Simon

Simon’s place in Stéphanie’s life is defined by a painful mismatch: he opens a world of music and intimacy to her, but offers no clear account of what their closeness means. At the skate park, his attention is intermittent and difficult for her to read; after a drunken encounter at a party, his apparent indifference leaves her trying to understand an experience she remembers only in fragments.

Identity and Background

Simon and Stéphanie have known each other since third grade. At school he was a good student, noisy and pretentious, and wore 501 jeans and Kickers. By the time Stéphanie sees him again as a teenager, he has changed markedly: he wears a leather jacket, smokes constantly, and looks sad. The contrast between the boy she remembers and the young man before her makes him seem newly compelling, though the narrative gives little access to his own account of that change.

Music is one of the ways he becomes important to her. Through Simon, Stéphanie discovers Leonard Cohen and the Doors, and listens to them constantly. She describes the music’s effect as almost overwhelming in its beauty. Her response binds him to a larger adolescent discovery: Simon is not merely someone she wants to attract, but the person through whom a sound and feeling become part of her life.

The Skate Park

The park Stéphanie and Clémence visit is the municipal skate park near the fire department barracks, on the road out of town. Its modest equipment consists of a ramp, three flat rails, and two low walls, but it draws a mixed crowd, from rich kids to notorious punks. Skating is accompanied by drinking, and hash and attractive girls are also part of the scene. Simon belongs comfortably to this social world. His skating style is phlegmatic, yet he performs the town’s best ollies and seems to neglect other tricks in favor of them.

His appearance helps make him a focus of Stéphanie’s attention: he wears Vans with holes in them, jeans low enough to show his underwear, and a different T-shirt each day. At the ramp, Simon and Rodrigue skate bare-chested while Romain Rotier and the girls sit above them with their legs dangling. The boards’ trucks repeatedly slam against the structure, a physical rhythm running through the scene as the group watches and waits. Simon’s presence is both ordinary within the park’s routine and charged for Stéphanie, who has already returned there four times that week with Clémence.

Intimacy and Uncertainty

At the party in Drimblois, Stéphanie drinks beer, smokes weed, and takes poppers. When she is nearly comatose on a sofa, Simon joins her, whispers personal things, pays her compliments, and tells her secrets. Flattered and weakened by the intoxicants, she lets him lead; he kisses her, and they later go to an upstairs bedroom. Her memories of what follows are partial. She recalls physical intimacy and her own participation, but also wonders whether she said no, without being able to make that memory clear. The account therefore does not settle into a simple story of either assured consent or unambiguous refusal: intoxication, fragmented recollection, and her changing responses remain central to how the encounter is narrated.

Afterward, Stéphanie goes for a swim and feels at once sad and happy, with a regretful, overfull feeling. She remembers little else. Most consequentially for her understanding of Simon, nothing follows between them: he ignores her. The encounter that had felt intimate to her is not accompanied by an explanation or continued attention from him, leaving her distressed and uncertain about what it meant.

Withdrawal and Rejection

Back at the skate park, Romain Rotier openly makes advances toward Stéphanie. She finds this especially upsetting because she takes his boldness as confirmation that Simon is indifferent; in her view, Romain would not dare if his brother were interested in her. His attention makes her feel ugly, sweaty, and diminished, while the presence of a new girl from Belgium intensifies her self-consciousness. When Romain tries to put a hand on her back, Stéphanie tells him to leave her alone. His angry response makes the public rejection a confrontation, and Clémence steps in.

Simon lands nearby, holding his skateboard upright, his muscular stomach shiny with sweat, his cheeks glowing and hair damp. He asks the Belgian girl to go with him. She agrees, and he does not answer Rodrigue’s teasing question about where they are going. Instead, he steps off the ramp first and helps her down. Stéphanie watches him leave with the girl; her eyes fill with tears, and she twists a bracelet around her wrist while trying to hold herself together in front of Clémence. Simon’s silence repeats the hurt of the aftermath of Drimblois, but now the rejection has a visible form: he chooses another companion and helps her away while Stéphanie remains behind. The episode presents him less as a villain than as an elusive focus of desire, whose choices and omissions have consequences for Stéphanie even when his own intentions remain unknown.