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Girls like them from guys. She wasn’t much for showing emotion, but she started to cry when I gave it to her. That kind of shocked me, since she wasn’t like most girls that way. When she started crying, I moved in for a hug, which seemed to work just fine. She hugged me back like we weren’t ever going to see each other again. It felt awfully good. I let my guard down and really hugged her back.
    â€œYou know I like you for who you really are, Adam,” she said quietly.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œLike right now, when you aren’t trying to impress anyone. It’s just you and me, and no bull.”
    I knew there was some criticism mixed in there, but it went along with a pretty tight snuggle from a really great girl. All my worries melted away for a moment.
    That was how we parted. I spent the rest of the evening reading over Grandpa’s letter. Then I turned to the other two and that small white one. What if I just opened them all up now? He’d never know. I was dying to know what was in them. The first task was pretty hard and involved all sorts of cool secrets. I couldn’t even imagine how interesting the other two might be. But I held myself back. Something told me that I’d ruin everything if I cheated. I just stared at the outside of the other letters. The two big manila ones were thick, obviously containing long letters just like the first. Then I glanced at the last one. That was the letter I really wanted to open. What in the world was in it? Was it the secret to my grandfather’s entire life? Was it something even bigger than that? Something he’d discovered long ago and had told no one? I couldn’t resist holding it up to the light. But I couldn’t see anything.
    I was going to do everything in my power to open that last little white envelope before I returned from France.

    Before we left the next day, I made sure I had Vanessa’s info. I looked at the piece of paper for a while, following the beautiful, flowery, feminine lettering. I smelled it, like I had about fifty times already. I put on the clothes I was going to wear on the plane and made sure her note was in my wallet in my pocket. I wanted it safe, even though I’d also put her information into my cell phone.
    At the last moment, I gave Leon a call.
    â€œHello, Mr. Murphy,” his squeaky voice said over the phone. “You have reached me on my distant planet.” He likes to say that whenever I call him. He often slurs his words too, and a lot of people can’t understand him. But I can. And he always refers to me as “Mr. Murphy.” I think he’s making fun of me.
    â€œI, uh, I’ll miss you, buddy.”
    â€œNo, you won’t.”
    He has this terrible way of always knowing the truth or at least most it. I was going to miss him, but I probably wouldn’t be thinking about him too much. I imagined his face on the other end of the line, his smile, his bright blond hair.
    â€œAnd forget about Vanessa Lincoln,” he added. I thought I’d hidden my interest from him. “Leave her to me. Shirley’s your girl. She’s the best. And you know it.”
    He also had a way of making me think about what I was doing. It took me a little while to get my mind back on the trip. But when I did, I realized something that for some freaking reason I hadn’t thought about for even a moment during my heady days with Vanessa Lincoln. My heart began to pound and I felt sick to my stomach.
    You actually have to fly on an airplane to get to France!

SIX
    IN THE AIR
    I had the barf bag on my lap all the way. The actual flights—Buffalo to New York, then New York to Paris—took about nine or ten hours all told, and my face was as white as one of Vanessa’s form-fitting sweaters every inch of the journey. I kept thinking about how high in the air we were, how ridiculous it was to be 50,000 feet up in the sky, or whatever it was. In the