The Rivals

by Daisy Whitney

  It’s then that I see him.

  Carter.

  All the way at the other end. He doesn’t see me—not yet, at least. He’s walking with his head down, maybe toward the bathroom. I’m here and he’s here and there’s one long, looming hallway and many dorm rooms and many boys between us.

  But I keep walking.

  Then everything happens quickly. It’s not like in the movies, where it’s slow-motion. Here in real life, things happen in a snap. Carter looks up. He spots me. A door opens. It’s the bathroom. Theo steps out. Carter opens his mouth. Theo glances down the hall. Carter shouts, “Get out of here, whore.” Theo turns to Carter, then to me. He puts a hand on my back and nods to the open door to his room, guiding me inside.

  “How about you get out of here, douche bag?” Theo shouts back down the hall to Carter.

  Then to me, gently, “You okay?”

  I nod because I can’t speak. Because my skin doesn’t feel like mine. My bones don’t feel like mine.

  “He’s an ass,” Theo adds.

  I still don’t say anything.

  “Are you okay?” he asks again.

  Then I realize Theo knows what Carter did. But he’s on my side, and I have to stop acting like a mute.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I manage. “But thanks. Seriously.”

  “Anytime. Are you going to class now?” he asks as he grabs his backpack from the floor and slings it over his shoulder. “Or did you need something here in Richardson? Are you meeting someone?”

  “I have English,” I say, answering his first question, but not the second or third.

  “Me too,” he says, and gestures to his door. But before we leave, he reaches to his desk and grabs something. I glance back, and when I do I see it’s a pill bottle and it’s full of little orange pills.

  Now I feel dirty in a whole new way, because as we walk to class, I keep thinking I have a secret I don’t want to have, a clue I wish I hadn’t uncovered. Because now I’m spying on the guy who rescued me this morning.

  And even though I didn’t cross a line, it feels like I did.

  I try to tell myself the pill bottle proves nothing. That this is not a clue whatsoever. That everything is totally circumstantial, coincidental, and happenstance.

  But I can’t shake the feeling, especially when he stops at the water fountain outside class, roots around for something in his pocket, then takes a drink.

  *

  Mr. Baumann begins English class with a statement. “When you are sixteen, adults are slightly impressed and almost intimidated by you.”

  He’s seated on the edge of the desk at the front of the classroom. Perched, really. He’s one of the younger teachers here, though young is a relative word, because I’m pretty sure he’s in his mid-thirties, which makes him twice as old as us. His hair is blondish, or it had been, at least, but last year it started to turn gray, and now you can see more streaks creeping in every day. I wonder if that means this job is wearing him down already or if he was always going to go gray now.

  “Do you think adults are impressed or intimidated, or both, by you?” he asks, then gestures with an open palm to us.

  I look around and notice Theo is eager to answer the question. His hand is straight up in the air. But Maia’s hand juts up too. Mr. Baumann nods at her.

  “But we’re not sixteen. We’re seniors, so we’re seventeen, and some of us are even eighteen.”

  “But of course. Let us never forget the facts,” he says with a grin, and then taps the cover of a paperback book on his desk. I can’t see the title. “However, what I am more interested in are not just the facts but how we exist with them, especially when the facts are bent and shifted. In this case, the question is not so much about the age or the number but about the experience of being a teenager and how adults see you. To that end, perhaps I will rephrase the question. Are adults slightly impressed and almost intimidated by the likes of you?”

  Theo’s practically waving his hand back and forth like a flag. But another hand shoots up. I turn around and notice Anjali Durand, the New Nine member I passed over for appointment to the Mockingbirds board. She’s no longer on the council—she served her one-year term, but she did choose to stay on as a tier-two runner this year. A wispy red scarf is wrapped stylishly around her neck, her dark blond hair clipped back, her straight bangs falling just above her eyes. The effect is striking—both youthful, with the bangs, and sophisticated, with the scarf.

  “I think they are intimidated by what they have lost and what we still have,” Anjali says. She has the slightest trace of a French accent, just enough to be interesting, not enough to be overly distracting.

  “And by that, presumably, you mean youth?” Mr. Baumann asks.

  Anjali nods. “Yes, but also an openness about the world, right? We’re still malleable and receptive to new views and new opinions. We can change more easily than adults, without as much moaning and creaking of the joints.”

  A smile lights up his face. “Moaning and creaking of the joints. Very nice, Anjali.” Then he adds, “Are we impressed too?”

  Theo’s still going at it, raising his arm higher and farther than anyone, almost like he could touch the ceiling—and even like that, with his arm lifted in class, he has a natural grace and fluidity to him. Now that I’m out of Richardson and removed from the shock of seeing Carter, I feel as if I can see things clearly again. Like Theo and how he moves—like water; his long, lean frame flows in and out of space like he’s one with the air around him. Even his hair looks as though it’s dancing—it’s caramel brown and wavy, and I would swear a breeze is blowing through it just so, just around him.

  “Theo. It seems you have something to say,” Mr. Baumann says, inviting the eager boy to answer.

  “Why would adults not be impressed with the accomplishments of the young? The way we balance a million different things, the way we must navigate between being no longer a child but not quite an adult. The way we often have to figure this all out on our own,” Theo says, in an astonishing fit of eloquence. It’s not surprising to hear eloquence from a student, nor from Theo. But he doesn’t sound like the Theo of thirty minutes ago. He sounds like an adult. He sounds like he’s giving a speech. It sounds like the orange pill he just took has kicked in.

  But why would he be using Anderin for an advantage? The advantage he wants is the one he evidently can’t have yet—to dance again. Anderin doesn’t restore an ACL. Anderin doesn’t help you compete in dance competitions or ace auditions for Alvin Ailey or Martha Graham.

  “Well said, Theo. Well said.” Mr. Baumann nods. Then he picks up the book on his desk, but he’s holding it on his lap so I still can’t see it. “As some of you know, I also advise the debate team, so you can expect that we’ll be enjoying many hearty debates in this class this semester.”

  Maia straightens up a bit higher as he says that. Nothing could please her more than the chance to sharpen her skills, especially with the Elite on her radar screen.

  Mr. Baumann chuckles slightly. “Well, I shouldn’t presume you’ll enjoy them. You might be bored stiff, but I suspect not, because I have selected a series of books for the next few months that I believe should speak to all of you. Because you all will have something in common with these books. Jane Eyre, Nicholas Nickelby, Tom Brown’s School Days,” he rattles off. “We’ll also read The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier and A Separate Peace by John Knowles. What you have in common with them is they, either in part or in whole, are set at private prep schools, usually boarding schools,” he adds.

  Oh. Well, that is a bit more interesting.

  “And I want you to look for yourselves in these school stories. Boarding school in particular is an unusual experience. You live away from home in dorms with your friends. You’re given all sorts of freedom but even more responsibility. What do you do with that freedom? What do you do with your responsibility? What did your fictional counterparts do, and what does that say about truth in fiction? That will be the over
arching theme of this semester—truth in fiction. And perhaps then we will better understand what John Knowles meant in A Separate Peace when he wrote, ‘When you are sixteen, adults are slightly impressed and almost intimidated by you.’”

  He holds up the paperback, then adds, “In this context, it was about war. Which is why you should never take things at face value. Because Knowles wasn’t just talking about the experience of being a teenager. He was talking about teenagers getting ready to fight a war. A war the adults would only watch. ‘When you are sixteen, adults are slightly impressed and almost intimidated by you. This is a puzzle, finally solved by the realization that they foresee your military future, fighting for them. You do not foresee it,’” he reads. “As you can see, context is everything and nothing at the same time. Words both stand alone and with each other.”

  When class ends, I notice Theo leaves with Anjali. They fall quickly into what looks like a deep conversation. Maia and I leave together.

  “That was a headfake if I ever saw one,” Maia says, and it’s clear she approves.

  I look at her out of the corner of my eye. “A headfake? You mean because he set us up to think he was talking about teenagers, and then it turned out he was talking about war? And then it was as if he was talking about the first thing again?”

  “It was bloody brilliant. I am totally going to use that strategy in my next debate. It’s like your opponent thinks you’re going one way with the football,” she says, then demonstrates by turning her head to the right, “then, boom! You’re off and running the other way.” She finishes by turning her head to the left.

  “Did you actually just refer to football, as in American football? I thought you had a long-standing practice of spitting on American football.”

  “I still spit on American football. The headfake is an English football strategy too, my oh-so-American roommate. And besides, it’s properly known as footy in the homeland,” she says as we walk across the quad to our next classes. “Speaking of the homeland, did I tell you Ms. Merritt wrote to me this summer about the Elite? Several times actually, asking if I was prepping for it yet, if I was going to be ready, if the other debaters would be ready,” Maia says.

  “Creepy. Did you delete her messages?”

  “Yes,” Maia says proudly. “Though I finally relented two weeks ago and answered one of them. But get this! I made it seem as if I hadn’t received the ten other e-mails because I live in London, hence the homeland connection. Like the Internet doesn’t work there or something. I told her I had spotty Internet access at our country home, and I was so dreadfully sorry I hadn’t replied to her notes.”

  I laugh. “You don’t even have a country home!”

  “I know. That’s the irony of it.”

  “But you know, she loves thinking you do.”

  “Oh, she ate it up. I’m pretty sure the next e-mail she sent was to my parents asking for a donation. She probably figures they’re lords.”

  “Shall I call you Lady Maia, then, in front of her?”

  “Oh, please do. In fact, I command you to as my royal subject.”

  “It’s all because of that stupid J. Sullivan James Award. She made it pretty clear she’s pretty much dying for me to get into Juilliard,” I say.

  “There are three criteria to judging the winner of the J. Sullivan James Award. Academic excellence, athletic excellence, and artistic excellence. So debate, theater, music, dance—they are all part of the artistic portion of judging for the award. I looked it up,” Maia says.

  “You research everything.”

  “You have to know the enemy,” Maia says.

  *

  When I arrive at orchestra later in the morning, my friend Jones is waiting outside for me, lounging against the railing, sunglasses on. But the strange part is he’s actually holding his violin in public. Even stranger is when he lifts the instrument to his chin, then gently, like a painter, an artist, Monet himself laying a brush to canvas, massages the strings with the bow.

  I recognize the first notes immediately, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and I’m about to shout it victoriously, but then he shifts into something else, something more Jones’s speed, opting for a little Vampire Weekend.

  “For a second I thought you might actually play Tchaikovsky. More than a few notes, that is,” I say, and give Jones a reunion hug, then a quick once-over. With his brown hair now reaching his shoulders, he’s totally got the whole rock-star look going on. He’s the most amazing classical violinist, but he’d rather be jamming on his electric guitar. I have no doubt he’ll make his way back to New York City for college when we graduate, and start some awesome band. I can picture him in cool little indie clubs, the kind where beer has sloshed onto the wood floor so many times, the place smells permanently of hops. The lights’ll dim, he’ll come onstage with his bandmates, and then he’ll jam out an epic opening chord sequence on a sleek silver Fender Stratocaster.

  The crowd will go wild. The girls will swoon.

  “I heard Delaney Zirinski is in need of your services,” Jones says, then gives me a wink.

  I’m shocked, but then I’m not shocked. Nothing gets by Jones. He notices things, sees things, then sees what lies beneath. Like he found out some shady stuff his dad’s company was up to this summer and now they’re engaged in some kind of standoff. It’s a shame Jones isn’t a Mockingbird. He’d make a terrific investigator, an unbeatable secret weapon.

  Still, it’s my job to protect Delaney. God knows, I wouldn’t have wanted Amy giving up my name, rank, and serial number before I was ready last year. So I will myself to keep all the muscles in my face still, to not grin, to not frown, to not give a thing away.

  “Not sure what you mean,” I say.

  A full-blown grin fills his face, like a kid whose dad just handed him the keys to the car. “That is really adorable. How you do that whole stony-faced denial thing.”

  I press my lips together, fighting harder to remain a blank. “How was your summer?”

  Now he laughs and points a finger at me. “This is good. It’s like a show. I want to see more.”

  I look away but can feel a smirk starting to bloom on my face.

  “Ah, there. I knew I could break you down.”

  “I’m saying nothing,” I say, but I can hear the laughter breaking through my voice.

  “It’s okay, Alex. Don’t feel bad,” he says, and wiggles an eyebrow. “My ability to put two and two together knows no bounds.”

  “You are the worst,” I say, teasing him.

  “But don’t you want to know how I knew she was in need of your services?”

  I hold up my hands as if to say yes.

  He taps his forehead. “You leave D-Day. Two seconds later, she leaves D-Day. Ergo.” Then he adds, “Besides, I hear the same things she hears. It’s so Themis, isn’t it? Anderin is like the drug of choice for overachievers.”

  Which is pretty much an apt description for anyone who goes to this school. I can only imagine what’ll happen at Themis if this gets out of hand. A whole student body amped up on speed. It’s like giving a cheetah a triple espresso when it’s chasing down a gazelle. The cheetah doesn’t need another advantage, but the cheetah will take it.

  Predators, all of us.

  Jones returns to Vampire Weekend, tucking his violin back under his chin. He sings quietly, plays quietly in the final moments before the bell rings, but I still recognize the words and the music. I also recognize an opportunity when I hear one.

  “Hey, Jones. Would you come to the Faculty Club with me? Ms. Merritt wants the Mockingbirds—the a cappella version of the Mockingbirds—to come sing.”

  He straightens his head but keeps the violin on his shoulder. “You’re crazy. I only make Faculty Club appearances if I have to.”

  I give him a light punch. “Do it for me?”

  He plays a few more notes. “We’ll see,” he says.

  “You’d do it if I told you about the morning I had,” I say, rolling my eyes to mak
e light of things. But the fact is, that run-in with Carter still lingers, like the scent of sliced onions left in the garbage can for too long. So I tell Jones what happened, the way Carter spewed those words out—whore.

  “God, I hate that guy,” Jones says. “Why can’t he leave you alone?”

  I shrug, then sigh. “I don’t know.”

  “If I ever see him or hear him say anything like that to you or anyone, well, it’ll be the last time any words come out of his mouth for a long time.”

  I give Jones a faint smile. I love the protector in him, though I don’t mention Theo played that role earlier today.

  “But what were you doing in Richardson Hall?” Jones asks.

  I look away. I don’t want him to see me as I lie to him. “Nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing? Why do I have a hard time believing that?”

  “Jones, it was nothing, okay?”

  “I’m sure this nothing had everything to do with your case.”

  “Yes, it did, and that’s all I can say because I shouldn’t be talking about it,” I say. Because I have to do my best to protect people’s privacy. No one’s been charged with anything.

  “Playing by the rules,” he remarks.

  “It’s the least I can do,” I say.

  “You won’t even bend for your old friend Jones? Maybe I can convince you with a little of this,” he says, then returns to the violin, to the 1812 Overture, a musical gesture just for me. Then he stops playing and lays a hand on my shoulder and it’s as if Tchaikovsky radiates from it, like notes are seeping out of his fingertips, and my skin beneath the fabric of my T-shirt absorbs the music, shoots it through my body and turns me into a human tuning fork. This must be what they say about great guitarists, extraordinary violinists. They are “hands men,” and there is something simply electric in the way his hand feels after he’s just played.