The American Girl: A disturbing and twisty psychological thriller

A knock on my door. I drop the book. Noémie pokes her head around.

I bite it off. “You put this here?” I hold up the book.

She shrugs. “No.”

I take a step towards her, hands shaking. “Know who did?”

“No. Are you … okay?” She swallows nervously.

“Yeah … I just feel like. I don’t know. Someone put this here to freak me out or something.”

She closes the door behind her. “Listen. What happened yesterday—”

“You going to tell me off, too? Because Freddie’s an ass-hat and I’m glad I slapped him. I mean, you know that creep sent me texts and this awful video. And then he kissed me and the other day he almost drowned me …”

Noémie puts her hand on my arm. Her eyes are soft. “Hey. I know. I know. He is always like that with every exchange that comes here,” she says, shaking her head, and rubs her hands over her face. “Like touching them in the pool, quoi. It’s gross. I have no reason why Maman is not stopping him.”

I swipe angrily at a tear running down my cheek. “Then why do you invite him along to everything?”

She shrugs. “St. Roch is small small. Everyone knows everyone and there are not always other young people to hang with. Maman asks someone like Freddie so there will be young people for you to meet.”

“You serious? He’s—”

“Hey, look, let’s have fun today. Just us!” She smiles wide, suddenly throwing everything into being cheerful. “We may take the bus to the town and go shop.”

It melts my heart a little to see her work so hard to distract me. Maybe she feels like we got off on the wrong foot, too, though I still have my doubts. “Won’t your mom mind? She seems pretty strict …”

Noémie rolls her eyes. “She’s the worst. I know. But she’s not here today and tonight she’s staying with her boyfriend. Raffi is in charge, en fait. And he is not here either. So I say we do what we want. Go wild, quoi!”

It turns out Noémie doesn’t go wild by halves. In St. Roch, we shop and we eat ice cream. We tie up our T-shirts to show our midriffs and compete to see who gets the most wolf whistles. We take in zero tourist attractions and many bars where guys keep buying us beer. I never do this back home. I mean, I’ve maybe used a fake ID once, but it didn’t look like me, and the second a doorman confronted me, I freaked and ran away. Somehow Noé makes me bold and I no longer care if what I’m doing is wrong. Boys ask for our numbers and names and we give them fake ones, laughing behind our hands. We drink demand shots. Red Bull and vodka, Jägermeister, Sambuca. Every time I slow down or get sleepy, Noé starts her Little Miss Crazy routine again.