What do you do with a secret? [Jessica] on Crotalus Commons

Felipe De Matteo

January 22, 2021 1:23 PM

What do you do with a secret? [Jessica] by Felipe De Matteo

OOC: CW: racism, sexism BIC:

The world felt very heavy to Felipe, which was not entirely unusual. He'd felt the weight of the world for his whole life, partly because of the pressures his family put on him to do just that and partly just because that was his nature; if there was a weight be carried, he'd be first in line to carry it. It wasn't that he was necessarily altruistic, at least not the way he thought he should be, but that he was dutiful. Loyal. Cognizant of the burden his existence put on other people if he didn't first carry it himself and indeed, even take their burden from them. Which was why he couldn't talk to Zara about all this.

He'd had nightmares nearly every night since returning to school after the holidays, and most of them revolved around the fact that he was largely alone. It was nice to have Leonor back on his side so to speak, but he was well aware that it was the two of them against the world - or at least against their own world - in a way that neither of them was exactly happy about. Far from it. His nightmares also liked to remind him of the possible dangers that lay with letting Zara in. Jessica, he reasoned, was safer; she was insignificant in the world of De Matteos because she was not dating the former heir, she was not dating the child of the current family patriarch, and she wasn't about to suddenly appear as more than a blip on the international radar for them. It was a sad truth but true nonetheless. In this case, Felipe was almost grateful for it.

Of course, he wasn't entirely sure whether any of that mattered. After all, he was a boy and Jessica was a girl and that meant she was probably safe. She was Muggle-born though, a point which counted against her in a way that it didn't count against Zara. Muggle meant dispensable, replaceable, insignificant. Felipe understood that now.

Still, she was human enough to Felipe that it didn't matter for now what his family thought of her, largely because they wouldn't think of her at all unless he gave them reason to and he didn't intend to do that. She also had the very important trait of understanding his situation a bit. So when his nightmares woke him up earlier than usual one night, he gave up on any efforts to return to sleep - not least of all because sleeping in the same room as Jeremy always made relaxing a little bit difficult anyway - and donned a robe before making his way to the Common Room. As he'd hoped, Jessica was there, sitting by the fire with a book. It wasn't terribly late yet but he'd gone to bed early and felt as if he were suspended in that odd time of night where there was no time at all.

He approached with padded, socked footsteps and ran a hand through his hair, wondering if he looked every bit as big a mess as he felt. "Hey," he said softly, greeting Jessica before he was close enough to startle her more than his surprise presence likely would anyway. "Can I join you?"

22 Felipe De Matteo What do you do with a secret? [Jessica] 1434 1 5

Jessica Hayles

January 26, 2021 6:25 PM

I think it depends on the circumstances. And the secret. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica was worried.

There was no good reason for her to be worried, at least not that she could put her finger on. On the surface of it, everything was…if not ‘fine,’ at least ‘unchanged’. Felipe’s response to her Christmas message had been a bit vague, perhaps a little wistful – but that was normal enough. Leonor had not replied at all – but Jessica had not really expected her to, at least not yet. Later, Jessica thought she hoped that Leonor would, but right now, she didn’t expect any response on that front. Everything was, therefore, just as it had been before midterm.

And yet, Jessica was worried.

She had started haunting the common room more often. The strange…thing they had seen here in the beginning of the year might have, she thought, slightly reduced the number of times they might have otherwise haunted it simultaneously, but she was fairly confident that if she lurked long enough, she’d eventually get a nocturnal opportunity to delicately place a few questions, try to figure out what, if anything, was going on. Sooner or later, she thought, Felipe would always come back to her – maybe not for any logical reason, but eventually, it seemed to be the way of things. She could imagine a point at which she would take matters into her own hands and create a situation more directly, but for now, her instincts said to wait, and so that was what she was doing.

She was actually reading, her mind on her book, more than she was haunting when he finally did approach, and her brown eyes were soft and slightly out of focus as she looked up. They cleared quickly, though, as she nodded, reaching for the ribbon she was using as a bookmark.

“Of course,” she said, gesturing to the nearest seat. She kept her eyes fixed on him as she closed the book and he sat down with her, assessing everything she could see.

“How’re you?” she added, leaving off any limits or directional statements that might have embellished the question. She had a feeling, somehow, that it was important to see how he’d respond, even though she didn’t really know exactly what any given response would mean. A polite general remark would, she thought, probably alarm her the most, but she wasn’t sure that a specific response about this exact moment would be better or not. It would, she supposed, depend on exactly what he said, if he went that route. And how he said it.

16 Jessica Hayles I think it depends on the circumstances. And the secret. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 30, 2021 9:55 PM

What if the circumstances are the secret? by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe took the seat Jessica gestured at, surprising himself with how comfortable it was. There was a seat a little further away, there was one across from Jessica, there was an armchair nearby . . . but sitting close made sense. They were friends and this was safe, even if nothing was safe especially friends. And questions weren't safe among friends, because usually, the right answer to Jessica's question was something passive and blah and only partway true, but that just didn't seem appropriate now. Felipe wouldn't have said he was necessarily opposed to lying - after all, important people had to lie rather often - but he preferred to lie by omission or downplay the truth rather than outright change it. He wasn't sure he'd hardly ever done that and if he had, it was because he was lying to himself as much as anyone else. He did a lot of that, he suspected.

"I'm . . . tired," he decided after a moment, still habitually picking the truth that revealed the least, although he suspected both his presence in the Common Room in the middle of the night and Jessica's knowledge of the way he ticked meant that she probably wouldn't take it literally. "Not tired like last year," he added hastily, having worried himself enough about that possibility recurring that it wasn't a big leap to assume Jessica might worry about the same thing. "How are you?"

22 Felipe De Matteo What if the circumstances are the secret? 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

February 01, 2021 5:09 PM

Then I guess you just use your best judgment. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica studied Felipe for another moment after he asked how she was, her narrow face nearly expressionless, before she answered him.

“I’m kind of worried about you, actually,” she said at last. “And kind of have been for a while.” She shrugged slightly, becoming uncomfortable from the combination of honesty and directness. Both of those happening at the same time was…weird. Especially when it was on kind of a serious topic like this, but the directness would have probably done the trick in any case. She was not naturally a very direct sort of person, and when the topic was this heavy….

“I just…I’ve had a feeling something’s not been right,” she added apologetically. “You don’t have to tell me if I’m right, of course. Or what’s wrong, if you don’t want to. But – it’s like I said last year. Say the word and I’ll help in any way I can.”

She dropped her eyes for a moment, gripping her book tightly to steady herself up and then lifting them again. She felt as if she ought to have more to say, but she couldn’t think of what it might be and so attributed the desire to keep talking to nervousness. Nerves were not useful or good guides to behavior, and despite how…bold it felt to have said all that, she knew she shouldn’t try to take any of it back. Instead, then, she just stayed quiet, letting him take the lead here and decide whether to confide any further in her or not.

16 Jessica Hayles Then I guess you just use your best judgment. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

February 04, 2021 1:24 PM

I don't think my judgment can be trusted. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe blinked, taken aback by Jessica's concern more than by her directness. He supposed he knew she worried about him sometimes, but it was odd to hear. His mind raced, trying to recall whatever he'd done that could have made Jessica worry, when she clarified it was a feeling she'd had. It was tempting to dismiss her worries as wrong then, but he knew he wouldn't do that. Couldn't do that.

"That's nice of you," he finally said, blowing out a lot of breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. His brows came together as he thought about his next words, because there were a lot of them that came to mind and none of them that worked and he wasn't sure what to do with that sort of internal conflict. Usually, there weren't any words that came to mind but some still came out anyway. Now, he knew what he wanted to say but he didn't think he probably should.

He switched to Spanish as a default means of keeping their conversation a little more private, even though the odds of being overheard in the Common Room this late were pretty slim anyway. "If someone in your family did something . . . bad," he decided, trying to be vague and trying to not think and trying to breathe and not panic. "Very bad. And they were going to get away with it because they could . . . what would you do?"

22 Felipe De Matteo I don't think my judgment can be trusted. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

February 11, 2021 7:45 PM

That's why you have friends to check your thinking against. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica half-shrugged when being concerned was described as ‘very nice’ of her. “I think it’s just what friends do,” she said, half-lightly, though she suspected the air was too tense for any real levity to stay afloat in it.

She frowned slightly as he began asking her questions – seemingly rhetorical, but in context, she highly doubted it somehow. Her expression was mostly one of concentration, but behind it, she felt a spike of alarm. Someone in his family had done something bad? What did that even mean? She hadn’t seen his parents much, but it was kind of hard to imagine them doing anything that heinous…God, it couldn’t be something Leonor had done, could it?

Her mind flashed back to the year before, to what he had told her in this very common room about what Leonor had said to him while he had been in the hospital. Yes, she could imagine that, even though it made her feel sick to her stomach. Oh, God, what had Leonor done?

“It depends,” she said slowly. “I guess – I guess it would depend on what it was. If people were getting hurt, or if the person was hurting themselves somehow, then I’d have to tell someone – I guess the person I told, that would depend on what had happened. If it was my parents I told, or a teacher, or – “ she hesitated, took a breath, and finished her sentence. “Or the law or something.” Her eyes searched his face, looking for a reaction, for anything to give a clue as to what was going on and how it was affecting him.

16 Jessica Hayles That's why you have friends to check your thinking against. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

February 12, 2021 11:54 AM

But how do I know if their judgment can be trusted? by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe automatically shook his head at the idea of telling his parents. That was not going to work for lots of reasons. But the way Jessica said it, it also seemed like parents were the first line of defense. Then teachers, then the law. The law. There was no law that could help now, he didn't think, if for no other reason than helping seemed likely to make the whole thing worse too. That was the crux of the problem, after all: whatever help was offered would undoubtedly not be helpful at all. Perhaps not helping was the best thing to do then, and they could all just wait until Felipe and Leonor were old enough that it didn't matter.

He chewed on the inside of his mouth as he considered her words, mulling over his own response. His own response tasted sour and he hadn't even gotten it out yet. Perhaps it was the feeling of bile rising in his throat and not his response at all, but he wasn't sure they were that different.

"What if the person who did it doesn't think it was bad? If it's a matter of . . . of philosophy, or something like that, how do you . . . what do you do?" He wasn't even sure what he wanted to ask. How do you know it's wrong? How do you change someone's moral fiber? How do you figure out if you're one of the bad guys? "Like if your dad cheated some people out of some money as part of his work," he said, clinging to what was not really a very close parallel but at least one that he could put in words a little more easily. "That is not what happened. But if your dad didn't think it was bad because he cheated someone he thought was bad, or because he's more powerful so it's okay, something like that? What would you do?" It wasn't comparable, but his voice was almost excited before it trailed off, first with the hope that he'd found an example they could work with and then with the realization that asking Jessica what she'd do if her dad swindled some people probably wasn't helpful. He wasn't sure anything would be helpful now.

22 Felipe De Matteo But how do I know if their judgment can be trusted? 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

February 18, 2021 6:28 PM

I guess either take it on faith, or find better friends. by Jessica Hayles

A question of philosophy? She felt slightly bad about it almost as soon as it happened, but Jessica felt her proximity to panic lessen slightly. She was still easily within eyeshot of it – Felipe’s peculiar sense of right and wrong and the self-esteem problems it caused him were serious issues for him, doubtless part of what had nearly killed him last year and certainly a lot of why he needed looking after – but it made the scale of the problem much smaller. It was possible that something manageable was going on, not something horrifying that had wide-scale repercussions that she couldn’t begin to advise him wisely on….

When he asked a hypothetical, she opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it, tilting her head slightly as she thought about it a little further.

Financial impropriety wasn’t the issue, but it was something analogous, maybe, to the issue. Would that be something to do with the way his family managed its village, maybe? Should she work on that assumption…? No, that was easy enough to decide. She should definitely not make assumptions. It was probably better, in fact, not to take any angle at all – just to answer the question as honestly as she could. The only problem there was, what was the honest answer – the knee-jerk one, or the one she put a little more thought into?

“My first thought is that I would ask what in the world he thought he was doing,” she said slowly. “And that I might yell at him – I’d definitely get angry. ‘Daddy, what’re you doing, that’s not just wrong, it’s stupid, you’re opening the door to so many problems that could happen.’”

This was all quite true. It was virtually impossible to get away with that kind of thing these days; one wrong move and then someone on YouTube got hold of it and then fifteen other YouTubers ran stories on it and then all sixteen fanbases crashed your sales numbers for six months. Plus, even after you got un-cancelled, or whatever they called it, there would be closer attention paid to all business dealings for years afterward, once the sharks had scented some blood in the water….

“But I would let him try to explain, I think,” she added. She smiled, a touch self-deprecatingly, at him. “You know the world looks different to me, my friend. I always think – there are…times that may be grey. Maybe there’s an explanation – maybe…someone is doing something bad, and tricking them into giving him their money was the only way to stop it.” She smiled again, shaking her masses of coppery hair over her shoulders. “Though I know this is not usually the case,” she acknowledged. “Most of the time, I would just be angry, and tell him about it very loudly.”

She wanted desperately to ask what he was really talking about, what was really going on, but bit her tongue. Instead, she asked, “does that help at all?”

16 Jessica Hayles I guess either take it on faith, or find better friends. 1442 0 5