by Josh Farrar
Once we are a block away and can see that no one else is around, we are holding hands. We laugh about the “rehearsal” and wonder whether or not we will all be making fools of ourselves.
“I don’t want to give Haitian drumming a bad name,” Alex says.
“Don’t worry,” I tease. “What you are doing, I wouldn’t call ‘Haitian drumming.’ Not yet.”
“Thanks a lot!” Alex says, tickling me. “How many years ’til I become a master drummer, you think?”
“How many years?” I ask. “Or how many lifetimes?”
He makes a pretend-hurt face and puts his arm around my waist, and I let my head fall on his shoulder. Even though he is only a little bit taller than me, it works.
But our schools are too close together. I can already see St. Christopher’s, only a block away. Is there time for a quick kiss before we get too close? I stop and look at Alex and those beautiful blue-green eyes. I sigh and hug him. Today, a hug is enough. I breathe him in and then, though I don’t want to, let him go.
“I’ll be thinking of you,” I say.
“Me too,” he says. “All day.”
We each walk backward for a few steps, not wanting to stop looking at each other. But soon enough, he is gone.
In front of school, I see Trevor again, this time with a knowing look in his eye. As if he is waiting for me.
“How was rehearsal?” he asks, not exactly blocking my way on the steps, but not letting me pass him, either.
“I hear Alex is a real good drummer,” he says, playing air drums. As if with drumsticks, not like a Haitian drummer at all.
“Yes, he is,” I say. “Can you move, please? I have class.”
“He isn’t who you think he is,” Trevor says. “Alex, I mean.”
“If that’s what you think, then you don’t know him.”
“I know Schrader pretty well. We’ve been in the same class since kindergarten,” he says. “You’ve been here, what, a couple months?”
When I don’t say anything, he says, “Anyway, you’ll see what I mean soon enough.” He slides down the banister, his feet smacking the sidewalk when he reaches the bottom. “And when you do, feel free to get in touch. Like I said, I think you’re really—”
Instead of letting him finish the sentence, I run up the steps and put all my body’s weight against the door, not thinking for a moment that someone might be on the other side of it.
“You idiot, watch where you’re going!” Jenna yells. I hit her with the door, and the drink she was holding must have exploded because her pink T-shirt is covered in soda. “God, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh no, Jenna, I didn’t mean it,” I say, not asking her what she thought she was doing, standing directly in front of the door like that. “It was a mistake. There was glare on the glass. I’m so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be if you don’t stop flirting with my boyfriend.”
Oh, so this is what she’s upset about. If she only knew how wrong she was. “Jenna, I was not flirting with him. And if it were my choice, I would not even be talking to him. If you don’t want us to have a conversation, tell him to stop talking to me.”
“You’re lying,” she says. “Why would Trevor talk to you?” As if I am garbage. Who raised this girl?
“Since you were watching,” I ask, “did it look like I came up to him? He wouldn’t even let me walk by him.”
“I know the truth about you, you know. I know everything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And I’m going to tell every single person, in both schools. Everyone’ll finally see what a little faker you are. Let’s see how popular you are after that.”
I don’t need to hear any more. I leave the obviously crazy girl there, her mouth wide open, syrupy soda still dripping off her skin, her clothing, even her face, as her voice echoes through the halls.
“You’re going to be sorry! When I’m done, you’re going to wish you never came to this school!”
26
Boys on Film
The next morning, Ira is waiting for me in front of school. Superstressed. Like pre-heart-attack stressed. I’d completely forgotten about this supposedly important thing he needs to tell me.
“Why haven’t you been answering your cell, man?” he asks. The poor kid looks like he’s about to blow a gasket.
“I didn’t tell you? I’m grounded. Like, no-cell-phone-for-a-month grounded. I’ve been sent back to caveman times.” The truth is, I’ve kind of liked being off the grid. Bijou and I send notes to each other from the Gran Bwa, the secret exchange place that nobody but us knows about. Going down Flatbush Avenue adds, what, another seven minutes to my route to and from school, which is no big deal. And who else do I really want to hear from, anyway? Definitely not Anxious Ira.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you,” Ira says. “It’s important.”
“Listen, I do want to talk. I want to hear what you have to say, but can it wait? I’ve got three minutes to get to Price’s class. I’ve been late twice already this week, and he’s gonna freak on me if I’m late again.”
“It can’t wait!” Ira says, but I’m already halfway down the hall, toward my locker. I’ve got to dump off my backpack, and I should make it to my good buddy Mr. Price on time.
“It’s gonna have to!” I yell over my shoulder. “Meet me at lunch!”
Why does everybody feel the sudden need to talk to me this morning? I’ve got maybe ninety seconds to make it to class, and Rocky and Trevor are standing right in front of my locker.
“Hello and howdy, dudes,” I say, not really caring about the consequences of sassing off to these clowns anymore (Bijou gives me confidence, see?). “Would you kindly move out of the way for a second, so I can, you know, get into my locker?”
“Wow, Schrader, that was an all-time performance,” Trevor says, moving a crucial six inches so I can open my combination lock. Needless to say, I have no idea what the heck he’s talking about.
“Seriously,” Rocky chimes in. “Oscar-worthy. Only thing is, didn’t you steal that line from us? That’s illegal, that’s, what do you call it—”
“Plagiarism,” Trevor says. “Straight-up theft.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“You’ll see soon enough,” Trevor says. “But make sure our names don’t get mentioned. If this comes back to us, you will regret it, believe me.”
“Dude,” Rocky says, patting Trevor on the back. “Stop stressing. He’s the one who said it, and he said it on video. Forget the plagiarism thing. Schrader here will get sole writing credit. And he deserves it. After all, it’s a friggin’ masterpiece.”
They cackle their way down the hall, not bothering to explain. What video? What “masterpiece”? What is going on?!
I see a bit of white sticking out of my locker vent, and right away I know it’s another note. My blood freezes as I brace for what’s inside. It’s got to be Rocky and Trevor, right? There’s got to be some connection between this supposed “performance” and the note, but what is it? I tear open the envelope and find this:
Now everybody knows how you really feel about that stupid girl. And believe me, she is stupid. Wait till you see what happens next.
Enjoy your day!
I head straight for English, knowing I’ll see Nomura there. I can only hope that he’s got a clue what Rocky and Trevor were talking about and how it relates to this note. What could the writer mean by how I “really feel”? Unlike Rocky and Trevor, I’m not into bragging about girls, and I don’t think I’ve ever copied any of their stupid sayings—seriously, plagiarize them? Publicly? That’d be social suicide.
As I make my way down the hall, it seems like everyone is looking at me. Seventh and eighth graders, fifth and sixth graders, even lower schoolers, all glance in my direction. But just as quickly, their eyes dart away, like I’m an exotic but disgusting animal at whom they can’t resist taking a guilty peek.
&nbs
p; “Finally, you’re here,” I whisper to Nomura as he takes the seat to my left. “What is happening?”
“You … don’t want to know,” he says.
“Umm, yes, I do. Like, right now.” Nomura whips out his phone and goes to YouTube. “Oh no,” I say. “Is it bad?”
“It’s worse than bad.”
But before the video starts playing, Mr. Price stands up and clears his throat. “Mr. Nomura, kindly put the phone away. You and Mr. Schrader can watch all the videos you like after class, but this is my time.”
27
Enjoy Your Dessert
“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?
Dear Bijou,
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
28
Gentlemen
“I told you Schrader wasn’t who you thought he was,” Trevor says, waiting for me again halfway between St. Catherine’s and the Clark Street station. “Not all guys are like him, though, Bijou. Some of us are actually gentlemen.”
I ignore him and keep walking. I want nothing to do with Alex, with Trevor, with any of them.
Please, please, please leave me alone.
Please, please, please don’t let my aunt and uncle see the video.
Just let me be invisible.
I go to that tree that Alex and I used to call our Gran Bwa. What a stupid joke that was. There is no spirit in that tree. It is an old, broken-looking thing, covered with scars and holes and ugly blemishes.
I read his note, crumple it up, and throw it in the gutter in front of Trini-Daddy’s. He says he can explain everything. He says he is sorry, but an apology won’t make a difference in my life. Can Alex snap his fingers and make everyone in school see me the way they saw me only forty-eight hours ago? No, he can’t.
I thought I could be friends with an American boy. I thought I could trust him even though we come from such different places and have such different experiences.
I was wrong.
Bijou,
Maybe I shouldn’t write again, but since I haven’t heard from you in a couple days, I had to try again. I know that when you understand what happened, and how it happened, you’ll see that while I might have been stupid, I wasn’t trying to be mean. That’s the last thing I would ever do.
I was talking to Ira and Nomura in the bathroom before the movie. And I was quoting Rocky and Trevor, repeating some terrible things that they had said about you to me earlier that week. Maybe that was my mistake, right there. I shouldn’t have repeated words that ugly. I should have kept them private, where they belong.
But they were not my words; they were Rocky and Trevor’s. If you think I could have said those awful things, then you never knew me in the first place.
When I saw that Ira had his camera on, I asked (demanded, actually) that he erase everything he had filmed. But he didn’t. I thought I could trust him, but obviously I was wrong. He’s no friend of mine. Not anymore.
But, Bijou, you’ve got to believe me: I’m the same person I’ve been all along. I’m the guy who wants to get to know you better, and the guy who knows that you have no interest whatsoever in marrying me so you can stay in the U.S.! (Sorry, a lame attempt at a joke.)
Please, please think this over. Please trust me. And write me back, okay?
Your friend, always,
Alex
29
Long-Time Friends
It’s Thursday, five minutes before first period. I still haven’t heard a word from Bijou, and Nomura is trying to convince me that that’s not entirely Ira’s fault. Which is obviously insane.
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Nomura says. “And ever since you met Bijou, you’ve been a real jerk to him.”
“I’m the jerk?” I ask. “He’s the one who shot that stupid video. And posted it.” And ruined my life, I almost add. “He’s also the one who hasn’t been showing up to school. If that doesn’t scream ‘guilty,’ what does?”
“Let me put it this way. For the past few weeks, you’ve been treating Ira the way Rocky and Trevor treat the rest of us.”
“Come on, you’re exaggerating. It hasn’t been that bad.”
“Remember ‘Friendship can walk the plank, matey’?” Nomura asks.
“Hold on,” I say. “That was a joke.”
“You have to admit, though, you’ve been treating Ira differently since Bijou showed up.”
“Only because he has lost his mind,” I say. “The video proves it. And so do these.” I pull ou
t the three anonymous notes.
Nomura pushes his glasses up against his nose. His pupils bounce back and forth like tennis balls, scanning the text. “Oh boy,” he says.
“It has to be Ira, right?”
“Um, not necessarily. What makes you say that?”
“The only other logical possibility is Trevor and Rocky. I thought it was them at first. But they didn’t post the video; Ira did. Plus, have you ever known them to do anything anonymous? They’re not exactly known for their shyness and secrecy.”
“So you think Ira’s been waging a silent war against you for the last month?”
“Yeah, and what gets me is you, my best friend, seem to think I deserve it.”
Nomura grimaces. “Look, only somebody with a serious imbalance would do this. And if it does actually turn out to be Ira, yeah, this is unforgivable. All I’m saying is, it didn’t come completely out of nowhere.”
As we leave the bathroom, Nomura and I still in full heated discussion, I nearly run over Mrs. Eagleton, the headmistress. “Mr. Schrader, we need to chat,” she says. Eagleton looks as grisly and humorless as a prison warden. Not someone you want to encounter in normal circumstances, and definitely not somebody you want to “chat” with after the publication of a viral video in which you look like a member of the KKK.
“Come on, Alex,” she says. “Follow me.”
“But I’ve got to get to English. I have a paper due.” Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying.
“Well, you’ll have to make it up, then. Mrs. Terraciano will understand.” Eagleton’s already walking toward her office. “Well, come on, Mr. Schrader. I don’t have all day.”
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