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guide!”
    “That’s him? That is our hot French tour guide?” Hannah’s face fell. “I want my money back.”
    It was true that this guy looked nothing like the way you’d imagine a dashing European university student to look. I guess we’d all been hoping for Pilar’s vampire — someone tall and slim, with an angular jaw and sexy, unkempt hair. Someone pale and artistic. Someone French-looking. Our guide had tan skin and neatly groomed dark blond hair. He wore a red hoodie, a black T-shirt, and jeans. His shoes, gray Pumas, weren’t bulky white sneakers, but they weren’t exactly sleek leather oxfords, either.
    “Mesdemoiselles,” Madame Mitchell said, “Je vous présente Jules Martin.”
    Jules Martin. Only she pronounced his name Zhool Mar-tahn . Which, I had to admit, seemed a little exotic for the boy standing in front of us.
    There was nothing wrong with him, exactly. He just looked kind of … American.
    Hannah crossed her arms, disgusted. “What a waste of time.”
    “ Bonjour , ladies,” Zhool said.
    “At least his accent is cute,” Pilar whispered.
    “So we’re supposed to tour Paris with our eyes closed?” Hannah replied.
    “Yes, definitely,” I said. “That’s the best way to see the city.”
    Zhool glanced over at us, and his expression made me suddenly ashamed. It was this glazed look that told me he wasn’t seeing us as people but as a stereotypical group of silly teenage girls. I half-pivoted away from my friends, but it seemed like too little, too late.
    He led us down into the station. I was nervous when I saw that we had to go underground, but soon we were in a wide-open terminal. Madame Mitchell passed out our tickets, and we all sat together on the top level of the train.
    Hannah took the window seat (another unspoken Hannah rule: if there was a window seat, she got it) and Peely sat next to her. I went to the next row back and sat down, picking up a newspaper some commuter had left behind.
    As I folded it, I caught a glimpse of the headline: BRUTALITÉ! L’ASSASSINAT DE DEUX ADOS DES FAMILLES DISTINGUÉES!
    Right. The murders our van driver had mentioned. I shivered as I glanced at the photos of the two victims, Gabrielle Roux and Pierre Beauclerc. Gabrielle was gorgeous and Pierre was alluring in the way we’d hoped our tour guide would be. I squinted at their faces for a moment, trying to figure out why they looked familiar.
    Then Pilar turned around. “Comment allez-vous?” she trilled.
    “She’s bien ,” Hannah said, turning around us. “What else would she be?”
    I tried to smile. “Très bien.”
    But I felt like the faces on the folded-up newspaper were watching me, all the way to Versailles.

    It was a two-block walk from the train station to the palace. Jules spent much of it walking backward, talking about the French monarchy. “Versailles was originally a hunting lodge, until King Louis the Fourteenth — the Sun King — moved the royal court and French government here in 1682.”
    “Do I have lipstick on my teeth?” Hannah asked, tugging my sleeve.
    “Of course, the monarchy was abolished during the Revolution, beginning in the year 1789, when the Jacobins stormed the palace and captured the royal family.”
    Pilar stopped for a second. “Hang on, there’s a piece of gravel in my shoe.”
    “King Louis the Sixteenth and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were both imprisoned —”
    “Have you ever been out here, Pilar?” Hannah asked.
    “No, I —”
    “ Shh ,” I said to them both, and they were quiet.
    “— beheaded,” Jules said. He paused. “Any questions?”
    “You don’t seriously care about all this boring stuff, do you, Colette?” Hannah sniffed. “We’re not supposed to be learning .”
    Jules went on talking, but I gave up trying to hear him. Instead, I let Pilar lean on me because her feet were already sore, and I held Hannah’s purse while she dug through it looking for her eight-hundred-dollar Bulgari sunglasses.
    But when we