Apocalypse Baby. Виржини Депант

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СКАЧАТЬ not being negative. I could have told you about her grades without us having to sit and sweat in this bell jar: if you would have read the file, everything’s in there. The grandmother had told me about them. And that she cut class, same thing, mega scoop. That’s why I was hired in the first place.”

      “And it doesn’t strike you as interesting that precisely for the two weeks you’ve been following her, she’s been coming to school every day?”

      “Yes of course it has. And it pisses me off, believe me.”

      I said that for no special reason, just to say something back, but you would think I’d made the gag of the year, the Hyena bursts out laughing and looks at me almost with affection. I think perhaps she’s flirting with me, but at the same time what do I know?

      “Show me where the kids eat lunch.”

      The school is on the banks of the Seine, in one of those districts full of office buildings and fancy apartments where it doesn’t seem possible that anyone needs to go out for a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk. Car sales, stereo equipment, computer shops. But nothing much that’s convivial, bars, restaurants, or little boutiques. I’ve never understood why there are never any practical shops or nice coffee bars in the areas where the very rich live. Is it such poor taste to eat out? So the kids have the choice between a brasserie which is very expensive and a long way off, and a tiny shop that sells little plates of sushi and three kinds of sandwich on white bread. That was a problem for me: passing unnoticed in such a small place was difficult. Luckily, the young don’t usually bother looking at people my age. I point out to the Hyena a table where I recognize some pupils from Valentine’s class. She’s taken off her jacket now, and slung it over her shoulder, revealing the Japanese-sailor-type tattoos that crawl all over her arms. She goes up to the biggest of them, by instinct; he has the face of a mischievous child on the body of a lumberjack.

      “I work for a firm of private investigators. Valentine’s parents have called us in to back up the police effort.”

      A small curly-headed youth with freckled cheeks, wearing a hoodie and wide trousers, sees fit to reply. “Yeah, they’re right, the police do fuck all, look at the traffic chaos everywhere.”

      Chorus: “The police didn’t even come to talk to us.”

      “There wasn’t anything on the TV news, was there? So what did they care?”

      “Yeah, that’s right, there was this girl last summer and she’d been gone a week, and people recognized her from the photo, so how are people going to know she’s missing?”

      The Hyena hasn’t sat down yet, she’s listening to them seriously and casting an amused look over them. I’m two paces behind, and not too surprised that not one of them says, “Hey, you’re always around here.” My talent is being invisible.

      “Did you know her well? Did she have many friends in school?”

      “No, she wasn’t all that friendly with people in school.”

      “Yeah, she could be, she sometimes ate her lunch with us. But mostly she went off on her own with her iPod.”

      “Mostly she didn’t come back either.”

      “She was a bit snobbish with us, if you want to know. If you said something, she’d put on this superior air and say the opposite. She was more friendly at the beginning of the year, I thought . . .”

      “She’s not friends with any of us on Facebook, is she?”

      “We don’t even know if she has a Facepuke page, actually . . .”

      “But did she have problems with anyone at school?”

      “Nah, not even. Perhaps she thought she shouldn’t be here at all. Dunno.”

      “And none of you saw her outside school?”

      “Yeah, I did, but it was a long time ago, oh, about three months ago. But we had words.” This is a dark-haired girl with very pale skin speaking: she looks intelligent, but so languid that you feel like shaking her to see if she’ll switch on.

      “What happened?”

      The girl who’d said this purses her lips and looks at the ceiling, not sure how to reply. The other kids burst out laughing.

      The curly-haired one, who didn’t think the police were doing their job, intervenes. “Valentine’s a bit weird. Kind of okay, but weird. Very hot. Especially when she’s had a few.”

      “She ought to be in the ads against binge drinking for teenagers. You really wouldn’t want to be her when she’s drunk.”

      The brunette takes up her story again. She talks like a little girl, in an unpleasant whiny voice. “She can be funny if it’s just the two of you, she’s fine. She’s nice. But if you go out somewhere, she can be a real drag. She binge drinks. She knocks it back till she can’t stand up straight, and if you’re at a party, no prizes for guessing you’ll have no fun, you’ll end up carrying her out to the taxi, and then she’ll be sick all over it, and then you’ll have to help her get up the stairs at home. See what I mean? A drag.”

      The Hyena is nodding her head all this time, looking around at them in turn, then suddenly asks, “And what about boys, what’s she like with them?”

      A tall gangling youth with a long, horsey face replies.

      “She can come on to you just like that, saying ‘Wanna blow job? If you want one, just tell me.’ Well, that’s what she used to do, when she first got here. Boys she liked, she’d go up to them, and, pow! Just like that, she’d come out with it. But she calmed down. In fact lately, she didn’t seem to bother with us.”

      The brunette takes up the story again. “Say you go out in the evening with a few guys, well honestly, you feel ashamed for her. When she drinks, she’ll do anything with anyone. But I think in the school she was in before, the girls were all like that. Or so she said.”

      “So you got fed up going out with her, that it?”

      “Yeah . . . and she can be pretty wild too. She comes out with really mega awful stuff.”

      “Like what?”

      “Oh anything, if it can upset someone. If you’re a blonde, it’s something bad about dumb blondes, if you’re Jewish, it’s anti-Israel, if you’re black, she’ll talk about banana trees, if you’re gay, it’s about AIDS, and so on. Valentine’s always got an insult for everyone. And in the end you can’t take it anymore, you just want a quiet evening.”

      THERE ARE FEW reactions around the table. Their apathy hasn’t been disturbed. A girl who was kind of okay, not too many problems. Nothing out of the ordinary. The more I see of this generation, the more I imagine how they’ll be as adults and the less I want to make old bones.

      “STILL, SHE ISN’T the local clown. When she’s sober, she’s even rather quiet . . . And she’s good at classes. When she got here, we were very impressed by her level.”

      “She’s good at everything, she reads books and all. But she’s good at math too. And chemistry. Yeah, everything really.”

      “The teachers like her СКАЧАТЬ