The Mockingbirds

by Whitney, Daisy

  Maia bows, then curtsies—for the queen, she says—and doles out slices of chocolate layer cake to T.S., Sandeep, Martin, and me. Dana even stops by and has a piece too. Amy’s not here; Ilana’s not here. It’s not a Mockingbirds celebration, just a friends one.

  Everyone is still a little high from the victory, a little thrilled the trial is behind us now because they all invested their time, their effort. I watch them laughing again, loose again, reliving certain moments, like Maia’s imitations of Carter’s Southern gentleman routine. The rest of them didn’t see him being questioned, so Maia’s reenacting parts of it.

  “ ‘And then we made love, at least it felt that way to me,’ ” Maia says, imitating him. She gags afterward for effect, letting her audience know what she thinks of Carter’s words.

  But I don’t want to hear them again.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, and slip out of the common room. I head outside, where I sit on the steps outside my dorm. I don’t feel like eating cake or celebrating or conducting a play-by-play as if we just won the basketball tournament or something. Justice doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t make you who you were before. I’m becoming someone else—someone else I’m figuring out how to be.

  I wonder briefly why I went through it, why it was worth it. Because in some ways, nothing changed. This is just how it goes, this is how it feels to take a stand. It feels like life, like chocolate cake, like just another average school night; it feels like wanting to be alone. You don’t parade in the streets, you don’t dance on the grave. You sit on the steps and you watch the school go by and the moon rise higher in the sky and it feels like…

  Like normal, actually. It feels like normal.

  I want normal. I like normal. I did this for normal.

  So I stand up and walk across the quad. Alone. I don’t need a bodyguard and I don’t need to hide and I can choose—I can make a choice—to look up at the trees and around at the dorms and down at the path and whichever way I want because I’m not going to be afraid anymore.

  I walk to the dorm all the way across on the other side of the quad. I go up to the second floor. I knock on a door. Mel answers.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” she says, and her eyes ask the question.

  I nod.

  “Good,” she says quietly.

  “Yeah, I think it is. I mean, I think it will be.”

  “I think it will be too,” Mel says. “When will his punishment be announced?”

  “Tomorrow. Lunchtime in the cafeteria.”

  “Are you going?” she asks.

  I hadn’t thought about it before. But something about it feels like attending an execution, and that’s not the kind of thing I’d do. So I decide to be me again and to do what I do.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  HOW TO PLAY GERSHWIN

  “Do you want to skip lunch?”

  Jones looks at me, raising his eyebrows at the question I ask when English class ends. “You want to skip lunch today, of all days?” he asks suspiciously.

  I nod.

  He knows what happened. We haven’t talked about it, but he knows.

  He shakes his head, kind of in fascination. “Isn’t this the moment you’ve been waiting for?”

  “No, this isn’t why I did this,” I say, but I don’t add anything more because I don’t have to keep explaining why I did it, even to Jones, even to my friend who doesn’t believe in the Mockingbirds, who believes in something else, in his own sense of right and wrong. Maybe, ultimately, that’s what we’re all aspiring to—to have our own sense of right and wrong and to act on it.

  “Where are we going when we skip lunch?”

  I roll my eyes. “You don’t actually know?”

  “No.”

  “Think, Jones. It’s not hard.”

  “Music hall?”

  I nod.

  When it’s time for lunch, they’re waiting for me on the steps of the cafeteria. Martin and Maia and T.S. and Sandeep and Amy and Ilana. They expect me to join them for this moment.

  “I’m not going in,” I tell them.

  “Not again?” T.S. asks woefully. “I thought you were cool going to lunch now?”

  “I thought that’s why we did this,” Ilana asks, a touch of indignation in her voice, as if I’m not grateful. But that’s not what this is about.

  Martin says nothing and his eyes are quiet too. The green flecks aren’t sparkling; they aren’t moving today. I know why. He’s thinking I disappeared last night. He’s thinking I’m disappearing now.

  “I’m cool going to the caf. But I don’t want to. I don’t need to,” I say. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  I leave and walk across the quad, knowing that shortly Carter will do his requisite Paul Oko routine, announcing he’s voluntarily withdrawing from the water polo team and if anyone wants to know why, the answer is in the book. In a few minutes there could even be a schoolwide dash to the second floor of Pryor after that. His entry will have shifted to ink then. Permanent.

  I push open the door to the music hall, and Jones is there with his violin. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t ask how I feel. He doesn’t need to.

  “I would have thought you’d bring your guitar,” I sass as I sit down at the piano.

  “I didn’t know you were that kind of girl,” he says.

  “Guess we’ll have to see if you can keep up on your violin.”

  “Oh, I can keep up with anything you throw my way.”

  I give him a smirk, say nothing, and let the music do the talking. The second Jones hears what I am up to, a knowing grin breaks across his face.

  Because he’s finally playing Gershwin how he wants. The hip-hop way.

  We play through the whole lunch period, blasting Rhapsody in Blue as if we’re a couple of rappers, jamming fast and to the beat and with a new kind of rhythm Gershwin never intended but probably wouldn’t have minded. And I don’t need to be in the cafeteria; I don’t need to be anyplace else, because the music takes me to the only place I want to be right now. To the place where I am and have always been wholly me, the only church I’ve ever belonged to, the only place I’ve ever prayed.

  And we’re all good, everything is forgiven between Beethoven and me because this is the part of me that hasn’t changed. In this moment I’m not defined by the other things, the things that happened to me, the things I didn’t choose. This is the part of me that defines me for all time, for always. The thing I choose completely.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  PAY IT FORWARD

  After French class that afternoon, Martin taps me on the shoulder. “Hey, you,” he says.

  “Hi.”

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Good,” I say.

  I know he wants to say more but doesn’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say either. Because now it’s just us, no trial, no case, no protection.

  “Amy wants to see you tonight,” he says.

  “She does?”

  “Yeah, we’ll all be there. Well, the board, at least. Laundry room. Eight o’clock?”

  I nod. “Do I have to bring quarters this time?”

  “I’ll get your back,” he says.

  I think I should start getting my own back now, so I say, “It’s okay, I’ll bring them.”

  Later that night I stuff four quarters into my jeans pocket. But I don’t bring laundry. The dryers work the same with or without clothes in them.

  I run into T.S. on the stairs. She’s bounding in, wearing soccer clothes. “I just had the best idea! I’m going to be a runner next year. Well, I’ll try out, at least.”

  “For the Mockingbirds? Really?”

  She nods excitedly. “Yes. I’ve been practicing my poker face for when the board gives me the sign-off to mark someone absent.” Then she demonstrates with her best stony look.

  “You’re a shoo-in,” I say.

  “B
esides, I’d kind of be defying the stereotype of freshmen and sophomores as runners. I’d be the senior, getting in there on the ground floor, mixing it up. A runner of the people,” she says, and dashes up the stairs.

  When I reach the laundry room, it’s like I went back in time. Amy on the couch, Martin and Ilana on the floor. Trivial Pursuit spread out. I walk back to them. Amy’s wearing a dark green V-neck T-shirt and jeans.

  “Hey there,” Amy says, a big smile on her face. I wonder if she is mad about my missing today’s main event. If she is, I can handle it.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “How was not going to lunch?” Ilana asks.

  “I didn’t want to be there,” I say defensively. “I didn’t think I needed to.”

  “You didn’t,” Amy says. “It’s fine you weren’t there. Do you want to hear how it went, though?”

  I shake my head. “No interest.”

  Amy nods sagely. “Good for you.”

  Good for me? I guess it is.

  “Are we playing?” I ask, gesturing to the game.

  “Sure,” Amy says, and rolls the die. A two. She moves her piece to the music category. “Alex, music! Your favorite.”

  She whips out a card but doesn’t ask a question. Instead, she says, “First of all, I want to thank you for your courage. You held up well and you’re really a great example. Actually, you’re a rock star.”

  She continues, her blue eyes lighting up as she speaks. “Even though we had a few surprises”—she looks pointedly at Martin when she says this—“all in all I think our tradition of justice continued.” Then she lightens, laughs a bit, and says, “Man, what a douche bag Carter is!”

  Ilana laughs too. Martin doesn’t.

  “And I think you did every woman at this school a service by speaking up,” Amy adds. Then she leans back on the couch, crosses her legs, one black Converse–clad foot kicking up and down absentmindedly as she speaks. “Back when we started, you asked me why I did this. Why I was in the Mockingbirds.”

  I nod, remembering the night she brought mac and cheese to my room.

  “And I told you it worked,” Amy adds. “Do you know how I knew that?”

  “No,” I say.

  Amy twists around on the couch, her back to me. She turns her head back though, her eyes on mine as she pulls her shirt up. Right above her black bra strap is the word Queer, marked on her skin like a patchwork quilt. The first two letters are a scar, barely fading, still more pink than white. The last three are tattooed on. I shudder, feeling a phantom pain in my back too. But her back had a real blade on it, one that dug into her skin for two long letters. She pulls her shirt down and turns back to me. “Do you know Ellery Robinson?”

  I shake my head, but the name sounds terribly familiar.

  “She was a senior last year,” Amy says. “She did this. Well, the first two letters. I finished what she started with a tattoo last summer.”

  Then it hits me, like a bullet. Ellery’s name was in To Kill a Mockingbird. Under “Watch Your Back.” The name I didn’t know, the crime I didn’t recognize.

  “It happened in May after I’d asked her out on a date. I thought she liked girls. I was wrong. Or maybe she’s just still in the closet. Either way, she didn’t like it because I asked her in front of some of her friends. So she did this to me. She left her mark. So I sought out the Mockingbirds.”

  “But,” I jump in, “you could have gone to the police with that!”

  “You didn’t go to the police,” Ilana says matter-of-factly. “You came to us.”

  “But you have evidence there,” I argue. “On your body! You could have gone to Ms. Vartan.”

  “And what good would it have done?” Amy asks, then gives me a kind sort of shrug. “The receiver didn’t. The kids who weren’t in the Honor Society didn’t,” she says, reminding us of the first cases the Mockingbirds tried. “And you didn’t either. You know what the school’s like. I came to the Mockingbirds and they helped.”

  “What happened to Ellery?” I ask.

  Amy waves a hand in the air dismissively. “It was the end of the school year and the hearing was in late May, just a couple days before she graduated. Nothing happened to her, but it didn’t matter. I did it to make a point. What she did was wrong.”

  “Obviously.” I look to Ilana and Martin, wondering where their scars are. “So are you guys in the Mockingbirds because something happened to you?”

  They both shake their heads, then Ilana says, “After I heard what Paul Oko did my freshman year I got involved. I’ve been involved the last three years. I’ll miss this most when I go to Columbia next year.”

  Then it’s Martin’s turn. “You know my story. Besides, this is the only extracurricular group that really matters in the long run.”

  I look to Amy. “So you’re the only one on the board who’s been through a case yourself?”

  Amy nods. “Yes. Because that’s how we keep going.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We pay it forward.”

  “Meaning?” I ask slowly.

  Amy smiles, that same sort of mesmerizing smile she’s been flashing all semester. “It’s not bad, Alex. It’s just we have to ensure the group can keep going. And we do that by asking”—she pauses after the last word, giving it space—“those we help to take over. That’s how we sustain the group’s survival to keep doing good. And now,” she continues, “it’s my honor and privilege in the great tradition of the Mockingbirds, because we believe in justice and goodness and fairness, to ask you, Alex, to take over for me as the head of the Mockingbirds next year.”

  “Why not Martin? He loves the Mockingbirds.”

  “I can’t,” Martin says. “Remember when I told you I could never be the leader? This is why. You have to have been helped to be the leader.”

  From victim to ruler, powerless to powerful, that’s how the Mockingbirds work.

  “You never told me this. Casey… Casey never told me this,” I stammer, because I kind of just want to go back to being me again.

  Except life doesn’t work that way. I have to go forward.

  “Some things are on a need-to-know basis,” Amy says in a reassuring tone.

  “What about the others you helped? The junior whose roommates were cheating off him? Or the freshmen theater students who brought the others to you?” I ask. “And it’s only March. Aren’t there other cases? There could be other cases the rest of the year.”

  “Yes, but you’re the one I want to carry the torch,” Amy says proudly, as if she’s asked me to be the godmother of a child or something. “I was hoping you’d want to.”

  Do I want to? It’s never occurred to my uninvolved, apathetic heart to lead, to want to lead. But that girl is making room for this new one.

  “Yes, I want to,” I say, and the words don’t feel foreign. They feel like a new beginning.

  Amy claps happily. “Great, I’ll teach you everything. You can observe for the next two months and learn how we work. As for next year, I’ll be like an informal advisor to you. Ilana’s off to college but Martin is eligible for one more term if you want to keep him on next year. However, there is one thing you’ll have to do first.

  “As you know,” Amy continues, “Martin violated the rules by being involved with you. Members of the Mockingbirds can date one another, but we forbid involvement with people we’re helping. It’s a conflict of interest. It could hurt our credibility. Anyway, now that you’re the leader-elect, I’m going to leave it up to you to decide whether he can stay on for another term or not.”

  I laugh. Like I’d say no, like I’d forbid him, like I’d be that kind of a person? He’s Martin. I want him to have what he wants. He loves the Mockingbirds.

  I look to Martin and my lips curl up in a smile, like we have a secret, only now everyone knows it. “Do you want to stay on?” I ask curiously.

  “Of course,” he says, the sparkle in h
is eyes returning.

  “Of course you can, then,” I echo back.

  “That’s settled, then,” Amy says with a knowing look. “I figured you’d say that and I was hoping he’d stay on too. That’s why I had you decide, so he could.”

  Even black-and-white Amy has a shade of gray. Even Amy can bend the rules in her own way.

  “If you want to get up to speed, you can read everything you need to know in here,” Amy says, and taps her notebook, the one with the mockingbird on the cover. “I’ll need it back in a few days. But when the school year ends it’ll be all yours.” She hands it to me. “Guard it with your life. It has all our rules and information on where records are kept.”

  I hold the slightly worn notebook as an archaeologist would a newly found treasure, one that has great and forbidding powers.

  “Well, kids. I have to study,” Amy says, and skips up.

  “I don’t,” Ilana says smugly.

  “You still have classes, Miss Early Admission to Columbia,” Amy points out.

  “Yeah, but they don’t really matter.”

  Then they walk out of the laundry room and it’s just Martin and me and the notebook. I rub my thumb on the edge of the pages, not ready to open it yet, not ready for it to spill its secrets for me. But I will be. Soon I will be.

  “You’re going to be a hard-ass ruler, aren’t you?” he says playfully.

  “Oh yeah. Just like I was back there.”

  “Thanks for letting me stay.”

  “Did you really think I was going to kick you out?”

  Martin shrugs. “Honestly?”

  “Well, yeah. Honestly.”

  “I didn’t know what you were going to do.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because now that this is over, I feel like you don’t need me anymore,” he says.

  I shake my head in answer, because Martin might once have been about need, but now he is about want. “Do you want to go to your room?” I suggest.

  He shrugs his shoulders happily. “Sure. Sandeep’s in the library anyway. But we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”