A World Without You(70)

CHAPTER 46


Phoebe



I’m half-asleep when someone knocks on my door. “Yeah?” I call.

Mom steps inside, holding two letters. “Mail!” she says brightly as she tosses one of them to me. It’s from James Jefferson High; inside are details for the class trip to Europe this summer.

“What’s that?” I ask, looking at the open letter still in Mom’s hand. The Berkshire Academy for Children with Exceptional Needs logo is emblazoned across the top.

“Bo’s school wrote us a letter,” Mom starts.

“Is he in trouble?”

She shakes her head and passes the letter over to me. I get the impression that this whole “mail call” thing was just an excuse to show me the letter. I read quickly. The first page is a cut-and-paste form letter that was probably mailed out to every family. I already know most of it—that a girl from his class, Sofía Muniz, committed suicide. That government officials have been observing the students, and that the board will be voting to determine the school’s future in a few weeks. Parents are invited to give their opinions by phone or email.

The second page includes a personal note from Dr. Franklin, describing how the situation with the officials and the investigation affect Bo specifically. He warns us that Bo’s therapy isn’t working as well as he’d hoped, that he’s changing his meds again, that Bo may have to be transferred to a new facility regardless of the school’s fate.

“Huh,” I say, handing the letter back to Mom.

“I just wanted you to know,” Mom says. “We should be extra careful around Bo. It’s a . . . sensitive time.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Mom asks.

“I’m not the one who needs to be talked to.” I don’t break eye contact, the challenge between us clear. But when Mom leaves my room, she doesn’t go to see Bo. Instead, she heads down the hallway to consult Dad.

Typical. She has the perfect way to start a conversation with Bo, but instead, she’s going to squirrel away the letter and her fears behind Dad’s office door. It’s like they’re actively trying to keep the silence, as if silence was the best—the only—possible option for this family.

I play on my phone until well past midnight, but what I really want is a distraction. I want my laptop back, and I’m a little pissed at the way Bo took it. I mean, I don’t really care, I wasn’t using it, but he didn’t even ask. He acted like I wasn’t even in the room. And besides, it’s mine.

I push myself off the bed and throw open my door. Bo’s light is off, and I can hear him snoring on his bed, but it’s easy to break into his room, considering he has no door. My laptop’s battery light glows just enough for me to find it on his desk, and I creep inside his room, stepping over his dirty clothes on the floor, and snatch it back.

It’s not until I’m sitting on my bed, my laptop plugged into the charger and open on my pillow, that I notice there’s a small drive attached to the side. It’s broken and jagged, but the actual drive seems to work. I click on the USB icon and find video files. Each file name is just a series of numbers, but it doesn’t take long to figure out they’re dates and times. I select one at random, and in the brief instant between when the file loads and starts to play, I worry that I’ve just stumbled onto Bo’s private porn stash.

But the video just shows a room. Dr. Franklin’s office. There he is, behind his desk, taking notes.

I crank up the volume on my laptop as Dr. Franklin pauses his work and the door opens.

Bo is the first person in the room. Other kids, ones I recognize from Bo’s school, follow. They all sit in a circle as if they’ve done this a hundred times. It’s all routine for them.

I lean in closer, the screen illuminating my face.

“Good morning,” Dr. Franklin says. “I trust you all had a good Monday?”

Bo looks over at the girl he’s sitting beside. She’s short, with brown skin and black hair. “The best,” he says with a smile.

Is that his girlfriend? I wonder. Bo’s chair is scooted close to hers, but she hasn’t moved closer to him. He keeps looking at her; she sweeps her hair over one side of her face, the side closest to him, like she’s trying to hide. But then she tucks some of her hair behind her ear, and her hand drops beside his, her fingers brushing his open palm.

Dr. Franklin starts what looks like a group therapy session, with a theme of reading other people’s emotions and caring about their comfort zones. He has one of the boys, a tiny little guy who’s practically paper-white, stand in the center of the room for a demonstration about appropriate ways to treat people. Seems a bit cruel. The kid’s shaking like a leaf, but most of my attention is on my brother.

I’ve never seen him like this. Unguarded. Real.

And more than that, I’ve never seen Bo as anything but my brother. Every time in my whole life that I’ve ever laid eyes on Bo, he’s just been my brother. If I saw him in a crowd of people, like at an assembly, I would think: There are all those people, and there’s my brother. He was separate. He was defined.

But here, in this video, at Berkshire Academy surrounded by people he knows that I don’t, I’m seeing him not as my brother but just as a person. A stranger, even.