Lost in Paris (3 page)

5

At exactly nine a.m. the lacrosse bus full of boys and parents pulled out. Brigitte and I leaned over my smartphone and looked at the Shock Value site on Twister.com, and . . .
wait for it
. . . there it was:

You cannot make me laugh nor cry. If you touch me, you will find that I'm cold. I cannot embrace anyone to get warm. People travel far and wide to see me, and despite my flaws, they're awed by my beauty.

“What do you think it is?” I asked Brigitte.

“I do not know,” she said.

“You're from Paris. How can you not know?”

“I do not do the tourist things. I run a pet-sitting business.” She glanced at her watch. “In fact, we need to get to little Fifi before she leaves a little pee-pee on her apartment floor.”

“Now?”

“Yes. I have a schedule,” she said. “I will go to get the petmobile. That lacrosse bus took my usual spot. The petmobile gets priority parking at most hotels and apartments,” Brigitte said. “You stay right here and try to figure out that clue!”

“Okay.”
Petmobile?
I went back inside to a rack of booklets and brochures and grabbed everything I could. Maybe there was something in here that would help. A white paper was taped to Beef's podium; it said,
All tours will be led by Étienne.
Seemed she was serious about this contest.

Then I typed a search into my phone using the words of the clue. I tried different combinations, but just got junk.

Beef whizzed out of the hotel, standing on the back of the wheelchair like she was on a carnival ride. She zipped along the sidewalk to the Hôtel de Paris bus,
whose ramp was already lowered. The wheelchair flew into the bus like a race car. Apparently, her guy had come through with the horsepower. A third person, the young woman who still had a stethoscope, followed them, much more slowly since she was weighed down with a gigantic hiking backpack. There were three sleeping bags affixed above and below the main pack. Pots and pans hung on the bottom and jingled as she waddled toward the bus. She also had a big duffel bag in each hand.

Wow, Beef was prepared with a capital
P
. How were we going to compete with her? She was focused only on the hunt, while we had to run a pet business at the same time.

“Wait, Professor Camponi,” the woman called. “It's time for your medicine.”

“Get in!” Beef called to her, already pulling away. The woman had to jog and jump into the moving bus.

Through the windows I saw the woman hand Professor Camponi—which was a much better name than Wheels—a bottle of water and a pill. Then the bus peeled out with a screech and she fell into a seat.

Where was Brigitte? If we hurried, we might be able to follow them. I looked down the boulevard to the right and left, but didn't see Brigitte, and now I'd also lost sight of Beef. Following was no longer a possibility.

I mumbled the words of the clue. Then from behind me I heard someone singing the same lines, as though they were lyrics. I recognized the voice. It was the guitar player with the beard, knit cap, and sunglasses.

He stopped singing. “Good stuff,” he said.

“How do you know those words?”

“I have Twister.com too.” He patted the front pocket of his worn jeans, indicating that even a sidewalk guitarist had a smartphone.

“Do you know what it means?”

“Of course,” he said. “It's one of my favorite things to see in Paris. I may be American, but I've been all around this city. I'll help you out.”

6

I waited for Brigitte on the sidewalk. Suddenly I heard a really loud rumble. The contraption that drove up the boulevard to pick me up was an unbelievable sight. I blinked, but it was still there.

It was a white minivan covered with black paw prints, like a gang of cats and dogs had stepped in black paint and run all over it. Stuck to the front was a basket­ball, colored to look like a pink cat nose with wire whiskers sticking out the sides, and on the roof were two pointy ears. The van stopped in front of the hotel and it actually barked! Yes, barked.

I had a whole new appreciation for my mom's old minivan.

I hustled into the passenger seat and buried my head in my hands. “To the Louvre,” I said.

“You figured it out?” Brigitte asked. She checked her seat belt and adjusted her rearview mirror, then her side mirror.

“Yes. Come on. We've gotta go. Beef left in a hurry.”

“Beef?” Brigitte asked.

“Sorry. I meant Madame LeBoeuf.”

“Ha!
Non
, I like Beef better,” Brigitte said. “Okay. Here we go.” She adjusted the side mirror again, put on her directional blinker, and rolled down her window to point to the road she was easing out onto.

I looked at the cars around us. “You look all clear,” I said as a hint to speed up.

“To the Louvre,” she said, but she didn't drive any faster.

Did she not realize what was at stake?

She continued at the pace of a turtle with three broken legs all the way to a parking spot near the Louvre. We dashed out. Brigitte managed to run faster than she drove. Through three giant arches I caught my first glimpse of the great glass pyramid of . . .
wait for it
. . . the Louvre! Even though I was in a hurry, I had to stop for
just a second in the huge courtyard to marvel at where I was standing. The pyramid was framed on three sides by a breathtaking building.

“It's like a palace,” I said to Brigitte.

“It actually
was
a palace for hundreds of years until Louis the Fourteenth moved the king's home to Versailles. Then it became the place to keep the royal art collections. As kings grew the art collection, the building's size grew too,” Brigitte said.

I looked at her with surprise at this little history lesson, because she'd seemed to know nothing when she'd looked at the first clue. “What?” she said. “I am French. Of course I know about the Louvre.”

“Well, it is amazing.”

“Masterpiece,” she said. “It is large and most magnificent.”

“It is.” I wanted to stay longer—I could've spent the entire week in this one spot—but the hunt . . . the hunt. We had to move quickly. We made our way to the ticketing lines and were immediately sucked into crowds of tourists and what looked like other Shock Value hunters.

“Mon Dieu!”
Brigitte said. “This line will take all day.”

“Isn't there a shortcut?”

“It looks like Beef has already found one.” She craned her neck to indicate Beef riding on the back of the
wheelchair to the spot where people needing extra assistance didn't have to wait in line. The nurse lady, whose backpack had been replaced with Beef's fanny pack, held a clipboard and ran to keep up with the speeding chair. Beef seemed to have thought this all out.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked.

“I have an idea of my own.”

Brigitte struck me as a person who followed the rules exactly, so I was skeptical. “You do?”

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a little black book that said
ADRESSES
on it.

“What's that?” I asked.

“It's the list of clients for Boutique Brigitte—Pour les Petits Animaux.”

“How is that going to help?”

“People love their pets. . . .”

“Sure.”

“They love people who take good care of their pets. . . .”

“Okay.”

“And they are willing to help them. . . .”

“All right.”

“One of them works here,” Brigitte said.

Now I caught on. That little black book was like a list of secret helpers. I didn't know how many clients Brigitte had, but I hoped she had one who could help
us with every clue.
That
was something Beef didn't have.

Brigitte dialed her phone.
“Bonjour
, Monsieur Willmott,
c'est Brigitte,”
she said. Then she explained that we were on the hunt for Shock Value tickets and needed to beat the crowd to the clue—Monsieur Willmott must have interrupted her, because she suddenly stopped talking and listened. Her expression was serious like it wasn't good news, but then she grinned.

“Merci! Merci beaucoup!”
She hung up. “We're in!”

“We are? How?”

“Follow me. We need to make a little . . . how do you say? . . . delivery.”

“Delivery?” I followed Brigitte back to the petmobile. “We don't have time to make a delivery.”

She threw open the back door and tossed an empty brown cardboard box out. She scribbled over the label that said
SHAMPOOING POUR CHIEN
and wrote the address for the Louvre. And added
Attention: M. Willmott
. Then she climbed in the back of the van and took out two black lab coats. They were covered with pet fur.

“This is the closest thing we have to a delivery uniform.” Then she put a baseball hat on each of our heads.

There was no way this was gonna pass as a delivery company uniform. She said, “Make a business face, like this.” She pushed her smile down, squinted her eyes a
bit, and forced wrinkles onto her forehead. Then, in a lower voice, she said, “Delivery for”—she glanced at the box—“Monsieur Willmott.” When she was done with the little charade, she laughed with a snort.

She was actually a pretty good actress, but I didn't believe the act would work, especially if she let a snort slip out.

She closed up the petmobile and ran ahead with the empty box. “What will you say to Shock Value when you meet them?”

I hadn't had time to think about it. What would I say? Before I could answer, we were at a door that said
LIVRAISONS
. I knew that meant “deliveries.” Brigitte pushed a button. A security guard answered the door.

She wasn't gonna fool this guy.

He looked at the box, glanced up at a security camera that probably made sure no one other than real delivery people came through the door, and asked, “
Livraison
?”

Brigitte nodded.

He winked, moved aside, and let us pass.

We were in!

The security man took the box and directed us down a corridor with another wink. Maybe he could tell I was American, because he directed us in English, “Go that way and turn right.”

Brigitte gave him a tiny hug and said, “
Merci
, Monsieur Willmott.”

We raced down a small hall and turned right as he'd said. When we emerged into the museum, we were among a smaller crowd heading up the stairs to admire the famous statue of Venus de Milo:

You cannot make me laugh nor cry. If you touch me, you will find that I'm cold. I cannot embrace anyone to get warm. People travel far and wide to see me, and despite my flaws, they're awed by my beauty.

Venus de Milo couldn't embrace anyone, because she didn't have arms. They'd been broken off and lost somewhere in time. Clearly, the guitarist in the knit cap wasn't the only one who knew this answer, because a bunch of what had to be other fans crowded around a girl wearing a royal blue Shock Value shirt, but I just stared at the statue. She was so pretty, chiseled perfectly from marble, yet she looked like she'd be soft if I touched her. She had been sculpted in the likeness of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. And she really was beautiful.

I snapped back to the contest and realized that the girl in the Shock Value shirt was explaining the next
part. “The first ten teams get the next clue. Go stand on a number.” On the floor sat round rubber pads, each with a number—one through ten. The spaces numbered one through four were occupied. I jumped for number five only to be beaten by a girl who had pierced everything on her face. I didn't want to mess with her. As I stepped on number six, the tip of my new sneaker squished as it was run over by a speeding wheelchair.

“Ow!” I yelped.

“Too slow,” said Beef.

“I was here first,” I said.

Beef, Professor Camponi, and the nurse lady squarely occupied space number six. I suppressed the urge to clobber them like I would if Charlie blocked the last piece of pizza from me, but Brigitte calmly pulled my furry lab coat to space number seven.

“All ten people get a clue,” she said. “Space number seven is okay.”

“It was the principle,” I said. “She is pushy and bossy and I don't like her.”

Once all ten spaces were filled, the Shock Value representative handed each team a small royal blue gift bag. “Welcome to the contest,” she said. “You are the ten teams competing for the three front-row seats and passes to Shock Value's special one-night engagement
in Paris this Friday. You'll get to see all the backstage action during the concert and maybe catch a glimpse of Winston, Glen, and Alec themselves.”

Glimpse?

I wanted more than a glimpse. I wanted to meet the band.

“A Shock Value rep will meet you at each clue's location to give you the next bag. The first team to successfully follow all the clues and make it to the end of the trail will get the epic treasure!”

Everyone on the ten teams clapped.

She continued, “So, good luck. The next clue is in that bag. Make sure you give me your names and cell phone numbers; then you can take the bag and go!”

Everyone opened their bags except Beef, who tossed a business card to the Shock Value rep, fired up the chair, hopped on the back, and whizzed away from the beautiful Venus de Milo.