A Song for Bijou

by Josh Farrar

  Maybe my likeness to Maman is the reason he never wants to let me out of his sight. Maybe the pain is too great. Maybe he is just tired of missing her.

  It’s different for me, though. If I didn’t have the few photographs that I keep in the drawer next to my bed, I’m not sure I would remember what she looked like at all. My memories of her are fading, too, like those images worn thin from too much touching. Smells, feelings … I remember those. But the memories of her face, her expressions, were the first to go. The woman in the photos looks like half a stranger now.

  Until I look in the mirror, and remember.

  Maybe that’s why I refuse to talk about Maman in the past tense.

  Because I see her every day, first thing in the morning, staring me right in the face.

  “Are you sure there’s no way for me to convince you to come to rehearsal tomorrow?” Mary Agnes asks. We’re riding the 2 train on a Tuesday, after school, grasping a portion of the cold steel pole that stands in the middle of the subway car like a leafless winter tree. “You know, he won’t even be there.”

  I have refused to let her even speak Alex’s name for a week. And thankfully, I haven’t had to see him myself. He has been forbidden from participating in Musicale.

  “Thank you for asking,” I say. “I do appreciate it, really. But I would rather just watch, okay?”

  “Listen, Bijou, I know you don’t want to talk about him, and I hear you,” Mary Agnes says with extra care. “But let me say this. If he has anything to say about the video, any explanation, you should at least hear him out.”

  “You forgot to say, ‘You owe him that much,’” I say.

  “You don’t owe him anything.” She pulls her gum out of her mouth and places it delicately in a napkin. “But maybe you owe it to yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look, Bijou, I consider you a friend. And I hope you think of me as one, too, even though we’re pretty different. But maybe you could use more than one friend. And Alex? No matter what it seems like he did, he’s the kind of boy you want in your life. Believe me.”

  My answer is a smile and a shrug; that is all I can give her right now.

  “Talk to him, okay? See what he has to say for himself.”

  “I will think about it,” I say as Mary Agnes struggles to pull on her backpack that probably weighs half what she does. “And Mary Agnes, you are my friend. Thank you, okay?” She might be bossy, she might be silly at times, but I know a friend when I see one.

  “Of course, sweetie, of course.” I kiss her twice on her cheeks, a gesture she is finally growing used to after these nearly three months with me.

  Alone now, transferring to the Q train, I wonder, is Alex the kind of boy I want in my life?

  I have been in America for only twelve weeks. I survived the biggest earthquake in the history of my country, and the death of the person closest to me in the world. I am surviving Brooklyn, its strange people, its confusing rules, its freezing weather, its dirty subway platforms. And I am fine.

  So why would I need a boy in my life at all?

  Dear Alex,

  I had a good talk with Mary Agnes today, and I do understand that you were not trying to be mean. And that nothing that happened was actually even your fault. I know you are not a bad person and that you would never try to hurt me on purpose.

  But I do think that we come from very, very different places and have had very different lives. People in America like to pretend that that doesn’t matter, but I believe it does.

  I like you, Alex, and you’ve told me you like me, too. For a moment, I was beginning to think that that was enough. But now I’ve found out—I’ve learned the hard way—that it’s not.

  I’m sorry, Alex. I know you want to get to know me better. You want to be close friends. But for me, right now, this is not possible.

  I’ll see you … sometime.

  Bijou

  33

  Preparations

  Ira wasn’t kidding. He has hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of video on his laptop. And I’d be surprised if he didn’t have footage of nearly every member of the St. Cathopher’s family. Since I’m still big-time grounded, he’s over at my house, and we’re scouring his computer for suitable “gotcha” material.

  “You could nail every kid we know,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Every teacher, too.” He smiles.

  We’ve only been searching his library for five minutes, and already I’ve seen: a fifth-grade Greg Vargas wetting his pants during a handball game; Mr. Miller leaving the john without washing his hands; even Angela Gudrun, obviously unaccustomed to her fancy high heels, taking a nasty spill at Spring Fling.

  “Is this mostly hidden-camera stuff, or what?”

  “The Mr. Miller one in the bathroom? Yeah. But that was just an experiment. Mostly, though, I just walk around with the camera. When something interesting happens, I just keep it at my waist and press record. See, no start-up noise whatsoever.”

  “Uh, yeah, I noticed.” It’s hard not to remember one of the more recent occasions when Ira used this keep-it-at-the-waist-and-press-record method.

  “Alex, really, I’m sorry. I never—”

  “What’s done is done,” I say. While it’s tempting to get mad at him all over again, I try to focus on the present. “I know you never would have put it out in the world on your own, and you couldn’t have predicted that Rocky and Trevor would steal it.”

  “Yeah, but now I know how to handle security better. I used to leave videos on the camera for a few days at a time before uploading them to my computer. But I’ll never do that again. The videos go straight to my laptop, and the laptop stays far away from school.”

  We check out some more videos. The wide-scale embarrassment potential is epic, but Ira hasn’t named the files or organized them in any way, so locating stuff on our specific targets is tricky, to say the least.

  “One question,” I say. “Why do you do this?”

  “Well, you know I want to be a director one day, right? But it’s not only that. It’s the weird stuff people do when they think nobody’s looking at them. I find it … fascinating.”

  “And you really shoot all this stuff without anybody noticing you?”

  “The time in the bathroom with you was the only time somebody caught me in the act.”

  “That’s nuts. I mean, I get it, the camera’s at your waist, not balancing on your shoulder, but still … it’s not that hard to notice.”

  “The camera’s not hard to notice, but I am.”

  “Huh?”

  He thinks for a second. “As soon as our entire class became completely obsessed with girls—which happened pretty much overnight, with zero warning—it was like I became invisible. Not just to girls, but to my friends, too.”

  “That’s so untrue.” It is, isn’t it?

  “Oh, come on, Alex. Take Spring Fling as an example. You basically told me to get lost as soon as the girls came over. Go talk to the geeks, you said.”

  “I did not,” I say, my stomach churning. I, Alex Schrader, may be a wee bit selfish at times, but I didn’t abandon one of my oldest friends as soon as I became interested in girls. Or did I?

  “ ‘Friendship can walk the plank, matey,’ right?”

  Wow, he remembers that line as well as Nomura does. “Okay, we’ve both done some stupid things in the last five weeks,” I say. “Truce?” I know a bro-shake won’t make up for my behavior, but hopefully it’s a start.

  “Truce,” Ira says. We squeeze wrists and go through the elaborate handshake that Nomura concocted when the three of us were eleven. We still remember every last grip, every sweet little palm slide, ending on a down-low clasp that’s way slicker and slier than the jocky high fives of Rocky and Trevor.

  “Okay, so we’ve at least got some time stamps to work with here,” I say, turning my attention to the file folder on Ira’s laptop again.

  “That, we do.”

  “Let’s stick w
ith the night of Spring Fling.”

  Ira chuckles wickedly and rubs his hands together. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks.

  “I do believe we’re on the same page.”

  But before we can find what we’re looking for, I hear a key turning in our front-door lock. I look at my watch. It’s already five fifteen! Dolly and my mom aren’t supposed to be here, not yet, but Ira definitely isn’t. Not while I’m grounded.

  “Hello?” I call, trying for a friendly tone. I pray it’s only Dolly.

  “Hi,” two voices call. Ugh. My mom’s with her. Dolly’s cello must have needed a ride somewhere, so Mom provided it. If I’m going to pull this off, I’ll need to keep better tabs on their schedules.

  “Should I hide?” Ira asks.

  “No,” I say. “I’ll tell her we’re working on a project.” I give a sad laugh. “After all, how much more grounded can I be than I already am?”

  After Ira leaves, I wonder if hiding him might have been a better strategy.

  “So what’s this video project about?” Mom asks, having finally calmed down about Ira’s being here at all. I’m down-stairs now, talking to her while she puts away her coat and her briefcase, and she seems to have accepted the fact that I couldn’t tell her about the “assignment” Ira and I were working on, because I don’t have a phone.

  “It’s for this human-behavior project,” I say. I don’t know where I come up with this stuff, but it’s not a flat-out lie (I’m back into “omitting the truth” territory, I guess). We are, in fact, doing a human-behavior project; it just happens to be completely extracurricular.

  “After Mrs. Eagleton’s phone call,” she says, “the last thing I want to see in this house is you and Ira hunched over a laptop and a video camera.”

  “This is important,” I say. “You’ll see.”

  “More or less important than your incessant practicing on that idiotic drum?” Dolly breaks in, as if anyone had asked for her opinion, nodding toward the rada standing discreetly in the corner of the room.

  “Nine times out of ten, I’m done practicing by the time you get home.” Mom outlawed any contact with Bijou or her rhythm-virtuoso brother, but she did give in after I begged her to let me stick with my practice routine during my grounding. I guess she doesn’t have the heart to make me give up the one thing I’ve ever been halfway good at.

  “Yeah, it’s that one time out of ten I’m concerned with.”

  “You know how many thousands of times I’ve lost sleep ’cause of that plank of wood you’re constantly screeching away on?”

  “Kids, please,” Mom says. “The last thing I need at the end of the day is to hear the two of you bickering.”

  Behind Mom’s back, I stick my tongue out at my obnoxious sister. In the last week, I’ve lost my phone, my freedom, and the first girl I’ve ever liked. I’m not going to let Dolly take away my rada, too.

  “Hey, Alex. Haven’t heard from you in a few days,” Jou Jou says, sounding genuinely happy to hear from me, as opposed to coldly suspicious of a kid who recently humiliated his sister (even if he didn’t mean to). Could Bijou possibly not have told him? “I was starting to get worried, man. Everything cool?”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine,” I say. And, figuring it’s better to come out with it, I take a chance. “Although I don’t know if everything’s cool between your sister and me.”

  Jou Jou can’t see me, but I’m cringing like I’m about to receive a blow. I’m taking a risk here by even bringing up the issue of the video; if he knows there’s something wrong between me and Bijou, all trust between the two of us will evaporate instantly. Because blood is thicker than … cow skin. Right?

  He takes a while to answer. “Listen, Alex, Bijou don’t tell me anything about this, and my aunt and uncle didn’t say nothing, either. But I think if you and I are gonna keep going with the lessons, you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

  So I do. I tell him everything about the video, about Rocky and Trevor, and about how I plan to get them back. And I tell him about how Bijou was the unintended victim of Rocky and Trevor’s stupidity, and Ira’s, and mine. I even tell him about the letter I finally (!) got from Bijou, figuring that if I leave out even a single detail and he finds out later, I’ll look like a jerk. (Okay, Mom, I guess I’m starting to see how “omitting the truth” really isn’t the way to go, after all.) I tell him that I understand why Bijou wants to push the pause button on our friendship, but that, for now, anyway, I still don’t want to take no for an answer.

  “This is bad,” Jou Jou says. “I can see how it happened, but I wish it hadn’t happened to her, you know? She’s the last person in the world who deserves it.”

  “Believe me, I know,” I say. “It sucks. It’s been … a nightmare.”

  Then, I tell Jou Jou about how I plan to get Bijou back, too. About what she means to me, and how I have to try to win her friendship back one last time. I won’t be able to do it without his help, after all.

  “Alex, you did say she wrote you and said she didn’t want to see you anymore, am I right?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “And you still think it’s a good idea to keep pushing like this? What if she’s right?”

  “Listen, if this doesn’t work, I will never so much as look at Bijou again. I will leave her completely in peace and not have a problem with it.” I have to pause for a second, because the idea of never even getting to talk to Bijou again makes me all emotional. “I can’t explain it, but I … need to do this.”

  Jou Jou takes a deep breath. “Alex, you’ve got a sister, am I right?”

  “Yeah. Dolly.”

  “Okay, Dolly. Try to imagine if somebody you had only known for a few weeks came to you with a plan like this in mind. Would you trust that person?”

  I don’t know what to say. Obviously, he’s got a serious point here.

  “Bijou is all I’ve got, Alex. She’s the most important person in the world to me.”

  “I know…. I’m sure she is. I’m really sorry I even—”

  “I can really trust you, you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I swear it.”

  “Okay, Alex, I’m in.”

  “That’s awesome! But you won’t tell her we’re … collaborating?”

  “No, man. It won’t work if I let the secret out now, will it?” He pauses. “But I’m putting my trust in you, Alex. You understand what that means, right?”

  “I do. And I won’t let you down. Promise.”

  “And you’d better be practicing your raboday pattern, man. Because it won’t work unless you’re sounding tight. Got it?”

  “I’ll be ready,” I say.

  34

  Musicale

  Performing in Musicale may not be mandatory, but everyone is required to attend. Of course, getting up on the stage to perform did not seem appealing to me at all, not after I have already provided so much entertainment to both schools (live and on film, which makes me a multimedia sensation).

  But now I’m here, sitting in the bleachers of the gymnasium, the same one where I met Alex only a month ago, with Pierre and Marie Claire to my left, waiting for the performance to begin. And I realize that just watching might be even worse. At least if I were performing, I would be too nervous preparing to remember the truth: that my life in Brooklyn has only gone from bad to worse.

  I watch as the bleachers begin to fill. While I am not the only one with family here—even though it is only three o’clock, many parents are; that is how seriously Musicale is taken in these schools—I am quite sure I’m the only one whose aunt and uncle have come for the sole purpose of making sure that I stay away from boys, and that they stay away from me. My uncle deliberately chose the last row of seats, farthest away from the stage, even though we arrived so early that there were plenty of better seats still available.

  “How long is this going to last?” Tonton Pierre says, shifting his weight on the uncomfortable aluminum seat.

&nb
sp; It’s been a week since the video showed up and my fight with Jenna, but my problems at school are still a big topic at home. Tonton Pierre was surprisingly gentle toward me for the first day or two, but then he started to ask me questions: How did I come to know the boys in the video? Why was that mean girl so jealous of me? Why was I associating with such misguided young people? And when he found out that I had joined a Musicale group that included boys, he became so angry that Marie Claire had to step between us and tell her husband to calm down, take a breath, and stop berating his niece.

  Marie Claire pats Pierre on the knee. “Sit back and relax, mon cher. We are here, at Bijou’s school. And we are going to enjoy the performance.”

  Tonton Pierre grumbles and shrugs, as if accepting a brief sentence in prison.

  The bleachers are starting to fill up. Nomura leads his parents into the third row, then jogs backstage. Maricel is right behind him, although I don’t see Ira. Rocky, his hair slick and shiny, walks ten feet in front of his parents and scowls at his balding father. Jenna is here, too, with her mother and little brother. I shrink into my skin, wanting to avoid any contact with her. The last thing I need is for Pierre to realize who she is and create a scene. And I doubt her mama would be any more pleased to see me, the girl who had called her daughter a common house servant.

  Mary Agnes looks up, finds me, gives me a wave. She is leading her parents and three younger siblings—every one of them with carrot-colored hair and milky, freckled skin that wouldn’t survive a day in Port-au-Prince—into front-row seats, which are permanently reserved for her, since she is on the planning committee for every event in the school’s calendar. I wave back, smile, and hope that Mary Agnes doesn’t feel a sentimental urge to introduce herself to La Famille Doucet.

  But it is too late. Here she comes, marching up the steps with a neon smile.

  “Hi, Bijou!” She kisses me on both cheeks, then says, “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Doucet, I’m Mary Agnes Brady,” and extends her hand as if she has come to my house to take me to the high school prom (no, we don’t have prom in Haiti, and yes, I learned what prom is on Tous Mes Enfants). Is she unaware of the awkwardness of the situation, or does she simply not care? I brace myself for Pierre’s reaction, but he and Marie Claire both return Mary Agnes’s greeting politely.