Free Elodie and Heloise by Cecilee Linke

his backpack on his shoulders and hands in his pockets. He had that same upturned smile on his face and a dark blue sweatshirt covering his skinny frame. Seeing his smile, Heloise felt her face blush.
    “Oh I didn’t know you were a big literature fan then,” she stammered, shutting her book and setting it aside. “I don’t think many seventeen year olds are fans of Hemingway, you know.”
    “And not many are Jane Austen fans either. Most people I know have trouble just reading e-mails.” He sat down in the chair to Heloise’s right. Kyle placed his backpack on the seat next to him on his right and put his French book on the table, the whole reason why they were even there.
    Oh God, he’s close to me. Instead of letting her feelings get the best of her, Heloise sat straight up and folded her arms in front of her on the table. After all, she was there to be a tutor, not a friend. “Well let’s get started then,” she announced. “So what are you having trouble with in French? Verbs? Nouns?”
    The smile that was on Kyle’s face went away for a moment as he fumbled through the thin textbook in front of him. Bienvenue à bord! the bright white letters on the cover proclaimed, with pictures of happy, high-school-aged boys and girls sitting on a park bench with pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe superimposed over the shiny blue and yellow background. Heloise couldn’t help but chuckle. There was more to French culture than just those two monuments, even if they were important in French history.
    “Oh right, French. Yeah, um..... I’m having trouble with the pronunciation. I just can’t seem to get the ‘r.’ My teacher keeps telling me I’m rolling my ‘r’s too much. I guess that’s what happens after taking three years of Spanish, you know?” He handed Heloise the book for her to thumb through.
    “I’ve never taken Spanish but I’ll believe you,” Heloise replied. She had never been through the experience of taking a foreign language class since she was already bilingual and therefore exempt from having to take Spanish or German classes. She flipped through the book, looking at all the different pictures and lists of vocabulary words and verb conjugations, things that Heloise had learned just from being exposed to the language every day as a child. 
    “You probably already know all of this then,” Kyle stated. “Since you grew up with French, I mean.”
    Heloise nodded, her eyes still trained on the pages in front of her. Looking through each section at tables of words and verbs felt so unnatural to her. Even the conversations included in each section of each chapter looked artificial. She hardly ever spoke in such a formal way with her father and sister or Aunt Marie. With some of her other French-speaking relatives, when she got to see them, she was still formal and polite with them, especially because she did not get to see them very often. In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen her Papa’s parents, her Mémé and Pépé who still lived in France. But because she saw her Aunt Marie the most often, Marie didn’t mind if Heloise spoke more informally about her friends and family when they came to visit.
    She finally shut the book and took a moment to gather her thoughts. “The important thing to remember, Kyle, is to not mix up your Spanish and French. Le français, c’est tellement différent que l’espagnol .”
    “Wait whoa whoa, what did you just say?”
    Heloise repeated her French sentence, slowing her speech. 
    “Wait slow down. Why are you speaking so fast?”
    “I’m not. This is how I speak in French. That’s how most French people I’ve met speak French. It’s no different than how you speak English, you know. You just get used to it. Il faudra s’y habituer .” 
    “See, right there! You just did that with the ‘r’. How did you do that?”
    Heloise thought for a moment before replying. She’d grown up with French, so she