“No.”
“Was she ever sleeping when you kissed her?”
“No.”
“Passed out?”
“No.”
Maia looks to the council. “I don’t really think there is any need to ask this witness any further questions because to do so would be offensive. Not to him. But to everyone. To you, Callie. And you, Lila. And you, Parker. In fact, it would be offensive to every man and woman on this campus, at this school, in this country, and in the UK as well. To bring up a relationship Alex has that is mutual and consensual, to discuss what she and her boyfriend do—what they both choose to do, choose being the operative word, choose being the only word that matters—when they are together in her room or in a classroom or at an ice-cream shop is despicable. It is distasteful. And it has no place here.
“It undermines all of the progress we as women and men who believe in right and wrong, who believe no means no, who believe every act of sex and intimacy should be consensual from both sides, have made. To bring up Alex’s very real and ongoing and mutual relationship with Martin and somehow suggest it has any relation whatsoever to what happened in January in Carter Hutchinson’s room against her wishes, against her will, is inappropriate and completely irrelevant. Being with Martin is a choice Alex made willingly and actively. Being with Carter was not a choice. She had no choice. I urge you to disregard this as it has absolutely zero bearing on what happened the night Carter date-raped Alex.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT
Martin is excused. Whether he returns to his post as sentry or whether Amy banishes him—to what? To Mockingbird jail?—I don’t know.
Kevin calls his third and final witness. Carter rises from the end of the table. He’s wearing a white-and-blue-striped oxford cloth shirt, a green tie, and dress pants. His white hair is slicked back.
“Let’s set the scene a bit,” Kevin begins. “How did that evening in January begin, Carter? The one when you met Alex?”
As if there were another night we were discussing.
“Um, well it started in the library….”
I cough-laugh quietly. Give me a break.
“I was studying for Spanish class.”
I tap Maia on the leg, then whisper in her ear. “He’s lying—”
She shushes me before I can continue, before I can say he told me the next morning he hadn’t even started studying for any classes yet. He was at water polo practice before we met.
“Then I went back to my room and, uh, called my mom to tell her about my classes. And to check in and see how she was feeling. She’d been sick during the break.”
Don’t they realize he’s lying? Can’t they see through him like I can?
“So after I talked to Mom, I went with some friends to the club. And while I was there I ordered a club soda, because of course you can’t drink there. I can’t drink anywhere. I’m only seventeen.”
Kevin nods, all thoughtful and paternal, as if Carter is the model student, the exemplar of virtue.
“No, you can’t drink when you’re seventeen,” Kevin states.
Thanks for the clarification, asshole.
I tap Maia again, shrug my shoulders as if to ask her what do we do next? She shakes her head, signaling me not to talk. I resist the impulse to cover my eyes with my hands, because if I did, I’d just watch through my fingers like it was a horror movie, because it is.
Carter, the white knight he’s pretending to be, continues, “And then I met Alex. And I just remember thinking how very pretty she was,” he says, painting a shy, almost lovestruck puppy-dog look on his face. “So I walked up to her and introduced myself, and she shook my hand and smiled. She was very sharp and witty and we talked about how much we liked the band.”
Right, let’s pretend I was straight up and sober the whole night. Because he forgot to mention how I practically stepped on him I was so buzzed. He continues in this vein as he details leaving the club, going to Sandeep’s dorm, playing Circle of Death—claiming he drank only orange juice when it was his turn. Then he describes our kiss there in the common room, like he’s some blushing Southern gentleman overcome by my beauty.
“And then you left to go back to your dorm?” Kevin asks.
“Yes, Alex said she wanted to go to my dorm.”
I snap my head toward Maia. Do something I say with my eyes.
“Objection!” she calls out, standing up.
Callie looks to Maia. “Yes?”
“His side is wrong,” Maia argues. “You already heard Alex say it was his idea.”
“You may sit down, Maia,” Callie tells her. “We’re listening to his side of the story.”
“Can you tell us what happened when you were back at your room?” Kevin asks Carter.
“We kissed some more and then…” Carter pauses, blushing a bit.
“Yes?” Kevin asks gently.
“Then we moved to the bed and we undressed each other.”
My forehead pounds; the vein I despise is angry too, filling with fire.
“And she lay down on my bed and pulled me closer to her, and I got a condom on so we could make love—”
I cough loudly this time; I don’t bother to cover it up. Carter stops and looks at me for the first time—they all look at me—coughing. “We didn’t make love,” I spit out at him. I don’t care if it’s not my turn.
“We did,” Carter says, gazing—actually gazing—right at me. “At least, it felt that way to me,” he says, then puts a hand on his chest and sighs.
The flames lick higher in me; they coat my body and my skin and I’m boiling inside and out.
“Then we fell asleep. She fell asleep in my arms.”
I close my eyes so I can’t see the lies; I only have to hear them.
“And I fell asleep too, for a couple hours, maybe three,” he continues. “Because when I woke up I looked at the clock and it was around three thirty in the morning then. And she was kissing me.”
“I wasn’t kissing you!” I shout, my eyes wide open now.
He gives me his look again, his demure look. “You were, Alex,” he says softly. He’s not the Carter he was on the phone, all brash and ready for war, or in the library, slick and ready for action. Now he’s a new Carter, the worst one of all. He’s sweet, sensitive Carter, dousing himself in syrup and honey. I want to peel every last inch of his sugar-coated lies off of him.
“So I reached for a condom again and put it on and we started having sex—I mean, making love,” he says, quickly correcting himself, and it’s so clear to me he’s playing a part, so clear to me he missed his rehearsed line. I look to the council next to see if they noticed his mistake. But their faces are stone.
“She didn’t push you away?” Kevin asks.
“She did not.”
“She didn’t say no?”
“She didn’t say no.”
“She didn’t shake her head?”
“She didn’t shake her head.”
“Thank you, Carter,” Kevin says, and sits down.
Maia leaps up, grabbing her chance to ask questions.
“You claim she didn’t say no. But not saying no isn’t enough. The code of conduct says, and I quote: ‘Sexual assault is sexual contact (not just intercourse) where one of the parties has not given or cannot give active verbal consent, i.e., uttered a clear “yes” to the action. If a person does not say “no,” that does not mean he or she said “yes.” Silence does not equal consent. Silence could mean fear, confusion, inebriation. The only thing that means yes is yes. A lack of yes is a no.’ ”
Maia pauses, letting the weight of the words fill the room. Then directly to Carter, her brown eyes boring into his blue ones, she asks, “Did she say yes?”
“She didn’t say no,” he says.
“Did she say yes?” she asks again. “Did she say yes either time? Did she say she wanted to have sex with you?”
“She didn’t say no,” he says again, stealing a help me
look at Kevin, but Kevin’s got the same lost look on his face as the boy in the witness chair.
The dryers are still rattling, but it’s as if the laundry room went dead silent, and this is one of those moments when everything is shockingly clear. There’s practically a collective holding of breath at the realization of Carter’s fatal error. He never prepped for this question. They never planned the next lie he would tell, because to Carter my not saying no was consent. He didn’t devise a lie this time. He didn’t think he had to. It’s as if he never read the revised code or—more likely—that he didn’t care what it said. Because he thinks what he did was okay simply because I didn’t utter a no.
When it’s not okay for so very many reasons.
“Did she say yes?” Maia asks for a third time, and each time she asks the question the room grows quieter, waiting for his answer.
“She was breathing.”
“She was breathing?” Maia repeats. “She was breathing?”
Carter nods, latching on to this idea. “Yes, she was breathing.”
“That was her consent in your view? Breathing?”
Carter doesn’t know what to say; he’s Bambi without his mom. “Um, yeah.”
“She was breathing,” Maia says, incredulously, then looks at the three students on the council. “A lack of no is not a yes. The absence of a no doesn’t mean consent. Nor does breathing equal consent. Breathing is breathing. Breathing is sleeping. Breathing is not saying yes. Breathing simply means you’re alive.”
She reaches for my hand, squeezes it. I squeeze her hand back, feeling neither fire nor ice, just calm, because for all of Carter’s lies, for his puppy-dog routine, for his faux-gentle demeanor, I’m pretty sure Maia just nailed it right there, when he finally told the truth.
Maia finishes with a quick closing argument. Then Kevin gives his, stumbling a bit on his words, still smarting from Carter’s slipup that neither one of them saw coming.
Callie says “thank you” to Carter, to Maia, to Kevin, to me. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow at noon with a decision.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
THE WHOLE STORY
“He as good as admitted it!” Maia shouts for maybe the ten thousandth time. We’ve just told T.S. every detail after returning to our dorm ten minutes ago.
“I know,” I say, shaking my head in amazement at how all Carter could come up with was the breathing defense. “Weird, isn’t it?”
“Breathing!” she declares again.
“Breathing,” I repeat. “That’s it. That’s all he could say.”
“And while we’re at it, it would have been helpful if you told me about Martin,” Maia says. “But now that the cat’s out of the bag, do you really like him a lot?”
“Yes, do you?” T.S. asks eagerly.
“I do.”
“I want to know how it started with him. Tell us how it started,” T.S. says. “Tell us every little detail you’ve been keeping all to yourself for the last month, you little secret keeper!”
I flash back to the morning after Carter, when I didn’t want to tell her anything. Now, with Martin, I want to tell her everything.
There’s a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” T.S. says, and she opens the door to Martin. “Well, hello there!”
“Hey,” Martin says, not nearly as festive as T.S. or Maia.
“I’m betting you want a few minutes alone with Alex,” T.S. says.
Martin just nods, and Maia and T.S. exit quickly.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Don’t apologize,” he says. He nods to my bed. “Can I sit down?”
I say yes and he is careful to sit a few feet away from me. The air suddenly feels heavy and I know why he’s here. To break it off. I swallow sharply and wait. He turns to me. “I should have just told Amy from the start.”
“What did she say?”
He pauses, then says, “She said it’s not how she would have liked to have found out.”
“Oh.”
“She said my actions could have seriously undermined the Mockingbirds’ credibility.”
“Amy doesn’t mince words.”
“And then she said it was a good thing Maia’s quick on her feet and delivered her brilliant speech.”
“It was brilliant,” I agree.
“Brilliant and true,” Martin adds. “And then Amy said in the end it didn’t hurt the case and may have helped it, but still she said she’d deal with me later.”
“What do you think she means?” I ask, wondering if the Mockingbirds will use their very own Mockingbird-ian ways to punish Martin.
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry, Martin,” I say.
“Don’t be.”
“But I feel terrible.”
“Don’t. I made my choice. I knew what I was doing,” he says firmly as he looks straight at me, his eyes still deadly serious, all brown, no flecks right now. His hands are holding the edge of my bed tight, like he’s not letting go, he’s angry or something. Angry at me. “It was worth it,” he says.
The only word I hear is the one in the past tense. Was.
“It is worth it,” he quickly adds, correcting himself. “It is worth it. You are worth it. And I hope they nail him,” he says, releasing his hands and balling his right hand into a fist. “He deserves it, that asshole.”
He slides close to me. “To do that to you,” he says, anger still lacing his voice as he lays his right hand on my hair, sweeping it off my face. “To do that to someone I’m so crazy about.” Then softly, letting go of his fury, he says, “Someone I’m falling for.”
He closes his eyes, leans into my neck, nuzzling me, his hand on my cheek now, warm on my face. I relax into the feeling of his hand on me, knowing I am close to falling too.
I have to admit I feel a twinge of victory in the air about the verdict tomorrow, not to mention the fact that someone—someone I really and truly like—is falling for me. So as I pace backstage, waiting for the quartet to finish their rendition of A Little Night Music, I tell myself not to be cocky, not to assume the game is in the bag. Then the last note of the Mozart serenade ends and there are cheers and clapping. The foursome bows and leaves the stage, and the spotlight is on me, just me. I walk straight to the piano, ready to perform the most awesome piece of music ever written in front of my friends, my boyfriend—no longer my secret boyfriend, now my boyfriend boyfriend—my teachers, Miss Damata, and a freaking Juilliard admissions officer.
The instant my fingers hit the keys, I soar. I fly. I glide back into the music, only music, and Beethoven is mine again; we’re reunited, we’re not mad anymore. We’re on the same side. And on and on we go through the first movement, then the second, into the third, and now the fourth, and I feel as if it’s righting all wrongs, stitching up wounds, rewriting history. And it’s beautiful and it’s loud, but loud-good, loud like sweep-through-your-body-and-carry-you-away loud. Loud like the whole audience is enrapt. Loud like it’s epic because it is and we all are just bathed in music and light and sound and magic and art and perfect perfection. We’re not just in the concert hall; we’re in Carnegie Hall, we’re on the world’s greatest stage, and all I can feel is music, sweet music, pouring over me.
And then we come to “Ode to Joy,” the most perfect piece of music tucked near the end of the most perfect symphony by the most perfect composer. And it’s just me and the piano crashing through space and time. I’m me again, restored. I’m me, who I was, who I’m supposed to be, who I’ve always been.
And I’m nearing the end, I’m just a few bars away; I wrap the music around myself and I’m so unbelievably far away from that night. I strike my last triumphant chords, the sound reverberating.
But then I’m back….
He has the condom on and he’s coming toward me now, his face is coming toward me, his body is coming toward me, and there’s a hand pressed on the mattress right next to my arm. His other hand 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 his penis 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.
And then I’m somewhere else. My brain goes someplace else, it wanders off because it doesn’t want to be here, but now it’s back, and a boy I don’t want to be with is on top of me and it makes no sense, so I turn to my side and fall asleep.
When I wake up again, there’s a noise, a sound, like a cross between a bark and a whisper, like an “oomph.” It’s like someone just sat on my chest. It’s dark and my mouth tastes like a sock, feels like wool. And there’s Carter. On me. Over me. In me. He’s pushing in me and I can feel him. I can feel his penis in me, even though I’m barely aware, half-asleep, half-awake, half-dreaming, half-dead. But I can feel him and he’s breathing. He’s breathing kind of heavy, hitting some sort of rhythm.
I realize the noise came from me. The “uh” came from me, from the feel of someone’s weight on me, someone’s body on me. And it’s like I just came to or something, the “uh” marking the line between sleep and awake, there and here. Now I’m here, still in his bed, still naked, still under him. Only now he’s pressing into me and he’s going faster and faster and I want to do something, say something, but all I feel is slower and slower and slower and all I can do is breathe, breathe, breathe….
And there’s nothing I can do to stop this, nothing I can do to move. My eyes are closed, and I’m just going to pretend I’m not here.
I will pretend, I will pretend, I will pretend I am enjoying it. It’s the only way to get through it. The only way is to pretend.
The Mockingbirds Page 21