“Well, Rosalind, here to buy your As You Like It tickets?”

I blush. “I already bought mine. I’m actually trying to get ahold of someone I lost touch with, and I don’t have very many leads, but the one I do have is through this Shakespeare troupe that I saw in Stratford-upon-Avon last year, and they have a website, but the email bounced, but I saw them do a play less than a year ago . . . ”

“In Stratford-upon-Avon?”

“Yeah. But not at a theater. It was sort of an underground thing. It was called Guerrilla Will. They performed at the canal basin. They were really good. I actually ditched the RSC’s Hamlet to watch them do Twelfth Night.”

Professor Glenny likes this. “I see. And you’ve lost a Sebastian, have you?” I gasp and I blush but then I realize he’s just referring to the play. “I have an old mate in the tourist bureau there. Guerrilla Will, you say?”

I nod.

“I’ll see what I can dig up.”

The following week, right before spring break, Professor Glenny hands me an address. “This is what my friend found. It’s from police records. Apparently your Guerrilla Will friends have a habit of performing without permits, and this is from an old arrest. Not sure how current it is.” I look at the address. It’s for a city in England called Leeds.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re welcome. Let me know how it ends.”

That night, I print out the copy of the email I sent to Guerrilla Will but then I change my mind and write a handwritten letter to Willem.

Dear Willem:

I’ve been trying to forget about you and our day in Paris for nine months now, but as you can see, it’s not going all that well. I guess more than anything, I want to know, did you just leave? If you did, it’s okay. I mean it’s not, but if I can know the truth, I can get over it. And if you didn’t leave, I don’t know what to say. Except I’m sorry that I did.

I don’t know what your response will be at getting this letter, like a ghost from your past. But no matter what happened, I hope you’re okay.


I sign Lulu and Allyson and leave all my various contact details. I put it inside an envelope and write Forward to Willem, in care of Guerrilla Will. The night before I leave for spring break, I mail it.

_ _ _

I spend a boring break at home. Melanie’s vacation doesn’t coincide with mine, and I both miss her and feel relieved not to have to see her. I hole up in my room and prop my old science books all around me and spend the time doing Facebook searches and Twitter searches and every imaginable social networking search, but it turns out, only having a first name is kind of a problem. Especially because Willem is a pretty common Dutch name. Still, I go through hundreds of pages, staring at pictures of all different Willems, but none of them are him.

I post a Facebook page as Lulu with pictures of Louise Brooks and of me. I change the status every day, to something only he’d understand. Do you believe in accidents of the universe? Is Nutella chocolate? Is falling in love the same as being in love? I get friend requests from New Age freaks. I get requests from perverts. I get requests from a Nutella fan club in Minnesota (who knew?). But nothing from him.

I try searching for his parents. I do combination searches: Willem, Bram, Yael and then just Bram, Yael. But without a last name, I get nothing. I search every Dutch naturopathic site I can find for a Yael but come up with nothing. I Google the name Yael, and it’s a Hebrew name. Is his Mom Jewish? Israeli? Why didn’t I think to ask him any of these questions when I had the chance? But I know why. Because when I was with him, I felt like I already knew him.

Twenty-four

Spring break ends, and in Shakespeare class we start reading Cymbeline. Dee and I are halfway through, at the really juicy part where Posthumus, Imogen’s husband, sees Iachimo with the secret bracelet that he gave Imogen and decides this is proof that she cheated on him, though of course, the bracelet was stolen by Iachimo, precisely so he could win his bet with Posthumus that he could get Imogen to cheat.

“Another jumped conclusion,” Dee says, looking at me pointedly.

“Well, he did have good reason to suspect,” I say. “Iachimo totally knew things about her, what her bedroom looked like, that she had a mole on her boob.”

“Because he spied on her when she was sleeping,” Dee says. “There was an explanation.”

“I know. I know. Just like you say there might be a good explanation for Willem disappearing. But you know, sometimes you do have accept the evidence at face value. In one day, I saw Willem flirt with, get undressed by, and get a telephone number from a minimum of three girls, not counting me. That says ‘player’ to me. And I got played.”

“For a player, boy talked a lot about falling in love.”

“Falling in love, not being in love,” I say. “And with Céline.” Though when he spoke of his parents, of being stained, I recall the look on his face, one of unmasked yearning. And then I feel the heat on my wrist, as if his saliva were still wet there.

“Céline,” Dee says, snapping his fingers. “The hottie French girl.”

“She wasn’t that hot.”

Dee rolls his eyes. “Why didn’t we think of this? What’s the name of the club she worked at? Where you left your bag?”

“I have no idea.”

“Okay. Where was it?”

“Near the train station.”

“Which train station?”

I shrug. I’ve sort of blocked it all out.

Dee grabs my laptop. “Now you’re just being ornery.” He taps away. “If you came from London, you arrived at Gare du Nord.” He pronounces it Gary du Nord.

“Aren’t you clever?”

He pulls up Google Maps and then types something in. A cluster of red flags appear. “There.”

“What?”

“Those are the nightclubs near Gare du Nord. You call them. Presumably Céline works in one of them. Find her, find him.”

“Yeah, maybe in the same bed.”

“Allyson, you just said you had to have your eyes wide open.”

“I do. I just don’t ever want to see Céline again.”

“How bad do you want to find him?” Dee asks.

“I don’t know. I guess, more than anything, I want to find out what happened.”

“All the more reason to call this Céline person.”

“So I’m supposed to call all these clubs and ask for her? You forget, I don’t speak French.”

“How hard can it be?” He stops and arranges his face into a puckered expression. “Bon lacroix monsoir oui, tres, chic chic croissant French Ho-bag.” He smirks. “See? Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

“Is that French too?”

“No, that’s Latin. And you can ask for the other guy too, the African.”

The Giant. Him I wouldn’t mind talking to, but of course, I don’t even know his name.

“You do it. You’re better at all that than me.”

“What you on about? I studied Spanish.”

“I just mean you’re better at voices, pretending.”

“I’ve seen you do Rosalind. And you spent a day playing Lulu, and you’re currently masquerading as a pre-med student to your parents.”

I look down, pick at my nail. “That just makes me a liar.”

“No it doesn’t. You’re just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they’re already in us. That’s why we pretend them in the first place.”

_ _ _

Kali is taking first-year French, so I ask her, as casually as possible, how one might ask for Céline or a Senegalese bartender whose brother lives in Rochester. At first she looks at me, shocked. It’s probably the first time I’ve asked her something more involved than “Are these socks yours?” since school started.

“Well, that would depend on lots of factors,” she says. “Who are these people? What is your relationship to them? French is a language of nuance.”

“Um, can’t they just be people I’m wanting to get on the phone?”

Kali narrows her eyes at me, turns back to her work. “Try an online translation program.”

I take a deep breath, sigh out a gust. “Fine. They are, respectively, a total bitchy beauty and a really nice guy I met once. They both work at some Parisian night club, and I feel like they might hold the key to my . . . my happiness. Does that help you with your nuance?”

Kali closes her textbook and turns to me. “Yes. And no.” She grabs a piece of paper and taps it against her chin. “Do you happen to know the brother from Rochester’s name?”

I shake my head. “He told it to me once, really fast. Why?”

She shrugs. “Just seems if you had it, you could track him down in Rochester and then find his brother.”

“Oh, my God, I didn’t even think of that. Maybe I can remember it and try that too. Thank you.”

“Amazing things happen when you ask for help.” She gives me a pointed look.

“Do you want to know the whole story?”

Her raised eyebrow says Do pigs like mud?

So I tell her, Kali, the unlikeliest of confidantes, a brief version of the saga.

“Oh. My. God. So that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why you have been such a loner, always saying no to us. We thought you hated us.”

“What? No! I don’t hate you. I just felt like a reject and felt so bad you guys got stuck with me.”