Tais-Toi

Chapter Seventeen

The day after that, Peony and I are sitting on my bed in my room at school. The pen and paper are ready. Peony never learned sign language after I lost my voice and I can't blame her for that. It isn't because I lose my voice that the whole world should learn sign language. Peony didn't want to learn it, I need to adapt. So, I write everything down. It doesn't go as fast and sometimes it's very annoying and inconvenient, but I have to learn how to live with it. And until now, it's been working. And after a while just talking, we come to the subject of my father.

He gave me a box yesterday, with One Direction stuff in it.

"Really? I knew I wasn't imagining hearing One Direction play on your radio. It's a CD, isn't it? Which one?" I hold three fingers in the air. She does understand the basics of sign language... "Midnight Memories? Wow... miracle! How?"

I don't know. He just... gave it. But we had a little fight before that...

"Oh, babe... Are you okay?"

I'm fine. I actually met my grandmother. The mother of my father, not the one in Belgium.

"Wow. Girl, what did you do?! So much in one time! Are you sure you're okay?"

Yeah, don't worry. Just a little confused by everything. I heard some things I didn't expect, but I'll get through it. I promise her.

"What kind of things? You know you can tell me..." She tries very carefully to tell me that she's curious and wants to know everything that happened. While I'm writing the story down, Peony looks through the stuff I was given by my father. And when she's reading the whole story, I take the next CD and let it play. It's the fourth one: Four. Yesterday, I heard the first two, now the third and the fourth.

"Sooooo, your mother was a CIA-agent? Are you sure that they were telling the truth?"

I don't know what to believe anymore.

"Are you sure she wasn't a spy or something like that? A spy from the Belgian government? Or a mafia agent who didn't want to tell she was actually mafia? Or, or maybe she was an assassin gone rogue..."

You watch way too much TV. She was just an agent. I don't even know what she had to do back there. My grandmother said something about protecting One Direction.

"Your mum had to protect One Direction? Okay, that's totally crazy! Now I don't believe anything of what you just told me!"

And usually you're the one with the crazy theories... If it even sounds impossible to you...

"But you said it yourself: you don't know what to believe anymore! So, you think there's still a possibility that it is true, don't you?"

Peony. No. It's impossible. This theory is crazy, unrealistic even. She sighs and doesn't say anything anymore. She knows she shouldn't discuss with me.

Peony stays till late in the evening until she has to go home of her parents. We say goodbye and promise each other to see each other again soon. I stay on the sidewalk until the car of her parents disappears in the dark night. And I'm alone again.