27 
Enjoy Your Dessert
27 “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” says Mary Agnes, who pulled me aside to show me the video as soon as I arrived at school this morning. “This is awful.”
But for the first ten seconds, the light in the YouTube video is so low, I cannot even tell what I am looking at. A flickering light. Dark shadows. Loud, scary music that stops and starts. Spoken words in the background, too muffled to hear. The video is fifty-three seconds long. It was uploaded yesterday and has been viewed a hundred and eighty-four times. The most recent comment is, “What a creep! Who knew?”
Starting at fifteen seconds, a boy’s voice begins: “She’ll pretend she likes an American guy so she can stay in the country.” Then a picture of me appears! “Next thing you know, she’ll try to get you to marry her, so she can become a citizen…. stupid, right?”
“It sounds a little like …,” I say.
Mary Agnes puts her arm around my shoulder. I shake it off. “It doesn’t sound like him, Bijou. It is him.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t believe it.”
I look at the user name of the person who posted the video: “RizeAgainToo.” The video returns to the shadowy room, but now I can see the images a little bit better. It’s a close-up of Alex and me, holding hands in the movie theater. And now the whole world can see it.
Suddenly, the scene switches to a different room, brightly lit. A close-up of Alex, speaking. The voice is definitely the same as it was from the beginning of the video. These words actually came out of his mouth.
But now he’s saying, “Everybody needs a little taste of brown sugar.” A box of brown sugar appears on the video, and the sound is edited so that “brown sugar” repeats and repeats, until Alex sounds like a robot. How could he have said these things? How could he do this to me?
After at least ten repetitions, the video goes back to the movie theater, showing the exact moment when Alex reached for my hand. It’s still very dim, but anyone who looks hard can see everything: the way we interlaced our fingers together, the way his thumb delicately stroked the back of my hand.
Then, Alex’s voice comes in again, this time with a new, shorter sentence: “Enjoy your dessert.” And this one, too, repeats many times before a new, edited combination of all three sentences begins: “She’ll try to get you to marry her … brown sugar … enjoy your dessert.” The phrases begin to get louder and blur into each other, and the video shows our intertwined hands in the dark theater. Then Alex’s brightly lit face, which changes into mine so quickly that I feel dizzy watching. The volume is louder now, booming and filled with echo. “Marry her … brown sugar … enjoy your dessert.”
That must have been the longest fifty-three seconds of my life. And by the time I’ve watched it a second time, the number of views has gone up to two hundred and nineteen. I look around me. How many people are watching it right at this moment?
Mary Agnes is talking to me, but I can’t even hear what she is saying. I want to scream, but I cannot even speak. Soon the video will have traveled beyond St. Catherine’s and St. Christopher’s, to my brother. To Pierre and Marie Claire.
Anyone who owns a phone can see how this boy has tricked me and made me look like a fool. How he took my feelings and threw them away like garbage.
Maman, can you see it, too? Can you see what they have done to me?
I’m sure you’ve seen this ridiculous video by now. I’m so, so sorry for saying what I did, but you’ve got to understand, it wasn’t what it looked like.
I would never say anything to hurt you.
Please write me back. I can explain everything!
Alex