Isla and the Happily Ever After
Page 18

“I’ll bet you speak French better than you let on, too. You never use it at school, but I bet you’re fluent. People can play dumb all they want, but they always give themselves away in actions. In the small moments, like that.”
The bubbles seem to go down the wrong hole. He coughs and sputters. “Play dumb?”
“I’m right, right? You’re fluent.”
Josh shakes his head. “Not all of us grew up in a half-French household.”
“But I’ll bet you’re still good.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Thankfully, he’s amused again.
“So why do you pretend not to know things?” My fingers play with the stem of my glass. “Or not to care?”
“I don’t care. About most things,” he adds.
“But why play dumb?”
He takes another sizable gulp of champagne. “You know, you ask really tough questions for a first date.”
A painful blush erupts across my face and neck. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I like girls who challenge me.”
“I didn’t mean to be challen—”
“You aren’t.”
I raise an eyebrow, and he laughs.
“Really,” he says. “I like smart girls.”
My blush deepens. I wonder if he knows that I’m the top student in our class. I never talk about it, because I don’t want people to judge me. But it’s true that his ex-girlfriend was smart, too. Rashmi was last year’s salutatorian.
Josh says something else, but the noise level in the restaurant has been increasing, and it’s finally reached its maximum volume. I shake my head. He tries again, but I still can’t hear him so he takes my hand. We down the rest of our drinks as we squeeze through the revellery. He plunks the empty glasses on a passing tray, leads me past a final throng of partygoers, and we emerge gasping and laughing into the hall.
“Well,” Josh says. “Now that that’s done.”
I gesture towards the galleries. We stroll through them hand in hand. But the air here is cold, almost reminiscent of mortuaries, and the sparsely furnished rooms grow stranger and stranger. Miniature sculptures of mundane objects that you have to get on your knees to see. A short film of a fast-food joint being purposefully flooded with water. A collection of puppets with crayons shoved up their asses.
“That looks…”
“Uncomfortable?” Josh finishes.
“I was going to say like a very colourful suppository.”
He bursts into laughter, and an elderly woman with a dead fox around her shoulders glares at us. The fox has been dyed an alarming shade of purple. Josh whispers into my ear, “That’s how it became such a vibrant colour. Crayons. Up its butt.”
I cover my giggling, but it’s no use. She glares again, and we scurry into the next room. “Ohmygod. This whole thing is…not what I’d hoped.”
“Don’t say that.” But he’s still laughing.
I shake my head. “I wanted weird, but maybe it’s too weird?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m with you. I’m happy to be anywhere with you.”
My heart puddles. “Me too.”
Josh squeezes my hand. “Come on.” He pulls me closer as we walk, and our bodies bump against each other. It’s amazing how solid he is. How real. Muscle and skin and bone. “We still haven’t seen your Finnish artist. Maybe he’s over here?”
We find the exhibit hidden away in a back corner of the museum. The walls are collaged with hundreds, maybe thousands, of grainy, unframed photographs. We peer closer at one of a crumpled single-serving potato-chip bag. The artist had laid a scribbled note beside the object as some kind of label before snapping the picture. It’s written in Finnish, but it’s also been marked with a date.
“Huh.” We say it together.
Josh points to another photograph. It’s an empty bus seat, also labelled. “So he’s cataloguing his day-to-day life? I guess?”
I look around for a sign in French and find it beside the door. I walk over to read it. “These aren’t his things. They’re some woman’s.”
Josh gives a low whistle. “No wonder this looks like a stalker’s bedroom.” He bends over. “Oh, shit! Look at this one. Yeah, I think that’s actually shit.”
I race back to his side. “How did he get her shit?!”
“Maybe he went into a public restroom after her? He was probably gonna take a picture of the seat and got lucky. Maybe it wouldn’t flush.”
I snort loudly.
“I mean, I’ve been waiting for you to leave something behind for ages, but you keep picking all of these working toilets.”
I fake-gasp and shove him. He laughs and shoves me back, and I squeal as the purple-fox lady enters the room. She shoots us daggers. We straighten up, but our sniggering is barely contained as we attempt to focus our attention on a picture of a discarded Coke can. “This guy’s lady love is kind of a slob, don’t you think?” he whispers.
I cover my mouth with my hands again.
“A reaaaaaaaal litterbug.”
“Stop it,” I hiss. My eyes are watering. “Ohmygod, look at this one! How did he get her toenail clippings?”
“If you were my girl,” he whispers, “I’d take creepy pictures of your trash when I knew you weren’t looking.”
“If you were my girl,” I whisper back, “I’d put the creepy pictures in a foreign museum so you wouldn’t know that I take creepy pictures.”
A single belly laugh escapes from Josh, and the woman spins around and actually stomps her foot. Like a cartoon character. It’s the last straw. We lose control, cracking up hysterically, as we run from the room and towards the escalators.
“If you were my girl,” I say, barely able to catch my breath, “I’d remove your skin, dye it purple, and wear you like a scarf at fancy gatherings!”
He stops and bends at the waist, he’s laughing so hard. “Oh, f**k.” He wipes a tear from his eye. Two museum guards whip around the corner. “Go, go, go, go, go!”
We tear down the hall, and the guards take off after us. We hit the escalators, and – for some reason – they give up. After, like, ten whole yards. They cluck their tongues as we disappear from view. “So much for security.” Josh is cheerfully dismayed. “Maybe we should steal a painting?”