3
Ignoramus

Thank God for the St. Catherine’s dances.

If I had seen that incredible girl—I still don’t know her name, but Nomura and I are working on it—in sixth grade, tracking her down without blowing my cover would have been a challenge. But because of the St. Cat’s dances, I’m going to meet her, and soon. As in Saturday-night soon.

The staff at St. Chris’s have never hosted a dance, thrown a party, or given any opportunity whatsoever for us to meet girls. But the people who run St. Cat’s, which is our sister school and is only three blocks away, think that dances are a very big deal, and they throw them three times a year. Every girl in seventh and eighth grade goes to these “St. Cathopher’s” dances, because they’re as desperate to meet boys as we are to meet them. The next one, Spring Fling, is Saturday night.

The incredible girl will be there, because everyone will be there. And if Mary Agnes Brady has taken the girl under her wing and sees herself as the girl’s personal tour guide, there’s no way she’ll miss Spring Fling, because Mary Agnes is obsessed with the dances. She lives for them.

At lunch on Thursday, Nomura sidesteps a kickball game in the yard and meets me in the corner next to a play structure I haven’t climbed since fifth grade. He’s got Ira with him, and Ira, as always, is shooting video. I haven’t seen him without that video cam of his for months.

“Her name,” Nomura says, “is Bijou.”

Bijou. Bijou, Bijou, Bijou.

I look at Nomura, then back at Ira. “And how many people did you have to ask to find out?” Nomura’s not exactly a human Fort Knox when it comes to keeping secrets, but Ira’s another story altogether. “I don’t want people to know I’m, you know, interested.”

“Me and Ira, that’s it,” Nomura says.

“Ira,” I say, “you mind turning that thing off? Not every moment of our lives has to be on video. I don’t want the world knowing about this.”

“Relax, man, my work is strictly confidential.” He clicks the camera off. “And nobody knows you like this girl. Nobody except Maricel, that is.”

Ira has a twin sister, Maricel, at St. Cat’s, but this is the first time that their relationship’s been useful in any way. Maricel is smart, pretty, and even semipopular. She’s also friends with Mary Agnes, so she must at least know Bijou a little bit and is probably a gold mine of information.

A little more on Ira, my second-best friend: Ira is always obsessed with something. And I do mean obsessed. When he dives into an interest, it’s headfirst into the deep end. First it was Pokémon cards, then Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and then he memorized practically every line of all seventeen Harry Potter movies. These days it’s horror: vampires, flesh-eating zombies, witches, shape-shifters, werewolves, even were-panthers, all of which are not only 100 percent fictional, but also way less interesting than the very real, fantastical creatures among us called girls. Ira couldn’t care less about girls, though. All he cares about, for now, anyway, is becoming some kind of major movie director. He’d better be careful with that camera of his. I don’t want everybody to know I like Bijou; that would ruin everything.

“So, what kind of name is Bijou?” I ask.

“It’s French,” Nomura says. “It means ‘jewel.’”

“But she’s not French,” Ira says. He’s talking really, really fast. He’s so excited, he can’t spit out the words fast enough. Maybe I was wrong; does Ira Lopez care about girls after all? “She’s Haitian.”

“Asian?” I ask.

Nomura laughs. “No, Alex. Haitian. As in, from Haiti.”

I look at him blankly. “Is that in Africa?”

“No, it’s not in Africa! Do you ever watch the news?” I give him a look; he knows I don’t follow the news.

How many guys in our class watch the news? Only one: Nomura. And he doesn’t even watch the news, he reads the New York Times, the actual physical newspaper, every morning while drinking a cup of black coffee. He brings it with him on the subway, folding it into a neat square, and sometimes he even reads it between classes. The kid is never more than ten feet away from the Times.

“You might remember this gigantic disaster that happened in January 2010.” He looks at me like he can’t even believe he’s still friends with somebody as dumb as me. “The Haitian earthquake? Hello, calling Alex Schrader…. Is anybody in there?”

“Three years ago? How am I supposed to remember something that happened when I was ten years old?”

“I remember it,” Ira says. “Haiti’s an island, and the whole thing was torn to shreds. There were poor people living in tents and shacks. Crying and dying, total catastrophe.”

“Oh that,” I say. “Yeah.” What I remember is Mom, close to tears, watching CNN in horror as the camera showed thousands of people with no homes, and how hot the place was, how completely miserable everyone seemed. Then Mom used a five-digit code to text a ten-dollar donation to the Red Cross.

Not for one second could I believe that the beautiful girl could have had anything to do with a place like that. She looked so fresh and clean and … innocent. Not like somebody who’s been through all of that.

“Okay, obviously I know what Haiti is,” I say, feeling the color rise to my cheeks. “I just forgot that Haitians were from Haiti. Haitian sounds exactly like Asian.”

“What an ignoramus,” Nomura says.

Ira giggles.

“You’re so ignorant,” I tell Ira, “you don’t even know what ignoramus means.”

“Do too,” Ira says. But then he shuts up, because he really doesn’t.

“So, where is it?” I ask Nomura. “Is it near Africa at least?”

“Have you ever heard of Cuba, white boy?” Nomura asks, getting a laugh from Ira. Nomura’s Japanese and Ira’s half Dominican, so they think it’s incredibly hilarious to call me “white boy” any time I say something stupid.

“Yeah, dude, I’ve heard of Cuba, thank you very much.”

“Haiti is south of Cuba,” Ira says. “But it’s right next to the Dominican. They’re on the same island … ignoramus.” Okay, so he does know the word. Big deal.

I pretend not to hear. I don’t know much about the Dominican Republic, except that a lot of good baseball players are Dominican and that Ira isn’t one of them. He’s terrible at sports, the kind of kid who strikes out in kickball.

“Do you know anything else about her?” I ask him. “I mean, she wasn’t in that earthquake, was she?”

“I don’t know, but I can find out.” Ira bites his lip.

“Awesome, Ira.” I do genuinely appreciate his help. Without Maricel’s info, I’d still be clueless. “Fantastic, in fact.”

“Wow, Alex, you’re so into this girl, it’s almost scary,” Nomura says.

“I’m a red-blooded adolescent male.”

“You might still actually be preadolescent, dude.”

“It doesn’t drive you half-crazy, knowing there are 243 girls only three blocks away?”

“You’re obsessed,” Nomura says.

“You’re more into girls than I am into horror,” Ira says.

“That’s because girls are real and horror is lame,” I say.

“Is not,” says Ira.

“Seriously, Alex. It’s all you ever talk about lately.” Nomura balls up his lunch bag and tosses it with a perfect arc into a trash can.

“We’re in seventh grade. Isn’t that normal?”

“Maybe, but it seems like girls have completely taken over your life. Like it’s the most important thing, ever.”

Instead of saying that girls are the most important thing ever, which they obviously are, I say, “Please, they haven’t taken over anything.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Let’s say you were given the choice between losing us as your best friends and getting to know this girl. What would you choose?”

“He’d choose us, obviously,” Ira says, looking at Nomura. Then to me, “Wouldn’t you?”

“I would gladly never talk to my own sister again in exchange for a girlfriend,” I reply, “if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I’m serious,” Nomura says. “Would you choose a girl over us?”

“Of course not,” I say. “How could you ask that?” And I mean it. Nomura is my best friend. And Ira is awesome, too. I would never do anything to hurt them, even if the hottest supermodel in the world were on her knees, begging me to be her husband.

“Are you sure?” Nomura asks. “Because when you talk about girls, you get this glazed look in your eyes, almost like one of Ira’s zombies. You’re not going to do us in, are you?”

Ira sticks his arms out like one of the undead and pretends to take a bite of my arm flesh.

“Knock it off,” I say. But then, seriously, “No way. Not a chance.”

“Even for Angela Gudrun?” Ira asks, knowing that only months ago, I talked about Angela every single day—every hour of every day, in fact. My Angela fixation was probably very annoying, I admit. But that was before Bijou. And now that I’m over Angela, it seems safe to respond in my goofiest pirate accent, “Ira, if I could have but one mere day with Angela Gudrun, I’d gladly say good-bye to you and Nomura, now and forevermore!”

They both crack up, which is generous, considering how weak the joke is.

“Friendship can walk the plank, matey!” I yell.

They know I don’t mean it.