Anna and the French Kiss Read Online Free PDF

when that girl died of leukemia.”
    “Who died of leukemia?” Rashmi plops her backpack down next to me. St. Clair trails in behind her and takes the seat in front of Meredith.
    “Anna’s dad wrote The Entrance ,” Meredith says.
    I cough. “Not something I’m proud of.”
    “I’m sorry, what’s The Entrance ?” Rashmi asks.
    “It’s that movie about the boy who helps deliver the baby girl in the elevator, and then he grows up to fall in love with her,” Meredith says as St. Clair leans back in his chair and nabs her schedule. “But the day after their engagement, she’s diagnosed with leukemia.”
    “Her father pushes her down the aisle in a wheelchair,” I continue. “And then she dies on the honeymoon.”
    “Ugh,” Rashmi and St. Clair say together.
    Enough embarrassment. “Where’s Josh?” I ask.
    “He’s a junior,” Rashmi says, as if I should have known this already. “We dropped him off at pre-calc.”
    “Oh.” Our conversation hits a dead end. Lovely.
    “Three classes together, Mer. Give us yours.” St. Clair leans back again and steals my half sheet. “Ooo, beginning French.”
    “Told you.”
    “It’s not so bad.” He hands back my schedule and smiles. “You’ll be reading the breakfast menu without me before you know it.”
    Hmm, maybe I don’t want to learn French.
    Argh! Boys turn girls into such idiots.
    “Bonjour à tous.” A woman wearing a bold turquoise dress strides in and smacks her coffee cup down on the podium. She’s youngish, and she has the blondest hair I’ve ever seen on a teacher. “For the—” Her eyes scan the room until they land on me.
    What? What did I do?
    “For the singular person who doesn’t know me, je m’appelle Professeur Cole .” She gives an exaggerated curtsy, and the class laughs. They swivel around to stare.
    “Hello,” I say in a tiny voice.
    Suspicions confirmed. Out of the twenty-five people present—the entire senior class—I’m the only new student. This means my classmates have yet another advantage over me, because every one of them is familiar with the teachers. The school is so small that each subject is taught by the same professeur in all four grades.
    I wonder what student left to vacate my position? Probably someone cooler than me. Someone with dreadlocks and pinup girl tattoos and connections in the music industry.
    “I see the janitorial staff has ignored my wishes once again,” Professeur Cole says. “Everyone up.You know the drill.”
    I don’t, but I push my desk when everyone else starts pushing theirs. We arrange them in a big circle. It’s odd to see all of my classmates at the same time. I take the opportunity to size them up. I don’t think I stand out, but their jeans and shoes and backpacks are more expensive than mine. They look cleaner, shinier.
    No surprise there. My mom is a high school biology teacher, which doesn’t give us a lot of extra spending money. Dad pays for the mortgage and helps with the bills, but it’s not enough, and Mom is too proud to ask for more. She says he’d refuse her anyway and just go buy another elliptical machine.
    There may be some truth to that.

    The rest of the morning passes in a blur. I like Professeur Cole, and my math teacher, Professeur Babineaux, is nice enough. He’s Parisian, and he waggles his eyebrows and spits when he talks.To be fair, I don’t think the spitting is a French thing. I think he just has a lisp. It’s hard to tell with the accent.
    After that, I have beginning French. Professeur Gillet turns out to be another Parisian. Figures. They always send in native speakers for foreign language classes. My Spanish teachers were always rolling their eyes and exclaiming, “¡Aye, dios mio!” whenever I raised my hand. They got frustrated when I couldn’t grasp a concept that seemed obvious to them.
    I stopped raising my hand.
    As predicted, the class is a bunch of freshmen. And me. Oh, and one junior, the angry scheduling guy from this