Circle of Silence (12 page)

Taneisha’s blanket falls to the side. Her left leg is in a cast
from foot to thigh. A steel rod goes from one side of her leg to the other,
right under her knee. It looks extremely painful.

“Everything’s fine,” I reassure the old woman. “I’ll leave now,
Taneisha. But if you change your mind and want to talk—” I scribble my cell
number on a page from my notebook. “Think about it. Please.”

Before she yells again, I hurry out. Raul’s exactly where he
said he’d be. “What happened? I heard shouting.”

“She doesn’t want to be interviewed. But I told her mom I’d
stay—oh, good. Here she is.”

Mrs. Woods hurries down the hallway, Styrofoam cup in hand.
“Everything okay?”

“Taneisha got kind of upset. I’m sorry—”

Mrs. Woods shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. She’s been
cranky ever since the accident. It’s what they call a tib-fib. Two broken
bones.”

“Ouch. I’d be cranky, too,” Raul says.

Mrs. Woods looks at us curiously. “Thanks for visiting….”

Before she asks how we know her daughter, I grab Raul’s arm.
“Hope she gets better soon.”

* * *

Taneisha’s the only one of the four accident victims
still in the hospital. Raul and I stop at Tristan’s brick row house to shoot his
interview. I don’t hear a word he says, even though I’m the one working the
camera and have the headphones on. I’m still thinking about Taneisha. I couldn’t
tell if she’s terrified by MP—or protecting them.

“Thanks, Tristan. We got enough.” Raul asks, “Val?”

“What? Oh, sorry. Yeah, it’s good.”

Outside, the sun has set. Raul nudges me. “Up for a burger? I
need food before interviewing Alexis.”

“We don’t have to do them all today.”

He gestures to the camera. “We’ve got the equipment. Didn’t you
tell me Alexis lives on Joralemon? We have to pass the Burger ’n Bun to get
there.”

“Now that you mention it, I am hungry.”

Raul breaks into a grin. “Thought so. You seemed a little
spacey at Tristan’s.”

Burger ’n Bun is one of the few restaurants in the Heights that
hasn’t been renovated, refreshed or turned into an overpriced hipster joint. A
narrow place, there’s barely room for a well-used grill and fryer combo behind
the yellowing marble counter. A set of round, patched-leather stools face the
grill. Three wobbly tables line the back wall, but no one sits there if there’s
a choice. The counter’s the place to be. We take the end stools, leaving a
couple of empty seats between us and an elderly man drinking coffee.

“Hey, Dave,” Raul says.

Dave’s run the place forever. The large-bellied cook flips
burgers, scrambles eggs and fries potatoes to near-perfect crispness.

“Afternoon, folks. What’ll it be?”

There aren’t menus at Burger ’n Bun. Just a faded list on the
wall that no one bothers with. There are never specials of the day, no new
items. Nothing ever changes, which might be the most comforting thing about the
place.

Politely, Raul lets me go first. I wave him on while I
decide.

“Cheeseburger and fries,” he orders. “With a root beer.”

“I’ll have a grilled cheese with fries. Rye bread and tomato,
please. Lemonade if you have it.”

Dave grunts and gets to work. He’s not a talky guy, but he’s a
magician with a spatula. For a few minutes, we watch the show. Fries, burger,
bun. Bread for my order is slathered with butter and plopped onto the grill.

Raul swivels his stool to face me. “You going to Winter
Formal?”

“Uh-uh. A Team’s got that story. They’re doing ticket sales
next week, and then they’ll cover the dance in January. It’s on the board.”

Raul clears his throat. “I don’t mean for
Campus News.
I meant, you know, to go. To dance and shit.”

Before I can answer, Dave slaps chipped white plates onto the
counter and brings drinks with paper-covered straws stuck to the outside of the
glasses. “Need anything else?”

Raul shakes his head. “Thanks. That’s it.”

I get busy unfolding a napkin and then reach for the ketchup.
Next thing I know, a wrapper hits my cheek. Raul’s resorted to the ten-year-old
“blow the straw paper at your neighbor” trick to get my attention.

Turning toward him, I notice the expectant look on his face. I
pass him the plastic bottle. “You could have asked.”

“I sort of did. Will you go to Winter Formal with me?”

My fork clatters to the floor. “I’ll get it.”

I jump off the stool before Raul can move. Never mind the
embarrassment of groping about on the floor. It gives me a moment to think.

Wow! Marci’s right, after all. He does like me that way. It’s
not hard to figure out what she’d tell me to do:
just say
yes.

She’s right. I can’t spend the rest of my life dreaming about
Jagger. It’s not like Raul and I don’t have a lot in common. We do. We could
talk camera angles all night. Plus, he’s cute. Yes, I haven’t felt that special
spark the way I do even now when I’m with Jagger—but maybe that takes time.

I resurface with the fork. Raul hands me a clean one.

“Thanks.” I swivel the stool so that I’m facing him. “Sure,
I’ll go with you. It’ll be fun.”

His anxious look melts into a grin. “Excellent. ’Cause you
know, Latinos can dance.”

I hold up a hand as if I’m being sworn in at a trial. “Full
disclosure. I’m really lame at the whole dance bit.”

“I’ll show you.”

I laugh. “Right. Mr. Carleton will be glad to give up class
time for salsa lessons.”

Raul squirts ketchup onto his burger. “I’m not thinking about
doing it in class!”

“Raul!” I pick up a sandwich half. “Okay, if I don’t start
eating, this grilled cheese will turn to rubber.”

He laughs into his burger.

Honestly, Val. Can you possibly be more of
a dweeb?

Power is not a means, it is an end.

George Orwell

MP LOG

This is what happens when things don’t get done right. The
new girl called me from the hospital and said she had to talk to me. Alone. She
sounded really scared, so I said, “I’ll be there at seven. Make sure your mom,
or whoever is visiting you, is gone. I don’t want to run into anyone.”

At 6:45, I slipped into the lobby wearing a gray
windbreaker, the boring kind that nobody notices. My hair was combed neatly. I
ignored the desk with the notice that said Visitor Sign-In Here. Instead, I
stood by a trash can. Didn’t take more than a few minutes before someone tossed
their visitor sticker. Easy to stick it on my jacket.

When I got to the room, the new girl told me she’d had a
visit from that news chick who
knew
she got hurt
doing something with us.

I kept my voice low and calm because you never want to show
you’re surprised.

“Did you tell her anything?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

She looked terrified, like maybe I wouldn’t believe her. She
said, “I swear, all I said to that Val girl is I don’t know what you’re talking
about and you better get out right now. She wrote down her phone number in case
I changed my mind and wanted to talk to her, but I threw the paper in the trash.
Is that okay?”

“Yeah that’s good,” I said, “but how did she find out? Did
she give you an explanation?”

“I have no idea,” the new chick said. “That’s why I called
you. Because I wasn’t the one who told her.”

Then the new girl started crying and asking, “Do you believe
me and can I still be in the group when I get better because it’s not fair to
punish me when I did what you said to do.”

I said, “Nothing changes as long as you keep quiet.” She
swore she would, so I said, “Okay, you’re still MP.”

But now we’ve got this problem. At the next meeting, I said,
“One of you broke the blood oath. I’m going to find out who.”

Everyone looked shocked when I told them about the hospital
visit and they all swore on a second blood oath that it wasn’t them.

“What about Phantom?” Hell Girl asked. “Maybe Phantom talked
to
Campus News
.”

Frankenstein shook his head. “Why? Skeletor has pictures of
Phantom like he has of the rest of us.”

Ghost Face looked thoughtful. “Maybe Phantom wants to make
sure we never meet again. If the new girl caved and told
Campus News
what actually happened, we couldn’t blame it on
Phantom.”

That made sense.

“We’re okay,” I told them. “If it was Phantom, it’s not like
that
Campus News
chick was told all that much. She
didn’t know anything for sure.”

I hit them up with the wolf grin and said, “But if I ever
find out it was one of you, that person will be really, really sorry.”

Everyone nodded. Word. It’s spine-tinglingly cool how much
control I have. Especially since Phantom quit. I said to the group, “Now we’re
going to pick someone else to join.”

Talk about shock and awe! One of the chicks said, “What
about the new girl? You promised her she can be in the group.”

“She can but not for a long while. It’s not like she can
hang around with us in a cast and crutches because everyone will notice. So
first we’ll plan another prank just so the assholes at school don’t forget about
us. Then we’ll choose someone else to join. I saved all those applications from
the box, so it’ll be easy.”

What I didn’t say to anyone is that after we choose this
second person, we’ll have another initiation. I’ll make sure it’s even better
than the first one.

Just because I can.

18

Exactly as Jagger predicted, MP resurfaces. This time,
the target is Mr. Washington Irving himself. WiHi has two statues: one at the
front of the school next to the flagpole and another near the ball field. A
small plaque on the second one says
Donated by the Class of
’28
, and it’s really, really ugly. The guy looks like he can’t decide
whether he’s constipated or about to let out a big one.

MP draped the nastier of the two heads in a hood, and then hung
a rope around the statue’s neck.
DIE, SUCKERS!
was painted across the chest in bloodred
letters.

The hood and rope are gone within two minutes of its discovery.
The painted words stay until Mr. Orel can figure out how to get it off without
ruining the finish on the statue.

Lucky for us, Raul got a shot of it on his cell before the hood
was removed. What we also get are gossip, rumors and just plain anger. Omar and
I set up a camera during lunch, and a crowd gathers.

“This isn’t funny anymore. I heard there was a hood and rope
around the neck. That’s definitely a racist statement against
African-Americans,” Cleve Watson, the captain of the AV squad, tells us. “Mr.
Wilkins should find the culprits and kick them out of school.”

One of Omar’s lesbian friends in the LGBTQ Alliance agrees. Her
nose ring flares angrily. “LGBTQ stands against any person who trashes someone
else’s rights. A noose around a neck has bad connotations like Cleve said. But
what we in LGBTQ want to know is why nobody got upset by those body parts that
were left around campus last month. Even if they were plastic, they were female
parts. We find that to be just as offensive, especially to the women in this
school.”

A senior, holding tight to his sophomore girlfriend, wondered,
“If Washington Irving is white, and there’s a noose around his neck, does that
really dis African-Americans? Or boring writers?”

Over on the side, watching intently, is a thin, pimply dude.
Omar motions him over. “Want to be on
Campus News?
We’re asking people what they think of the latest MP prank.”

The kid ducks his head, mumbles, “Uh-uh,” and shuffles off.

“Sure looked like he was waiting for his minute of WiHi fame,”
I say.

Omar shrugs. “People get camera-shy.”

Shy, however, is a word Mr. Wilkins has finally discarded from
his vocabulary. The principal makes an emergency announcement over the PA.
“Please excuse the interruption. Anyone involved with defacing and vandalizing
the old Irving statue will be punished. I ask all members of the Washington
Irving community to cooperate with campus police as they investigate the
matter.”

In an on-camera interview, Mr. Wilkins explains further. “I was
tolerant of those first pranks because I didn’t want to trample any student’s
free speech rights.”

“Are you saying you didn’t want a Manhattan High problem?” I
use my best Emily Purdue voice. “You know, when their principal broke up a legal
student protest last year and the parents got him transferred?”

Mr. Wilkins gives a tight-lipped smile. “I was not thinking
about that situation at all, Ms. Gaines. My policy is to allow students the full
amount of First Amendment rights to which they are entitled. The original MP
incidents could not be considered vandalism in the
legal
sense because no school property was destroyed. The actual defacing of
the Irving statue, however, changes things.”

“That’s a fine line,” Omar huffs indignantly. Back in the Media
Center, the rest of the team watches the interview on the monitor. “I don’t
think Wilkins cares about free speech at all. He’s just covering his ass.”

“Totally,” Marci says. “Besides all that, how much does the
noose on the statue remind you of the bird in Val’s locker? And the trophy in
the display case? Those were warnings. Is this one, too?”

Henry brushes hair out of his eyes. “Who are they warning by
messing with the statue?”

Jagger gives me a curious look. “Val? You’re awfully
quiet.”

I didn’t realize my silence was so obvious. In my head, I’m
having a fierce argument.

Tell them about the secret agent, the
meeting in the playground….

Uh-uh! Remember the note. “I could get in
trouble for telling you this. Don’t tell anyone. MP has spies
everywhere.”

Not that I think anyone on the team is a spy, but so far, MP’s
been awfully good at finding out stuff. Locker combo, my email address. I do not
want to be responsible for outing the secret agent. Not yet.

“I’m as much in the dark as the rest of you,” I tell them.

Technically, that cannot be considered a lie.

* * *

The doorbell rings. Footsteps pound as the twins race to
get there first. I’m in the dining room, college catalogues spread across the
polished wood table. The task is to choose my top nine—three reach, three safe,
three “I really want to go here, but can my folks afford it if I don’t get a
scholarship?” schools. Narrowing it down is tough. Plus, the journalism programs
require extras. A kick-ass
Campus News
segment that
nails the MP story would really help.

Jesse—or is it James?—shouts, “Val! It’s for you.”

I’m happy for the interruption—until I see who it is.

“Can I come in?” Jagger’s wearing an aviator jacket with a fake
sheepskin collar and a multicolored scarf. Not an outfit everyone can pull off.
He, of course, looks great.

Jesse and James swarm around us. “I’m Jesse,” James says.

“No, you’re not.” Jesse tackles his brother. “He’s James….”

Clearly, staying on the first floor is not an option. “Let’s go
upstairs. Find a little privacy.”

But where?
Bethany, as usual, is in
the bedroom. It’ll be a month of pot washing to get her out of here.

“Hey, Bethie. Remember me?” Jagger asks.

For a moment, I’m not sure how she could. It’s not like I
brought Jags around when we were together. The house is too loud and too
crowded; it was easier to hang out at his place. But then I remember the July
afternoon I had to get Bethany from the Arcade because she had a doctor’s
appointment. Jagger came with me. At the time, he barely looked at her. Now he
gives my sister the full Voorham treatment.

“Got yourself all grown up, didn’t you?”

“Ninth grade,” she mumbles.

“Cut your hair, too. I like it.” She shrugs as if she doesn’t
care, but I can tell she’s pleased. He shoots her a dimpled smile. “You think
you could give me and Val a few minutes alone? I need to tell her something and
it’s kind of private.”

“Okay.” Bethany scoops up her iPod and closes the door quietly
behind her.

“How do you do that so fast?” I laugh. “I figured I’d have to
bribe her to get her out of here.”

“Natural charm.” Immediately he turns serious. “I really do
have something to tell you.” He pats the bed beside him. “I won’t bite. Or do
anything else.”

I pull out my desk chair. “I’m fine here.”

He shrugs. “Whatever.”

There’s an awkward pause. “So? What do you have to talk to me
about?”

“Remember the MP box?” Jagger asks. “The one that said ‘Join
us’?”

I perk up. “You found it?”

He shakes his head. “I put in an ‘application.’”

“Wait. What? There weren’t any.”

Now that Jagger has my attention, he takes his time, puts a
pillow behind himself and leans comfortably against the headboard. “Right. Not
formal applications. I scribbled something quick and slipped it in.”

“Don’t tell me they asked you to join.”

Jagger grins. “Got the word today.”

“You want to be a member of MP?” My voice gets more than a
little screechy. “Are you crazy?”

“That’s how we get the story, Val. What exactly is MP? Who are
they?”

I lean forward. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would they let
someone from
Campus News
into their club? I mean,
they hate me especially, but I’m sure they’re not in love with the rest of
us.”

“Exactly!” The dimples on his cheeks widen. “But no one knows
I’m in the class. I’ve never been in front of the camera, never anchored.
Invisible the entire year—just like MP. You have to appreciate the irony.”

I roll my shoulders to get rid of the tension tightening my
muscles. At the same time, I’m frantically sorting through what I know—and what
to say.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Don’t do it.”

Jagger’s brow wrinkles. “Why not? I thought you’d be happy. I
mean, okay, I didn’t tell you I put in an application, but that’s because I
wasn’t sure anything would happen. Plus, the fewer people who knew I did it, the
better.”

Omigod!
I lean forward. “Do you
think someone on B Team is a spy?”

Jagger laughs. “Are you downloading secret agent books in your
free time? Of course I don’t think anyone’s a spy. But word gets out. Henry and
Omar talk about it in Calc, Marci tells Phil in the cafeteria. Someone sitting
next to them hears. You know how that goes.”

I do. The WiHi rumor mill is fierce. That’s why the MP story is
so frustrating. Equally worrisome, though, is what the double agent told me: a
girl ended up in the hospital after joining. But I’m sworn to keep that
information secret. A crazy dilemma.

“You can’t do it, Jags.”

“Give me one good reason.”

Urgently, I move to the bed. “Because they’re crazy. And
dangerous. You can’t trust them.”

His eyes flash. “Boy, are you transparent! Jealous because I’ll
break the story and you won’t. I can’t believe I’ve been fed a line of crap all
semester. ‘It’s all about
Campus News
. Not any one
person. We’re supposed to work together.’”

“It is. We do—”

He gets to his feet. “Unless the we is me. Okay, I know I
fucked up the night of Sonya’s party. I was drunk and Dawn came on to me
big-time. I’m sorry. But it’s stupid to hold it against me the rest of my
life.”

“I’m not!”

“You are! What’s worse is you’re letting the best story of the
year slip through your fingers for personal reasons. I refuse to let it
happen.”

He storms from the room. Bethany must have been in Mom’s
bedroom, because she walks in less than ten seconds later.

“You and Jagger have a fight?”

“None of your business!” Despite the cold, I lift the window
and climb onto the fire escape. Jagger stalks down the steps of the building.
This time he doesn’t bother to wave.