Louis

Louis is Annette’s Belgian neighbor and first love, a steady presence through much of her adolescence whose eventual breakup with her helps explain the guarded, performative confidence Billie sees in her sister. In Billie’s recollection, Louis is at once the patient boy who shared Annette’s life and the person who told her that his feelings had changed.

Identity and Background

Louis lives next door to the Fay family. Billie remembers him as having slightly reddish hair, a physique that seemed muscular for his age, and an even summer tan from working in nearby fields. He was two years older than Annette, a difference that mattered less in Billie’s account than his patience and constancy.

A Long First Love

Louis and Annette had been in love since they were eleven or twelve. They grew up together, and Billie describes him as repeatedly present for the vulnerable milestones of Annette’s adolescence: her transition to secondary school, a breakout on her forehead, and the braces that made her feel self-conscious. Louis reassured her that she was beautiful even with braces. He is remembered as calm, attentive, and as someone who looked at Annette with stars in his eyes.

Their relationship gathered the ordinary and momentous experiences of a shared youth. Louis was Annette’s first kiss and first prince charming; with him she experienced her first drunken night, her graduation dance, the death of the family dog Ciseau, starting college, and the parents’ divorce. He was also present around the family’s grief, including their father’s tears. From Billie’s perspective, the pair seemed gentle and almost cinematic, like a couple in a film headed for a happy ending.

The Breakup and Its Aftermath

That idealized picture ends on a winter Tuesday, when Annette takes a telephone call from Louis after Billie returns from school. Louis tells her that the butterflies are gone and that he wants to have sex with other girls to make up for lost time. The breakup is thus framed not as a gradual drift Billie witnessed, but as a decisive announcement that overturns the future she thought the couple shared.

Billie interprets Annette’s subsequent kissing and conspicuous romantic behavior as a response to being rejected for unknown bodies. She says Annette’s lips have been on fire since that night, as though she were taking revenge and competing with Louis. Billie recognizes the hurt to Annette’s pride as well as her heart, and understands why her sister warns her about older boys; at the same time, she wishes Annette would stop making broad assumptions about them.

Narrative Role

Louis is characterized largely through Billie’s memory of his relationship with Annette, rather than through an independently narrated account of his motives. The contrast between his earlier patience and his wish to pursue other girls gives the breakup its force: the boy who seemed to accompany Annette through every first is also the one who declares that he wants experiences beyond their relationship. His absence remains legible in Annette’s changed behavior and in Billie’s simultaneous resentment of, and sympathy for, her sister.