The Mockingbirds

by Whitney, Daisy

  “Who cares? Point is you did it. You are stronger than you think. You’re a fighter. And you know me, Alex. I’m not a sentimental gusher. But I love you and I’m proud of you.”

  “I love you too,” I say, and my other line rings. “It’s probably Amy or someone. I better go.”

  We say goodbye and I click over.

  “Alex?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Alex Patrick.” The voice drips with sarcasm as my entire body turns into ice.

  “Alexandra Nicole Patrick,” he says again. “Now I know your whole name. Your whole entire name. And it’s Alexandra Nicole Patrick. The freak. Alex the freak who ran out that morning. Who ran away in the library.”

  “Leave me alone,” I rasp. But I don’t hang up. I should, but I don’t, because I can’t move, I’m paralyzed. My feet are blocks of ice concrete. My legs won’t move, my arms won’t move, my brain is frozen. Everything is happening to someone else right now. This is not my world, this is not me, I am not not not on the phone with the guy who screwed me while I was sleeping. It’s not happening, because if it was I would slam the phone down.

  But it is happening.

  “I thought you were just a freak. Now I know you’re fucking delusional.”

  “Not. I’m not.” It’s like I can’t speak, can’t form sentences. I’m just surrounded by thick sludge, quicksand, and it’s pulling me under.

  “You were begging for it,” he says, oily and slick.

  “Shut up!” I say, because I’m starting to thaw and the words are coming. “That’s a lie.”

  He laughs harsh and cold into the phone. “Oh, it’s not a lie, freak girl. You were all over me.”

  Hang up. Hang up. Hang up.

  He keeps going, “And that’s why I can’t believe you would pull this shit and say I raped you and think you can get away with this.”

  I hate him I hate him I hate him.

  He continues, “You can sic all your little Mockingbird friends after me, but I know you’re wrong and there is no way I am settling this case. That’s why I have no fucking problem showing up for this trial, you freak.”

  “You’re the liar,” I say. “You’re the liar.”

  Then I hang up and just stare at the phone, bore holes in it with my eyes and I can feel my hands are hot and my cheeks are burning and my hair is on fire with rage and I have never hated anyone before but I hate him, I hate him so much for doing what he did that night and for doing this now. He deserves this, he deserves to be made an example of, he deserves to be punished. He was wrong then and he’s wrong now. He’s slippery, he’s slimy, he’s a water polo stereotype.

  I want to throw the phone, I want to throw my computer, I want to throw the chair, the desk, the bed. I want to smash the window. This is how it happens—this is how people go all postal. This is how you get so mad, so angry that you become not yourself.

  I tell myself to breathe. One, two, three.

  I take a deep, long, penetrating breath. I’m not going to be that person who loses it. No, I’m not and never will be. But I’m still angry, and when I turn to the mirror I see the vein in my forehead is throbbing. It’s my own metronome pulsing in time, just like Carter’s chest that morning.

  I hear a ripping sound. It’s loud, ridiculously loud. I cover my ears it’s so loud. I open my eyes slowly, not wanting them to be open. Carter’s on me, he’s straddling me and he’s naked. Something’s wrong with this picture. He’s got a leg on each side of me and there’s this broad chest, a pale chest, a pale white chest, and I don’t want to look down because if I do I’ll see his penis and it’ll be hard and I don’t want to see his hard penis because he’s trying to put a condom on it. Because that’s what he just ripped open, the wrapper for the condom.

  “What are you doing?” I mumble.

  “Getting a dome out.”

  “A dome?”

  I think he nods but I can’t tell because he has two heads or something. Or his one head is blurry. I’m not sure, but it’s spinning. His head is spinning, or maybe it’s the bed, or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m spinning. I close my eyes. It hurts too much to leave them open. But I spin more with them closed, so I open them again and Carter’s still on me, this looming figure over me. I think he got the condom on because he’s coming toward me now, his face is coming toward me, his body is coming toward me, and there’s a hand, a left hand, a right hand, I’m not sure, pressed on the mattress right next to my arm. And his other hand, his other arm is between his legs. I think I know what he’s doing. I think I know why his hand is between his legs. He’s going to try to enter me. He’s going to try to push himself into me. I look down at me, at my body, and I’m naked in this bed, and I don’t know how I got naked in his bed. All I know is I don’t want him inside me. I don’t want it inside me. The spinning slows, then it halts, and the room’s no longer turning, it’s suddenly still and quiet and calm and I’m strong. I’m so strong I put my two hands on his big chest. I press my palms hard against him and push him. I shake my head; I say no. And I keep my hands on his chest like that, like a bodybuilder holding back a car, a strong man holding up a bridge.

  My body is hollow, my insides a dark empty cave. Everything turns black for a moment as the filthy memory moves through me. There was no begging for it, only pleading to stop; I pushed him away and he pushed into me anyway.

  I remember I’m nearly late for French class, so I grab my backpack and bolt. Martin’s waiting right outside my dorm for me.

  “Sorry, I’m going to make you late,” I say.

  “Us. Make us late. It’s the same class for both of us. French,” he says, reminding me of the class we share. “But don’t worry. It’s no biggie.”

  “Right,” I say, still distracted by the call and the memory.

  “You okay?” he asks as we walk to Morgan-Young Hall, the regular way. I don’t have to go the long way anymore.

  “You okay?” he asks again.

  Oh, I still haven’t answered him.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I manage. Then, “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “We need to run,” I say, grabbing the arm of his shirt. “Subjunctive, remember?”

  If you’re late for French you have to speak in the subjunctive mood for the entire class. “Avis aux retardataires de mon cours, je vous imposerai l’utilisation exclusif du subjonctif,” Ms. Dumas warned us the first day. It’s a brutal but effective punishment because everyone who has ever studied French knows the subjunctive tense is the trickiest tense of all. Hence, no one is EVER late to Ms. Dumas’s French class.

  “We’re not going to get in trouble,” he says, running alongside me.

  “What, are you omniscient?”

  “No, I just took care of this already.”

  “Took care of it?”

  “When I knew you were going to be late, I took care of it.”

  Before I can ask how, we push open the heavy door to the building just as the bell rings. We’re late. But right outside the French class there’s Amy, immersed in an animated conversation with Ms. Dumas. Our teacher’s back is to us, her brown curly hair pinned up on her head as she chatters away en français with Amy. Martin places a hand on my arm, slowing me down so we can tiptoe soundlessly down the hall. I mirror his stealth as Amy exclaims, “Certainement! Il me fera un grand plaisir de rédiger un essai pour vous.”

  “Formidable,” Ms. Dumas says to Amy as Martin and I slip into class, undetected by our teacher. I take my seat; he takes his a few desks away. Literally two seconds later, Ms. Dumas marches into the class and issues an upbeat, “Bonjour, mes amis!”

  She walks straight to the front of the class, to her lectern, and begins her lesson, without having noticed we were late. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. I hate the subjunctive mood. But I feel strangely unsettled too. Where would I be without Amy and Martin and Ilana fighting all my battles, swooping in and saving me from teachers, from bad boys, from myself? I was Alex the music girl, the piano pl
ayer, the Juilliard aspirant. Now I’m an untouchable.

  When class ends, the girl who sits in front of me turns around to face me. I know her vaguely. Her name’s Mel, short for Melissa, I’m sure. She’s a tiny little thing; she must be under five feet tall. She has light brown hair she wears in a French braid every day (I know—I sit behind her in this class).

  “Hi,” she says quietly to me.

  “Hi, Mel,” I say.

  Her eyes dart from one side of the room to the other, then she turns back around and says nothing more. Okay, whatever. I grab my bag and head out, Martin materializing by my side.

  “So,” he begins, then leans closer so only I can hear, “do you want to hang out again tonight?”

  “Yes,” I say. “But I don’t know if Maia or T.S. will be there.”

  “We could sneak out somewhere,” he says mischievously.

  My eyes go wide. “You’re a Mockingbird. You can’t break the rules. We can’t go out at night except for Fridays.”

  “You’re such a good girl,” he teases.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  WORDS AND DEEDS

  After calculus ends that day, Amy finds me.

  “We’ve decided to hold the trial in about a month. Sometime in mid-March. We’ll pick the exact date soon,” she tells Maia and me, then adds with her calming smile, “I wanted to let you know myself so you’ll have plenty of time to prep.” She emphasizes the last word to Maia, who nods crisply, understanding the directive she just received.

  “Of course. We’ll be absolutely prepared,” Maia chimes in.

  “Does Carter know it’s going to be in March?” I ask.

  “He’ll know shortly,” Amy says, and heads off, maybe to deliver the message herself. I picture her tracking him down after his last class and telling him in person too, but the image doesn’t compute. Maybe she has some other way—a safer way—of delivering messages to the accused.

  “Let’s start by reviewing your testimony first,” Maia says as we return to Taft-Hay Hall.

  I relive that night again for Maia as she writes notes in her black-and-white composition book. I tell her what I remembered this morning, how I tried to fight him off. “He is revolting,” she says scathingly, then reaches to hug me. “I’m so sorry he did that to you.” She continues like that—alternating between criticizing him and comforting me. I feel dirty just talking about it, so when she leaves for Debate I take a shower, washing off the latest coat of memories.

  I get dressed, dry my hair, and pull on jeans, then a sweater I know Casey would give her Fashion Police thumbs up to.

  Martin knocks at eight. I let him in.

  “Hey,” he says as the door closes behind him.

  “Hey.”

  I sit down at my desk chair, he grabs T.S.’s. “So how was today? Was it hard?”

  I shrug. The truth is I don’t feel like talking about it much, even with him. Or maybe especially with him. I don’t want this—us, if there is an us, or whatever we are—to be all about him.

  “It was fine,” I say, not telling him about the phone call earlier today.

  He furrows his brow, giving me kind of a penetrating stare. “You sure?”

  “Yes,” I say emphatically.

  “And Amy told you the trial will be—”

  I cut him off. “Can we just talk about science or something?”

  His eyes sparkle as I say that, then he starts in on the latest scientific findings about dogs, then dolphins, then pigs. I’ve never been a science person, but I’m strangely entertained by his tales, partly because his stories come alive the way he tells them. Then he reaches into his back pocket and takes out his cell phone. I tense for a second, thinking maybe the Mockingbirds have just paged him and he’ll have to go. I don’t want Amy to take him away from me.

  “I promised I’d show you those Meissner effect pictures,” he says, flipping his phone open.

  “Right, I’ve been dying to see them,” I tease.

  “Hey! Sarcasm doesn’t work on me. I’m showing them to you anyway,” he says as he drags his chair across the room so he’s right next to me. He leans in closer, and for a second I’m distracted by his nearness and how he smells clean and how much I like the way he smells. As he scrolls through some pictures of a magnet hovering, I bend into his neck, my lips brushing his skin, and he groans lightly. I like the sound of it.

  “You really don’t want to see my pictures, do you?” he teases.

  “I do want to see them. I swear,” I say softly as I graze his neck again.

  “I have no idea where they are now,” he says, and drops his cell phone onto the chair. He makes the sound again, that groan, and it makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel in charge.

  “No idea?” I ask as he closes his eyes and reaches his hands up into my hair.

  “No idea at all,” he says before he silences me with his lips. We twist around so we’re closer to each other. His breathing grows heavier, his fingers play with my hair and a little zing rushes from my belly down to my toes and back up again.

  I drift into the kiss, then another, then yet another.

  Amazing.

  Yes, this kiss is amazing.

  Then another.

  Heat.

  I am warm all over.

  Then a touch.

  Weak in the knees.

  This is the guy who makes me weak in the knees. The guy who makes me laugh. The kind of guy worth waiting for.

  Worth waiting for.

  Then like a kick in the gut, I’m doubled over. Because I’m not worth waiting for. I have no virginity to give up because mine was taken.

  I pull away.

  “Mmm. Come back,” he says. His eyes are still closed; he’s in the moment, still wanting me. His hand loops around my hair and he pulls me back, kisses me more, firmer, harder, trying to bring me back to now. But I’m not into it anymore. The connection’s broken. I put my hands on his chest and push him away.

  He opens his eyes. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “You’re not fine. One minute we were here. And the next minute you were somewhere else. Is this too soon? Are you okay with this? I don’t want to push you.”

  Then another word appears in front of me. And it’s a nasty word. It starts with an R and ends with a D and it’s rebound.

  I want Martin because he’s not Carter. I want Martin because he’s the reverse of Carter, the antidote to Carter. My eyes glass over with the realization that I’m using him to get over what happened.

  “I should go,” he says, and stands up.

  I nod.

  He gathers his backpack, stuffs his phone back into his jeans pocket.

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have done this. I should have known it’d be too soon.”

  Too soon.

  I let the words play, stretching them out letter by letter.

  Too.

  Soon.

  Like they’re the low notes on the piano. Warbling. TooooooSooooon.

  Then I snap out of it.

  “Don’t go,” I say quickly.

  He gives me a look. He doesn’t believe me.

  “I want you to stay. I want you to stay.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  I reach for his hand and lead him to my bed. “I’m not ready for more than kissing, but the bed is more comfortable.”

  “The bed it is,” Martin says, stretching out next to me. Then he taps me on the nose lightly. “You’re in charge. You know that, right?”

  “I do. I do know that. So tell me about the freshmen theater students.”

  He gives me a grin. “You’re only interested in me for access to information, aren’t you?” he jokes.

  “Yes, I want you to give up all your Mockingbird secrets,” I toss back.

  He smiles at me, brushes a strand of my hair behind my ear, and says, “Good thing I like you. It makes me want to tell you things.”

  “So the freshmen last semest
er, what did they do?”

  Martin chuckles lightly, the memory amusing him. “It was really stupid and immature. That’s why they confessed. They knew they had no defense.”

  “Tell me. What happened?”

  He props himself up on an elbow and rests on his side. “You remember the musical last semester?”

  “Wasn’t it Evita but set fifty years in the future, and Eva was a princess warrior?” I say jokingly, because that’s how Themis would do Evita.

  “Something like that. Anyway, so the Theater Department cast a couple freshmen as understudies for the main roles. So there was a Che understudy and an Eva understudy, and they were also in the chorus. But these two freshmen thought they’d been robbed. They thought they should have been cast as the leads. They thought they were unfairly discriminated against because they were freshmen. So they…” Martin tries to suppress a laugh, but it doesn’t work; he can’t stop laughing. “It’s so ridiculous what they did.”

  I start laughing too. “Tell me, tell me.”

  “They tried to make the leads sick so they could take over. Because apparently the leads had this ritual of drinking tea and honey before every rehearsal. Standard acting process, we learned. Anyway, so the freshmen started spiking the tea with cough syrup one day, Benadryl the next, Tylenol PM another time.”

  “Did it make them sick or just sleepy?”

  “The latter,” Martin says. “Dumb freshmen didn’t have a clue.”

  “The seniors couldn’t just deal with this themselves?” I ask. Because while spiking tea is petty and infantile, it also seems as if Che and Evita could have held their own.

  “It wasn’t the seniors who came to us,” Martin said. “It was a couple other freshmen in the play. Freshmen who were in the chorus along with the understudies, but who were just chorus members. These other freshmen thought all the first-years were getting a bad rap because of what the two understudies were doing, so they wanted to press charges.”

  “For what? Character defamation?”

  Martin shrugs. “Kind of. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be the wronged person, the victim, who comes to us. Sometimes other people do. People who hear about what’s going on and who bring it to our attention, who want us to investigate. A lot of people are afraid or they think what’s happening to them isn’t a big enough deal. And sometimes when bad things happen, the impact goes beyond the people being wronged. Like in this case. The other kids saw it happening and wanted it stopped, so they came to us. The sleepy seniors didn’t have to be the ones to initiate a case.”