Amma knows because she’s done her share of this kind of crying.
The bunk room is uncomfortably warm even with the windows open, the night outside hot and still, and Amma hears a dog give two short barks, the only sound other than the sobs.
She and Brittany had picked this hostel because it was cheap, and at the time, a twenty-minute train ride outside of Paris hadn’t sounded that far, plus it was a good use of their Eurail passes. But Amma hadn’t thought about how lonely it might feel out here in the suburbs, how the pace and noise and lights of the city might keep this kind of breakdown at bay. The quiet here is too thick, too heavy, and the old lady who runs the place has a curfew, which means they were all in their bunks by midnight, the doors locked.
We should’ve spent a few extra euros and stayed in the city, Amma thinks, punching her pillow down. But their money is already starting to run out and they never had that much to begin with.
Brittany gives another choking cry, and from across the room, one of the other American girls staying in the hostel sits up. Amma thinks her name is Taylor or Hayden, something like that. She’s from South Carolina, Amma remembers from the brief conversation they had over the shared dinner of sandwiches and soup in the rustic kitchen, and her accent is thick as she snaps, “Girl, whoever he is, he’s not worth it. Shut up and go to sleep.”
Amma is up almost before she realizes it, tossing her pillow back on the bunk, anger surging through her blood so quickly it almost makes her dizzy.
“Back the fuck off,” she says, her voice sharp and too loud in the silent room, and the girl above Taylor or Hayden from South Carolina sits up, too.
“Les nerfs!”
Amma’s French is shitty, stuck somewhere in eleventh grade, so she doesn’t know what that means, but she’s assumes it’s telling her to calm down or shut up. Or maybe it’s some uniquely French phrase that conveys both.
But Brittany is already sliding from the bunk, her purple plaid pajama pants riding up one slender leg as she mutters, “Je suis désolée, je suis désolée.”
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
That, Amma does know—she’s always thought désolée is a weirdly intense word for sorry. But as Brittany slinks from the room, still sniffling, her pillow clutched to her chest, it’s the only word that fits.
Desolate.
It’s the feeling that she and Brittany have both been trying to outrun. With each new destination, Amma keeps thinking that maybe now they’ll have escaped it. On the first flight from Atlanta to London, she’d imagined all that sadness, all that grief, slipping away from them to pool on the runway, a sludge of loss they could leave farther and farther behind with each stamp in their passports.
But it slips back in at night, and no sight, no experience, seems able to exorcise it.
The floor is gritty beneath Amma’s feet as she follows Brittany into the hallway. As she leaves the bunk room, she hears a murmur of voices and she knows they’ll leave tomorrow. This first night has already marked them as the Weird Ones—the “girl who cries” and “her psycho friend”—and that is fatal in these kinds of places where words like vibe and chill are paramount.
Fuck them, she thinks, crossing the empty living room as she hears Brittany unlock the back door. If they only knew, if they only understood …
The hostel has a small back garden with wrought-iron furniture and a few potted plants, and Amma finds Brittany standing in the middle of it, her face tilted up to the sky as she sucks in deep breaths, her pillow lying in the grass at her feet.
Her hair is pulled back from her face, and Amma notices the sharpness of her chin, the hollows underneath her cheekbones. She’s getting thinner again, though she’s still not as thin as she was when Amma first met her. Sitting in folding chairs in a church basement, Amma had thought Brittany looked sick. Beautiful, sure, with all that dark hair and those big hazel eyes—but brittle and insubstantial, like the slightest thing would break her.
Brittany is tougher than that, even with the midnight cry-fests. Amma knows that now.
She turns, sensing Amma’s approach, and she wipes at her face. “I’m sorry,” she says immediately, and Amma shrugs.
“You said that already. But in French, so I guess it doesn’t count.”
Brittany gives a watery chuckle before groaning and plunging her hands into her hair. “God,” she sighs. “Am I going to cry all over Europe?”
“You’re entitled to it,” Amma says, stepping closer and putting an arm around Brittany’s shoulders, hugging her against the side of her body. The night is warm, but Brittany’s skin is cold, and she shivers a little as she presses in closer to Amma.