I still remember the first time I met Giselle.  I was sitting in the office, picking at my split ends like I always used to do when I was bored.  Until Giselle told me to stop, of course.  She always said that my hair was magnifique, French for magnificent.  Giselle only spoke French when I met her, which was why I got so upset.

            I speak multiple languages.  English is my first language, Spanish is my second, and most everything else comes naturally to me.  But I never learned French.

            Giselle walked into the room and murmured something to our new manager in a language I didn’t understand.  Then, she turned to me, smiled, and said in a heavy accent, “My name Giselle Chanterelle.”

            I stared at her for a moment.  “I’m Vanessa.”

            “I no speak English,” she told me with another smile.

            My mouth dropped open.  I was supposed to be in a singing group with a girl who didn’t speak English?  How would I do that?  I turned away immediately.  I wanted nothing to do with her.

            Giselle’s singing voice was beautiful.  Gorgeous.  Much better than mine.  But I wouldn’t talk to her.  I would sing and dance with her, but I ignored her as soon as we got offstage.  Our careers took off, but I would notice her sitting sadly on the tourbus, alone and neglected, watching me.

            It took months before she finally approached me again.  “Vanessa,” she said timidly, sitting down on my bed.  “I want to be friends.”  She said the words correctly, but still with her accent.

            “Friends, huh?” I replied condescendingly.  “We don’t speak the same language!  How can we be friends?”

            Giselle stared at me blankly, not understanding a word past friends.  “Yes,” she told me.  “Amis.  Friends.”

            “You no speak English,” I responded quite rudely, imitating her accent.

            “You… enseignez.  Tell me... how... speak English ?”

            Her face was so genuinely hopeful that I couldn’t refuse.  “All right.”

            “All right mean yes?” she asked.

            “Yes.”  I couldn’t help smiling.  This couldn’t hurt, could it?

            The time passed much quicker now.  When we weren’t practicing, I taught her English.  It was slow and sometimes painful, but she caught on.

            Our friendship began to grow, too.  As the language barrier was slowly broken down, we could almost have conversations.  We became experts at drawing pictures or signaling things that we couldn’t say in each other’s languages.

            One day, when we were sitting on the bus together, she was gazing out the window with her normal dreamy look in her eyes.  Suddenly, she turned to me and gave me her eager-to-learn look.  “Vanessa!  How do you say…?”  Her voice trailed off, and she put her hands together, flapping the fingers like wings.

            “Bird?”

            “No, I know bird…  Smaller than bird.”

            “Smaller than a bird…”  I thought, but nothing occurred to me.  “Can you draw it?”

            “Oh, yes.”  Giselle took the pad of paper that she always kept around and pulled out a pencil.  In a few graceful strokes, she had drawn the most beautiful butterfly that I had ever seen.  “How do you say what that is?”

            “It’s a butterfly,” I told her with a smile.

            “Butterfly…”  She tried the word in her mouth.  “We say it more pretty in French.”

            “I’ll bet.  How do you say it?”

            “Papillon.”  She smiled at me.

            “That’s very pretty.  I know butterfly in a lot of languages…  It’s borboleta in Portuguese.  And farfalla in Italian.”

            “You are very smart,” Giselle told me.  “Very smart.  Très intelligent.”

            “Thank you.  But the prettiest way to say butterfly, I think, is Spanish.  Mariposa,” I said in my best Spanish accent.

            “Mariposa,” she murmured in reply.  “Beautiful.”

            We shared a smile.  “Giselle, I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.  Le meilleur ami,” I repeated in French so that she would understand.

            “You are the same for me, Vanessa.  I hope that, one day, we both have daughters who are this good friends.”

            “Except yours might actually speak English,” I laughed.

“Yes, I hope she will.  They could be best friends, Vanessa.  They could sing like we do.”  A tear came to her eye.  “It would be beautiful.  Magnifique.  I don’t know how to say that in English.”

“I think it’s magnificent, Giselle.”

“Ah.”  She wiped at the tear.  I leaned in and hugged her tightly, and we were silent for a moment, happy enough in being together that words were unnecessary.

That moment wouldn’t last.  Sure, it lasted for those few seconds, and our happiness lasted for another week or so.  But then, we met Victor Sierra.

He came up to us on the street and asked for autographs.  He made jokes and flirted with us while we signed his paper.  He was the most handsome man that I had ever seen, and I was thrilled when he begged for my phone number.

When we got back to the bus, Giselle threw herself down on my bed and exclaimed something in French.  I didn’t catch most of it, just her favorite word ever.  Magnifique.

We were both madly in love with Victor Sierra.

We kept our feelings to ourselves until he asked me out on a date.  Later, he took her out.  Suddenly, all we could talk about was Victor.  But we fought.  We argued, screaming quick, long sentences in our native languages that couldn’t be understood by the other.  The friendship was over.  It was even more over when Victor proposed to Giselle in front of me.

“Mon amour,” he began.  “Marry me?”

Giselle, after figuring out what he meant, agreed.  I cried for days.  Our group, our wonderful partnership, was over.  I didn’t really care anymore that Victor had chosen her.  I had lost my best friend.  Mon meilleur ami.  Giselle.

Years dragged on, and I lived alone.  I had enough money to get away with not working.  I was lonely and bored and unhappy.  If I had been in my right mind, I would have slammed the door in Victor Sierra’s face when he came to visit.  But I wasn’t, so I let him in.

He didn’t leave.  I let him cheat on Giselle with me.  I let him get me pregnant and I had my two beautiful children, the twins, Ferris and Emma.  I don’t know if Giselle had a daughter.  I don’t know if that daughter is the same age as my Emma.  All I know is that we should never have let a man come between us.

Especially now as I lie in this bed, dying.  Victor attacked me.  I will die.  I will never see Giselle again.

And all I can do is pick at my split ends with my shaking fingers that are blurred before my eyes.  I don’t deserve to look magnifique when I die.  I shouldn’t have let my best friend go.