Sylvie watched helplessly as Marie slid across the floor of the truck toward Arsène. When she got near enough, he grabbed hold of her ankle and pulled her the rest of the way, so that she went sprawling onto the ground. Laying the AK-47 in the dust, he got down on his knees and opened his pants, while the soldier in the jeep kept the machine gun trained on Sylvie and the others. Marie began crying. Doctor Van de Velde, bleeding and weak, looked away in horror.
Suddenly, there came a shot. The man behind the machine gun toppled. Arsène, caught off guard, grabbed for his AK-47, but when he looked up, Olivier had him locked in the sights of his own automatic rifle.
“No!” Arsène pleaded for his life, his pants down around his knees. Olivier waited while Marie, trembling, crawled out from under him, his aim unwavering. Sylvie jumped down from the truck to help her. “Please!” begged Arsène, “just go! I won’t stop you!”
But Olivier had no mercy. As soon as Marie was clear he fired, bullets riddling Arsène’s chest until he lay in the dust, wide-eyed and unseeing. Marie sobbed uncontrollably in Sylvie’s arms. Holding her tight, Sylvie looked up into her brother’s face. There was no emotion in his eyes, no remorse—not even relief.
“There’ll be more coming,” he told her coldly. “Get her in the truck, and let’s go.”
THEY REACHED THE CAMP GATES ahead of Kayembe’s men, in time to meet an arriving convoy of Tanzanian soldiers. By then, Marie had fashioned a bandage for Doctor Van de Velde from his bloodied shirt. The wound wasn’t life-threatening—the Belgian opted to let the Tanzanians take him to the camp hospital to have it seen to, but he insisted that Marie go on to Dar es Salaam with Sylvie and her family.
“Your time here is done,” he said in his blunt fashion. “You’ve become a liability.”
Marie didn’t argue with him.
FOR THREE DAYS they drove across grasslands and high country, morning and night. Olivier taught Marie how to handle the truck so that she could spell him off at the wheel. They worried the whole way that Kayembe might follow them, but they found out later from Doctor Van de Velde that the Tanzanian troops succeeded in driving Kayembe and his forces out of Nyarugusu. The Zone 3 clinic burned to the ground, but the other clinics and the hospital were saved. According to the Belgian, now the UN was arguing with the Tanzanians about rebuilding the clinic that burned, since the Tanzanians would have been just as happy to shut the entire camp down.
Sylvie shed tears for Fiston, who had given his life trying to save them. He had known her father, and, like him, he died a good man—even if circumstances had made him choose to work for Kayembe. She prayed that his sacrifice had allowed his spirit to cross over, and that it wasn’t still trapped in Nyarugusu.
When they reached Dar es Salaam, Marie had to argue with the staff at the Canadian embassy about letting them inside. At last she managed to convince the embassy officials that the family’s lives were in danger from Kayembe and his men. Marie explained to Sylvie that the embassy was considered Canadian territory, and as long as the family stayed inside, they’d be safe from attack. But as wonderful as the embassy was—Mama was delighted with the indoor toilet, and Pascal and Lucie quickly became spoiled watching the TV that the staff provided in their living quarters—it soon began to feel to Sylvie like another refugee camp. Until the Canadian government, oceans away, decided what to do with them, they couldn’t even go outside the embassy grounds for fear they wouldn’t be allowed back in.
On the tenth day after they arrived in Dar es Salaam, Marie left them to fly to Montreal. She planned to do what she could from there to persuade her government that the family would never be safe from Kayembe, not so long as they remained in central Africa, and to let them come to Canada.
Before she left, Marie warned Sylvie not to tell anyone about Olivier shooting Arsène. If the Canadians found out he had killed someone, they might never let him into the country. As far as anyone was to know, Olivier was just a fourteen-year-old boy. But, watching him roam the embassy like a caged animal, Sylvie worried for him. She had seen the look on his face when he shot Arsène. How would he ever adjust to life in a place like Canada, where there were laws to be obeyed?
“It’s so boring here,” he complained at the beginning of their third week at the embassy. “There’s nothing to do.”
“Here,” said Sylvie, handing him a book about Canada, “learn something about where we’re going.”
“If we ever get there.”
“We’ll get there. Marie says thirty thousand people have signed the petition. She won’t let us down.”
Sylvie taught herself to type on an old computer the embassy staff let her use—a skill that Marie told her, when they spoke on Skype, she would need once they finally arrived in Montreal and she started school. For the first time in her life, Sylvie had daily access to the Internet. She visited Alain’s website frequently, and was heartened by the comments people wrote there—complete strangers wishing Sylvie and her family well and urging their government to let them into the country.
Encouraged by Marie and Alain, Sylvie began to post on the site, too. People had many questions for her about her family, and about their lives in North Kivu and in Nyarugusu. At first she was shy, but when other Congolese started sharing their stories about the murder, rape, and torture that went on there, she found the courage to tell her own story—how she and Mama were raped, and how the soldier cut her face with the machete.
“Please do not feel sorry for me,” she wrote. “I am one of the lucky ones.”
And she saw that she was. Soon, forty thousand people had signed the petition, then fifty thousand. Sylvie counted the hours and the days until the Canadian government, thousands of miles away, would decide their fate. Surely it wouldn’t be long before they agreed to let them come.
FIONA HAD ONLY BEEN in Vice-Principal Bains’s office once before, when she was on the planning committee for last year’s Artravaganza Night, the school’s annual art show. She was a star student then. Seated in front of him now, she felt like some kind of criminal.
“Fiona, something has come to my attention,” he began ominously.
From the way he was avoiding looking at her, Fiona could guess what that something was. For the last two weeks, since the start of school, everything had been about the boob shot—from finding a hard copy of it taped to her locker on the first day of classes, to being snubbed by Megan and Brit when she saw them in homeroom. Fiona found out from Lacey—who was no longer speaking to Megan and Brit—that they’d been going around saying horrible things about her, calling her a slut, a skank, a whore. It seemed that, to them, she’d gone from being the girl they’d known all their lives to some completely different person, defined only by that picture. She thanked her lucky stars for Lacey and Rick, who had stuck by her, constantly reassuring her that, sooner or later, the whole mess would blow over—even if, right now, it just blowed.
“First, you should know that I have not seen this picture of you that’s going around,” said Mr. Bains, leaning back in his chair as though he was trying to keep as much distance between them as he could manage. Everybody was used to the turban Mr. Bains wore with his usual chinos and open shirt, but right now, to Fiona, it seemed intimidating. She didn’t want to imagine what Sikhs thought about girls who took nude photos of themselves. “I promise you I will never look at it,” he continued. Fiona struggled for something to say. She sat like a lump, gaze fixed on the floor. But from the corner of her eye, she saw him shrug helplessly. “To be honest, we’ve never had to deal with something like this at our school before.”
Fiona thought, You mean you’ve never found out about it before! Because she couldn’t have been the only one.
“The implications are very serious,” he continued. “Technically, that photo is child pornography, and distributing it is a crime.” Seriously? “Anybody caught viewing it or sending it around could be arrested.” His gaze became intense. “Fiona, this is very important. Did anyone force you to pose for tha
t picture?”
“No!” she exclaimed.
“Look, I know you’re a good kid. I’m just trying to understand what happened, and whether I should be calling the police.”
“Don’t call the police,” she half insisted, half pleaded. “Mr. Bains, please. I made a mistake, and I’m dealing with it.”
He studied her for a moment. “Fiona, if you took that photo of yourself and then sent it to somebody, you could be charged with distributing child porn.”
What? “It’s my private business,” she said, growing angry.
“It isn’t private anymore,” he pointed out. “Do your parents know about it?”
“Yes.”
“What action are they taking?”
“They don’t think it’s such a big deal,” she said, which was at least true of her mom. “They’re letting me handle it.”
He clicked his pen open and closed a couple of times, looking unconvinced. “Don’t fool yourself,” he said. “This isn’t going away. There’s counseling available—you don’t have to face this alone.”
He was being really nice, but Fiona found herself repeating something her mother had said to her. “If I act like a victim, then I become a victim.”
“I still have to report it to the police,” he said. “Maybe they can shut this thing down.”
“Please don’t. There’s nothing they can do.”
They both knew it was true—trying to stop a picture from circulating on the Internet was like trying to catch a shadow.
Mr. Bains chewed his lip. “So what’s your plan? How are you going to deal with it?”
“One asshole at a time,” she told him, at which he raised an eyebrow. “Sorry,” she apologized. But as she got up to leave, an idea started to form, and she realized she might just have come up with the solution—somehow, she had to make all those people who were tearing her down see her for herself again. See her as Fiona.
WHEN SHE GOT HOME, Fiona found her mom at work at the kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of research. The TV was on in the living room, which was unusual, since her mom didn’t watch much TV. But ever since the news broke about that African girl being holed up in a Canadian embassy someplace, she’d been glued to it.
“How was school?” she asked, without looking up from the article she was writing.
“Okay, unless you count Mr. Bains accusing me of being child pornographer.”
Her mom stopped typing and looked up. “What?”
“He found out about the photo,” she said. “He says he has to tell the cops, that I could be charged with distributing porn.”
“Oh, honey. That’s ridiculous.” She got up to take her in her arms, and Fiona let her. She needed a hug. “What’s going to happen to Ryan?” her mom asked. “He’s the one who sent it around.”
“They don’t know it was him, and I’m not telling them.”
Her mom stood back and studied her with surprise. “Why are you protecting him?”
“You’re the one who said not to be a victim!”
“But I didn’t mean he should get away with it,” she replied.
“Why can’t everybody just drop it?” Fiona snapped at her. “I said I would handle it!”
“Okay, okay,” said her mom, backing off.
Fiona flopped down on the living room sofa. A half-hour ago in Mr. Bains office, her plan had seemed clear—one by one, she was going to talk to all the jerks who’d been putting her down to let them know how much the things they said about her hurt. Now she wondered how she would ever find the guts to do that. Everything was muddled again.
On the TV, a young black woman was being interviewed from her home in Montreal. Dr. Marie Pierre, it said on the screen. “Sylvie and her family face persecution and quite possibly death in the DRC and in Tanzania, unless Canada accepts them,” she said. Her English was perfect. “We owe them a new life. Canadian mining companies have a history of supporting the militias against the people, so we’ve been part of the problem. This is a chance to help.”
“That poor girl and her family,” remarked Fiona’s mom. “They’re trapped inside the embassy in Tanzania until the government agrees to recognize their refugee claim.”
Fiona watched as the now famous photo came up on the TV screen, the one where Sylvie was looking into the camera with deep, frightened eyes—eyes that make you shudder to think what they’d seen. But who was she, really? She’s been defined by a picture, too, Fiona realized. She’d become known by the scar on her face, but the scar was just an idea of a girl, just like the boob shot was an idea of Fiona.
But who was the girl? Those eyes—what were they saying? Fiona thought that maybe she understood. They were saying, See me for who I really am.
FIONA’S BIRTHDAY was the next day, Saturday. Her dad made a plan to take her out to lunch with Brandon and Katie, and then to the Vancouver Aquarium—one of Fiona’s favorite places. Joanne didn’t join them. Fiona didn’t ask why, and her dad didn’t bring it up.
After they finished eating, the restaurant servers brought a cake to the table and sang “Happy Birthday.” Then came the moment Fiona had been waiting for all summer.
“Surprise!” said her dad, handing her his present.
Fiona tore off the gift wrap to find the very latest smartphone. The official launch date wasn’t until tomorrow, but Fiona’s dad had managed to get this one early, just as he’d promised. It was slim and light, with twice the speed of the previous version.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck.
“You’re welcome. Careful with this one, right?”
He had to say it.
“Don’t worry,” she replied, acknowledging his multiple meanings. “Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson.”
AFTER LUNCH, they drove to Stanley Park and checked out the penguin exhibit and then the sea otters, where Fiona and Katie put their faces up to the glass to watch the otters dive and roll. Even though she was now officially fifteen, Fiona felt like a kid again, and she was loving it. But after a while, Fiona noticed that Brandon wasn’t having much fun. He’d never been the most outgoing kid—he would spend entire days glued to computer games if Joanne let him—but Fiona sensed there was something more going on. When her dad and Katie decided to pay the penguins a second visit, Fiona stayed back with him, watching the belugas through the windows of the underground viewing area.
“Anything wrong, B?”
He was silent for a moment, then he asked, “How come you never come over anymore?”
Now it was Fiona’s turn to go silent. “It’s complicated,” she finally replied.
“It’s because you sexted, isn’t it?” Fiona glanced at him. He was only eleven! What did he know about sexting? “Mom and Dad have been fighting about it,” he said, without waiting for a reply. “Mom thinks you’re a bad influence.”
No surprise there. “What do you think?” she asked.
He hesitated before answering, then, blushing, he pulled something out of his jeans pocket. “I found this in Dad’s car, under the seat.”
Fiona stared in shock at her old cell phone, resting in the palm of his hand. She reminded herself to breathe.
“How long have you had this?” she asked, taking it from him.
“A few weeks.” His face had gone tomato red.
“Did you look on it?” He nodded. “Did you find—?”
He nodded again, then blurted, “It was Tommy’s idea to do it!”
“Do what?”
“Upload it. Onto Friendjam.”
It took Fiona a moment to process what he was saying. It was never Ryan! she realized. It was my own little brother!
“Brandon,” she said, too shocked to get mad, “you know how wrong it was to do that, right?”
From his tight expression, she couldn’t tell if he was sorry or guilty or angry—or all three.
“Why did you take that picture?” he asked.
There were so many answers and half-answers to that question, Fi
ona opted for the simplest one.
“It was supposed to be private,” she replied.
“Tommy says you’re a whore.”
The word had largely lost its sting over the past weeks, but coming from Brandon’s mouth, it pierced her, right through the heart. Suddenly, she was burning with anger.
“Tommy is a little perv!” she told him. “Stop hanging out with him!”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” he threw back.
“Brandon!”
“If you tell on me,” he lashed out, “my mom’s just going to blame you anyway!”
She watched him lope away with a surly stride, looking ridiculous in his child’s body, acting like a teenager. But Fiona felt like crying, not laughing. She closed her hand over the cell phone, feeling it like fire in her palm.
WHEN FIONA GOT HOME later that afternoon, the first thing she did with her new smartphone was text Ryan to ask him to meet her at a neighborhood coffee place. She got there early to make sure she was waiting for him when he arrived. He looked nervous as he approached the table.
“Don’t worry. I won’t bite,” she told him.
“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” he said as he sat down. “Is this some kind of ambush?”
“I owe you an apology,” Fiona replied. “I know it wasn’t you who posted that picture on Friendjam.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Turns out it was my little brother.”
Ryan got a quizzical look. “That’s…disturbing.”
“Tell me about it.”
Ryan sat back, relaxing in the chair. “It hasn’t been easy for me, either, you know. You’ve got a lot of friends, and they all hate me.”
“I figured you made a copy,” Fiona offered lamely. “I thought you were getting back at me.”
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