Diplomatic Immunity (22 page)

“We didn't go anywhere. We're the same people. When you convinced me to swim in leaves, you didn't have a plan. But it was the best day I'd had in years. I loved you. Plan or no plan.”

The tears started again.

“Life jacket, Charlotte!” my grandma called from the other room. What, did she have a cup against the wall?

She hustled into the room with another towel. I buried my face in it and heaved giant sobs.

“This is what happens when you cork it up for years,” Gramma
Weeza said. “At first I told her to let it all out. The problem is, this corked well runs deep.”

Charlotte put her hand on my back and rubbed softly.

“What am I going to do, Charlotte?”

“I don't know. Have you talked to Rafael?”

“Not since he told me I ruined his life.”

She sighed. “You'll get through this.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it's either that or you die trying. And I don't think this is going to kill you.”

I grimaced. “I think you're speaking too soon.”

That night, I couldn't help but stalk the internet looking for news of Raf in the aftermath of the article. But there was nothing.

I went to Post-Anon. Maybe other people's misery would make me feel better. There was another entry of the poem about lost love.

Even though I'm out of chances

You might notice in all my glances

That I still love you, and my broken heart dances

Just knowing that I had it good that one time

Now all I've got is one last rhyme

I shut my computer and hid under the covers and wondered how in the world I would make it to school in the morning.

As much as I tried to shut it out, Tuesday morning came. It sneaked through the crack at the bottom of my bedroom door and infiltrated the space between my window and the sill, and once it was inside, it bonked me on the head as if to say,
Wake up, world's biggest asshat
.

I checked my phone for any messages from Raf, but there was only one from Charlotte.

Charlotte:
Thinking of you.

A knock came from my door, followed by Gramma Weeza's voice.

“Breakfast, Pipe.”

“I'm not hungry,” I mumbled.

“You need your energy,” she said.

“I don't deserve energy,” I said.

I heard her footsteps as she walked back down the hall. Usually she insisted on breakfast. It was always the biggest meal she prepared, and it sometimes resembled a dinner more than a breakfast. For my sixteenth birthday, she'd made me pork chops and rice. For breakfast.

But today she didn't pressure me. My situation must have been really pathetic if she was letting me off the hook so easily.

When I got to school, it was bad. Really bad. Like teen-movie bad, complete with fake coughs that sounded like “narc” and “bitch
.
” My locker had a website scrawled across it in black permanent marker: “www.hopb.com.”

Knowing it couldn't be anything good, I resisted checking it out for a full thirty seconds. When I gave in and looked it up on my phone, I gasped. A literal bottom-of-the-lungs gasp.

At the top of the page was a banner with a picture of me licking my hand. I recognized it as one night when I'd learned how to do a tequila shot one night at the embassy, but the angle and the way my eyes were closed made it look like I was passionately making out with my own hand.

The banner read: “Hate on Piper Baird.”

Below it was some sort of mission statement.

Do you hate Piper Baird? So do we! Feel free to share your pictures or stories with us here. And since Piper values anonymity, don't bother leaving your name.

So many entries. So many unflattering pictures. Stupid cell phones with their cameras.

One anonymous poster even wrote a short story to go along with the hand-licking picture. The story was told from the perspective of my tongue, which I guess was creative.

Shutting off my phone, I straightened my spine and walked down the hallway, ignoring the glares and trying to ignore the tears streaming down my face, and hoping and not hoping for a glance of Raf.

When I got to chemistry, Raf's usual seat was empty.

At lunch, Mack and Faroush were sitting at their usual table; and when I got my tray of food, I started toward a different direction—because who would want Benedict Arnold at their table?—but Mack motioned me over.

“You sure know how to cause quite the fracas,” she said once I'd sat down. “I knew what you were doing, but I didn't realize how ruthless it was going to be.”

I put my head down and knocked it against the table. “I know. I'm a horrible person.”

“You're not horrible,” she said. She didn't elaborate.

A loud crack of plastic hit the table and made me jump. Giselle had thrown her tray next to us and sat down.

She stared at me with seething in her eyes. “What. The. Hell.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean for it to be published.”

“Don't hide behind that bullshit. You meant it all along. You are a narcissistic psychopath.”

I put my head back down on the table. “I think you mean ‘sociopath.'”

“What's the difference?”

“A sociopath feels remorse.”

She sighed. “I don't care.” Her French accent was coming out more than I'd ever heard it before. “You broke my best friend.”

“I know,” I said.

“Why did you do it?”

I shook my head. “I was trying to pay for college.”

She glared at me for a few long moments. “That's all you have to say?”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“That doesn't fix anything.”

She grabbed her tray and stood up.

“Wait,” I said.

“What?”

“Where is he?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I'm not telling you shit.”

She stalked away.

“Well, that was exciting,” Faroush said.

“Ow,” I answered.

They were silent for the rest of lunch, and for that, I was grateful.

In journalism, Jesse went through the rundown and assigned me a story on the controversy over the school's expansion project,
and the property's neighbors who were signing petitions to thwart the move. It was a good story, the top one, so I was pretty sure Jesse felt bad for me. After the meeting, Professor Ferguson called me over to his desk.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“I already know it was a bad story,” I said, staring at my feet.

“Not a bad story,” the professor said. “Not badly written. Actually quite compelling.”

I looked up. “Then why are you frowning?”

He leaned back in his chair. “I think you have a hit-and-run approach to journalism.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means you went from textbook journalism to suicide bomber. You go for the most damage, but at your own expense. I saw it in the story about the communications system changeover, which, as it turns out, was not instigated by a stalking situation. It was a technical malfunction. But the point is, you crossed bridges and then you burned them, leaving nowhere for you to go. Journalism is a game with rules. You have to learn how to play without blowing stuff up.”

The pit in my stomach radiated throughout my entire body. “I think I understand,” I said.

“One more thing,” he said. “If I were you, I would make sure you have another option for college besides the Bennington.”

My heart turned into an anvil as I nodded.

I dived into my assigned story, first interviewing angry neigh
bors and then trying to get a comment from Principal Wallace, who was making it very difficult for me to see him. Then I took a camera out to get some B-roll of the grounds and the houses nearby. Jesse texted me to see if I needed any help, but I told him I could do it on my own. Following the story was the only time I was, for just a moment, able to think about something other than how I'd messed everything up.

After school, Mack helped me put together the video footage of my story. We worked in silence mostly, but she spent extra time adding special effects to the video clips and sound engineering it so that my voice sounded a little less nasal.

Right as I was finished, I got a text message from Charlotte.

Charlotte:
Meet me outside.

I put the finishing touches on the package and sent it off to Jesse and then gathered my things and went out to the roundabout in front of the school. Charlotte was there in her silver Prius.

She rolled down the window. “Get in,” she said.

I obeyed.

She took off down the road and in the direction of Embassy Row.

“Where are we going?” I said, suspiciously.

“Number two on your list. We're going to storm the embassy and demand forgiveness,” she said, turning on her windshield wipers. It had begun to snow, which meant all of DC would soon be shutting down.

“We're not even going to be able to get past the gate.”

“We're going to try.”

“And what would I say to him if we did get in?”

“You could start with ‘I'm sorry' and go from there.”

There was no use arguing anymore, and I didn't feel like trying. Instead, I pulled my knees into my chest and rested my chin on top and tried to take deep breaths.

Sooner than I wanted, Charlotte made a turn and the Spanish embassy came into view, with its red-and-yellow flags and ornate iron gate that seemed twice as tall as the last time I'd seen it.

Charlotte drove right up to the guard's gate and rolled down her window.

“Pipper Baird, here to see Rafael Amador.”

“I'm sorry,” the guard said. “He is unavailable.”

“Could you just please use your little radio thing and let him know that she's here? And very contrite?”

“It is impossible.”

“No, it's not,” she said. “I can see the radio thing, and the button you would need to press.”

“Charlotte,” I started, but she shushed me.

“You just press that green button on top of your walkie-talkie and tell him.”

I began to hope.

The guard shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and
for a moment I thought he might be about to send his attack dogs at us. “Miss, it's not possible because Rafael is out of the country.”

“What?” I blurted out. “Where?”

“I'm not allowed to say.”

I practically crawled over Charlotte. “Is he back in Spain?”

“I'm not allowed to say. Please circle around and remove your car from the premises.”

Charlotte frowned and did as she was told, and on the way back to Chiswick, she said, “Well, at least you can say you tried.”

When I was a little girl, my mom used to buy this really expensive Irish butter from the specialty store. It was rich and creamy and it made her fresh bread taste better than any cake. And if I ever felt sad, or I was having a bad day, I used to sneak into the kitchen and use my finger to shovel small bites of cold butter into my mouth and it would make me feel better.

So today, I went home and tried the same thing with the cheap stuff we had now. And I gagged.

Rafael was out of the country. Probably back in Spain. I Googled his name, but no new stories came up. No explanations of where he was. No hints as to whether he would ever forgive me.

Not even butter could assuage the pain.

So to cope, I did the only thing I really knew how to do. I opened my laptop and started typing.

I had him here. His hand in mine. His fingers laced with my fingers.

I let go first.

And then I closed my laptop.

Sometimes writing was a release.

Sometimes it was an ascent up the face of a mountain, with no harness and no safety line.

Sometimes it was a leap off a cliff attached to a hang glider.

Sometimes it was a leap off a cliff attached to nothing.

Sometimes each word filled my soul.

And sometimes each word ripped a piece of it out. This was one of those times.

Over the next month, I dived into the school paper, sang extra loud for tips, and at night worked on my computer as much as my heart would let me.

My fingers were strong enough to hold him, and my will was strong enough to hold him, but the thing you don't understand, the thing you don't see coming, is that point when it's too late for your strength and your will to keep someone.

I finally stopped looking for Rafael. I didn't think even any of the DIs knew where he was, except maybe Giselle, and she would
never tell me. In fact I was pretty sure she would never talk to me again. Which wasn't that hard because she had never talked that much to me in the first place.

Eventually, the nasty glares subsided, and the snickers in the hallways stopped, and one day, when I got to my locker, I saw that there was no fresh permanent marker on it. I considered that a good day.

I gave up on the living-on-tips story. Bottom line was, I couldn't.

So I was left grasping at air. At empty chairs. At water that could be caught only for a moment before it seeped between my fingers, or dried up. Gone.

I failed you.

I stuck with the stories that Jesse assigned or that I discussed with the department before I actually started writing them. By the time March was over, I was back in my form and was consistently scoring some of the top stories.

The only thing I had was that moment I would never get back. That great and terrible what-if.

What if I hadn't let go of his hand?

And when the deep freeze of winter was gone for good, I found a story. A big one. One that had all the elements of a Bennington winner.

Children in the community were losing teeth at a higher rate than in any other area in Fairfax County. I first discovered it when I heard my neighbor, who was a dentist, remark upon it to my dad.

I started to dig. And dig. First I made a list of things that could cause tooth loss and narrowed it to three factors: diet, tooth-care routines, and environment. The easiest way to check was to interview parents about tooth-care routines.

I didn't find anything, so I moved on to diet. Again, nothing that stuck out as different from any community in the country.

The third was environment. I began looking up stories of environmental oddities and found one about a local factory that had developed a leak in their waste process, allowing several toxins into the water supply.

There it was. It didn't take long to draw lines connecting the toxins and early tooth loss.

Professor Ferguson told me that the story was a contender. It would go up against Jesse's story, where he followed a marijuana plant from its growth to harvest to transportation to preparation to rolled-up joint.

It would be a tough competition, but at least I was a contender. More important, I'd found my passion for reporting again.

Then you came along. And you said those three words. Not “I love you.” But, “I've got you.”

And you had me. And I had you.

The story got me attention, first from the local papers and then from the regional ones and then the news stations and then the national news.

Maybe I hadn't saved the world, but I'd saved a lot of teeth.

But I let go first. I let go and watched you fall to the ground. And then you let go and watched the ground swallow me up.

And for the second time in my life, I'm left with a haunting what-if.

What if I hadn't written the story that destroyed you?

By mid-April, the Bennington committee held the vote to determine the winner of the Bennington Scholarship.

Professor Ferguson told me it was the closest vote they'd ever seen.

Jesse won.

My savings account was empty and I had no Bennington and no Rafael.

But it didn't destroy you. At least, I don't think it did. If I know you, you're out there in the world scaling national treasures and ignoring fences and showing someone else the back side of water. But I hope you're not out there in the world hating me.

Because I love you.

There was nowhere to send my words. It wasn't newsworthy. It had no hook. No scandal. None of the hallmarks that make a good story.

I couldn't help thinking that Raf would want to see it, but if I was being honest, it was me who wanted him to see it. I didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve that. So I did the equivalent of sending it up in a balloon. I submitted it to the Post-Anon website. Three days later, it appeared on the site.

I read it one more time and said good-bye to Rafael Amador.