Chapter Text
“Le chat est dans la maison,” Charlotte parrots dutifully into her phone.
Duolingo’s blue microphone toggle wiggles in response, but maison remains unhighlighted.
“Maison,” she says. Still nothing. “Mai-SON.” Nothing. “MAI-son.”
Finally, it blinks green. “Goob job!” Duolingo tells her, and Charlotte wants nothing more than to throw her phone against the far wall. She’s been at her French lessons with the app for over three weeks now, and it feels like she can only consistently say her name, identify the gender of a pizza and a cat, and ask for a ride to the airport by horse.
It’s driving her insane.
And it’s driving her roommate, Georgiana, equally as much up the wall.
She is la folle.
“Have you considered taking lessons in a class?” asks Georgiana. She swivels around in her office chair. They’re in their shared workspace, and Charlotte knows she’s being a bit rude yelling into her phone as she is, but she can't help herself. “Preferably a classroom far, far away from our apartment during our work hours?”
“Non,” replies Charlotte in her best French accent. She sighs. “Sorry, I just had to hop on-- I was about to lose my number one spot in the Sapphire league.”
“Do you hear yourself? The Sapphire league?” Her eyebrow arches up. “What the hell is this -- Pokemon?”
“It’s educational. Edu-tainment, if you will. And I may or may not be a smidge addicted to winning,” she admits. “There’s this one person I’ve been competing with since I first created my account. They’re probably a bot, but… I don’t want to let myself slip.”
Georgiana bites her lip, considering for a moment. “I hate to say this, Char, but it doesn’t seem like you’ve been improving much as of late.”
“Ouch, but… you’re not wrong,” she says. The few years she took French in school seemed to have evaporated along with complex math. “The conjugations and the noun cases still get me. What I really need is another person who speaks French to help me out.”
“Can’t you message that bot friend of yours?”
Charlotte tabs over to her long-time competition. Their handle is ParkBytheBay. Their profile picture is a cartoon-y seagull wearing a beret. Along with French, they’re also signed up for Portuguese, Hungarian, Finnish, and Vietnamese. They have a 867 day streak, over 100,000 total XP, and they’ve had over 100 Top 3 finishes. Basically, this person either has the most time on their hands ever, really adept at languages, or they’re determined to be so. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to DM them,” she says.
“Or, hear me out,” says Georgiana, “I can always give you my cousin Sidney’s number.”
“Sidney? The one who thought I was waitstaff at your parents’ Christmas party three years ago?” The man had been impossibly rude, tossing his winter coat at her when he blazed through the front door with an equally snobbish blonde woman on his arm. It wasn’t exactly hate at first sight, but it was damn near close. She hasn’t had the pleasure of his company since then, but Cousin Sidney was always, in some way, in the periphery of the Lambe family.
“In his defense, you were wearing black pants and a white top--”
“You said it was a black-and-white party!”
“Anyway. He’s going to Marseilles for work in a few weeks, and all my parents can talk about is how he should’ve been a linguist instead of an economist.”
“Language prodigy or no, he was a complete ass. I’d rather DM a bot.”
“He’s really not that bad when you get to know him… especially now that he’s dumped that evil witch of an ex-girlfriend of his.”
Charlotte taps back to ParkBytheBay’s account. They seemed the friendlier option. Someone who loved learning languages wouldn’t laugh in her face when she accidentally messed up a word or three. Rude Cousin Sidney undoubtedly would. “I’m sure he’s perfectly lovely,” she tells Georgiana, meaning quite the opposite. “If my bot doesn’t pan out, I’ll ask for his number.”
It’s another lie. She knows it. Georgiana knows it. But it’s enough to settle the conversation, and they go on with their day -- Duolingo, French, and Charlotte’s frustration with both placed solidly on the backburner.
Later that evening, Charlotte musters up the courage to DM ParkBytheBay -- who, by then, had overtaken Charlotte’s number one spot in the league by several hundred XP; the bastard.
She taps out a quick message: Hi, Park. Je m’appelle Lottie, and… I was wondering if you’d like to be my French language penpal.
God , she thinks. I sound desperate as hell. But she hits send anyway and nervously proceeds with her nighttime routine. By the time she returns from brushing her teeth and washing her face, she has a notification from Duolingo on her phone. Her stomach swoops and her heart thumps.
“They’re not a bot,” she mumbles to herself. Or they are totally a bot, and she’s about to have her bank account stolen.
She reads ParkBytheBay’s reply: Enchanté, Lottie. Je m’appelle Parker . I’ve never had a ‘penpal’ on Duolingo before so I’m not sure what it all entails…
Good grammar, spelling, punctuation. “Okay, Parker,” she hums. “I see your point.”
Charlotte thinks for a moment before typing back: Honestly, neither have I, but my roommate suggested I find someone to talk to in French. Since I don’t currently live in France, or French Canada, or other French-speaking territories, French-speaking persons aren’t easy to find. Who would’ve thought? We could message back and forth in French as we have time, if you’d like.
A speech bubble pops up in their chat room after a minute, and Charlotte lets out a breath. Either Parker was staying up at all odd hours of the day, or they were in the same time zone. Interesting.
That sounds constructive. I like the app, but it’s easy to guess the answers after a while. Just out of curiosity: have you messaged everyone in the Sapphire league, or am I just lucky?
She laughs. In the spirit of being honest… You’ve sort of been my low stakes French arch-nemesis for a few months now. Not sure what it says about me that you were my go-to penpal. Sorry.
In fact, Parker overtaking her in the league got her back on the app several times in the past when she was feeling too down in the dumps about her progress to continue.
The speech bubble pops up again. She settles into bed, her phone in her hands.
Why sorry? Friendly competition is good for the soul. Alright, Lottie. It was nice to meet you, but I have to go now. If you want to start today, I’ll reply when I get on next. Have a good day or night, whatever non-French country you’re in. À demain!
Sidney swipes out of the Duolingo app. What an interesting turn of events, he thinks. He’s been studying different languages with the damned green owl for 867 days now, and no one has ever direct messaged him before. He wasn’t aware it was even an option -- and wouldn’t have ever used it, if he did.
Except he is using it now. Perhaps it was the factor of surprise and a bit of wine at dinner that led him to respond to LostLottie’s message. All this time, he assumed it was a built-in app account. That he’s been neck and neck competing for weeks in silly leagues the app throws them all in -- a brilliant strategy from the designers to keep users on, that’s all. But it seems like Lottie is a real life person. And he can even sympathize with her plight: finding another human being to speak a foreign language with is difficult. Sidney tried to take night classes at the local community center, but he ended up missing more than he attended, thanks to long hours at work. And while he enjoys the app well enough, in his experience it is easier to learn with another person; responding and thinking in a natural way. Either way, what’s done is done, and, weirdly enough, he’s looking forward to seeing what she’ll -- or he? Or they? -- come up with when he checks his DMs tomorrow.