Aurélie said nothing.
It started small: a hesitation before speaking in class. A blank space where her voice used to be. M. Delacroix, the history teacher, called on her. Aurélie, explain the Maginot Line. She opened her mouth. The words stacked behind her teeth like cars in a traffic jam. She saw the other students turn. She saw Sophie Marceau’s double—a girl named Véronique with feathered hair and a swan’s neck—smirk. Aurélie closed her mouth. The hyphen sat in the air between question and answer, and nothing crossed it. Les 14 Ans D--Aurelie -1983-
She opened her lunch—a baguette with butter, an apple, a small square of dark chocolate. She ate slowly, deliberately, taking up her small piece of the world. Aurélie said nothing
That night, Aurélie did not sleep. She lay in her narrow bed, the Walkman’s headphones over her ears, the cassette having long since ended. The silence between songs was the same as the hyphen inside her. But for the first time, she listened to it differently. She heard not an absence, but a pause. A breath. A hinge. She opened her mouth
Michel Ricaud, a prolific director in the French adult film industry during the 1980s.