004 Arrivals

Charles de Gaulle Airport was too big, too loud, and smelled like recycled air and expensive coffee.

Isla loved it immediately.

Nobody here knew her name. Nobody was holding a screenshot of her handwriting. Nobody was looking at her with that look of pity and curiosity that she'd been dreading since she woke up to her journal being posted on the Internet and a text from Marcus Ellis that she still hadn't opened.

She stood in the arrivals hall with her suitcase and her program welcome packet and the particular exhaustion that came not from the nine-hour flight but from crying on and off for most of it while pretending she wasn't. The man in the window seat had noticed somewhere over the Atlantic — he had quietly set a small pack of tissues on the shared armrest without looking at her or saying anything. She'd taken them without saying anything either.

It was the kindest interaction she'd had in four days.

She found the program sign outside Terminal 2D — a student holding a piece of paper that said LUMIÈRE EXCHANGE PROGRAM in marker that had bled slightly at the edges and joined the small cluster of people gathered around it.

There were eleven of them in total. Everyone had the same look — slightly dazed and overwhelmed, the expression of people who had arrived somewhere new and hadn't figured out how to be there yet. Isla recognized it because she was wearing it too.

A girl in an orange jumpsuit was already photographing everything. Two boys who clearly already knew each other kept finishing each other's sentences in Portuguese. A very tall person with large headphones hadn't looked up from their phone since Isla arrived.

And then there was the boy leaning against the wall.

A little apart from the group. Dark hair. Hands inside his pocket. He was looking at nothing in particular with the expression of someone who had genuinely made peace with waiting — not restless, not bored, just still. Like he took up exactly the space he needed and not one inch more.

He wasn't doing anything remarkable. He was just standing there.

But Isla's eyes landed on him and stayed for a second the way they sometimes did with a sentence in a book — the kind arranged so perfectly you had to stop and read it twice.

She looked away. Back at her welcome packet. Read the same line three times without absorbing a single word.

The shuttle driver appeared and did a headcount. The boy pushed off the wall and joined the group without a word.

On the shuttle Isla got a window seat and pressed her forehead against the cool glass and watched Paris appear in pieces. The outskirts first, then gradually something more like what she'd imagined — wide boulevards, pale buildings, iron balconies stacked on top of each other like they'd been growing there for centuries.

Her phone had fifty-three unread messages. She hadn't opened any of them since the airport in Ohio. She wasn't ready. She might not be ready for a while and she was going to have to be okay with that.

She pulled out her welcome packet and tried to read it properly.

"First time?"

She turned. The boy from the arrivals hall was in the seat across the aisle. He was looking at her — not in a pushy way, just a noticing way. Like he'd asked because he actually wanted to know.

"Sorry?"

"First time in Paris?"

"Oh." She blinked. "Yeah."

He nodded. Turned back to the window.

That was it. Six words total. He didn't try to extend it into a conversation or ask her name or do any of the things people did when they were performing friendliness on public transport. He'd asked a question, gotten an answer, and let it be.

Something about that — just that small ordinary exchange with a stranger who wanted nothing from her made something in her chest loosen. Like one loop of a knot releasing.

She wasn't Isla-whose-diary-was-everywhere here. She was just a girl on a shuttle. First time in Paris. Yeah.

She turned back to her window and let herself actually look at the city appearing outside it.

The program building was near the 6th district, a converted old school with narrow hallways and high ceilings and wooden floors that announced every footstep. Isla was assigned to Room 14 at the end of the second floor hallway.

She pushed the door open with her suitcase.

Two beds. Two desks. One window overlooking a courtyard where someone had planted lavender that hadn't been getting enough water. One side of the room was already claimed — a grey duffel bag on the left bed, a sketchbook and two pencils on the desk, arranged with the neatness of someone for whom order was a habit rather than an effort.

Whoever it was traveled light.

Isla took the right side. She sat on her bed and looked around and talked herself through it quietly. “Okay. You are in Paris. You are in this room. This is real. You did a hard thing and you're still standing.”

Her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen.

Marcus again. A second message this time. She could see the preview before she could stop herself.

“I know you're probably not checking these. But Isla, what I read — I need you to know that I ..”

The screen went dark.

She put the phone face down on the bed.

Her hands weren't entirely steady.

She was still sitting there when the door opened.

She looked up.

The boy from the shuttle stood in the doorway. He looked at her. He looked at the sketchbook on the left desk. He looked back at her with an expression that moved through several things quickly — surprise, reassessment, and then something close to resigned acceptance.

He came in. Set his bag down on the left bed. Sat down.

The silence stretched.

"I'm Isla," she said finally.

"Theo."

She waited. Nothing more came.

"Are you always this chatty?"

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile but close enough to count. "Usually less," he said.

She almost laughed.

She hadn't been close to laughing since Ohio.

She turned back to her unpacking and tried to ignore the fact that her phone was still face down on the bed with Marcus's unfinished sentence sitting underneath the dark screen.

“What I read — I need you to know that I..”

She needed to know that he what.

She picked up the phone.

She put it back down.

She picked it up again.