31
Strange Silence

“Yes, I took the videos, and yes, they were uploaded to my YouTube account,” Ira says to a blank-faced Mrs. Eagleton. “But I didn’t edit them. And I didn’t upload them, either.”

“Then who did?” Eagleton asks. Ira is silent. And of course, so am I. “It’s unlikely that Mr. Schrader would, given that everything he said violates the ethics code. What exactly were you thinking, Alex? This is not what we stand for at St. Chris’s. And honestly, we’ll be lucky if my colleagues at St. Catherine’s don’t cancel the Musicale and the final dance of the school year.”

Great. One more reason for the entire population of both schools to hate me.

Eagleton is staring me down, and I don’t know where to begin. I’m thinking more about what not to admit, and whom not to rat on, than how to explain this disaster away. And Ira is as tight-lipped as I am. Does that mean he really didn’t upload the video, though? It’s hard to imagine him doing it, but Nomura thinks Ira was right to be mad at me. The question is: Is Ira mad-mad, or wackomad?

“Well?” she asks. “Neither of you has anything to say for yourself?”

“It was a joke,” I say. “I didn’t mean for those things to sound the way they did, and I definitely didn’t mean for them to wind up on the Internet.”

“A joke?” Eagleton asks, astounded. “I’m not going to dignify some of the words you used by repeating them, but I do hope you realize that way of thinking, and of expressing yourself, is no laughing matter.”

“I know that now, ma’am. And I’m really, really sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” says Ira. “I don’t know who took my camera, or why, but I’ll find out.” I kick Ira’s shin, invisible under Eagleton’s desk, and he chokes a cry of pain.

“Well, I’ll be looking into that issue myself, rest assured,” she says. “And as for the two of you, I’ll be placing a call to your parents to explain the situation. They have to know, of course. And while I will not be suspending you—the last thing you deserve is a vacation from your classes—you will not be permitted to participate in Musicale, or the dance.” She gives one last sorrowful shake of her head. “If either event does indeed take place.

“All right,” she finishes, waving us away like houseflies. “Off with you. Back to class.”

We turn a corner and get into every subject we weren’t able to cover in Eagleton’s office.

“I’ve been trying to tell you, but you’ve been impossible to get hold of,” Ira says. “On Tuesday, somebody broke into my locker and ripped off my camera. By Wednesday morning, it had been returned, but this new video, the edited one that went on YouTube, was on it.”

“Ira, you said you were going to delete it.” I try to remember back to the movie, right after we’d left the bathroom. Hadn’t he erased it then?

“I did, I swear. They must have looked in the trash … Rocky and Trevor.”

“So you know it was them?”

“Who else would it be?”

“And what about that footage of me and Bijou holding hands?” I almost shove him but think better of it. One of the few things that could make this worse would be a second visit to Eagleton’s. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know,” Ira says. “I was mad at you at the time—you were being a real jerk that day—but that’s not why I shot it. I shot it because Terror Lake was lame, and I was bored. But I wasn’t going to do anything with it. And I didn’t think anybody else would, either. I have hundreds of random videos of people doing all kinds of meaningless stuff.”

“That’s pretty weird, Ira.”

He shrugs, helpless. “If I’d realized something like this could happen, I never would have left my camera lying around like that.”

“Wait,” I say. “Did you say hundreds of random videos?”

“Yeah,” Ira says, confused. “Why?”

Ira and I are just forming the beginnings of a revenge plan when we see Bijou and Jenna Minaya circling each other in front of St. Chris’s. And I literally mean circling, like gladiators in the ring. At first, I can’t even follow the conversation. Something about Dominican maids and Haitian villas. I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I can practically see steam coming out of their nostrils. This is not going to be pretty.

At least I get why Bijou still hasn’t written me back. If this girl fight is any indication, she’s got plenty of other stuff on her mind right now.

When Jenna says that Bijou’s mother is dead, that Bijou’s been pretending, at first I don’t believe a word of it. There’s no way, I think, that she could have kept that a secret, especially from nosy Mary Agnes.

But then Mary Agnes gets right up in Jenna’s face. “You’re a liar,” she says, almost screaming. “And you’d better shut your mouth right now.”

Jenna doesn’t even try to deny it. She doesn’t need to, I realize, because she’s telling the truth. I can see it all over Bijou’s face: the stunned, helpless look of someone whose last secret has been uncovered, someone who finally has nothing left to hide.

And I feel ashamed. Ashamed for not knowing before, and ashamed for knowing now. And ashamed for caring so much about whether Bijou liked me that I couldn’t see how much pain she was in.

Then she faints, and Mary Agnes does an amazing job cushioning the fall. But Bijou’s too heavy for her to handle alone, and she struggles to keep her upright. Before I have time to consider that I’m probably the last person Bijou would want by her side right now, I rush toward her.

But somebody beats me to it: Trevor.

I’m only a step or two away from Bijou when he puts his right arm up to block my path, then slyly slides his left arm around Bijou’s waist. Then he helps Mary Agnes, who seems too focused on helping her friend to object to Trevor’s gallant-seeming move, to carry Bijou up the steps and into school.

Really? Trevor? If it had to be a guy, couldn’t it have been Nomura, or Ira, or anyone but him?

What’s even harder to believe is that Bijou seems to actually like him being there. She certainly doesn’t push him away, anyway, and before they’re even halfway up the steps, she lets her head fall on his shoulder. What, are they going to be a couple now? Are my chances with the best girl I’ve ever known totally over because Trevor Zelo beat me to her side by a half second?

But if I’m devastated, at least I’m quiet about it. Jenna, on the other hand, is absolutely beside herself. After Trevor and Mary Agnes disappear with Bijou, she lets out a hoarse shriek and, after that, starts crying hysterically. She’s like a human puddle, her chest heaving sobs. I never would have thought somebody as mean as Jenna Minaya could break down so completely.

And then it hits me: Jenna wrote the notes. The whole time, I’d been looking for a guy, but it was Jenna all along.

I sneak away before Nomura or Ira approaches me and manage to catch the subway before any of the other kids who witnessed the scene reach the platform. And I realize I’ve been doing it again, thinking about Trevor being closer to Bijou than I am, about Mary Agnes being closer to Bijou than I am. I’ve got to stop thinking so much about myself all the time. If I’m ever going to be friends with her again, I need to learn how to think about Bijou without always sticking myself into the equation.

The whole way home, I think about Bijou and her mom, and the strange silences that always seemed to follow the word “maman.” The way Bijou got quiet whenever I asked about her mother. The faraway look in her eyes every time Port-au-Prince was mentioned. Maybe I didn’t want to see how sad she truly was. At least now, I’m doing just that: seeing.

My mom told me that Bijou might have post-traumatic stress disorder and that there might be things about her experience that I wouldn’t be able to understand. Maybe it’s time to admit she might have been right about that one after all.

Mom also told me there’s no difference between lying and omitting the truth. But in Bijou’s case, there must be. I try to imagine what it might have been like if I’d lost Mom, then been sent to an entirely new country after my grandparents had gotten too old to take care of me. Would my mother’s death have been something I’d want to discuss with a bunch of kids I’d only just met?

No, if I’d been in Bijou’s shoes, I would have stuck with the strange silences, too.