Ten Things You Never Knew About

Simone Cloutier

One: I’m not really French.

I was adopted as a baby in America by a Parisian couple. Funny story, actually; until I was seven, I believed my parents were aliens from outer space because of something I had heard when I was four. I had heard someone referring to them as aliens – of course, referring to their immigration, but I didn’t know that.

Anyway, one night at dinner, I was in the middle of swallowing a nasty spoonful of peas when I finally got up the resolve to confront them about it.

“Are you fattening me up?” I asked, in the most serious tone I could manage.

My mother looked straight at me with her round, unblinking eyes. “Excuse me?”

I just knew I was in for it. Should’ve kept your mouth shut, Simone.

Because I figured that either way, I was going to end up as their test-subject like in the books, I went ahead and told them that I knew they were aliens.

My father, whom I mostly called George, nodded solemnly and took a long sip from his glass. I stared at him while trying not to squirm or jump up from my seat because I wanted the enemies to know I was brave.

Then, my mother started giggling. I peered over at her, trying to guess her intentions, but then George started laughing, too. I was too confused to do anything, so I just sat there, still trying to look brave, even though they were laughing at me.

My mother asked me where I had gotten the idea. When I told her, she explained the whole thing in that flowy accent of hers.

I had forgotten all about that until my eleventh birthday party, when my mother told the story to my guest’s parents. I was pretty embarrassed, but it was when the cake was being served that I received the real blow.

My parents made an announcement, apparently having decided to surprise me with the news, when it actually felt like an ambush.

“Excusez-moi, nos amis!” said George, clinking his glass. My mother continued to serve the cake while he made the announcement.

“With everyone gathered here today,” he went on, “we would like to announce our long-awaited return to France this Spring!”

Everyone murmured at once, and I heard myself ask how long we would be staying. It all sounded great until I heard George’s response.

“Well, Simone, it’s not a vacation – we’ll be moving entirely,” he said this with almost an sarcastic enthusiasm.

Way to blindside us, George. I looked over to my mother to see if she was smiling to herself, just like she always did when someone was joking and she knew it. But she kept neatly arranging slices of my favorite cake onto the plates, almost robotically, and I couldn’t see that she was making any sort of expression at all.

The guests all looked as shocked and devastated as I felt, but unlike me, they soon recovered, pretending to act excited for us.

“What great news,” they said. “How exciting,” said another.

Most unnerving, though, was the one that said “You’re so lucky, Simone; I’m jealous!” That one came from my best friend, Jeremiah.

I remember glaring at him.

In April, we finally finished packing all the stuff we could take and selling the rest, and I waved goodbye to the apartment I had grown up in from the moving van. I had promised Jeremiah that I would call when we got there, but I was beginning to think that it would be weeks before I was finally able to do so.

I was still kind of mad about what he had said at the party, anyway.

Despite my parents constantly speaking French, I barely knew how to ask what time it was. Everything they taught me had pretty much gone in one ear and out the other, but how was I supposed to know that I would be stuck with it one day?

It must have been my bad kharma – I was condemned to live with only those strangled syllables as my means of communication.

When I got a good look at where we were going to live, a picturesque little village near the Rhine, I realized that we were moving into a postcard. This was nothing compared to what I thought when I saw the facilities that I would have to be using for the next several years.

Throughout the first four days, I kept wondering exactly what I possibly could have done to deserve all of this.

Author's Notes: Simone is a girl, by the way. None of this ever happened, but a lot of things in here are broadly inspired by things that have actually happened.