chastity and bonne.

I had no idea what I was in for when I took a seat on the bus next to Chastity Andrews. I had seen her at the airport with a mother who looked like she had just stepped out of an Anne Taylor catalogue, and Chastity herself could be a poster child for Ralph Lauren or J. Crew.

My experiences at boarding school had conditioned me to stay far away from polo-shirt enthusiasts, but Chastity seemed different. I sensed that under the starched collar and Tiffany's jewelry and flat-ironed hair was a fellow odd-duck.

My prediction, as it were, turned out to be a little too accurate.

We started with the basic introductions and family backgrounds, although I soon found it hard to get a word in edgewise as she picked up steam, veering away from depictions of idyllic Westchester, New York, to broach new and completely random topics having to do with her past and present debauchery.

She seemed determined to bring home the irony of the fact that she had for ten years been a Catholic schoolgirl (at a school named, suitably, School of the Holy Child), in light of her sexual promiscuity, drunken escapades, and honorary membership in an inner-city gang. Soon she was telling me a story about how during the previous summer she had, while inebriated, tipped over a golf cart and broke her neck.

“Really? Can you break your neck and not die?” I mused aloud.

“Well, it was only part of my neck I guess. Mostly my back."

“Ah.” I said. She was already thinking up

something new to entertain me.

“And then I sprained my ankle a month ago while I was hooking up with this guy, because I fell down the stairs, and he left, and I was trying to go back up the stairs to find him but I couldn't figure out why my ankle wouldn't move right."

She laughed heartily, lost in reverie.

I pondered a minute.

“You seem to be moving around pretty normally now, considering all your injuries."

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I guess so. But there was this other time....”

And so it went.

We spent all day meandering around the wind swept beaches of St. Malo, weaving up barracks and into towers, then back into the cobblestone streets where ice-cream and souvenir stands waited.

We exchanged stories about our host families, and, in a tentative, indirect way, began to find words to formulate the experiences of those first few days, the feelings that we didn't yet understand. Chastity was my first, and best friend while I was in France. And she is still one of my very best friends today.

On that day I met another person who would become not just a best friend, but a central figure in the next four years of my life. It was Bianca, who is also Bonne.

We found each other when she ambled over to the group who I was attempting to entertain with my re-telling of the wild boars story. I was being overly animated, demonstrating tusks and all, in an attempt to impress and make some dinner partners. Everyone laughed politely, except for Bonne, who recognized the priceless humor of the situation and gave it the guffaw it deserved.

She thought I was hilarious, I thought she had cool earrings; it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. She and Chastity and I laughed our way through dinner, and screeched when we all mistook a stray cat for a wild boar. It was clear that I had found my niche.