Diplomatic Immunity (20 page)

“No worries, Pip. I'll set up over here.”

He gestured to a bench among the flowers, and I slowed to a halt as my emails downloaded. And then there was Charlotte's email.

I read the subject.

And I realized that my minutes with Rafael were no longer infinite. They were limited. And they were very few.

The subject of Charlotte's email read:

In the Next Issue of People: Drugs, Bribes, Statutory Rape, and Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Cards: Why We Need to Rethink the US Policy toward Diplomatic Immunity.

And I realized what I had said earlier to my mom—about breathing in and out for the rest of my life—was wrong, because my breathing totally stopped.

I accidentally crushed the arboretum handout the guy at the front door had handed to us.

Headlines flooded my head.

Drugs.

Bribes.

Affairs.

Fights.

Once I clicked on the link, I quickly moved from not breathing to breathing too much.

There, in all its pixelated glory, was the blurry picture I'd taken of Raf and Alejandro, and it was obvious Raf was holding his brother up.

Shit.

I scrolled down past the other incendiary pictures I'd taken to read who the article was written by.

The byline read: “Edited by Carl Wittburgh from an Anonymous but Verified Insider.”

Verified? Verified by who? I quickly scanned the first few paragraphs, and my sinking feeling was confirmed. It was my story.

Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.

I closed my eyes.

What would this do to Raf?

I texted Charlotte.

Me:
Please tell me you put this together as a joke.

Charlotte:
No joke! I sent it to my uncle, the one who works for People, and we spent the week verifying it. Going over the photos making sure they weren't doctored. Interviewing servants in the embassy. Faculty at the school. It's your story!

I was literally panting at this point.

“Pip? You okay?”

I nodded and turned toward Raf, who looked at me with concern. I smiled and the tension in his face quickly eased.

How long before this article rocked his world? His safe, padded life inside the lines of diplomatic immunity was about to explode. Suddenly I had just this small pile of minutes with him, and I wouldn't be getting any more, and so I clung to them with the tenacity of a miser in his study clinging to his last sack of gold.

Maybe I should've warned him. But what would warning him accomplish?

I put my phone away. There would be time for texting Charlotte later.

Raf had a blanket spread out and the picnic of cold fried chicken and potato salad waiting.

“It's an American-themed picnic,” he said.

I took his hand in mine and started tracing lines over the palm. I even wrote the words
I'm sorry
in cursive, but Raf didn't notice.

Another minute gone, and in its place, I took a mental snapshot of his face and tucked it away.

He sighed and lay back on the blanket. “Tell me something you've never told anyone, Pip.”

I glanced around and then lay down next to him. “It's hard now.”

“Why?”

Because I've ruined your life, and you don't know it.
“It's
early afternoon. And we're not alone. And we've had nothing to drink.” I leaned my head toward him as I whispered, “And I'm not resting the side of my face on your belly.”

He placed his lips lightly on my hair and whispered, “If you need incentive . . .” He pulled up his shirt. “My belly is available, yes?”

He had no concern about the stares we were getting. He only had eyes for me.

“Yes. And oh my God,” I said, covering my hands with my eyes, unable to wipe the smile from my face. And that was how another minute slipped away, replaced by the image of Raf doing something that looked like it could be in a jeans commercial, provided, of course, he wasn't speaking in the commercial, because he just kept saying, “My belly is yours, Piper Baird. My. Belly. Is. Yours.”

When someone treats you like that, you tell them the truth immediately. You tell them how you didn't mean for it to happen, but you accidentally did something that will probably lead to their deportation and his father losing the ambassadorship, as soon as possible so they will have as much time as they can to do something.

What if his father could pull something like he did with the paparazzi? Wouldn't that be worth an early warning?

I shook my head and told myself no. Raf's dad had been able to quash a story about an underage kid who made a bad decision one night because it was in a cheap tabloid magazine. Not
People
.

Maybe Raf would never find out I was the one who wrote it. Sure, things would change because he would probably be sent back to Spain very soon, but at least he wouldn't be out there in the world hating me.

I was on my side, my head propped up by my hand, facing Raf, who was doing the same.

How did we get here?

I never intended to hurt him. I just wanted an article that could get me into Columbia. Maybe I'd never wanted it to be published ever.

Who was I kidding? I'd imagined it in a paper, above the fold. Hell, I'd imagined it in the
Washington Post
.

“Pip? You look confused.”

At least I could tell him the truth right now.

“I'm just struggling with the feelings, my feelings, about you, which are of the strong variety, and I'm bottling up our minutes together in my head so I can pull them out whenever I am missing you.”

We stared at each other for a few minutes.

I waved good-bye to those used-up minutes, and glanced up and noticed how the sun was streaming through the skylights overhead and hitting Raf's brown hair perfectly, and I filed the image away in the little cabinet for “Things Too Painful to Think about Now, or Ever.” Which was smaller than it used to be, but I had a feeling it would soon be filled with pictures of this boy.

And that was when his phone rang, and Fritz came over to us in a rush. Moments later, my dad texted me.

I want you home. Now.

“I'm sorry, Pip, we have to go,” Raf said, helping me to my feet and quickly gathering up the picnic materials. “Something's happening at my home.”

“What is it?” I said, sounding so fake and stupid to my own ears.

“I'm not sure. Everyone's fine; no one's hurt. But apparently there's a story coming out, and my dad wants us all together so he can figure out what to do.”

I couldn't help but wince. Raf noticed.

“Hey, it'll be okay. This happens. Not all the time, and not lately, but it's happened before and it will all be okay.”

I couldn't believe the irony. The executioner being comforted by the . . . executionee.

He held my hand and stroked his thumb over my knuckles.

I brought his hand up to my lips, kissed his knuckles and his thumb, and said, “Rafael Amador, I . . . really like you.”

He smiled.

“Pipper Baird, you send me to the moon.”

When his car pulled up to my house, I had the hardest time letting go of his hand.

“It's just a hand,” Raf said.

“Huh?”

He smiled gently. “You were looking like you were trying to remember the name of said appendage. It's a hand.”

My dad was standing at the door, his arms folded, a frown on his face.

“Good luck with your family stuff,” I said.

Raf put his hands on either side of my cheek and pulled me in for a kiss. “You are not to worry about my family stuff. It will be resolved.”

I got out of the car and rushed inside and my dad followed me in, closing the door behind us. He didn't wave at Raf.

“Piper, I don't want you hanging out with that boy right now.”

I was sitting on the couch, my parents on the two chairs opposite.

“Why?” I said.

“The neighbors—you know, the Phillipses—showed us a story on the
People
magazine website. They knew you went to the same school, and they wanted to warn us. Did you know he has fake IDs? And regularly goes to bars and gets so drunk he has to be helped out? And he runs underground fighting rings?”

Oh my God, I was so stupid.

I quietly agreed not to see him anymore, mostly because I was sure there was no way he'd want to see
me
, and excused myself to my bedroom, feigning a stomachache.

It was actually a very real stomachache that reached northward to my heart.

I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head and put my earbuds in and turned up the music and started to think of the logistics of changing my name to Phyllis Muffler and leaving the country.

I wasn't sure how much time passed. Maybe a couple of hours. I'd dozed on and off, amazed that sleep was even an option, but then I remembered how when Michael was a baby and the doctors would give him a shot, the stress of it would put him to sleep.

Maybe this was one of those times.

A spinning hanger in the corner of my room caught my eye. Michael had wandered in.

“Hey, bud,” I said.

Michael was looking at a picture on my desk of me and him from years ago. It had been taken just before he'd won the third-grade Scrabble competition.

“Rafael is downstairs.”

I shot upright. “What?”

“Rafael is downstairs. He's at the door.”

“What? Where are Mom and Dad?”

“They're out.”

I took several deep breaths. “Michael, can you go downstairs and tell him I'll be right down?”

He looked at me and as he walked out of the room, he casually said, “No.”

Argh.

Okay, Raf was here. Raf was here. And I looked like crap. There were so many things to fix: my hair. My smeared mascara. I was pretty sure I smelled. But there was no time because Raf was here and waiting for me, and he probably knew everything by now, so I wasn't sure he would wait for me to freshen up, and I wasn't sure if I wanted him to wait or I wanted him to give up.

Teeth. I could at least brush my teeth.

I did that in a flash, but I was really thorough, and then I raced downstairs and reached for the door . . . and froze.

It was like Schrödinger's cat. If I didn't open the door, maybe Raf still loved me. If I never opened the door, maybe Raf would love me forever.

No. That was crazy. If you put a cat in a box with a vial of poison, the cat is going to be dead, whether you open the door or not.

“I heard you run down the stairs.” Raf's muffled voice came through the door. “Are you going to open?”

And still I couldn't move. For this one last minute, I could convince myself that Raf was my boyfriend, and he liked me.

I tucked that minute away and sealed the jar in my brain.

And opened the door.

Raf was waiting there. His hair was slightly messier than usual, and sticking out on the sides as if he'd been pulling at it. “It was you, wasn't it?”

My shoulders sagged and I walked past him and sank to the top step of my porch. It wasn't that long ago that my knee had
kissed his head on this same porch. “How long did it take you?”

“Seconds,” he said, sitting next to me. “I remember that one picture. From the party. You were taking it, and I wasn't looking at the lens. I was looking at you.”

I tensed.

“And in that picture, you can tell my eyes are looking infinitesimally to the side. Where your eyes were.”

I nodded. Slowly. And then put my face in my hands.

“Will you at least look at me?”

I stayed still. How could he think I could face him ever again? I was pretty sure if I looked at him, his eyes would bore holes right through my heart and I would bleed out on the porch.

It'd be a good death, though.

“Piper, this afternoon I offered you my belly in front of the world. The least you can do is face me right now.”

There was no arguing with him. He was right. And he'd used my correct name.

I turned slowly, aware of each degree of the turn, and dropped my hands. Once I was facing him, the most I could do was look at his chin.

“Hey, my eyes are up here, you know,” he said with a smile in his voice. How could he still have a smile in his voice? But then I realized it didn't sound like a very strong smile. It sounded fragile. “I'm so tired of girls always staring at my chin. They think I don't notice, but I do.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, straightened my spine as much as I
could, and then looked him in the eye.

And his eyes did that melty thing to my heart, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse in his arms.

But his arms stayed down at his sides.

I didn't have a place to melt anymore. I didn't have a soft spot to land. I broke my soft spot.

“Why did you do it?” Raf said. “Is that what this was all about? Getting a story?”

I glanced up and down the street, looking for another soft spot to land, but everything was hard, and there were only sharp edges and pointy objects and shards of glass and one wrong move would cut me.

Who was I kidding? I was already cut.

I could make up a story. I was good at writing. Maybe there was a guy with a gun to my head, demanding the
True Hollywood Story
of the Amadors. Maybe there was a drug that makes a person tell the truth, like that sodium pentothal, only this particular drug makes the person
type
the truth.

And then, further, it makes the person email the truth. To her best friend. Whose uncle works for
People
magazine. And then, magically, the drug makes the receiving reporter post the story.

“Sift through all those stories in your head, and pick the truth,” he said. This time, there was no smile in his voice.

I could tell the truth. I
would
tell the truth. But if I omitted a couple of key things, maybe I could salvage this.

“That story wasn't supposed to go anywhere. I started it as
an experiment to see what was possible. And then I sort of kept going, for fun.” I could taste the lie. “But then my friend Charlotte sent it to her uncle who works at
People
, and he printed it without my knowledge. I had no idea.” I leaned toward him and put my hand on his chest, but the way his eyes cut to the hand on his chest made me remove it as quickly as I'd placed it there. “I didn't even know it was going to be out there until Charlotte emailed it to me today during our picnic. And I don't have your father's clout to quash a story.”