Circle of Silence

by Carol M. Tanzman

  “That’s a different lock.” The new padlock is made of thick, shiny steel. “The other one was broken and sort of hanging.”

  “The cops must have contacted the owner,” Henry surmises. “Told him to make sure no one gets in again.”

  Even though I’m desperately trying to focus, my mind swirls. What if I’d been ten minutes later? What if Jagger hadn’t kept his locator app enabled? What if I hadn’t noticed the back door in the dark…?

  Henry senses I might lose my shit. He must also know that Raul asked me to Winter Formal because he says, “How about you and Raul stay together? I’ll cross the street and try to find someone who saw the kids. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Swiftly, he retraces his steps.

  “Val, if this is too hard—” Raul starts.

  “Take out the camera.” Silently, I wait for him to get ready. After he nods, I start speaking. “It was dark by the time I found the place. Probably should have used my cell for light, but I was in a rush and not thinking clearly. An animal brushed past me and I fell into that pile of rusted machinery.”

  Raul swivels to capture the scene. “Which made a lot of noise, so you hid.”

  “Right. Behind that trash can. No one came to look for me. By the time it felt safe to continue, I saw that the back door was half-open. I didn’t notice anyone leaving. Don’t know if they heard me and got out when I was hiding or if they had a lookout. Maybe the plan was always to leave Jagger alone.”

  Raul stops shooting. “That doesn’t seem right. The point of an initiation is that as soon as it’s over, you’re a member of the group.”

  “Unless they were suspicious of Jagger the whole time. Who’s to say one of them didn’t follow him to the Media Center and realize he’s in TV? They might have figured out he was doing it for Campus News.”

  “This is some truly evil shit.” Raul restarts the camera. “What happened next?”

  “I pushed the door slowly so it wouldn’t squeak. I hoped the initiation was still going on, that everything was okay. Except for a small streak of light across the floor, it was pitch-black. Completely silent. I called out. No one answered. That’s when I panicked. I ran into the room and tripped over Jagger’s backpack.” I’m moving backward, showing Raul where I’d gone on the other side of the wall. “About here. I picked up the flashlight and that’s when I saw…”

  I can’t go on. Raul moves forward and puts his arms around me so that I don’t fall. It feels familiar—although the hug I remember isn’t his. It’s Jagger’s. At my locker, after I found the bird…

  “Hold on a sec!” Pushing Raul aside, I dump my backpack onto the ground. Paw through the contents.

  He squats beside me. “What are you looking for?”

  I sit back on my heels. “Remember how we couldn’t figure out who got my locker combo? I just realized it wasn’t Mrs. G., Lawrence or Tracy Gardner. It was me.”

  Raul cocks his head. “Who’d you tell?”

  “No one. I mean, not specifically. But Marci and I always keep the combo sheet we get at the beginning of the year in our backpacks, in case we forget the numbers.” I point. “It’s not here.”

  He gives me a skeptical look. “You could have tossed it by accident.”

  “No! Somebody got a hold of it. Maybe MP planned to put the bird in my backpack, not the locker. But then they saw the combo. Decided it would be scarier to tie a string around the poor thing’s neck and hang it.”

  “Okay,” Raul says, “but I still don’t see how this helps. Anyone at school could have found the numbers.”

  “Not really. I keep the backpack with me every second of the day—except for one class. We all leave our bags—”

  “In the Media Center.” Raul blinks. “You don’t think someone on the team—”

  “Not us. A Team.”

  His brow furrows. “Really?”

  I remember a line from one of the emails: There are spies everywhere.

  “Think about it. Suppose one of the people on A Team is in MP. They check the list of stories on the whiteboard. They’re at the Wednesday presentations. They go back and report it to the group. That’s how MP knows we haven’t figured out who they are. That’s the reason they keep going, getting bolder each time.”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, he puts the camera back into the case. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible. But it’s hard to believe anyone on A Team hates us so much that they’d leave Jagger in the building, alone.”

  “Hailey can’t stand me. Never could. Still doesn’t explain why she’d do that to Jagger—”

  “Unless she has a thing for him—and it wasn’t returned.”

  “Hell, that explains something.” I tell him about the conversation in the Media Center. “Hailey was mad at me for no real reason. If she knew Jagger and I went out last year…” My voice peters out. Raul doesn’t notice the slip—or if he does, he decides to ignore it. Hurriedly, I add, “She accused me of making it up just so I could get the story. She could be doing that thing magicians do. Focus my attention someplace else so I don’t notice what’s in front of me.”

  “Let’s think this scenario through slowly,” Raul suggests. “Hailey’s in MP. She’s also in love with Jagger, who couldn’t care less. He shows up in class at the beginning of the year, gets put on our team. Your team. MP starts doing all that stuff. We work the story hard, which pisses Hailey off even more. She tries to blame you—”

  “But that doesn’t work. So she steals the locker combo from my backpack, hangs the dead bird in my locker. Tries to scare us off the story—along with a personal screw-you.”

  Raul nods. “Jagger puts the application in the box—”

  “And Hailey gets MP to choose him. So she has a better chance of hooking up.”

  Raul leans against the building. “First flaw in the logic. Jags thought they chose him because they don’t know he’s in TV, right?”

  “Unless they knew and were playing him. Or Hailey didn’t care or didn’t think it mattered. She might have thought he was trying to mess with our team. That he was turning on us. On me. What does it matter?” I sling the backpack over my shoulder. “If Hailey’s in MP, any explanation is possible.”

  28

  The team gathers at Marci’s. She throws a bag of chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table and slumps onto the couch. “We got nothing. No matter what Omar or I said, Taneisha refused to talk about MP or the accident.”

  “She acted completely clueless. But I get why Val thinks she knows something. There’s something fishy about that girl.” Omar tears the bag open with his teeth. “What about Red Hook? Anything?”

  Henry shakes his head. “The guys I talked to said it’s a ghost town after five. MP could’ve used the building a hundred times. As long as they met after work hours, or on a weekend, they’d be invisible.”

  Raul and I exchange a look. “All we got is a theory. Val?”

  I repeat what I told Raul. The team is so desperate for a lead, any lead, that no one questions the possibility. The only concern is how to approach Hailey. We finally decide that a surprise attack, when she least expects it, is best.

  Just before everyone takes off, Henry’s phone pings.

  “Hold on, guys,” he calls out.

  Marci leans over to read the text message. “What does ‘K Pawn to e4’ mean?”

  “It’s an opening gambit. Toby wants me to call. She obviously found something.” Excited, Henry hits the reply button. “Come
on, come on—hey, what you got?”

  We wait impatiently as Toby goes through an obviously obsessive explanation of how she tracked down the email address. After a few minutes, Marci does a hand-circling “Get on with it” gesture.

  Henry ignores her, listens some more, then asks, “You sure?” Pause, then, “Owe you a game.”

  Marci bounces impatiently on the couch. “Finally! What did she say?”

  “Whoever sent the emails routed them through Val’s computer.”

  “What?” Marci asks.

  “It appears as if they were sent from her own computer,” Henry explains. “To herself.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I protest. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Of course not.” Henry’s voice has more than a touch of admiration. “It’s not the hardest thing in the world to do if you know anything about hacking. At least that’s what Toby said. The original IP address was switched out for your computer ID, Val. Insanely clever. That way, no one can track down who sent them.”

  Raul looks thoughtful. “After we talk to Hailey tomorrow, a couple of us should speak to Toby. Find out if she has any idea who at WiHi has mad hacking skills and can fake an IP address!”

  * * *

  Orange Street is quiet, a few blocks north of the heart of Brooklyn Heights. Before school the next day, the team meets opposite Hailey’s building. The air is chilly. Marci looks particularly miserable that she had to get out of bed earlier than usual. No one speaks until Omar raises his voice.

  “Hailey! Over here!”

  She looks surprised, and then amused, as we surround her. “If you’re trying to kidnap me for ransom money, you’re out of luck. My folks don’t have a dime.”

  “Funny.” Marci pulls her into the alley.

  “Can someone tell me—” Hailey turns pale. “Did something happen to Jagger?”

  “He’s the same,” Henry mumbles.

  “That’s a relief.” Nobody responds, because it’s not a relief at all. “What’s this about?”

  “We need the truth,” I say.

  “Please,” Marci adds. “It’s not like we’re accusing you of doing it by yourself—”

  “Doing what by myself?” Hailey seems genuinely confused. “You think I’m the one who got Jagger to stick his neck in a rope? I don’t do that kind of stuff.”

  “He wasn’t playing Pass Out,” Henry says. “He was getting initiated into MP.”

  Hailey blinks. “Oh-kay. Someone’s going to have to explain.”

  “Maybe you should. What were you doing that night?” Raul demands. “The night Jagger got hurt.”

  Hailey’s eyes flick around the group, then land on me. “You fucking bitch! You think I had something to do with it? That I’m MP?”

  “Are you?” Henry asks. “Maybe someone else on your team—”

  “Are you nuts? Besides the fact that nobody on A Team would ever do that to anyone, none of us has time to freaking breathe, let alone join some secret society and plan weird-ass pranks. Benny’s aunt is sick, so he has to pitch in until his mom comes back from Florida. Both Leni and Scott took two days off to finish their early-deadline college applications. We’re one segment short this week—” She looks around the group, hate making her body rigid. “If anything, it’s Val who set this up. You guys ever consider that? She’ll do anything to get ahead!”

  “Let’s not do this,” Raul says. “I believe you when you say it’s not you, but it’s not Val, either. You understand why we had to ask, right? We figured the only way everything makes sense is if there’s an insider in TV Production.”

  The fight leaves Hailey as the impact hits. “Jagger did it for the story?” She leans limply against the wall. “Put his neck in a noose and…damn!”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s crazy.”

  “When was this exactly?”

  “The Friday before Thanksgiving. Why?”

  “No reason,” she says. “Just, you know, I didn’t remember the exact day.” She gives me a funny look. “Don’t you have tape?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When Jagger met MP. Didn’t you shoot it? That’s what I would have done.”

  “I couldn’t. I wasn’t there—”

  Immediately, I shut up. I should have realized something long before this moment.

  * * *

  We pass the bagel shop on the way to WiHi. Raul nudges me. “Got a couple of dollars? I didn’t eat breakfast—and don’t have any money.”

  “Sure.” Waving the others ahead, I dig into my backpack. “What kind do you like?”

  “Sesame.” He grins.

  The store is warm, windows steamy with morning goodness. It’s too bad I don’t drink coffee because the scent of fresh-made smells delicious. Not burned, which for some reason is the way Mom seems to brew it.

  Raul and I settle at the table farthest from the door. In front of us, two toasted bagels are smeared with cream cheese. He takes a huge bite of his, chews it down before saying, “Okay, Valerie, spill.”

  “First, when did you start sounding like Marci? And second, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I saw your face when we talked to Hailey. Something upset you. Besides the fact that she called you a bitch.”

  I lean back. “She’s right. Jagger planned to shoot as much of the initiation as he could with Mr. Carleton’s little demo camera.”

  “And…?”

  “In the confusion, I forgot about that.”

  “How was he going to capture anything without them knowing? Did he hide the camera in his jacket?”

  I shake my head. “Backpack. He was afraid he’d have to take off his coat.”

  Raul swallows another bite of bagel. “He couldn’t have gotten the camera going. The cops would have watched the footage. They’d realize something’s up because MP would have to tell Jagger what to do with the rope. He didn’t know ahead of time.”

  “Except the police might not have found the camera.” Raul’s eyebrows rise like double question marks. “Jagger hid it pretty well.”

  “Cops aren’t stupid. I’m sure they checked.”

  I laugh grimly. “Jagger worked it out himself. He was very proud of the idea. Said he read some James Bond novel where the spy hides a gun inside a paperback.”

  “No way,” Raul breathes.

  “Way. He took his copy of A Separate Peace and hollowed a space big enough for the camera. Then he cut a hole on the cover exactly where the lens is. He showed it to me. You’d have to know what to look for to notice it.”

  “So, what was he going to do? Take out the book and say, ‘Go ahead and initiate. I’ll just sit here and read my English assignment’?”

  “He put it in the side pocket.” I lift my backpack. “It’s mesh like this one. All he had to do was press Record. He practiced in the mirror so he could do it without anyone noticing.”

  “Genius,” Raul admits. “You think the police missed it?”

  “What else could it be? The camera is so light, even if a cop picked up the book, they might not notice. Actually, they probably didn’t even take it out of the pocket. Jagger’s in high school. They’d expect him to have a book.”

  “Mrs. Orapessa’s going to be pissed it’s ruined,” Raul mutters. It’s the kind of random thought that’s been beaten into us throughout thirteen years of public school.

  “There are extras in the book room. What we need to worry about is finding Jagger’s backpack.�
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  Raul glances at the painted bagel-clock that hangs behind the counter. “It’s early. If we’re lucky, Mrs. Voorham’s still home. It’s closer than going to the hospital.”

  First period’s almost over, so why not ditch the rest of the day? “I know where he lives.”

  “I bet.”

  Uh-oh.

  There’s a definite undercurrent in his voice. Does Raul suspect something went on between Jagger and me? Getting up to throw the paper plates away, I pretend I didn’t hear.

  * * *

  My first impression of the woman who opens the door is that we’re looking at Jagger’s grandmother. But then the voice, dull with exhaustion and worry, greets me by name.

  “Come in, Val.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Voorham. This is Raul. He’s a friend of Jagger’s, too.”

  “How is he?” Raul asks gently.

  Jagger’s mom sinks into a living-room chair. Without being invited, Raul and I take the couch. “They took out the breathing tube yesterday.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” I ask.

  Helpless, her shoulders rise and fall. “He’s breathing on his own but still unresponsive. No one knows what’ll happen next.”

  Jagger’s story about his mom makes me worried. “He’ll be okay, Mrs. Voorham. You have to hang in there. For Jagger’s sake. That’s what we’re all doing.”

  She nods and I pray that means she’ll be all right. The silence in the room hangs like a cloud, dark and heavy. After a few moments, Raul clears his throat.

  “Mrs. Voorham, Val and I were wondering if you have Jagger’s backpack.”

  “What?” She makes an effort to focus. “His backpack? I don’t know.”

  “Maybe the police gave it to you,” I say. “After, you know, at the hospital.”

  “Did Jagger have it with him when…?” She can’t continue. Her face is so pale.

  “Why don’t I get you some water?” I ask. “I know where the kitchen is.”

  “Ummm…” Even that is hard for her to decide.