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Le Vol
By Lhia_Dunwaith
(Note: “le vol” is “the flight” in French)
Flight. Lucien had never appreciated the word before. Not really. But now, he was free.
Fastening the tight aviation goggles onto his face, Lucien knew his destination. Home. Without another thought, he jumped up, rising hundreds of feet per second, watching the ground below him. With a burst of speed, he broke the sound barrier, the noise of it not fazing him at all. The speed of sound? No. That was too slow. Much too slow. Home was too far away for that, and he wanted to reach it before first period…
“Good MORning class!!!” screamed the substitute overenthusiastically.
Lucien jerked awake. His new classes started way too early. He needed to not fall asleep tomorrow morning. What did he dream about, again? He remembered clouds and foggy glasses, but-
“Today is an EXTRA special day!!! Today, you have a new class member!!! That is SOOOO exciting!!! Class, meet Lucien!!! I’m sure you’ll be GREEAAAT friends!!!”
Lucien stood there in front of the class and stared. He had a hard time understanding English in the first place, but this woman was so happy she made the language seem like it was Arabic inside his head. He didn’t understand anything that she was saying, save for his name.
“Where ya from?” the girl in front of him asked him very quickly. He blinked. The girl must have read his expression of confusion correctly, because she repeated slowly, “Where are you from?”
Lucien knew that one. He said, slowly and confidently, “Montreal.”
Why were they all looking impressed? He had moved from Montreal three days ago, but his real home was Paris. While in Montreal, he had needed to learn English (that was a pain), but… why Seattle? Seattle… the whole place sounded wrong to Lucien: the spelling, the finality when his father had announced where they were going.
When Lucien was fourteen, his mother had left him and his dad. There was no divorce. She just packed her things and left. Of course, Lucien WAS only fourteen then. He was too busy trying to get his girlfriend’s American music off the Internet to really understand or care about what was happening. He knew it was something to do with his little sister, Gaëlle, who was less than a year old at the time. Lucien had asked, many times before, why his mother had left. His dad would never give a direct answer. Just the phrase: “Well, ta mére,” Lucien’s dad had always spoken in English whenever he could, but he’d never said “your mother”: only the French words for it, “had been married eight times before me, so…” And then he’d just leave Lucien to dwell on the fact that his mom had sounded like Americans on TV shows. Eight times? Huit?
When his father had announced where they were going, it was said with such conclusiveness that Lucien knew that there was no changing his mind. But Lucien didn’t go without a fight.
Someone’s words joggled Lucien from his reverie. “Dude, are you okay?” It had come from a boy wearing a sport jacket.
He narrowed his eyes and said, “What is ‘dude’?”
Everyone stared. He instantly blushed. Why was he blushing, anyway? He had faced worse than this! He had become an American citizen! Had he not proved what he was capable of? He had agreed to take that citizenship test that meant so much to his father. Why couldn’t he just act “cool” in front of a whole classroom of kids?
He just straightened his thin-framed glasses and pushed back a wave of dirty-blond-colored hair, saying, “I didn’t need to learn the word “dude” for the American citizenship test.”
Needless to say, Lucien ate lunch alone that day.
However, he did tell his father some grand lies about making new friends, sitting with “cool kids”, and so on. He made a tale of being invited to a party full of soccer players and cheerleaders… it was painful to watch the look of joy on his dad’s face as he listened to his only son’s story. It was a look of sheer pride that his son could make friends so quickly.
Lucien didn’t feel well at dinner, although his dad was in a genial mood, talking about anything and everything (oh, it’s supposed to rain tonight!). He knew it had something to do with the miserable day at school he had had, but he felt worse at the fact that he knew it wasn’t going to be better tomorrow. So after kissing Gaëlle on the cheek, he left to his new room, which still hadn’t been fully unpacked yet, and laid down, on his bed. Before drifting off, though, he put a CD into his boom box: a CD that was so special to him that he’d never even listened to it before. It was a compilation given to him by his old girlfriend in Paris, Isabelle. The first song he recognized as a song by the American group Evanescence (the group was very popular in France). Comforted by his old memories of Isabelle, he went to sleep, letting the music waft into his unconscious mind.
I miss Paris, said his dream self. I want to go back.
I want to go home.
Once again, Lucien dreamed. This time, he was already up in the air, speeding through clouds. His hair was drenched, and his face soaked. Not caring that his dad had no idea where he was, he flew off into the night sky- although he flew so fast that he went through time zones in a matter of minutes. Lucien was like a migratory bird- he knew where he was going. The word rang through his head, obscuring all other thought.
Home. I’m going home.
Paris seemed so tiny when he began his descent. It was eight o’clock in Paris, meaning that it was only eleven o’clock in Seattle. The sun was still in the process of waking up, so it was still slightly chilly.
He knew where he wanted to go. Back when he lived in France, he could give directions to this place from any point in the city.
Isabelle’s house.
He landed on her doorstep, ringing the doorbell as he did so. Immediately, the door opened, and there she was. Isabelle.
She stared at him for a full minute. Lucien looked down at himself, too, and saw that he was wearing an ice blue flight suit.
“Lucien, you have wings,” exclaimed Isabelle (in French, of course). “Are you… an angel?”
Lucien knew he had wings. He just didn’t think about it that much; he took it for granted.
He embraced her, glad to have her with him for the first time in over sixteen months. “I never forgot you,” he said. “I missed you so much.”
“How,” she asked him, “did you get here?”
He didn’t know how to respond to this. “Anything can happen in a dream. This is only a dream, after all.” The thought depressed him, and he suddenly felt a desire to just wake up and end this very tormenting nightmare.
Isabelle looked confused. Her eyebrows met in the center of her forehead, like she was considering something. Lucien wondered if he had said something wrong.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
It was Lucien’s alarm, waking him up. It was six o’clock in the morning. Time for school. Again. He groaned, not moving towards the beeping alarm clock.
His dream had been so… complicated. He felt like he was really there. Like he was actually with Isabelle. Why couldn’t he have just been in that dream for a minute or so more? Was that too much to ask?
He wanted to return to his favorite place in the world. France.
“Hey.”
Lucien whipped around in his seat. He was in English class. Some girl had just whispered to him. What did she want?
“Are you the new kid? From France?”
“Yes,” he said. Just “yes”. He must have seemed so stupid to this girl.
But the girl didn’t seem to mind. “Do you want to eat lunch with me today? You seemed really lonely yesterday.”
His jaw dropped. He wouldn’t have to sit alone today!
“Bien sûr. I mean,” He grinned at the girl and corrected himself in English, “of course. What is your name? I am Lucien.”
“I’m Lin!” said the girl. Lucien examined her more carefully. She looked Asian American, or at least part Chinese, but she spoke English very well. It would be foolish of Lucien to assume a certain reason as to why she was who she was. There were a thousand possibilities as to her heritage. “That’s short for Linda, but I hate the name Linda, so I tell people to call me Lin. It sounds more Chinese, anyway. I was adopted from China when I was little.”
Aha! That was it! She was adopted!
“I love bagels and cows. And I talk a lot. Sorry, am I overwhelming you?”
“No,” Lucien laughed. “You’re good. You are in my homeroom?”
“Yeah, I am,” she responded eagerly.
The bell rang. “Whoops! Gotta go. I’ll see you at lunch, okay, Lucien?” She smiled at him. Lucien noticed that she had perceptible dimples, the kind that left everyone who saw them in a happier mood. He smiled as well (for one of the first times since he had left Montreal).
He had just made a friend.
When Lucien got home, his father was in a frightening mood. Lucien could tell. He was swearing in French, not caring that little Gaëlle was right behind him, trying to understand every word that he was saying. The question was why, though. Had Lucien done something wrong? Or was it Gaëlle? It also could have been his new job as a translator for US Airways at SeaTac; he did have a lot on his plate at the time. It could have been anything.
However, whatever had made his dad upset, it seemed to be Lucien’s fault.
“Lucien,” he said in English, “I want to talk to you. Please know that I will try to understand anything that you say.”
Lucien was bemused. Was this about school? Had the school called his dad about something he had done? What did he do wrong in school, though?
“Please don’t lie to me when you answer,” he said. “I want to know where you went last night after you went to your room.”
What? He hadn’t gone anywhere! He had instantly put on the music and fallen asleep. Unless… the dream he had had… affected his unconscious state somehow. Switching to French, Lucien said, “I didn’t go anywhere,” He knew his dad would never believe him, “but I did have an… odd dream.”
“About what? Lucien, please don’t make anything up.”
“I’m not making this up, Dad!” he protested. “I had a dream that I saw Isabelle again. I flew to Paris-”
“Flew?!”
“Yes, flew! It was great! I felt more than I have felt for the past few months, all in that one dream. You have to believe me. I never went anywhere last night!”
“But,” put in his father, “you told me about a party that one of your new friends was throwing yesterday. You didn’t sneak out to go to that?”
Oooh crud. That lie he had made up. Soccer players and cheerleaders. Biiig party. Remember that, Lucien? That harmless little fib you told your dad turned into a huge problem.
Mon Dieu! he thought. Oh my God!
“Dad,” he said, “I’m sorry. You see, I wasn’t invited to a party last night. I made that all up.”
The look on his dad’s face was contorted into a mask of one trying to understand another’s actions unsuccessfully.
“I did it,” Lucien continued, “so you wouldn’t worry about me needing to make friends. You understand? But it’s okay! I really did make a friend today! Her name is Lin, she loves cows and bagels, and we ate lunch together. I’m not making this up.”
His dad sighed and said, “I believe you this time. I was going to tell you that… I didn’t mind if you were going to a party. I just wanted you to tell me where you were. Gaëlle was crying last night, and I assumed that you would take care of her, but when I saw you were gone, I assumed you didn’t want me to know you had left. I looked around the whole apartment, and you weren’t anywhere. Where did you really go, Lucien? I want to know. You can tell me.”
“I didn’t go anywhere. After dinner, I listened to a CD and fell asleep. I mean it.”
His dad just stared. Now, it was Lucien’s turn to be apprehensive. It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sleepwalking, was he? No. His father always locked the door to the apartment in which they lived before he went to bed. Even if Lucien had somehow unlocked the door and went outside, last night was a rainy night. The rain would have woken him up. Sleepwalking wasn’t an option.
Was it his dream?
But how could that have happened?
He suddenly remembered the look on Isabelle’s face in the dream when he had told her he was dreaming. It looked disbelieving, and oddly unsettling. Was he really dreaming, or was there a way for him to fly to Paris in less than half an hour?
“Dad,” Lucien asked, hoping his father was in a better mood now, “can I make a long-distance call? Please? I’m going to call Isabelle and ask her if she can tell me anything about this weird dream. If what you’re saying is true, I flew to Paris and back last night. Can I please call Isabelle? I know how to make long-distance calls, anyway. Please?”
Lucien’s dad looked hesitant for a moment, but then he said, “All right. You may call Isabelle. Tell her I said ‘hello’.”
Lucien grinned and hugged his dad, saying, “Merci beaucoup. Thank you so much.”
“Âllo?”
“Hello, Isabelle.” Lucien’s grin was so wide that he wished his girlfriend could see it. He hadn’t been allowed to talk to Isabelle for a long time. A very long time.
“Lucien???”
“C’est moi. It’s me.”
“I teenk I turned crayzy zees morning.” How did Lucien know that she was going to practice her best English on him? “I saw you az I was going to walk to school. You had wings! You said you flew to Paris to see me! I was so scared, and zen you said somezing about a dream-”
Lucien dropped the phone. How was he going to explain this to his dad?
“Talk to my father,” he said to her in French. “Tell him what you saw. I know what you saw, because I had a dream that I was flying from Seattle to Paris to see you again. I talked with you! I remember every word you said!”
Isabelle was speechless in both English and French. Finally, she managed the words: “C’est un miracle.” It’s a miracle.
Without responding, Lucien handed the phone over to his dad while he reveled in his own confusing thoughts. It couldn’t be a coincidence. There was no way. Isabelle had seen an apparition on her way to school that morning. It wasn’t a dream. It couldn’t have been. So, then, how was it possible that he had flown to Paris and back last night?
“Dad,” he said, “tell Isabelle that I’m going to take a nap now and that I’ll be seeing her soon- hopefully.”
He had never fallen asleep so easily before. Now that Lucien had a simple, pure force driving him, he flew like never before, his new wings beating faster than a hummingbird’s, so they were merely blurs in the dark night.
He spotted la Tour Eiffel- the Eiffel Tower- fifteen minutes after that. Wiping his goggles free of the moisture that was obscuring his vision, he looked and saw Paris at midnight. His guess that Isabelle was still awake was confirmed- her room was the only one in the house with lights on. Not wanting to wake her parents, he skirted around her small house, flying up to her back window with one strong beat of his wings. He rapped his knuckles on the window like in those old cheesy romance movies, but this was different. This was better.
Isabelle’s smile broadened when she saw Lucien at the window. It reminded him of his new friend Lin, and her spectacular smile. As Isabelle opened the window, he said, “Je suis ici. I’m here.”
“Now,” Isabelle said to him in French, “we need to talk.”
“You’ll never believe what I saw yesterday!” Lin said to him at lunch a month later. They were eating with a bunch of other kids from the French club. Lucien was now very popular in the French club (and even if they weren’t jocks or cheerleaders, they were still good friends). “It was about at nine o’clock last night. I saw this really big… THING fly past my window. Almost like a huge bird. It had great, big, light blue wings each about the size of a person’s arm. I want to know what it was.”
Lucien couldn’t contain his shock. After talking with Isabelle for over five hours, he flew back to Seattle. It was very cloudy, like it always was in Seattle, and he had almost flown straight through the city. Doubling back, he had realized with a paroxysm of fear that he was lost. He had flown around the city for about half an hour trying to find out where he was. The result of this was that he nearly crashed into a few skyscrapers, and a few people on the street looked up and saw him. It was a risk he had been willing to take to get home.
Lucien sighed, saying nothing.
“And,” continued Lin, “the weird thing is, the bird looked like a person! It had on goggles and short, neat, mouse-brown hair. Yeah. It had hair! It looked through my window and saw me. It looked uneasy about something. But then it was gone, and I didn’t see it again. It reminded me of you.”
“How?” Lucien was scared. Was he about to lose his new friend over his supernatural abilities?
“Well, it looked like you, for one thing. Also, the way the goggles looked on its head… they were perched on the bridge of its nose, kind of like how your glasses always are. Just… weird similarities. I wonder what the heck that thing was, though; people say that evil spirits haunts America’s great cities. Who knows? Maybe Seattle is one of those cities. But I’m not one to talk. I don’t believe in magic. They make good stories, but I’m not a fan of the paranormal.”
Still Lucien did not speak.
“Lucien,” Lin suddenly screamed, “help me here! I think I’m going insane! Was it you who I saw, or just- I don’t know- a messed-up bird?”
Lucien leaned back in his cafeteria seat (and just in time, too, for a large slab of low-fat veggie cream cheese came falling out of Lin’s sesame bagel, narrowly missing his pants). He didn’t know what to do. He was no longer a “nobody” at his school anymore; he had other friends now besides Lin. But she was the first friend he had ever made. He didn’t want to lose her friendship. She’d think he was a total freak if he told her. Right???
“It was not me,” he said, “because last night… I stayed up late talking to my girlfriend.” Well, it was half of the truth, anyway.
“Really?” she murmured, disbelieving. “Then why, may I ask, is there a cyan aviation cap and matching goggles in your school bag?”
Lucien grimaced as she pulled the flight gear out of his school bag. She was not mad. Or, at least, she didn’t seem to be. She just said, “Wow. What’s it like to fly?”
By now, the whole cafeteria table was trying to listen in. He whispered in her ear, “I’ll tell you later. Or maybe I’ll show you.”
“Show me?” Lin responded in an undertone. “How?”
The two of them, Lucien and Lin, were sitting side by side on the top of the Space Needle. Lucien had taken off his cap and goggles, for he had realized a week ago that, without his “accessories”, the wings would vanish into his shoulder blades like melting ice. Now he appeared as a normal boy (albeit a boy on the top of the Space Needle). Together they watched the lights of Seattle turn on, until it got colder and colder- although the two of them were, in fact, waiting for this to happen. Lin had brought a polar fleece jacket with her in addition to the windbreaker she wore.
Then, suddenly breaking their peaceful silence, Lin asked, “Are you asleep now? Like, before you said that you’d fall asleep and have your wings. Are you dreaming now?”
“No,” responded Lucien. “I am not sleeping: I am in an unconscious state. To become this way, I-”
“Sorry,” interrupted Lin, “you’re very good at English. How do you know what to tell me?”
Lucien answered, “My father works as a French/English/Spanish translator; he is very good at English. He often tells me what certain phrases mean. But…I can become able to fly if I clear my mind of all thought. This means if I sleep, or if I meditate. I use meditation if it is during the middle of the day, when I can’t fall asleep.”
Lin fell quiet. It seemed she had no more questions.
“This is nice.” said Lucien. “It’s even better than last night. Last night, I visited Rome.”
“Oh!” Lin exclaimed. “Cool!”
“But now,” he continued, “I have a friend with me, so… it is much more fun.”
“Where do you want to go next?”
“Washington, D.C.” He pronounced the last two letters “day” and “say”, as they are pronounced in the French alphabet. “I have only been there once, for a short period of time, when I first became a citizen. Besides, since I am an American now, I want to see my country’s capital properly.”
“Ah. If I may say so myself, I recommend you sneak- er, fly- into Disneyland for a day. That would be fun.”
Lucien laughed. He couldn’t believe that, just this morning, he was worried about Lin not accepting him because of his wings.
“Thank you, Lin. Thank you for accepting me for who I am. I don’ t know why I am this way, but I want you to know that I appreciate having you here.”
“My pleasure.” she responded. “After all, you’re still human. I mean, you still have a personality, so you can still be my friend. Plus…” She broke off, not knowing what to say. “Your being able to fly is a gift. So, I say, cherish that gift.”
They both smiled, and looked into the rising moon in front of them. Lucien decided that, though France would always have a special place in his heart, Seattle was now his home. Without this magical place, he would not be who- or what- he was now- for it was, truly, a magical place (Lin was right all along). He would always be tied between two places: Paris and Seattle, and he could never and would never bring himself to choose between one of them. What he was, he didn’t know, but he was lucky, because with his new form, he was now able to choose between America and France, his two favorite places in the universe.
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