The Rivals

by Daisy Whitney

  “What would happen if you said no to chocolate-selling? Would anyone listen? Would the teachers listen?” Mr. Baumann asks.

  Theo answers immediately.

  “Not in Robert Cormier’s construction of this universe, where everything is bleak and everyone is violent and everyone gives in to all their baser instincts. Because the teachers succumbed to cruelty too. They were fully complicit; they allowed the Vigils to operate. They didn’t even turn a blind eye. They let Vigils do their bidding, making them their own personal army of sorts.”

  No wonder the debate team is winning. That stuff works.

  Then I flash on something. Theo only talks like this in class. He doesn’t talk like this, all sharply cut and smooth as glass, when I see him in the dance studio. He’s muddier then with words, but softer too. He must be taking the Annie right before classes and right before Debate Club practice. But in the studio, he’s not on anything. In the studio, he’s still trying to be himself.

  “But step aside from this book. We’re talking about you. That’s the theme this semester. Truth in fiction. Your truth. What would happen if you said no to chocolate-selling? Would the teachers listen?” Mr. Baumann asks again.

  I cock my head to the side and consider Mr. Baumann, the gray streaking through his hair, the casual way he sits on the desk like he wants to be part of a circle with us, like he wants to connect with us. Could I talk to him? Could I tell him what’s going on right under his nose? Could I tell him what I know about the student who just answered his questions? Would he listen? Could he act? He is the Debate Club advisor, after all, and this case should be his jurisdiction, not mine, not ours.

  I start imagining how good it would feel to slough off this role, to push it onto him, to let the teachers carry the yoke. I find myself wiggling my shoulders ever so slightly, once to the left, once to the right, as if I just let go of something very heavy.

  But there is no letting go. There are no teachers to talk to. There is no dean who cares. We are the only ones.

  When class ends, I head to the music hall for a private lesson with Miss Damata. And even though she’s the only teacher I trust, I can’t talk to her about this. I might have told her what happened to me last year, but I’ve never told her about the Mockingbirds. Besides, what could she do? I’ve practically told Ms. Merritt and she was more concerned about my college apps.

  Miss Damata listens to me play Ravel’s one-handed song.

  “Technically it’s pristine. But I can’t help but think something’s off. It’s as if something is missing, not in the music, but behind the music,” she says. “It’s as if there’s a layer of emotion left unexplored.”

  I try the piece again, but as I play, the music sounds empty.

  “We’ll return to Ravel. Let’s hear your Bach,” she says.

  When we’re done, I think back to what Mr. Baumann said earlier about teachers, when he asked if they’d listen.

  “Miss Damata, what would you do if you found out that, say, one of the other teachers was doing something wrong?”

  She smiles. “That’s kind of a broad hypothetical, Alex. Can you be more specific?”

  “Well, what if a teacher were supplying drugs?”

  Miss Damata places a hand on my forearm. “Alex, if there’s a teacher here who’s supplying drugs of any kind to students, I need to know. We need to do something about it.”

  Then I laugh. “No! That’s not what I meant. What I meant was what if a teacher were supplying to other teachers? Like selling and stuff?”

  She relaxes a bit. “There is a code of conduct for the faculty. It outlines ethical guidelines we must adhere to in teaching and in our conduct with one another. How we behave, how we treat one another, how we treat students. And it governs anything that’s a criminal act, like selling and stuff, as you say.”

  “But does anyone enforce it? Because a code only matters if it’s enforced.”

  “Absolutely. There are clearly spelled-out sanctions and disciplinary actions. Obviously we all strive to the highest standards, but there have certainly been punishments doled out. Ms. Merritt is very involved. She spends a lot of time with the teachers, and she listens to us. She listens to concerns we share with her and she can act upon them. The code is very important to her.”

  I go cold all over because the faculty has a code.

  A code that matters. The dean enforces it, she disciplines, she does more than slap hands. But only with her peers. What does she do with us? She leaves us to the wolves—we are the wolves. She won’t fight for us; she won’t protect us; she won’t help us.

  “Why do you ask, Alex?”

  I can’t speak right now. If I open my mouth, I will breathe fire. I will burn the music hall down in a towering blaze. I place my left hand on the keys while my right hand lies limp, lifeless on my leg. Useless, like the faculty with us. The left does everything. The left hand bears all the burden.

  I look down at my hands, one working, one not, and then I explode through the music. I storm across Ravel, a general on the battlefield, tearing over it, marching forward, plowing down enemies, leaving nothing behind but charred earth. That’s how Ravel meant the music to be played. With rage, with unbridled, all-consuming, red-hot, fiery, flaming fury. After all, who wouldn’t be pissed to have only one hand?

  When I stop, Miss Damata says, “I believe you’ve found what’s missing.”

  My anger carries me into the night like a wave hurtling toward the shore. It carries me from my dorm and across the quad and into the administration building to the mission I have been plotting all day. I turn a key in the lock and let myself in. Anjali gave me hers to use. She has one, being a runner.

  The building is dark, except for a few hallway lights. I walk down the hall, glancing back and forth at the portraits of past headmasters and headmistresses dating back to the founding of Themis in 1912. I want to rip every one from their gilded frames. I want to slash the canvases with a razor blade. I want to leave them all in a pile of mangled portraits outside Ms. Merritt’s door for her to discover. What’s the big deal anyway? So what if I slice a bunch of dumb portraits? It’s not like I’d get in trouble. It’s not like I’d be disciplined. I’m not a teacher. I don’t matter.

  At the end of the hall, I make a left and reach a dark wood door with a pewter half-circle knocker. I don’t knock. No one’s in the Faculty Club right now. It’s only fitting that my meeting is here in the seat of their self-congratulatory power. The place where they make us perform for them.

  I sit down on a high-backed leather chair, then survey the room—the shelves stacked with bound books, the rich mahogany walls, the blue Turkish rug. I envision taking it over, camping out here and protesting their illusions. Holding up picket signs and shouting through bullhorns. But they’d never notice; they wouldn’t care; they’d just hand me a self-help book on growing out of teenage rebellion. As if that was all that ailed us. Knowing this gives me strength to do the thing I’m about to do.

  My eyes adjust to the dark, since I didn’t turn on a light. Beat doesn’t turn one on either when he joins me a minute later.

  “You got my note,” I say, and gesture to the chair across from me. After I borrowed Anjali’s key, I slipped a note under Beat’s door instructing him to meet here.

  “I did and I’m here,” he says, and sits down in the darkened room.

  I cross my legs and place my hands together, painting my own false front of steady calm. But inside I am a jangled box of exposed nerves, and when I look into Beat’s dark brown eyes and see the tiniest bit of fear, my resolve weakens. But then I think of the brochure, of the code, of Ms. Merritt’s concern for the school’s record, rather than us. What choice do I have? What choices have we ever had? If she had done her job, I wouldn’t have had to snoop in Maia’s things, lie to the board, look through Vanessa’s phone, or do this. So I plow onward, venturing into territory I should be straying far away from, but doing it anyway, violating all our rules.

  Ev
en unwritten ones. We’ve never expressly forbidden entrapment, but that’s probably because no Mockingbird would ever do that to a witness.

  But I’m about to be the first. I’m wiretapping, I’m profiling, I’m demolishing every shred of our guidelines.

  “I know you’re involved, Beat,” I begin, unspooling a lie. “I know Theo’s forcing you to share your supply with him for the Debate Club. He’s trying to mix it up, to get some from you, some from Jamie. I’m not going to let Jamie be the only one to take the fall for him. And I’ve got other students who’ll say all this on the record.”

  I’m completely bluffing. But I have got to get the right guy on trial. The end justifies the means, I tell myself. This is the lesser of two evils. This is my only choice.

  Beat’s face turns ashen. “You do? They will? They’re going to point fingers at me?”

  It’s like weeds are twisting inside me, hooking into me, trying to stop me, but I push through them, stepping closer to the cliff, to the edge of the lie that could make this all worthwhile. “They are. And I know you’re not trying to hurt anyone. I know you’re just being victimized. So I think we’d all be better off if you just coughed up the information now. And then I really can protect you. I’m going to need you to testify. Because we know it’s Theo. We know he wants to win the Elite. So you can either corroborate that and testify or it might be hard to keep the immunity promise.”

  I am sickened by what I’m doing. But what else can I do? Really, what else can I possibly do? This is what happens when no one will help.

  He runs a hand through his tousled curls, closes his eyes, exhales. When he opens his eyes, he says, “Fine. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Then the words spill out.

  “You’re right. Well, almost right. It’s not Theo. But it is about the Elite. It’s Maia. Maia Tan is behind it all. And I will testify to that. I will tell you how she operates, how she supplies, when she distributes. And I will bring other witnesses too. I will call them right now before we all leave for Miami in the morning for our next debate competition,” he says.

  I put my head in my hands, and the weeds shoot up, snaking around my whole body now, pinning me down in their grasp. I deserve this. I set him up. I lied to him. I am no different from the students we try.

  An hour later Beat delivers two other Debate Club members to testify. He brings them to a board meeting that I hastily convene. They tell their stories. Not a single, solitary piece of data about my roommate’s supposed sick quest to win the Elite is left out.

  I guess when you play with fire you get burned.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  REASONABLE DOUBT

  Nothing at this school stays secret very long. I’m reminded of this when I bump into Natalie on the quad the next day. This time, she pokes me in the chest, her right index finger banging into my sternum.

  “Can you keep your hands off me?” I say, and I push her fingers away.

  “But of course. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with your little clubhouse there for inappropriate poking,” she says. “Because that’s what you’re running. A clubhouse.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s see,” she begins, raising her index finger. “You run the group with your Goody Two-Shoes boyfriend.” She adds the middle finger. “He rooms with Senator Dickhead’s son, who also just so happens to be on your dumb board.” Ring finger now. “And to top it off, their other roommate is now the prosecutor.” The pinkie finger for the finale. “Who, natch, is practically engaged to that soccer bitch.”

  “Watch it, Natalie,” I say.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks, and leans in closer to me, her chest about to bump mine. I take a step back. “You going to sue me? You going to put me on the stand again? Because I would love to take you down again.”

  “If memory serves, you didn’t take me down last time, because you defended the wrong guy,” I say, and my latent anger over her testimony rises up. “You defended a rapist.”

  “Whatever,” she says, and then waves her hand in front of me. “And now I hear your other roommate is about to get what she deserves.” Then she starts cackling. “You know, I’m going to have to campaign to have your trials opened to the public. Just like on TV. Because that I would love to see. That I would love to be in the audience for.”

  She snaps a finger, swivels around, and walks off.

  As I head to the caf, I notice a flyer on a tree. Something about it catches my eye, so I walk over to it, wrapping my arms around my chest because the October air is growing chilly. When I reach the tree, I place a hand on the flyer to smooth it out. It’s a drawing of a dog, a cartoonish-looking canine, but something about it bothers me. Maybe it’s the strange smile on the face that’s almost a sneer. Or the words I spot underneath it—coming soon—like a cold wind that just whipped by out of nowhere. It unnerves me, the message that’s like a warning, a stranger flitting through a dark alley at night. I glance around and see students streaming by but no one paying close attention, so I take it down, fold it up, and put it in my back pocket.

  I head to the cafeteria and join Martin, Sandeep, and T.S. at a table.

  “Do dogs in Brazil think in Portuguese?” T.S. is saying as I sit down.

  “Dogs don’t think, T.S.,” Sandeep says in a deadpan voice.

  “I know that,” she says, and rolls her eyes. “But if they could, would they think in Portuguese? Or maybe French? Or how about Russian? Does it depend where they live?”

  “Actually,” Martin interjects, “there have been studies showing that apes and dolphins are able to process information and even consider several options before making a simple choice. So it’s possible we could learn that dogs can think.”

  “Dude, you’re embarrassing me,” Sandeep jokes. “You’re like a walking encyclopedia of scientific studies.”

  “Why are you guys talking about dogs?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Because dogs rule,” T.S. says.

  “Did you see that sign or something?” I ask.

  “What sign?” she says.

  I reach into my back pocket and smooth out the paper to show them.

  T.S. wrinkles her nose. “Eww! That’s kind of a creepy Snoopy.”

  “So is that why you’re talking about dogs?” I ask again as I put the paper back in my pocket. Maybe they saw the sign too. Maybe they know what it means.

  “No. My mom just sent me pictures of our dogs from this morning. They’re catching Frisbees in tandem on the beach!” She takes out her cell phone and shows me a photo of her border collie/Lab mutts. “It’s like synchronized Frisbee-ing!”

  “But what does that have to do with Brazil or Portuguese?” I press.

  “Jesus, Alex. We’re just having fun. One thing led to the other, you know?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, and try to shake it off. Obviously T.S.’s dogs have nothing to do with that freaky dog sign. Still, the words coming soon worry me.

  I head to the food line. As I’m waiting for the pasta primavera, I overhear some students behind me.

  “That’s how you qualify. You have to be in the circle of friends.”

  “And if you’re not, they hunt you down. So don’t piss them off.”

  “Yeah, but did you hear one of their own is selling her stash?”

  I cringe at the words but keep moving through the line.

  “I bet they won’t even try her. There are benefits to rooming with the leader, you know. Membership has its privileges, as they say,” the student says, scoffing.

  I contemplate turning around to see who’s talking about me and maybe confront them too. But what can I say? Fact is, they’re right. Fact is, Natalie’s right.

  I leave the line and return to the table. When I sit down, T.S. says, “For the record, I think dogs think in Sumerian.”

  “No, they don’t. They think in Etruscan,” Martin says with a wry smile, and pushes a hand through his shaggy brown hair. He leans back in the
chair, pleased with his contribution to the ancient-languages trivia match.

  Sandeep shakes his head, then says with a straight face, “You’re both wrong. Dogs think in the Illyrian languages.”

  T.S. lights up and smacks the table with both palms. “You so win!” Then she leans over and gives him a big kiss, pausing to linger on his lips for a moment before she pulls back. Then she looks at me. “That is, unless you can beat him.”

  “No,” I say.

  After lunch, I walk with Martin to Morgan-Young Hall, where I have advanced calculus and he has superstar biology, or something like that. We pass the bulletin board in front of McGregor Hall and there’s a new drawing hanging up. This one’s of a tree house, and it’s in the same style as the picture I took down. The tree house has a sign on the door drawn to look as if it was written by a child—SECRET CLUBHOUSE. A bird perches on top of the tree house.

  I point to it. “Look. That’s us. Students are talking about us again,” I say. “Not us us. Us as in the Mockingbirds.”

  “I know,” he says. His voice is oddly serious. “You can’t let it get to you.”

  “Who said I was letting it get to me?”

  “Maybe the fact that you were incredibly testy at lunch was the giveaway.”

  “I wasn’t testy.”

  “You were,” he says.

  “Because I didn’t play what obscure language do dogs think in ? I don’t feel like talking about dogs right now.”

  “Case in point,” Martin says.

  “Anyway, people were talking about us in line.”

  “Saying we’re all clubby, right?” Martin says, and it’s like he’s reading my mind.

  “Exactly.”

  “People always talk about the Mockingbirds, Alex. There’s always something they don’t like.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think it was ever like this.”

  “You’re noticing the talk now because you’re in it.”

  “No, that’s not it. There’s more chatter now than there’s been before,” I say, and tell him what I overheard in the line, then what Natalie said.