Letters from the Sky

Chapter 1-3

As they entered the low, dark building, things began to get crowded and loud, and the half-tranquil morning stretched so thin was forgotten completely in the rush of humanity. Jedrick shrank closer to Jeanne, and Paris flanked his other side.

“Watch out,” she warned the boy. “The whole hallway is crawling—Jeanne, this is why you need to walk faster in the morning!”

Jeanne ducked her head slightly. “Sorry.”

Jedrick put a hand on her forearm. “It isn’t a big deal. Paris just treats me like a cripple sometimes. It’s maddening.”

“I do not treat you like a cripple!” she squawked. “Would you rather me and Jennie left you on your own to navigate the hallway?”

He didn’t reply, just shrugged out of Jeanne’s grip and began to stride through the screeching crowd on his own, dodging a group of boys kicking a football across the floor and coming to a stop directly in front of the door to his classroom. He smiled back at the girls. Jeanne clapped. Paris pouted for the second time that morning.

“I’m not blind,” he protested.

“Only half,” Paris retorted.

Jedrick shrugged and waved. “Believe what you want. I’ll meet you guys for lunch?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t need to. It was the same every day. Jeanne and Paris didn’t wave back, but took care to call out their goodbyes before walking to class 8C.

Feeling odd without the third member of their party, Paris and Jeanne linked arms. “To class?” proposed Paris.

Jeanne nodded. They took off down the hall, having significantly more trouble dodging the football boys than Jedrick had.

The teacher wasn’t in the classroom when Jeanne and Paris arrived, though that wasn’t much of a surprise. Ms. Milovskaya always seemed to stumble in just as the minute hand hit the six and the electric buzzer rang for the beginning of class, taunting a tardy violation herself. The students were therefore rowdy, knowing they wouldn’t be caught or chastised for another ten minutes, at least.

“Paris!” Monique squealed, blonde curls bouncing as she grabbed the girl’s shoulders. “Paris, Louis said he’d walk me home today! He said he’d walk me home!”

Paris let out a squeal of her own, dissolving into some language only teenaged girls knew.

Or some of them, at least. Half-welcoming the distraction, Jeanne slipped away to find her seat.

She liked her desk. It was a large, wooden, clumsy affair, as was the rest of the furniture in the room. The top flipped up, and inside were a few pencils and her textbooks. It smelled faintly of cedar, though she was certain the wood was little more than something cheap and reminiscent of plywood. It didn’t matter the logistics of it, really, as long as the smell was still there.

The desk stood in the back of the room, right by the window, so close Jeanne could lean her temple against the pane, the way she did now. Some days, the sun was so gold and warm, she could sink against the glass and fall asleep. Today the pane was cold and beginning to shiver slightly. The sky still stood so low and grey, and Jeanne was happy. It would stay like this all day, she hoped.

She ran her fingers against the pungent wood of the desk top and thought quietly to herself. Paper, she needed paper…

A notebook would suffice. She flipped it open, frowning at the lines inside, and began to sketch anyway. A curve of a cheek appeared, not too round, but kind and high and exotic; the long, straight, soft rope of black hair followed, and an eye: frowning, but there was something behind—

The door to the classroom swung open, the plastic pane in the cheap door creaking. Ms. Milovskaya fell in, still talking. “Marianne, I have class. Yes, I’ll see you—” She shut her mouth with a wide-eyed glance at the classroom, and Jeanne couldn’t help but think of a doe. A head poked into the room—Ms. Roma, the school nurse, grinned at the students, and waved cheekily.

“Sorry to interrupt, kids. I’m off!” She winked at Ms. Milovskaya and disappeared, shutting the door behind her.

Ms. Milovskaya covered her eyes with one hand for a moment, then took a deep breath, suddenly clapping her hands. “Well! It’s time for class to begin, everyone take their seats please.”

Jeanne shaded in the hair on her sketch, quietly waiting for the class to calm. Even when they did, she did not look up. It didn’t matter much anyway.

Milovskaya spoke. “If you get out your books and turn to the story you were to read last night, I want to discuss something you might not be familiar with. It’s an eastern motif, the red string of fate. One supposes lovers who are destined to be together are connected by an invisible red string.” Ms. Milovskaya had an unfocused look on her face.

Paris, from her seat just in front of Jeanne, threw her hand up. “If it’s invisible, how can it be red, too?”

“It’s only a story,” Ms. Milovskaya responded gently. “A romantic idea about connection. It’s an insight into another culture—”

“I think it’s wonderful,” gushed Monique, staring at the boy she had been squealing to Paris about before.

Jeanne raised her hand. “What if…” Her voice caught. She cleared it and spoke again. “What if the person you loved lived very far away?”

Ms. Milovskaya c****d her head, contemplating. “Well, dear, I think that’s the point. No matter how far away they are, you are connected to them. I suppose the string would stretch, wouldn’t it? It’s magical, after all,” the young woman said with a smile. “I don’t think the laws of reality quite apply.”

“But what if they were very far away,” Jeanne persisted, “where you couldn’t ever reach them?”

“Then how would you know you loved them?”

“You’d know,” Jeanne replied in that same soft voice.

Ms. Milovskaya stopped for a moment, putting a hand over her chest, in the exact center where the rib bones met.

“Well, then…I’m sure it would work out.”

“No matter what?”

“I…believe so.”

“So you do believe in this?” Paris asked stridently.

Ms. Milovskaya blushed. “It’s only a story,” she repeated.

“I like it,” Jeanne said decisively. No one but the boy next to her heard. Ms. Milovskaya, still blushing slightly, continued with her lesson.

And so life went on.

She moved on to math, soon, then history. Jeanne turned a page in her notebook and began to draw two hands, one small and pale and the other larger and longer and shaded grey, their wrists tied together with a thick red ribbon. She was just drawing in the shadows when the bell for lunch sounded. Jeanne put her things back into her desk, patting the desktop gently as students moved in a rush out of the room, only the stragglers left behind. Paris flounced over, unfastening her tight bun of hair and letting it curl around her shoulders. Her hair was mostly straight and generically pretty, just like Paris herself.

Jeanne smiled at her in a bemused manner. “Your mother would be appalled.”

“Mama isn’t here,” Paris retorted.

“I’ll help you put it back up after school.” Jeanne offered.

Paris smiled gratefully. “Thanks. Shall we go pick up Jedrick?”

“Pick up who now?” A familiar voice drawled. The tow-headed boy leaned nonchalantly in the doorway, never mind he almost missed the jamb and stumbled a bit.

Paris ran over to him. “You fool! I don’t care how proud and crazy you are, let one of us come find you,” she scolded.

Jedrick scowled. Jeanne laughed. She sidestepped over to Ms. Milovskaya’s desk, through which the young teacher rifled, presumably for her lunch.

“I think it’s wonderful to believe in love like that,” Jeanne said.

Ms. Milovskaya looked up, confusion and vague panic stamped on her features. “Like what?”

“The string.”

The woman deflated. “Oh, yes. Yes, it’s a wonderful story. I take it you enjoyed it?”

“Very much. Do you think it works even if the person you love doesn’t really exist?”

Ms. Milovskaya smiled wanly. “You seem very interested in this. Everyone has someone, Jeanne. Even if it’s not quite how you planned it…” She trailed off, then seemed to focus again. “What do you mean ‘doesn’t really exist’?”

Jeanne flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t actually mean it like that—”

“Jennie! Come on, or lunch will be over!” complained Paris.

“Are you saying strange things to people again?” asked Jedrick, only half-teasing.

Jeanne nodded happily. “Yes. Let’s go, I’m hungry.” She took one of Jedrick’s arms, Paris took the other, and they were off down the hall.

The school had cafetorium of sorts, an empty room used sometimes for sports and performances, dark wood like the rest of the school. Along one wall a few tables were set up like a counter, with huge tureens of soup from the kitchens and baskets of soft rolls. The three friends pulled out their red-paper lunch slips, showing them to one of the lunch workers and receiving food in exchange. Like always, they slipped out of the room when no one was looking, tiptoed down the halls, and made their way to the school steps.

Paris leaned on Jedrick’s shoulder and began to whine.

“It’s so cold out!” she exclaimed. “Barely into September, and I’m freezing.”

Jedrick sipped his soup, unconcerned. “There are only a few warm weeks left. We should go down to the river this weekend.”

Paris nodded. “We can squeeze two or three more trips in before it turns frigid, right?” She shivered. “Just not today!”

Excited, Jeanne watched free strands of hair whip around Paris’s face. “This weekend,” she affirmed. “Supplies come in this Saturday too, so we can stop by Cello’s bakery and he should have baked a lot by then.”

“Sweet-bread!” yelped Paris happily. “Oh good, it’s a plan!”

Not long after, there was the sound of a hand bell being rung by Mrs. Bonnefoy, the middle-aged office secretary, the signal for the end of lunch and a warning before the late bell. The three gathered up their things and took them back to the cafetorium. At the exit, a young man who appeared to be barely out of university ran up to them.

“Jedrick, come on, I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said with a sigh.

Paris waved happily to him. “Salut, Armand!”

He rolled his eyes at the girl. “Don’t ‘salut’ me, young lady. I know for a fact you and the little one are the reason why Jedrick sneaks off at lunch time.”

Jedrick frowned. “I’m not going to sit and eat lunch with Beau and Lisle. I’m not developmentally challenged, Armand. I don’t need help.”

Armand sighed. “I know. I really do. But suppose you get hurt—it would be my fault for not keeping you close. Your parents are reluctant to keep you in the vichy as it is. They think studying with me will be enough for you.”

“It is,” retorted Jedrick. “You know for a fact I’m miles ahead of your other students. I’m not handicapped.” He fairly growled the words, and Paris and Jeanne winced. They’d been witnesses to this particular argument on numerous occasions, and Jedrick tended to get caustic by the end of it.

Armand had been anticipating the response as well. He supplanted it by simply putting one hand over Jedrick’s mouth, the other around his shoulder, and dragging him away.

“You ladies are not out of trouble, either!” the teacher called behind him.

Paris stuck her tongue out. Jeanne waved. Neither was acknowledged. They jumped when the bell rang, slipping down the hallway and skidding into the classroom.

Ms. Milovskaya, predictably, wasn’t inside.

Paris laughed and shook her head. “We really shouldn’t be so concerned about lateness, huh?”

Jeanne smiled back at her. “Probably not.”

A breathy sort of sound threaded through the classroom door, followed by a hushed complaint of “Marianne, please, I have to go” before the homeroom teacher whirled into the room, shutting the door on the person out in the hallway. She frowned, her face dusted with a reddish rose flush.

“The bell rang. Everyone should be in their seats!” she ordered.

With a chorus of reluctant “Yes, madame’s,” the students did as they were told.

Ms. Milovskaya retrieved a stack of blank white paper and a few photos from a pile on her desk, and began to pass them out. “For our art period today, I’d like you to work on landscape drawing. I have some pictures and prints of the school and the town; just do your best to copy what you see. It’s going to be difficult at first, but in the next few weeks, we’ll learn about perspective…”

The photo Jeanne received was face-down when it was placed on her desk. She flipped it over and her eyes widened.

At first it was only rubble, the burned-out shell of some sleeping giant of a building, and the destruction was crippling because it was her school, where she sat at this very moment, but it didn’t exist anymore, it was just a pile of refuse—then faces under the rubble began to fall into focus, twisted bodies, burnt and curved, with grimaces of pain and fear pasted onto their faces…

Jeanne blinked. The picture was of the athletic fields outside the school building. She blinked again. Still fields, complete and trimmed and free of humanity altogether, and she shivered, her hands shaking, but it never changed back into the image she had first seen. She wondered if she had seen it at all.

The rest of the day was spent waiting patiently for the bell to ring. Once it did, Jeanne gathered her books and placed them in her desk, retrieved her math primer, and waited for Paris to slip over to her desk and tell her, “Come on, let’s go get Jedrick.” Weathering glares from Armand, who was too busy trying to get Beau to stop crying—Beau might have been a boy their age in body, but he was much younger in mind—they retrieved the last member of their crew and, linked as always, walked out into the darkening day.

It was only when the air hit her Jeanne began to grow restless.

“Jennie, if you don’t stop twitching, I’m going to hurt you,” Jedrick joked pleasantly.

She ducked her head. “Sorry. I don’t—I’m not—”

“The air smells foul,” muttered Paris. “Doesn’t it? It smells like something burning.”

Together, they sniffed at the wind. Jeanne smelled rain.

“I—I’d better get home; I have to watch Suzette for Maman,” she sputtered. She didn’t wait for answer, running off down the street. Paris and Jedrick watched her go.