The Rivals

by Daisy Whitney

  And as I make out the last name, I feel like I’ve just been sucker punched.

  But I pull myself together to read the note: There’s more where this came from. I need your help. Can we meet?

  It’s signed Calvin Tarkenton, then his year. He’s a first-year. Despite my shaky fingers and jittery heart, I call him and tell him to meet us in the basement laundry room at eight. Then I tell him to bring quarters.

  Four hours later, I’m playing Trivial Pursuit with Parker and Martin and, I have to say, even though the game is for show, I am kicking their asses. But it only lasts for five minutes because at eight on the dot, Calvin arrives.

  Calvin is a small, awkward thing, pale, with cheeks marked by acne scars and an Adam’s apple so precariously large, it teeters off his throat. I realize he’s the boy I saw checking out the posters we slapped up a few days ago. I introduce myself, then Parker and Martin, and I invite Calvin to start his laundry so the sounds muffle our conversation. Calvin almost trips over his own feet on the way back from the washers.

  “Thank you for coming. Do you want to tell us what you know?” I ask gently, because this boy seems to need a soft touch right now.

  Calvin says he knows who’s behind the drug ring. He knows who’s getting the prescriptions. He knows who’s selling them to others. And it’s not Theo. And it’s not Beat. And it’s not Maia. It’s a girl, though, someone I know.

  “How do you know all this?” I ask.

  “She wanted me to help her. She wanted a counterpart,” Calvin tells us in a squeaky voice that borders on an alto. Strange for a guy, even a freshman. “I’m in the VoiceOvers with her and we’re doing a duet. After rehearsal one night in the choir room, she kind of hung behind and when it was just the two of us, she asked me to help her out.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “No,” Calvin says. I make note of the fact that he simply says no. He doesn’t say absolutely not or God no. His no is simple.

  “Why’d you say no?”

  “Look, I don’t like the idea of being a narc and ratting out other students, okay? But this thing is spiraling out of control. It’s the kind of thing that could take over the school, know what I mean?”

  I picture a tiny little rock rolling down a snowy mountainside, adding a little powder here, a little powder there, building speed, building strength, becoming monstrous, and then just burying the ski town at the bottom of the hill in the mother of all avalanches. Some, like Beat, choose to batten down their own hatches. Others, like Calvin, try to save the ski town.

  Calvin continues. “I don’t want Themis to be the next Miss Coleman’s or Waterstone.”

  Miss Coleman’s is an all-girls school in Connecticut. A couple years ago a group of girls formed a secret club whose mission was to push other girls around. They prided themselves on their “water torture technique” because they’d wear all these other girls down with a thousand tiny little instances of bullying. One of the girls withdrew. Her parents turned around and sued the school and won. No one wants to go to Miss Coleman’s now.

  Then there’s Waterstone up the road in Massachusetts. It used to be known as a bastion of diversity, a school that attracted students from all over the world, all walks of life, all colors, all creeds, all sexual orientations. It was like Brown University but prep school. Waterstone’s gay-straight alliance had even become a model for other prep schools around the country. Until a couple of seniors beat up on the group’s leaders, resulting in broken bones and a broken alliance.

  “That’s not the kind of school I want to go to,” Calvin says. “So after she came to me, I collected some evidence.”

  “How’d you get the evidence?” Martin asks.

  “She’s not that cautious. All the stuff—it’s kind of out and about on her desk. It’s weird, but she’s not really trying to hide it. I think she wants people to know it’s her. So they’ll come to her. And she figures she’ll never get caught.”

  “Since it’s Themis,” I add.

  Calvin opens his backpack. He pulls out one of those freezer-size Ziploc bags and offers it to me. “Go ahead. Open it.”

  I reach for the bag and feel as if I’m in a state of suspended animation, like everything is happening to another Alex, in another city or another life. An Alex who opens Ziploc bags of evidence. An Alex who knows what to do with such evidence. I take out the goods, inspect each one, then pass them on to Parker and Martin in some bizarre form of underground show-and-tell.

  There are pill bottles with several different students’ names on them. They’ve been filled at different pharmacies, but all local ones. Then there’s a photocopied sheet of paper with a list of names that match the ones on the bottles, then amounts, then the price they paid. A hefty premium is being charged. Finally there is a handful of blank prescriptions. They’re waiting to be filled out, but they’re all presigned and the T and the R are crisper than in the original.

  Because they’ve been inked by the daughter of a pair of doctors. A daughter who’s been forging her parents’ signatures.

  Then Calvin says the name out loud, the person who’s forging the names, who’s peddling the pills.

  Jamie Foster.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MAKE AN OFFER

  It doesn’t make sense that it’s Jamie.

  Not when Theo practically admitted it to me. Not when I saw his pills. Not when I saw Vanessa’s e-mail. Not when Delaney tipped me off way back when. None of these clues would be admissible in a court, but still I know he’s part of this.

  And yet Calvin never mentions Theo. We even ask him if Theo’s involved, but Calvin says no, not that he’s aware of. Just like Beat said.

  How the hell can the dancer boy be so open with me and so under-the-radar with everyone else? How can he scoot by unscathed, unnamed?

  But then there is the evidence. And evidence means we have a case.

  We mobilize the runners to start docking points. They’re streaking up and down the classroom hallways, gathering attendance slips and marking a certain alleged drug dealer absent from pretty much every class. Every time the board authorizes another point deduction, my stomach clangs inside me, smashing against my skin. I barely know Jamie, but I do like Jamie, and I know Jamie likes me. So I feel nothing but this piling knot of dread in my belly as we take away points without telling her. It makes me think of Carter last year, of how he must have felt when the Mockingbirds started trimming his point totals before he was served. I don’t know that I could ever in my whole life feel sympathy for my rapist, but if I could, this would be the one time. Because now we have moved beyond our role as investigators. Now we are practitioners of vigilante justice. This is what it feels like when people use that cliché the lesser of two evils. Because that’s what vigilante justice is: the lesser of two evils.

  I wish there were a better way. I wish I could drop this whole entire case in someone else’s lap, where it belongs. I wish an adult could do the dirty work of punishing a girl I like—a girl I thought of as a friend.

  By the end of the next week, McKenna’s little sister barely has enough points to get a cup of coffee. Jamie waits for me at the end of music class, clutching her backpack. “Alex,” she says, then gulps, “did I do something wrong?”

  Shoot me. Just shoot me now, please. If I thought it was bad having T.S. ticked off at me, if I thought it sucked having Maia lashing into me, this is even worse. Because Jamie just looks so innocent, especially as she holds on to her white backpack with pink polka dots like it’s a lifeline.

  Especially when Theo should be the one in her place.

  “What do you mean?” I manage to say, but the words catch, like stones in my throat.

  She shakes her head quickly, over and over, her long, straight hair moving with her. Then she backs away from me, like she’s scared of me. “I’m sorry.”

  The sound of her words is like a jolt to the heart, an electric shock I didn’t see coming. Because we were friends—or at least starting
to be—and now we’re judge and criminal. As she darts out, her black hair like a sheet behind her, her white and pink polka dots flashing by, I wish someone had told me that being unbiased, being impartial, doesn’t stop you from having feelings about a case, about a victim, or even about the accused.

  I may be a Mockingbird, but I’m still a human being. It’s getting harder to reconcile the two.

  *

  At our next board meeting, I bring up the nagging issue in this case, the one that’s plagued us from the start.

  “If we’re going to file charges, who are we going to file charges on behalf of? It can’t be Calvin. He’s a witness, not the wronged party. It can’t be Delaney. Or even Beat. They’re not the ones pressing charges. This isn’t one person against another.”

  Parker speaks. “It goes back to what we talked about at our very first meeting. That these sorts of victimless crimes are really crimes against society. Against the greater good.”

  “And in the real justice system, a lot of crimes are actually crimes against the state, let’s not forget,” Martin points out. “The people of Rhode Island versus John Doe, and so on.”

  “But we’ve never tried a case like that before,” I say, tapping the notebook. All our past cases have been brought to us by the victims. “And if it’s going to be a first case like that, we should take a vote. Like you did last year.”

  They nod and agree, because the precedent with new types of cases has been set. Mine was the first date-rape case tried, so the Mockingbirds asked the student body to cast their votes on whether date rape should be considered a violation of the students’ code of conduct. The students voted yes.

  “Let’s put it to the students, then, whether a cheating ring is a crime against the whole school,” I say.

  That keeps us busy for the next week, posting signs in the dark of night about the coming vote, distributing ballots under doors one morning, collecting them in our mailbox, tabulating them, and then announcing the results in our usual fashion—by flyer, in code.

  The student body is with us by a strong majority: 73 percent.

  None of this makes the next day any easier. Because I have to do my official duty and pay Jamie a visit.

  McKenna’s there with her, and I feel like a complete jerk. Jamie barely speaks when I give her the option to settle. She just shakes her head and says, “No, I’ll take it to trial.”

  McKenna gives me a steely glare, then wraps an arm tightly around her little sister. “She didn’t do it,” McKenna says. Jamie cowers under her sister, her brown eyes like a deer’s. “Besides, how can you accuse her? You’re supposed to be looking out for her.”

  I can’t do this. I’m not made for police work; I don’t have the kind of scorn for the guilty that would make this easy. When I thought about the Mockingbirds this summer, I figured the cases would be like mine—black-and-white, good and bad. This case is all bad.

  “We have evidence. A lot of it,” I manage, saying it softly, because that whisper of her sorry still hangs in the air.

  “What kind?” Jamie asks.

  “Forged prescriptions taken from your parents. A list of the students buying. Pill bottles.”

  “Someone planted that. Jamie would never do that.”

  “It’s pretty compelling evidence. It’d probably be easier if you settled. We’re willing to settle, and I can make you an offer right now,” I say, and nothing about this feels comfortable. Nothing about this feels remotely normal. I might as well be in Turkey trying to translate for the government.

  I tell her the settlement terms. Jamie will have to give up VoiceOvers for the rest of the year and consent to regular inspections to make sure she’s not still dealing. If found guilty at trial, she’d be out of VoiceOvers for the rest of her time at Themis.

  “This is all better than what would happen if the police found out,” I say, even though I have no clue what the police would do.

  McKenna snaps. “She’s fourteen. She’s a freaking minor. She’s not going to jail. You know why? Because she didn’t do it. We’re not settling. You accuse my sister, you might as well be accusing me. So I will be the one defending her. I will be her lawyer.”

  “I understand,” I say, and that means we will be filing charges on behalf of the entire student body—the Students of Themis Academy versus Jamie Foster.

  The girl with the polka-dot backpack, who also happens to be my protégé.

  A couple of days later, I wake up before the sun rises and tack sticks of Juicy Fruit gum to the trees in the quad, a sign that a student is about to be served. We serve her, and then later that day as I’m on my way to the library to write Jamie’s name in the permanent copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, I catch sight of curly red hair. It’s that girl Carter was kissing, that girl Carter is dating. She’s leaving the caf, and he’s right next to her, holding her hand. He leans in to kiss her on the cheek, but then she turns closer, making sure it’s a full lip plant. I gag and look away, hurrying into the library, wondering if we do any good at all. Because everywhere I turn, I see wreckage.

  I retrieve To Kill a Mockingbird from its shelf, flip to the back, and take a deep breath, my right hand suddenly shaking. I exhale, but my hand is still jittery, like it’s resisting what it’s about to do. I wait a minute, then another till it stops.

  In the back of the book, I write the crime: Pharming Without a License.

  I hesitate for a sliver of a second, wanting to write Theo’s name. Except he’s somehow skating past us, and I wish I knew how he’s pulling it off.

  But I don’t.

  So I add Jamie Foster’s name to the Themis Academy list of the accused.

  Chapter Twenty

  BIG MAN ON CAMPUS

  It gnaws at me that Jamie isn’t connected to the users. She’s not on the debate team, but nearly all the users on the list from her room are debaters. I can’t help but feel we’re being set up, like we’re being led down this path by some unseen, unnamed person.

  Someone who doesn’t want us to know Theo’s really the dealer.

  I start following him around, doing the thing he said irked him when Parker did it. But I’m better at this than Parker because I learned how to avoid people last year. I learned how to dart around bushes and duck down hallways and hide out on the sides of buildings. Ironic how avoiding Carter then helps me be a better spy now. Because that’s what I do for the next three nights, lurking outside the music hall, waiting for Theo to emerge from the dance studio. Every night I watch him. Every night he goes straight to Debate Club practice or straight to Delaney’s.

  I look at my watch, and it’s almost time to follow Theo again. For now, I’m meeting with the board and Sandeep in Martin’s room. We decided to keep the evidence in Martin’s room. It seemed safer, less risky than my room, what with the captain of the debate team being my roomie and all.

  “So this guy Sam looks like he’s been on Anderin for about twelve weeks and two days, which means he started back in the summer,” Sandeep says, since we asked him to be the “DA.” With a case this far-reaching we couldn’t have someone in the group representing the whole student body. Plus, Sandeep is pretty much the definition of unflappable, which is why he’ll be an amazing hand surgeon someday and why he’ll be the perfect prosecutor in our courtroom. “And he’s consuming triple the recommended dosage,” he adds.

  I look at the list again and scan for Sam’s name. He’s a debater, same as Theo.

  I glance at Parker and wonder why he never found anything on Theo. Maybe he didn’t look hard enough. Maybe he didn’t try at all. Maybe he’s in cahoots with Theo. The strange, inconsistent details of this case weigh on me more, and I am dying to get to the bottom of this. Even as I close my notebook I can still see the words be respectful hanging in front of me like a warning sign, blinking yellow lights. But I don’t see how we can do our job by being goody-goody every second.

  Besides, I don’t think following him is disrespectful.

  I think it’s absolu
tely necessary.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say as I stand up.

  Martin gives me a strange look.

  “I have to rehearse. Practice,” I explain, going for a quick cover-up.

  “Practicing with Jones,” Martin says, and there’s a distance in his voice I’m not used to.

  “Not this time,” I say, and give him a look. But I’m not going to say more in front of his roommates, so I leave and head to the music hall, crunching on the crackling leaves on my way. It’s early evening; dusk is settling in. When I reach the music hall, I take off my shoes and pad down the hall in my socks. I inch close enough to confirm Theo’s alone in the studio again, but not close enough for him to see me.

  Then I return outside quietly and hide behind the bushes, slipping my shoes back on. I crouch and I wait. I stay for the next half hour or so, thighs throbbing, knees aching, but I don’t care. I will succeed where Parker failed.

  The door creaks open, and I hold my breath. I watch Theo walk away. When he’s a safe distance out, I follow him. As he walks toward Morgan-Young Hall, he checks his watch. Then, as if he just remembered something, he makes a sharp right into Richardson Hall. I know he lives on the first floor, room 103. I count three windows down and do my best to walk ever so casually, but ever so slowly, past his window. The blinds are half-closed, but I can still see him reaching for something on his desk. I squint to make out what it is, but it’s too small to see. Then it looks like he takes out his phone and presses it hard on his desk, pushing the edge of his phone back and forth, back and forth, in one small spot.

  Theo bends his face down to the desk, reaches for a prerolled piece of paper, a dollar bill or something, and snorts. My breath catches in my throat, and my whole body, the whole night, goes silent and still. I don’t want to watch, I want to turn away, but I can’t stop looking. It’s the wreck on the highway, and the medics are pulling out the body.