhett du Pont, and your cocaptain is Nisse Greenberg. Sunny skies over the Midwest. We are expecting a clear flight all the way from Kansas City to Toronto, and from there we should land in Paris on schedule.”
As the pilot went on, the woman in the aisle seat leaned over and gave Kelsey a wry smile, her face framed in auburn waves.
“He gets loopy on Dramamine,” she said. “But he can’t fly without it.”
“My dad has to take that, too,” Kelsey said, thinking of her giant father splayed into the aisle, fast asleep, while Kelsey, Michelle, and her mother giggled at his snoring.
“But I am right,” the man said, waving his hand. “She is thinking of a young man when she looks out the window.”
“Sorry,” the woman muttered again. “He’s not usually like this. He typically just mutters to himself about the crossword puzzle.”
“Of course I don’t do this often! This is a special case. You must tell us about him.”
Kelsey picked at the magazines in front of her, wondering how she could ever explain. He isn’t my boyfriend, but I do care about him. She thought of how Peter had sent her a recording of himself saying something in French before she left, stumbling over the words as he read them from a dictionary, thinking she could understand them. But it hadn’t really been meant for her.
“There’s nothing to tell.” Kelsey shrugged.