Just One Day

Sometimes we just have to get lost just to find ourselves. This YA book had me hooked and I could not put it down. It deals with love, loss, embracing all that life can offer and just letting yourself go. I lived vicariously through Allyson and her tale.

Allyson and her best friend Melanie or 'Mel' are on a student tour abroad through Europe. They are having a miserable time and Allyson’s cell phone isn’t working so she can’t contact her mother. Better yet, mom can’t contact Ally. However, mom contacts 'Mel' or as she prefers to be called, Mel 2.0. They go to an underground performance of Twelfth Night in London, England and it is there where they first encounter Willem De Ruiter. He is a Dutch actor and he throws a coin at Allyson, as their eyes meet. He continues to throw coins into the audience and after the play, many of the lucky ladies go backstage to hopefully meet him. Ally and Mel decide to go back to their student tour group.

The next day, everyone says goodbye and at the train station, Ally and Willem have another chance encounter. Willem believes there are no accidents and that everything happens for a reason. He invites her to go to Paris for a day with him. Allyson is a sheltered American good girl and yet, she feels the pull of his attraction and says yes. He nicknames her “Lulu” because of her haircut and he declares, “you remind me of that actress” so he doesn’t really know her name.

“Travelling isn't something you're good at. It's something you do. Like breathing. You can't work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents.” ~Willem

They are off on their adventures from seeing Paris from his perspective. He shows her the less touristy side where the laid-back attitude is really on display. Ally is traveling along with him and the first thing they do, since the workers at the airport are on strike so there’s no way to store Ally’s heavy luggage with her throughout Paris is to visit a friend of his.

They proceed to his “friend’s” venue where Celine books acts for the bar. As Allyson is now enveloped in her role of “LuLu” she is more open to new things and is more assertive and able to speak her mind whereas Allyson is more contained.
“I think you're the sort of person who finds money on the ground and waves it in the air and asks if anyone has lost it. I think you cry in movies that aren't even sad because you have a soft heart, though you don't let it show. I think you do things that scare you, and that makes you braver than those adrenaline junkies who bungee-jump off bridges.”
~Willem

Her time in Paris with Willem, she sees he is truly like the wind and doesn’t allow time to govern them. That's why he took her watch and wore it. It’s like he’s taking the time away from her so that she could enjoy it. Their adventures are fun and even scary, such as when they come across skinheads at the park.

They are meant to keep it casual but they are both falling for each other… At least that’s what Ally “Lulu'' believes as she makes a promise to take care of him, when she finds, like her, he is an only child. He is also a vagabond so when he got sick, he admitted, he’s never felt so more alone.

“Part of me knows one more day won't do anything except postpone the heartbreak. But another part of me believes differently. We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.”
~Allyson on their last night together.

They find a place where artists go to squat and stay there for the night. Magic happens and they are blissfully happy. However when Ally wakes up, Willem is gone. In a state of panic, reality hits her. She is in Paris, where she doesn’t speak an ounce of the language and she’s broke. She is heartbroken and calls her teacher, Mrs. Foley, and arrangements are made for her to be collected and sent back to home, to Boston.

After she gets home, she has gone to college and she is nothing but a shell of herself. She feels friendless and her roommate and her don’t really get along. Her guidance counselor calls her and together, decides Ally isn’t really interested in becoming a doctor. (That’s her mother’s dream, not Ally’s.) She winds up taking a class with Professor Glenny who is very into plays and the best reader is a guy named Dee. Dee is black and for some strange reason, nobody is interested in being his partner for this class. Ally steps up and asks him to be her reading partner for the Professor's class. He clicks his teeth and acts like he’ll think about it but secretly is relieved. He uses many voices fitting into characters he thinks people put him into. They become good friends and even Ally’s roommate likes to ask Dee for clothes advice. He plays an outrageous gay persona which might even make Rue Paul laugh. With her roommate’s friend, Dee puts on this tough guy image because he’s from the South Bronx. However, truth be told, he was attending a private charter school on a scholarship. Ally asks Dee about the voices and “accents” and he explains, he’s always been put into boxes and stereotypes. Only with her, is he authentic and real. I’m not delving deeply into Dee because I like how he’s just a pure friend to her. He is the best friend that all of us we have or wish to have. Loyal and the sweetest. He is one of my many favorite characters.

“You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place.” ~Dee

Slowly Allyson starts to heal and go out of her comfort zone. She takes French class, tells her parents she doesn’t want to become a doctor, much to her mother’s aghast, and sets off for the summer not working as an intern for a dr or hospital but going back to Paris to reclaim what she’s lost. She is going to find Willem, if she can. She’ll start with going back to Celine’s club, finding out he did leave a note, he had been roughed up and wound up going to a hospital, meeting other hostel guests and friending them, meet a new and wonderful friend named Wren who is very important to Ally in the later chapters, and slowly starts to heal her heart and take more chances, not as Lulu but as Allyson Healey.

“And that's when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I'm still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he's in love with now, Willem changed my life. He showed me how to get lost, and then I showed myself how to get found.”
~Allyson sees Willem in the park in another Shakespherian play but a girl jumps into his arms and Ally decides not to greet him, afterall. Even after coming all this way to find him.

The ending is truly a cliff hanger and I looked up to see if there were anymore to this story. Thankfully, Author Gayle Forman has indeed written a sequel “Just One Year” which will be on my “to be read” list.