The Night Has Teeth Read Free

school is a thirty-minute bike ride away.
It’s a historic building attached to and surrounded by modern
retail outlets. The contrast of the school’s elaborate ironwork and
dressed masonry with the glossy glass and simple sandstone of its
neighbors makes the building stand out. Like somehow, despite being
there for hundreds of years, it doesn’t belong here. Cornices and
consoles are adorned with wrought stone reliefs. Period cast-iron
railings frame the lower portions of the windows. It seems fit more
for nobility than for the sneaker-clad students who now sit in its
classrooms and gather outside on the wide sidewalk.
    When I arrive, I more or less throw my bike
against a short metal barrier, lock it up, and race inside to my
first class. I’m so late. By the time I navigate my way through the
corridors and find the right room, the class is already well under
way and the room is crowded with senior students. In France, they
call this year terminale . Like
it’s the end of the road. I try my best to sneak in quietly, but
the ancient wooden door betrays me, slowly creaking at first but
then slamming shut with a thudding crash. The only thing I can do
is meekly give the teacher a glance and an apologetic half-smile.
He nods toward the classroom without breaking his stride, signaling
for me to enter, and I move to one of the few available seats at
the back of the room.
    In my feeble attempt to plunk down without calling
further attention to myself, the chair scrapes noisily against the
floor, making me drop my backpack. While fumbling to catch it, the
chair topples to the floor, me with it. Crash! The eyes of everyone
in the room turn toward me. Embarrassed? You bet. Even the teacher
halts in mid-sentence to stare at me as girls stifle giggles. I can
almost hear the sound of eyeballs rolling as I right my chair, pull
down my cap, and try to become invisible by shrinking as deep as
possible into the hard wooden seat. Could this day get any worse?
As the attention returns to the front of the class, I glare at my
traitor backpack and try to decide if I should focus all my quiet
energy on taking out my laptop. I’m far too fazed for notes right
now, so I take a deep breath and try to listen to the professor’s
intro to psychology.
    On the whiteboard are multiple textbook
definitions. One in particular catches my attention:
“ Social
Psychology: The branch of human psychology that deals with the
behavior of groups and their influence on the
individual. ” This class
would have been helpful much earlier in my life. If only there were
a handbook to deal with the elaborate and confounding social rules
around cliques. I could have even made do with the SparkNotes
version. IRL social situations have never really been my strong
suit. There’s something about the safety of a computer screen
that’s been a comfort to me in my interpersonal dealings with,
well, anyone. In any case, first impressions are hard to shake, so
I kind of write off this class as a means of meeting any new
friends. Thankfully, the rest of the morning passes without any
more embarrassing moments.
    By lunch hour I’m starving, so I duck into the
Starbucks across the street for a sandwich and a frap before
heading to the courtyard at the back of the school. On the
manicured grass other students hang out, make out and fake out
(soccer is the predominant sport on any given field in this city).
I spread myself out under the warmth of the late summer sun, and
while I’m reaching into my backpack a soccer ball knocks it out of
my hands and spills my sandwich onto the ground. As I sit up,
trying to salvage my food from the wreckage, a shadow falls over
me. I raise a hand to shield my eyes from the sun while looking up
at the backlit figure.
    “Desolé ,” a guy’s voice says in heavily accented French
while I glance down at my mangled lunch.
    “De rien . It’s nothing.”
    When I pick up the ball, there’s a moment of
hesitation. Tossing it over would only