Chapter Text
It’s a slow morning at the museum, scarce of visitors. November wraps the outdoors with a thin fog, and the pyramid outside takes the white colors of the haze ; the Louvre feels only half-awake.
Alix is very awake, though, and she is on a very important mission : outrunning Jalil across the corridors and rooms of the Sully wing. She is doing a pretty good job for now ; her brother is twice her age, even a tiny bit older than that, but he does not have half the talent she has for sneaking around the glass display stands and weaving her way between the few people wandering in the way.
She misses a little the summer and the gentle beginning of fall that would see her run in the grass in the Tuileries gardens by that hour, as now the mid-season decided to unleash its freezest winds early this year and threatens anyone that would dare to try to frolic around outside for too long with high risks of getting a nasty cold, but running in the halls with her brother on her tail, trying -and failing- to grab her, is a very exciting and fun activity to a mischievous six-years-old like her, so she doesn’t mind too much.
Right now, the pair is running up the path connecting the rooms of the Greek and Roman antiquities galleries, from room 660 to room 651 just ahead of her. The museum guards barely even blink when they see them, having grown used to Alix bouncing around the whole place since the moment she learnt how to run, taking off when nobody was looking, even for a second, becoming unbothered by her antics in a matter of weeks after it became apparent that the little girl could not so much as make the display furniture tremble even if she bumped straight into it at her maximum speed. Her only rule was to not touch any art pieces, and she has always followed it like her life depended on it.
Turning at the corner of the hall between room 641 and room 651, Alix was ready to carry out the final part of her plan : running even faster through the Egyptian exhibition, all the way from room 640 to the end of this side of the building, in hopes of her brother, who clearly wasn’t amused with spending one of the rare school-less wednesday mornings he had having to look after his sister, giving up his pursuit and giving in to his passion for egyptian history instead.
A foolproof plan it seems, as by the time she passes the corner and enters the European decorative arts gallery, she hears no footsteps following her. Daring to look back, her fluffy warm brown hair peeking out from behind one of the pillars of the grand hallway making two visitors chuckle, she sees no grumpish big brother in sight, throwing out her small fists in celebration.
Free to roam as she pleases now without Jalil always insisting that she remains in his field of vision, Alix hops carefree around the corridors and large, open chambers, under the centuries-old gaze of myriads of pieces of art that saw her walk this floor dozens of times.
They are probably more familiar with her than she is with them, only having started this year to learn how to decipher on her own all the words laying their history on wall text stands, but she remembers snatches of stories about them from her father’s passionate explanations (that she lends an ear to from time to time, when she’s calm enough to listen), so she always takes a moment to look back.
Her steps guide her to the rooms at the entrance of the Richelieu wing, where she takes interest in watching the visitors wandering around : there’s a group of four old women commenting every shiny artefact the displays presents them with, a teenage girl waiting with her back on the wall, phone in hand, someone seeming deep in thoughts in front of a painting, two people whose attention appears to be more interested by each other’s lips than by the antiquities surrounding them (yurk, cooties).
Entering another room, she sees a boy her age, seated close to a corner, a pencil in hand and a sheet of paper supported by a folder on his propped-up knees. He catches her attention because he looks like those younger-looking adults with huge black and green porfolios or tiny black sketchbooks, -often art students, her brother told her once-, that hesitate for minutes on which one of the benches by the windows they’ll seat on and then draw for hours with a very focused frown on their face, except he is much more smaller than them, and he is sitting on the floor.
He has chestnut brown hair, a bit longer than what she is used to seeing for boys, and he wears a sleeveless sweater vest with a button-up shirt underneath, and black dress linen pants, a kind of clothing that make him look like a prim and proper student from an all-boys private school, and a sharp contrast with her, her wardrobe full of comfortable jeans and sweatpants, often a little baggy because she likes it that way, and tee-shirts with cool logos.
Intrigued, she gets closer. The kid does not seem to notice her, even when she ends up standing right in front of him, blue eyes, behind the bangs covering half of the top of his face, fixated on the shapes he scribbles and nothing else.
In silence, Alix takes a look at his doodles : some are scrawled over, but she identifies one as a drawing of a statuette of a cat like the ones in the Egyptian gallery, another as an old vase she is almost sure is on display two rooms away from this one, and the faces of two characters she remembers from a cartoon airing on TV every Sunday. The lines look a little wobbly, but she thinks it looks pretty neat for someone the same age as her.
At some point, the boy raises his head a little, nipping at his pencil, eyebrows in a frown, and notices her.
A second flies by.
Another one passes. She smiles at him with all her teeth, so he’ll know she’s nice.
He blinks in confusion, and suddenly stands up in surprise, accidentally knocking her lower jaw with his head. They both stagger away after the blow, Alix growling at the sting she feels heating up at the side of her face, but the pain gets almost forgotten on the spot to the laugh she can barely stifle when she sees just how red the boy in front of her is, like a ripe tomato.
Her chuckles only add to his embarrassment, and so to the reddening of his face, as he raises his bristol board folder up to his face as if to hide behind it. He stammers something she doesn’t quite catch, and promptly runs off, deeper into the Richelieu wing.
The little girl stays put, a bit puzzled by the turn of events, but intrigued. Quickly, she decides to go after him.
The silver or golden ornaments and art pieces of the galleries slide by in a blur around her, her focus forward, scampering from room to room, searching for the boy. She looks for him like they were playing a game of hide and seek, her mind already off the slight, receding ache at the bottom of her jaw.
Ultimately, she catches a glimpse of him taking a sharp turn into one of the smaller corridors, the ones used by the staff of the museum, thinner pathways she gets to use as shortcuts sometimes. By the time she arrives at the corner, she sees the kid being guided back to the main room by a man with the craziest haircut she has ever witnessed, a wild updo with orange curls flaring out, saying something about needing not to be disturbed.
When the adult notices her, as she stands in their way with curious eyes, he stops. “Well, hello little lady !”, he says, “what happened to you ?”. Met with a mildly disconcerted face, he points to her left cheek, dotted with a faltering pinkish mark, and the young girl just now realizes that she has been holding the side of her face for all this time.
It barely hurts anymore, so she lets go, instead pointing at the boy. “Hum, he knocked me when-”, she starts to explain, not accusatory, matter-of-factly and without a second thought, but almost cutting herself off when the other child noticeably shrinks in on himself.
The man doesn’t let her finish. “That’s not very nice, Nathaniel”, he said, raising his voice. The kid -Nathaniel, she now knows- looks down. “Come on, apologize.”
He mutters a “sorry”, a quiet and wincing sound like wrangled out of a scratched throat, and before she can even try to explain that it was not his fault, another voice calls out from behind them.
“What is going on ?”. A woman, with chestnut brown hair, emerges from the corridor. With her eyebrows in a frown, her face looks sharp, like something serious, severe, is inked into it.
When she speaks, stern, something weird happens : Nathaniel has a full-body shudder, and then goes very still. It’s not much the shuddering that ticks Alix off, she is pretty sure she shivers like that too when her and her friends from school get caught exploring the classrooms during break, instead of staying outside in the schoolyard like they’re supposed to ; it’s the stillness that comes after. He looks almost like a statue, and even if she doesn’t really understand why he does that, it makes her sad to see him like that, because he doesn’t look like he’s doing well at all.
She attempts to speak again, but can’t even say two words before getting talked over. “He hit a girl”, the man with crazy hair says.
“I-I didn’t mean to !”, the boy whines out, voice high-pitched in something of a panic, breaking out of his stupor a little.
The lady, who Alix can only assume is his mother, does not seem to hear him out. “Nathaniel, I told you to behave.” He doesn’t answer, trembling, gaze to the floor though he shoots anxious glances to the woman’s hands.
Confusion boils with frustration inside the little girl’s mind : she feels lost, doesn’t understand why those people are acting like this, not listening.
Fortunately, she sees her father approaching from the same corridor Nathaniel’s parents emerged from. He looks nearly as puzzled as she is, face wrinkled in incomprehension and subtle worry, until he sees her waving at him to catch his attention.
“Alix !” Alim’s voice is bright as he calls her. “My daughter”, he informs the others with a smile, briefly turning towards them as he comes to stand next to the young girl. “Where’s your brother ? What happened ?”
“He’s in the Egyptian section”, she answers. For an instant, she is hesitant to admit she sneaked away from Jalil, but she knows her father won’t get mad. “I was bored so we raced, and he was too slow, so he gave up !” ; approximately what happened, leaving out the fact her brother did not actually agree to be raced with, something Alim likely has guessed if his skeptical, but also amused expression was anything to go by.
“And then, I saw Nathaniel”, she goes on, pointing at the boy again ; her father gently pushes down her hand, murmuring “Don’t point” but not interrupting, “and I wanted to see his drawings, but he didn’t see me, so when he stood up, we bumped into each other”, she claps her hands for emphasis, “and then he ran away, and I wanted to see where he was going, so I ran too.”
Her enthusiastic explanation draws a smile on Alim’s face, one she mimics. In front of them, the woman, expression less sharp now, shrugs, while the redhead man looks slightly dumbfounded.
“Oh, you should have said it earlier !”, he says with mirth, not seeing the confused, and most of all annoyed, glare the little girl discreetly shoots him.
Alix doesn’t dignify that with a response. As her father leaves her side to talk with Nathaniel’s mother, who sighs and say something about not losing any more time, she glances back at the boy ; she isn’t really good at reading people sometimes, but she can see how he is still tense, looking around with wide eyes as if surprised at how the situation turned out.
She has an idea.
“Dad !”, she calls, “Can I show Nathaniel around the museum ?” The boy’s head perks up.
“Sure, if his parents are okay with it.” he replies without hesitation.
She looks back to his father, standing straighter with her hands behind her back, the same kind of demeanor she adopts when she needs to ask an adult for something. “Mister, can I show Nathaniel around the museum, please ?”
He laughs. “Fine by me, but I’m not sure Nathaniel is very much fun to be around if you’re bored, little lady.”
His son looks away. The young girl is once more bewildered by the way this man acts, saying something mean like it was a funny joke, and behind him, she notices a fleeting frown washing over her dad’s expression as he overhears the interaction.
She ignores it : he certainly doesn’t know what he is talking about, because she always gives a visit around the place to her friends when she can, showing them her favorite statues and paintings, and it’s always fun. Giving up on trying to understand for now, she instead grabs Nathaniel’s hand and leads him away.
The pair trots around the hallways, coming back to the Egyptian gallery. Her new companion is rather quiet, but he watches the scenery of colors and art around with curious eyes, so she decides to tell him of all the little facts she remembers about the sculptures, tools, engravings and whatnot surrounding them. They progress through the exposition in stops and starts, Alix often pausing to lay out her explanations ; the boy doesn’t talk much but he gives her small nods as feedback, standing on his tiptoes like her when the display stands are a bit too high for them.
As they pass near the seated scribe, a statue of half-a-meter that used to scare her when she was younger because of how his eyes look, the girl sees her brother there, reading the descriptive text attached to the stand like he had not read it dozens of time before, with all the times he spends in the Egyptian sections of the museum.
“Hi Jalil !” she shoots, waving at him but not slowing down, almost missing the teenager’s perplexed look at seeing his sister hop around the exhibition with a boy her age he has never seen in tow as she runs off away from him again with a snicker.
Eventually, as the day walks forth, visitors start flowing inside the galleries, the usual murmur of people strolling around the exhibitions filling in the museum up to its high and pristine ceilings. Alix doesn’t mind the crowd, enjoying weaving in-between and across groups like in an obstacle race, but when she looks behind her, Nathaniel, who’s hand she had let go of for a little while, doesn’t seem to do as well as she does, eyeing his surroundings anxiously and almost getting his foot stepped on by someone.
The little girl joins him back and takes his hand again. He holds it tighter than before, shoulders drawing inwards, and she can feel the nervous tension that had taken a hold of him earlier coming back, but this time, she knows what to do : such situation, where one of her friends would get intimidated by the place or by a sudden crowd forming in the rooms, had happened before, and, in those cases, her father had advised her to take them to a quieter, less frequented part of the museum.
She tells him as such as she guides him forwards. By now, they are near the entrance of the Denon wing, witnesses of the ancient Greece standing tall around them in the Roman and Greek antiquities gallery, and, entering the edifice, Alix smiles, walking a bit faster in excitement, because the nearest calmer area she has in mind is the home of one of her favorite statues, and she is happy to be able to show it to her new friend.
Soon enough, the pair is standing before a grand staircase of polished stone, a headless, winged statue dressed at its end like the prow of a ship. Just like she thought, the stairway is somewhat vacant : even if the renowned figure could attract quite the pack of tourists during the holidays, it tends to be less crowded on schoolweeks like these. Some visitors don’t bother climbing all the way like they are doing, admiring the glory of the goddess in white marble for afar, and those who do often vacate the space not long after, therefore, tucked away, backs against one of the corner walls of creme stone so that they don’t get asked to move aside by anyone trying to take pictures from the mainway, is a good place to sit down and take a breather.
There, in the hazy light of the pale day shining outside from the window to their left, Alix starts to speak of what she learnt about the statue, like she did with so many art pieces on the way here : she doesn’t remember its entire title, the name of its birthplace always slipping out of her mind, but she knows it to be a depiction of the greek goddess of victory, Nike. Though missing its head and arms, the young girl finds the figure to be striking, standing as if ready to soar to the skies above with its wings : she wished she had wings too, to fly and go where she wants to, when she wants to.
Turning back to Nathaniel, she notices only now that the boy started drawing again, having taken a new, blank piece of paper from his folder (and doing so in surprising silence ; she did not hear him one bit). He is sketching out the statue in front of them, a clumsy outline of it appearing at the end of his pencil on the white sheet.
Silence stretches between them as she watches him. He seems to notice after a handful of seconds, looking up and locking eyes with her.
“Sorry”, he mumbles, avoiding her gaze.
“For what ?”, she asks.
“It’s…” he stammers a little, struggling to answer like he didn’t consider he could be asked why he apologized. “You probably think I wasn’t listening to you.” It’s an affirmation, but it holds the hopefulness of a question.
“Why ? You weren’t listening ?” It doesn’t feel nice to be speaking in a vacuum, but she would not hold it against him too much, because she did talk a lot today, and he listened a lot too.
“No, I was !” He meets her eyes again.
“Then it’s all good !” She assures, light-hearted because she is happy to know she wasn’t talking to herself earlier. Sometimes, others get tired of hearing her talk their ears out with everything that crosses her ever-active mind ; Alix is glad he doesn’t seem to. “Why did you think I would think that ?” She leans closer.
Nathaniel does not reply right away, a small frown pulling at the lines of his face. “My parents get angry sometimes when I draw, because they think I don’t listen.” The black lines he scribbles become a little harsher on the paper.
The girl’s expression turns pensive. Adults thinking a child isn’t paying attention to them because they are doing something else is not something she has never heard of, but, with what she saw earlier, she has a bad feeling about the boy’s parents, one she can’t place nor name but that she keeps in mind. “Your parents are weird” is what comes out of that train of thoughts.
Eyes downcast, he doesn’t respond.
After a little while, she starts to watch him. Drawing is not something she is particularly interested in -her father doesn’t say she has springs for feet for nothing ; activities where she needs to stay still are not her forte-, but looking at the image as it appears on the paper, growing closer and closer to looking like the winged statue, is strangely calming .
Her friend answers every little question she has on what he is doing, why does he draw this shape at this place, what’s that he just added, what line is next, and she has fun watching his expression change as he scribbles, in a frustrated pout when he struggles with the layered, complex folds of the tunic, or a shy smile when he finishes the last feather of one of the wings. At some point, he even sticks his tongue out in concentration and, for all her efforts, she cannot contain the giggle that escapes her at that : he becomes red like a tomato when he notices, but she doesn’t want him to think she is mocking him, so she sticks out her tongue too, and he laughs, a timid sound that makes her smile wider.
The day shines brighter outside, projecting from behind the window squares of light that laze at the edge of their shoes. When Alix looks up, the morning fog has partially cleared, and the sun is near its highest : she stands up, Nathaniel watching her with curious eyes, turning around to find a clock. There is one in the hallway to the left, a two-handed clock like the ones her father taught her how to read (she is the only one in her class that knows how to read non-digital clocks accurately, and she is quite proud of it), that indicates 11:51AM.
“Nathaniel, we gotta go !” She calls as she comes back to the corner. He looks at her, slightly confused. “It’s almost lunch time !”, she offers as an explanation ; he still looks confused, but gets up to follow her.
They turn right after going down the staircase, careful not to slip on the neatly polished steps, then down some set of stairs all the way to the -1 level, from which they can access the inside of the pyramide. A lot of visitors are also taking the stairs, noon up in the sky beckoning them to look for somewhere to eat, and it is too dangerous to run and jump all around them (even if it has a lot of potential for some fun, in Alix’s opinion), so they get delayed a little more than she had thought they would.
A dozen minutes later, they finally get there, the glass structure above standing meters tall over them, letting natural light enter its inside. From the escalator bringing them to the reception aera, on her tiptoes against the railway to try to see beyond the upper bodies of the people in front of her, the young girl spots both her father and brother, as well as Nathaniel’s parents, waiting near the cloakroom counter.
The two children get closer rather quickly, lingering behind a group of visitors going in the same direction to gather back their belongings. “Alix knows she’s got to be back here by 12, ma’am” they hear Jalil say, in a passably annoyed tone, to the face of the chestnut brown-haired woman, who still looks as severe as earlier.
As if it was her cue, the girl hurries to the adults, her friend in tow, but doesn’t stop when close enough : instead, she runs to grab her dad’s leg by surprise, letting out a giggly roar like a video game monster, a harmless little prank she always loves to do.
“Speaking of the devil”, he says with a smile, gently ruffling his daughter’s soft brown hair.
“You’re late”, her brother teases her, “it’s already…” a glance to his watch “ten past twelve ! You’re literally so late.” He jokes.
“Shuuush !”, she huffs in response to his nagging, “We had to go down from the second floor, and we couldn’t even run !” Another safety rule her father had drilled into her mind, not wanting her to fall or to accidentally slam into a visitor, especially during the days the museum could tend to get overcrowded.
“Slowpoke”, he comments, earning a small slap on the thigh from his sister, one that barely hurts but prompts him to fake a gasping “ouch” he exaggerates just to mess with her.
While the siblings playfully bicker, Nathaniel lingers near, only coming to stand by his parents when his mother tells him to do so. Now that he has grown more comfortable being with Alix in the span of this morning, he doesn’t look thrilled to go back with his parents, or so the young girl supposes, feeling him watching her at the corner of her vision.
When she turns to him, both her and Jalil having given up their perky squabble after Alim asked them to stop fighting, his eyes go back and forth, from her to the paper held secure by the straps of his folder, then to her again. Finally, as the adults exchange goodbyes and start to leave, he sheepishly trots to her and hands her the drawing.
She takes it, a toothy, candid smile lighting up her face. The statue lies on what was before a blank canvas, beautiful even if unfinished, with shaking lines and hesitantly drawn layers of clothing, pretty in its own right with the pose captured and the detailed wings : although it surprised her a little to get a cool gift like that after having met only a few hours ago, she makes sure he hears her enthusiastic “Thank you !” as they both have to run back to their family already walking away.
Outside, on their way to the nice halal restaurant Alim brings them to once a week, one near the Palais Royal garden, Alix chimes in to the usual chatter of their walks with a retelling of the morning she had just spent, hands moving freely around after her father convinced her to let him put the drawing she was given in his satchel, to avoid it being accidentally wrinkled but her small but firm grasp.She talks about the art pieces she had shown Nath, the stops they made in the galleries, even that one moment they saw another kid fall face first on the floor in the greek antiquities exhibition.
“How did you even meet him ?” Jalil asks at some point, used to but even now somewhat surprised by the ease with which his sister was able to make friends, claiming them casually like one would claim as theirs a stick on the side of a trail during a walk in the forest.
“He was drawing in a gallery and I wanted to see, but I surprised him and we bumped into each other !” She ends her sentence by clapping her hands to imitate the “bumped into each other” part, the same way she did when she told her dad earlier, which just as expected makes her brother laugh.
She chuckles with him, but quickly the memory of what had unfolded after this encounter comes back to mind, souring her mood. The behavior of Nathaniel’s parents towards him, so foreign and confusing to her, and his fright, while she did not see much of it, left something of a lasting impression on her, an uncomfortable feeling. “... His parents are weird.”, she says.
“For real,” Jalil voices his agreement, “like, before dad arrived, when I was waiting for you two at the reception, his mother started going mad about him not being there already, and then she started blaming me for it !”, he continues, sounding outraged.
The new information only adds to Alix’s growing dislike for those two people, but the heavy feeling isn’t lifted, its edges to her, leaving her unable to really explain. “Nathaniel looked really scared of them”, she mumbles like a passing thought.
Only silence responds. When she looks up, her father and her brother share a glance, almost as if they understood something about the situation she didn’t, which doesn’t help her frustration.
She tugs at her dad’s sleeve, what she always does when she wants to be lifted up : lately, he has been telling her she is getting a little too old to be carried around, only caving in sometimes when she pleads with puppy dog eyes, but this time he gathers her up in his arms without discussion.
“You know…” He starts with the hint of a sigh in his voice, seeming to weigh the words he was about to say ; his daughter fleetingly remembers the careful concern she had seen etched on his face earlier, when he stumbled upon the moment that had raised her worries. “Sometimes, some parents aren’t… always very nice to their child”, he sounds hesitant, which is unusual.
“Why ?” She immediately asks.
His eyes evade hers for an instant ; he works up a response that never entirely comes, ill-at-ease and perhaps unequipped to talk to her about such a matter, about a situation he lacks information on. Alim is a man that holds himself to a high standard of rationality, finding worth in never jumping to conclusions, and, even if he trusts his daughter and acknowledges her feelings, he does not want to incriminate anyone further than he already did.
In the absence of an answer, Alix looks down. Maybe that’s one of the questions even adults don’t have a solution to.
Noticing her dampened demeanor, her father cuts short to his pondering, not wanting her to feel upset and hopeless.. “Well, you know what you can do ?”. Her focus is back on him in an instant, and she nods, curious. “Mr. and Mrs. Kurtzberg came today as representatives of an organization we are planning a temporary exhibition with, so they will come back every Wednesday for a while, and your friend will probably be there too. So what you”, he presses a finger to her chest, which makes her giggle, “can do is being an extra good friend to him to make him feel better if he feels bad. What do you think ?”
The little girl thinks about it for a few seconds, after which the musing pout on her face is replaced with certainty. “I can do that !”, she exclaims with a cheeky smile, relief bringing her spirits up. “I’m gonna be the best of friends ever !”, she adds, legs swinging back and forth in excitement.
“I’m sure you will, habibti.” He holds her, tone gentle and proud with affection, one she reciprocates by putting her arms around his neck for a hug.
The rest of the walk is rhymed with laughter again, the two siblings falling back into their ever-constant banter on the way to the restaurant, as the risen sun starts to warm up the day. It’s a nice afternoon that awaits them after a good meal, and even the remaining gusts of cold winds that come and slam onto her on a few instances don’t bring the younger’s mood down.
The week flies by at a peaceful pace, its end a little warmer, warm enough for the two Kudbel children to hang out in the Tuileries garden during their father’s Saturday shift at the museum. By then, Alix is getting impatient to see Nathaniel next wednesday, but on Monday she is surprised to stumble upon him by accident in the schoolyard during the afternoon break.
As it turns out, they are going to the same school, just never met because they are not in the same class, and because Nath often keeps to corners where he can draw peacefully, away from the constant flow of kids who might inattentively knock his stuff over, while Alix is frequently seen running up the court lengthwise in games of tag with older students, or pestering boys with girls her grade when they take up too much place playing soccer.
Recess is close to ending when she unexpectedly finds him near the edge of the yard, but she has just enough time to ask him if he stays at school for lunch today, and, after he tells her he does, to offer to find each other right there when morning classes end, which he accepts. When noon comes, he is waiting for her right where they agree to meet up again : they settle down here, the school relatively calm (as calm as a school can get) as its population is at least halfen by parents coming to pick their children up to eat together at home, and chat away the time, the boy getting a little more talkative than last time even if he is still quite nervous, both getting so engulfed in the discussion that they almost forget to get in the line for the lunchroom access before it is closed.
Next wednesday, the day clearer than the week before, he’s there too, discreetly waving at her when he sees her from where he had been waiting at his parents’ side. For good measure, she asks his father again if she can give his son another visit of the museum, and they take off the moment he agrees. This time, they visit the second level, a third smaller than the first one, where countless paintings, vestiges from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, heavy with history in what is not their first home, watch the two kids have some blissful fun amongst them, their only concern being to check the clocks from time to time to avoid being late like they were last week (it works ; they even arrive earlier than the adults).
And like that, easily, weeks go on, turn into months, and they grow closer, habits blooming as the days become colder, then warmer. They see each other during breaks, not always on morning and afternoon ones as fifteen minutes are never too much for the little girl to spend the energy bundling up into her limbs during long lessons hours by sprinting around with friends like an overcharged toy, to avoid feeling restless during class and risking facing the moderate wrath of her teachers, but always on the two-hours lunch breaks ; however, they get more time to spent with one another during the morning before-school daycare, where Nathaniel is frequently dropped off early while Alix only goes when her father starts work before the museum opening hours, and during wednesday mornings at the Louvre.
Their hangouts at the museum are her favorites : the place, a grandiose haven of prestigious antique arts for some, morphs itself as a playground of mysteries for them, a theater of curiosities they stroll through cheerfully, where long wall texts next to ancient fragments, using big words at every phrase they try to decipher with their 1st grade reading comprehension skills, transform into cryptic messages about old-timey magic artefacts, and endless hallways crossing countless rooms turn to pathways to new adventures and discoveries. The guards and guides working there get used to seeing them around even faster than they did when her younger self started running around at age 3, and Alim even authorize them to use the few staff-only corridors that are rarely locked, provided that they swear to be extra careful if they see workers carrying fragile tools or art pieces.
At school, their friendship raise a few small questions : some teacher assistants and early childhood educators comment quizzically, far from unkindly but maybe a little indiscreet, about social-butterfly energetic Alix befriending such an introverted boy as Nathaniel (one of them even congratulate her for it, which she finds weird), only looking at their glaring differences. She brushes them off : sure, her friend isn’t as sporty or talkative as her, far less in fact, but by now she knows he can be as curious, cheeky and creative as she is, he is just afraid to show it.
Most of the students their grade go along with it the way six-years-old usually do, not thinking too hard about things ; only some of the older boys she occasionally plays with make a big deal of it for a short while, picking on the younger boy about his clothes or his hair they find too long and questioning her about why she would even hang out with him, but very quickly they learn to stay away after learning the hard way that the little girl, even if she’s a least a quarter shorter than them, knows exactly where to kick them to get them to back off. She stops playing with them during recess, and when Nath tries to apologize for making her lose friends, she shrugs and says she wouldn’t want to stay friends with mean people anyways.
Months blend into one another with the peaceful routines of school days and vacations weeks, of noon breaks spent sitting in the grass and wednesday mornings running around in the Louvre, until the end of April, when the temporary exhibition the kids’ parents had been planning finally come to fruition. They both get to spend time together during the opening ceremony organized in one of the gardens along the Champs-Élysées avenue, taking snacks from the banquet and hiding under the tables, but after that, his parents stopped coming to the museum, and their wednesday adventures abruptly came to an end. Alix did request her father to call them, to ask if they would be willing to bring their son for a play date, but each time they claimed they were “too busy”, or sometimes said that Nathaniel was grounded.
She doesn’t like his parents. Ms. Kurtzberg, with her severe expression and surveilling eyes, always looking like she is unnerved by anything, and Mr. Kurtzberg, who acts nice to her on most instances, but who’s odd occasional belittling comments about his son she doesn’t forget no matter how casual he makes them sound, laid-back attitude his response to everything ; this suspecting feeling about them, the one that appeared when they first met, is always at the back of her mind when she sees them, even if, try as she might, she doesn’t understand everything about it.
She knows one thing, though, has a certitude that she knows to be true, one that appeared a day in late June she thinks she’ll remember forever.
This day is warm, an usual day of almost-summer with only few lessons here and there, something common as the summer holidays were each passing day closer and closer, the school curriculums mostly done with by now.
Most kids are outside, playing sports in the yard or taking part in board games. With the early-morning and evening daycares both closed and the classes almost all finished, everyone feels like they are already in vacations, save perhaps for the teachers having to watch over so many children at once, although they seem quite decontracted, the ladies clothed with wide pretty dresses getting complimented by a few pupils for their flowery garments.
Alix stays under the fresh shadows of the trees in the middle of the lawn, having a contest of who can do the best cartwheel with a few classmates. As one of them is taking their sweet time showing off their acrobatics talents, she shoots a glance towards the school entrance : she has been trying to spot if Nathaniel had arrived for a little while now, because he’s unusually late today.
When she does, there he is walking up the stairs leading to the yard, alone. She waves both her hands high to get his attention, but he doesn’t seem to see her, running away, stumbly, under the covered part of the courtyard instead of looking either for her or for a peaceful corner to sit down and draw, like he always does.
The girl frowns, puzzled. For an instant, she hesitates to follow him, but ultimately chooses to, checking that her playmates, still focused on each other’s more or less agile tricks, would not mind her absence before getting to the topped pathway in a few strides.
Not many students are staying around here, the place no less warmer than the rest, only a few groups of kids chatting with their backs against the stone walls. Her friend not in sight, Alix searches for him further into the access : the place is a bit dark, the only source of light being a small window near the ceiling, and, apart for the large stairs leading to the left wing of the building taking up half the space, the rest is mostly used for storage.
She can see the dust on some of the cupboard space as she steps forwards, the only furniture regularly used among those being the locker full of rubber, foam and plastic balls for sport and the trunk for lost and found items. “Nath ?”, she calls, half-whisper half-shout.
Nothing answers except for a bit of noise, so hushed she could have missed it if she wasn’t looking for it, from behind the staircase. When she gets there, pecks of dust floating around in the few shards of light reaching down there, she finds him curled up near a corner.
“Nathan ?” She calls again, approaches, worried. He doesn't seem to hear her, holding himself as he trembles, muted sniffles and sobs like he’s trying to keep himself quiet, nails digging into the soft skin of his arms. She reaches for his hands, and it’s only then that he realizes she is there, shuddering when her fingers meet his own to try to break the violent grasp he has on his arms.
The girl gets a glimpse of his face when he raises his head, only see tear tracks and panicked eyes but not much else as he practically slams onto her suddenly, almost making her stumble backwards ; coming back down with him, she thinks he has gone crazy for a split second before realizing, feeling his hands clutch the back of her tee-shirt, that he’s just trying to hold her, to hold himself together.
“Nath, what happened ?!”, she asks, hugging him back almost on instinct, trying to stay calm.
“I-It’s–... I—.... M-my parents-”, Nathaniel can barely speak between uneven breaths, almost coughing, “They–... I-I didn’t m-mean—”, the rest is lost to painful sobs, to strangled noises that sound too much like choking for Alix not to be scared.
She is lost, doesn’t know what to do. She tries but can’t move him, and she is afraid of what will happen if she leaves him there, even if she makes it quick, even if it’s to get help. He is breathless against her chest, whimpers wracking his frame and, helplessly, all she can do is hold him tight, asking what is happening, saying words he doesn’t hear.
The little girl searches in every corner of her mind for the memory of an advice on what to do, of a situation she could have bear witness to, of anything that could help, really. Tears well up in her eyes, but she bites them down, telling herself she needs to be a big girl and help her friend, even if she’s scared.
An idea comes to her as she remembers what worked to calm her down when she was younger, with emotions too big for her body ; the echoes of something her grandmother used to sing to her, her face hazy in the reminiscence but her tone clearer, a lullaby tune Alix once learned the words of but can’t recall what they mean.
Lacking a better idea, she wants to try. She doesn’t have a very good singing voice, and not a particularly good accent either, but right now it is not important, and she still needs to try.
Nīnī yā moūmoū
Hattā ytīb ‘chānā
Oū ilā mā tāb ‘chānā
Ytib ‘chā jīrānnā
She sings with all the calm she can muster, slowly, syllables rolling off her tongue both foreign and familiar. After a little time, she can feel Nathaniel exhaling, trembling and with sobs all around irregular wheezes, but at least she hears him breathing again.
Not out of it yet, just a little better. He slowly starts to rock back and forth, and she follows the movement.
Nīnī yā moūmoū
Hattā tjī ‘andou moū
Boūboū falmīdīya
Qāqā fassīniya
She will never know what happened with his parents to cause this. She’ll ask but he will not answer ; he’ll apologize for scaring her, tell her it won’t happen again, that it’s okay, that it’s nothing, but he won’t answer.
All she knows in this moment is that nothing can justify making him so terrified.
Nīnī yā moūmoū
Hattā ytīb ‘chānā
Oū ilā mā tāb ‘chānā
Ytib ‘chā jīrānnā
There is something wrong with his parents. That is the truth, the certitude she realizes today, from all the things she picked up on during all this time since she met him back in November, all the words, the glances, the movements, the presence and absence of things. She understands more and at the same time less of it, and it’s scary.
Nīnī yā moūmoū
Hattā tjī ‘andou moū
Boūboū falmīdīya
Qāqā fassīniya
When she finishes singing, the gentle darkness of the hidden place holds them both, silent. In her arms, Nath is still crying quietly, shaking a little but his breaths are even. They stay here, in the half-light and the calm.
At some point, the boy starts to mumble, asking Alix in a tired, small voice if she is going to leave, if she is going to go away and leave him all alone now, as he’s still holding her like a lifeline : she is a bit confused by the question, wondering if he is entirely back to himself, but regardless she tells him she won’t leave. He’s her friend, and she will never drop him.