Fanny Brahimi gave me a wink and kissed me warmly. She had changed considerably herself. Originally from Algeria, she was petite with short blond hair and pale eyes; she was squeezed into skintight jeans and wore a belted trench coat and high heels. Back in school, she’d been a die-hard grunge fan who’d traipsed around in Doc Martens, lumberjack shirts, patched cardigans, and ripped 501s.

She was clearly more resourceful than I was—she had somehow unearthed a glass of champagne.

“Didn’t manage to find any popcorn, though,” she said, sitting next to me on the step.

She had a camera around her neck, just like she used to, a Leica M, and she started taking pictures of the crowd.

I’d known Fanny forever. She, Maxime, and I had been together at La Fontonne Elementary School, known locally as the “old school,” whose striking late-nineteenth-century buildings stood in stark contrast to the prefab structures of the École René-Cassin built decades later by the Antibes city council. As teenagers, the three of us had been close. Fanny was the first girl I’d ever dated, back when I was fourteen and in the ninth grade. We went to see a Saturday matinee of Rain Man, and, on the bus back to La Fontonne, both listening to the headphones of my Sony Walkman, we exchanged four or five awkward kisses between Jean-Jacques Goldman singing “Puisque tu pars” and Mylène Farmer crooning “Pourvu qu’elles soient douces.” We stayed together until junior year, at which point we drifted apart, though we remained friends. She was one of those mature, liberated girls, and in our final year, she started sleeping with guys, no strings attached. This was pretty unusual at Saint-Ex, and a lot of people criticized her for it. But I always respected her—to me, she was the embodiment of freedom. She was a friend of Vinca’s, a brilliant student, and a wonderful human being, three qualities that endeared her to me. After completing her degree in medicine, she traveled around a lot, working in combat zones and with various humanitarian missions. A few years ago, we’d met up again by chance in Beirut, where I was attending the Francophone Book Fair, and she’d told me that she was planning to move back to France.

“Have you spotted any of our old teachers?” she asked.

I nodded toward Monsieur N’Dong, Monsieur Lehmann, and Madame Fontana, who had taught us math, physics, and biology, respectively.

“A fine bunch of sadists,” Fanny said, snapping their photos.

“Can’t argue with that. Are you working in Antibes?”

She nodded. “I’ve been in the cardiology unit at La Fontonne Hospital for the past two years. I’ve been looking after your mother there—didn’t she mention?”

From my silence, she could tell I knew nothing about this.