Annette

Annette is Billie Fay’s older sister, admired for her beauty and apparent ease but marked by the end of her long relationship with Louis. To Billie, Annette is at once a model of womanhood, a source of romantic caution, and a sister whose love includes envy, irritation, and loyalty. Her heartbreak helps explain why she warns Billie about older boys, while her practical support makes clear that protection need not mean taking away Billie’s choice.

Identity and Presence

Annette appears as the more polished sister in Billie’s comparisons of their looks and maturity. On the evening Billie wishes for a little magic and imagines becoming a girl on the threshold of womanhood, Annette is already dressed in a black dress and flowered jacket, with shining hair. Billie calls her beautiful and thinks of her as someone with an eye for beauty, her hair resembling that of women in films. Annette explains her advantage by saying she has had two extra years to brush it; Billie, by contrast, leaves her own hair tangled in a ponytail. The exchange gives their difference a teasing, everyday shape: Annette seems closer to the grown woman Billie hopes to become, but sisterly affection runs through the comparison.

That contrast becomes sharper when Billie imagines what maturity should look like. She considers cutting her hair, painting her nails dark, speaking more slowly, choosing her words, laughing less loudly, and letting her eyes shine. Annette’s appearance supplies a vivid standard for this imagined transformation, but Billie’s account also shows that she is trying to define her own route toward adulthood rather than simply duplicate her sister. Annette’s beauty is a point of admiration and a measure Billie feels she falls short of, not an uncomplicated ideal.

Sisters and the Uneasy Work of Admiration

Billie describes the bond between them as both intense love and gentle jealousy. While Billie tends sunburn with aloe cream, paints her nails in colors she considers too pale and young, and draws poems about Simon and Étienne inside pink crayon hearts, Annette seems to shine without trying. Billie calls her perfect, a real woman from her body to the inside of her head, and hopes to shine as brightly one day. At the same time, Billie imagines that age might turn their complicated mixture of love and envy into love without qualification. Her account preserves the rivalry instead of pretending it is absent: admiration is sincere, but it can sting precisely because the sisters are so close.

The sisters’ difference is not only about appearance. Billie says sadness makes her feel like a child again, while happiness brings her nearer to being a young woman; the shifts leave her confused. Annette’s more assured femininity therefore functions as a contrast to Billie’s unsettled sense of self. Yet Billie does not describe Annette as a distant rival. She wants to grow toward the confidence Annette represents while continuing to address her with tenderness and to depend on her judgment.

Annette’s romantic life also unsettles the apparent simplicity of that ideal. Billie remembers that her sister could seem to have a perfect, film-like relationship, but the history behind that image gives it a painful ending. The very woman Billie calls a true woman has been left grieving, and her later attempts at new closeness are not proof that heartbreak has disappeared. Annette’s example thus contains both the beauty Billie admires and the vulnerability she is only beginning to understand.

Relationship with Louis and the Breakup

Annette and Louis, their Belgian neighbor, had been in love since they were eleven or twelve. He was two years older, somewhat red-haired, athletic, and tanned from working in nearby fields. Billie remembers him as patient and consistently present in Annette’s life: he supported her transition to secondary school, comforted her over an adolescent pimple, and told her she was beautiful even with braces. Their shared history included Annette’s first French kiss, her first drunken night, her graduation dance, the death of the family dog Ciseau, her entrance to college, and the divorce of their parents. In Billie’s memory, they were tender and seemed like the kind of couple in a film destined to end happily.

That image breaks in a winter telephone call on a Tuesday, a detail Billie remembers because she was returning from school. Louis told Annette that the butterflies were gone and that he wanted to have sex with other girls to make up for lost time. Billie recalls Annette arriving in her room with a swollen, red, tear-wet face and mascara running in dark streaks over her cheeks. The remembered scene makes the breakup more than background: Billie has seen what rejection did to someone she loves, and that sight informs the caution she hears in Annette’s later advice.

After Louis leaves, Annette’s kissing becomes more conspicuous. Billie links her sister’s newly fiery mouth to an effort to get back at Louis and compete with him after being rejected in favor of other bodies. The account does not reduce Annette’s behavior to a single motive, but Billie understands it as a response to pain and wounded pride. She knows that being discarded in that way must hurt both the heart and the ego, especially when self-acceptance is already difficult at their age.

Protectiveness and Billie’s Choices

Annette’s history gives weight to her warnings about older boys and their supposedly stony hearts. Billie can be angry when Annette seems to generalize or underestimate her adolescent nerve, yet she also recognizes that her sister is trying to spare her a similar hurt. That recognition does not erase the irritation; it makes the disagreement legible as a tension between Billie’s wish to be treated as capable and Annette’s fear for her. Billie can say that Annette sometimes understands everything and sometimes understands nothing, then acknowledge that she cannot stay angry for long.

When Billie is considering whether to go to Pierre’s, Annette helps her prepare without insisting that she follow through. She tells Billie that if she changes her mind once she gets there, she can simply turn around. The next morning, before leaving for Montreal, Annette promises to make her a queen’s brunch and says Billie can tell her about the evening with as many or as few details as she likes. Because Billie must be back before nine for their father to use the car on home visits, Annette also says she will tell him Billie has gone to a friend’s for a midterm-break sleepover. The cover story and the practical arrangements give Billie a way to proceed, while the invitation to turn back preserves her right to stop.

This care is attentive rather than triumphalist. Annette does not claim that Billie will have a perfect evening, nor does she demand a report afterward. She offers food, privacy, an exit, and help navigating the household rules. Those concrete gestures make her a confidante even when Billie initially finds it embarrassing to speak openly about being in love with Pierre or wanting more than kissing. When Annette names that possibility before Billie can manage it herself, Billie denies it, blushes, and searches her sister’s wardrobe for something suitable. The scene shows both the intimacy between them and Billie’s continuing difficulty saying what she wants aloud.

Recurrence, Change, and Significance

The relationship remains active after Billie’s important night with Pierre. The following morning, Billie calls Annette but is not ready to recount the evening. Annette shifts the conversation to Simon, whom she plans to meet for studying, while predicting that they will kiss throughout the night; she says that this time she will stop breaking his heart once and for all. Billie misses her. The exchange echoes the sisters’ earlier roles without making them identical: Annette, once devastated by Louis, is now negotiating her own closeness with Simon, while Billie keeps the details of her first major experience private until she can make sense of them.

Billie’s eventual account of that night rejects the polished romance she once wished for. It was not a candlelit scene with blue rose petals, chocolate-covered strawberries, and promises of love, but an awkward encounter in a blue chalet, surrounded by uncertainty. Billie nevertheless feels more at ease the next day, describing herself as a little larger of heart while still having the same freckled face and limbs. Her willingness to let an imperfect experience remain her own marks a small movement away from the princess-like ideals against which she had measured herself. Annette’s advice and care belong to this process, even though Billie needs to keep some of the experience to herself before she can narrate it.

Near the end, a letter tells Billie that Annette and her father are there and that they are keeping an eye on her. That reassurance gives the family bond a lasting presence beyond the immediate scenes of preparation and confession. Annette’s role is not to prevent Billie from being hurt or to supply a ready-made model of adult womanhood. She makes a difficult transition less solitary: her own heartbreak explains her warnings, her affection survives their disagreements, and her practical care allows Billie to approach a new experience at her own pace.