The Rivals

by Daisy Whitney

  Martin and Parker tell me the defendants and their attorneys are coming. “The defendants are entering now,” I announce in a voice that surely doesn’t belong to me.

  Maia walks in first, past the washers and dryers, to the other table. She nods to each of the council members, then sits down. Jamie follows. Her straight black hair is cinched back in a clip at the base of her neck. She wears flats, a dark blue denim knee-length skirt, and a beige cardigan. I have this fleeting image of her on a prairie, some sort of innocent pioneer girl. She looks so unbelievably young, so unbearably innocent, so fourteen years old. McKenna is next to her, her wild black hair tamed back with a red headband. But the headband can only do so much. The curls have a mind of their own. She wears pressed black slacks and a white button-down shirt.

  The two sisters take their seats at Maia’s table, but it’s not as if the three of them now form a united front. They’re not really on the same side; we’re just trying Jamie and Maia together because they’ve been accused of the same crime.

  I shut the door and walk to the middle of the room. I open my notebook and read from it.

  “The function of the council is to listen to the evidence presented in this case—the students of Themis Academy versus Jamie Foster and Maia Tan. The charges are selling and trafficking in prescription drugs with the intent to cheat. The council will listen to the evidence and determine the verdict for each of the defendants based on the evidence against each of them. The punishment for Jamie Foster will be voluntary withdrawal from VoiceOvers as well as regular and random checks to ensure the activity in question has ceased. The punishment for Maia Tan will be voluntary withdrawal from the Debate Club as well as regular and random checks to ensure the activity in question has ceased. Both Jamie Foster and Maia Tan have been offered settlement options. Both have declined. They have signed the papers and agreed to these terms. If Jamie is found not guilty, we will remove her name from the book and enact appropriate restoration measures. If Maia is found not guilty, we will remove her name from the book and enact appropriate restoration measures.”

  I look to Courtney and say, “Courtney Jaynes, I turn the proceedings over to you.”

  Courtney gives instructions to each side as I retreat to the doors, where I will wait and watch and listen for the rest of the morning.

  Sandeep goes first, calling Calvin to the stand. Calvin is not as self-assured as he was the night we met him. He stumbles more, turns red at times, and trips on his words. His high-pitched voice doesn’t help. He looks even younger than Jamie. As I listen I realize that Calvin doesn’t have much to contribute without the evidence. Sure, Jamie approached him, Jamie made him an offer. But that’s it. That’s all he can say, because that’s all he knows. Without the evidence that documents her crime, his words fall flat.

  It’s only when the evidence is off the table that I see how much of the case against Jamie relied on that Ziploc bag he found on her desk, waiting, calling out, begging for discovery.

  The hair on my arms stands on end. I begin to realize what is happening and how we were set up, like a spotlight pulling up onstage and revealing just a sliver of the scene. The light grows stronger when Sandeep calls Beat’s buddies to the stand. They present a long and detailed account of Maia’s alleged activities, coupled with descriptions of inspirational speeches she gave to the team on “winning at all costs.”

  Beat is next, and now the stage is practically bathed in light, all of it glowing on its star, with his high cheekbones, his wavy brown hair, and those deep brown eyes. His palms rest on his legs, and his chin is lifted up, a pose that seems to say, I’m open, I’m here, I’m ready whenever you are, so take your time.

  He waits patiently for the first question from Sandeep.

  “Tell us how it started.”

  “It began late last year,” Beat says, like a storyteller of old. “It was the last week of school, and Maia was giving us a pep talk for the summer, to keep us energized and ready, she said.” A pause. “Ready,” he repeats. “That was the word she used. She wanted us ready for the Elite. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do. I didn’t really know what she meant. So I asked. And she answered. She said we needed to do”—he stops, winces on the next words—“whatever it takes. That was her saying. We had to do whatever it takes to win the Elite.”

  A question—what did that mean specifically?

  “We weren’t sure. We discussed it,” Beat answers, gesturing to the other witnesses who went before him. “We talked about it. We wanted to do well. And I’ll be honest,” he says softly, calling on his best shamed look, “it’s no secret that I don’t have a perfect record. You know what I did and what I’m trying to make up for.”

  He takes a deep breath. The whole process of coming clean is so difficult, apparently.

  Then he continues. “But when the new year started and we had our very first meeting, there were no longer any questions about what she meant. She took out her pill bottle and said, ‘These help me, and they’ll help you too.’”

  Maia objects, but the council overrules. They want more; they lean in closer to the campfire, eager for the next chapter in the tale.

  And Beat provides it, ably. “It all happened so quickly, and pretty soon she was producing forged prescriptions for some of us.”

  Maia objects.

  The council doesn’t even look at Maia. Courtney just waves her off, like she’s a minor annoyance, and keeps watching Beat, entranced by him, as if he’s some sort of magician in a turban, luring her into his tent.

  “For others, she taught them how to doctor shop. That’s when you visit different doctors and get prescriptions from a bunch of them. So you stock up, essentially,” he says. “Some of us already had ADHD, like myself, and to be honest, I even thought about sharing some of my own pills with my friends.” He takes a deep breath, places his hand over his mouth for just a second, as if the memory itself still hurts. “The directive was just too strong to ignore,” he adds, shrinking back in the chair a bit. Then he straightens himself. “But I couldn’t do it. I crossed a line last year and I did something wrong, and I knew it. And I just didn’t want to be that kind of person again. I learned my lesson, the lesson the Mockingbirds taught me.”

  It’s like a stake in my heart.

  It’s like a twisted, rusty stake the way he is using us to play us. The way he is taking his past with the Mockingbirds to paint a new present for himself. Beat, the bad boy turned good. Beat, the reformed.

  And I fell for it all. I fell for it when he called me to the theater. I believed him. I wanted to believe him. But it was all an act, just like this is all an act now.

  “And soon, half the team was hooked. Half the team was either sharing someone’s pills, or using her fake scrips, or getting their own. And then they were snorting too. If you walked into our practice room, you could smell it on us. We were coated in the stuff, it seemed. And it worked. We were confident. We were on fire. We were winning. We were taking down other teams left and right. We were untouchables.”

  “So why did you come to the Mockingbirds then?” Sandeep asks.

  “It wasn’t easy. I mean, it’s not like I’m on the list of their favorite people,” Beat says.

  The council members nod sympathetically. They understand how terribly hard it must have been for Beat to come forward.

  “But it’s just wrong,” he says, and looks to the council. “You have to play fair. You have to do the right thing. Right?”

  He waits for them to respond. And they do respond, they do nod, they do understand every single thing he is saying.

  “That’s why I came here.”

  Here, cloaked in the immunity I granted him, safe from another black mark on his record because I backed him into a corner the one night when I tried to act.

  But Beat is a far better actor than I am.

  He is also a better liar than Maia is an orator.

  Because he has an answer to everything she asks.

  “Beat,
you said I showed my pills to the team, but yet they never left my bag. How can you explain that?” Maia begins.

  “Maia.” He says her name like a gentle chide. “You know that’s not true. We all saw them. You get them from the pharmacy in London.”

  “That’s a lucky guess, Beat. Of course I get them from a pharmacy in London. I’m from London, and so is my doctor.”

  He just shrugs and gives a smile, waiting for her to ask a question, because it’s still her turn to ask a question.

  “Let’s go back then to this whatever it takes directive that I issued,” she begins as she walks across the linoleum floor, her soles clicking against the tiles. “Are you aware that whatever it takes is a common phrase that doesn’t specifically refer to cheating, drug dealing, or other insidious measures to get ahead?”

  “Of course. But that wasn’t really how you used it,” he says, managing another dig.

  “I used it to refer broadly to the idea, no, the ideal, of doing your best. Of working very hard to achieve something we all want,” she says sharply.

  “Yes, something you wanted badly,” he says, and lowers his eyes momentarily like he’s ashamed to point out this supposedly sordid truth.

  “I was saying it in the way that a coach would encourage a team to go out and do their very best.”

  He pauses, shrugs his shoulders, and twists up his mouth for a moment. “But when you couple that with showing us the pills and teaching us how to doctor shop, it’s pretty clear that you wanted us all to cheat right along with you.”

  Maia’s eyes flare at the audacity of the accusation. I watch from my post, my heart caving in more as she struggles to contain her anger, to put out the fire that he’s fanning with his lies. She takes several seconds to collect herself, then continues. “And this doctor shopping. When did this supposedly occur?”

  “It was the third week of school, I believe,” Beat says, looking up at the ceiling like he’s trying to recall the details. He scrunches his forehead for a second. There, yes, he’s got it. “It was shortly after our first tournament, where we barely squeaked past Andover, and you said you were very concerned and we needed a much larger margin of victory.”

  Maia gives him an incredulous look. “I never said that!”

  “Maia,” Beat says again in that concerned voice.

  “I never said a thing like that. I told you all I was extraordinarily proud of you for the Andover victory,” she says, but it’s not her normal cool, calm, and collected voice. It’s a defensive voice. I want to look away, to turn away from this scene, but I can’t stop watching her having to defend herself rather than question him. Because that’s what he’s done. He’s turned the tables. He’s turned her into a witness rather than an attorney.

  “Not exactly. You said you were proud of us, but you knew we could do even better—loads better was what you said,” he adds, and he even says those words with a British accent, imitating her perfectly, scarily, so spot-on that the council is convinced he is telling the whole truth. “And you added that we were all, in effect, performers, so there was no reason why if we could talk circles around opponents that we couldn’t surely do the same with doctors.”

  I cringe because even though it’s a lie, he uses the exact words that Maia would use. He has mastered her speech patterns, her vocabulary, the way she strings words together, and he is using this to take her down.

  “I never said that!” she shouts at him.

  I want to run past the dryers and the washers, run past the tables, and grab her, wrap my arms around her, put a blanket on her shoulders and take her away. Because she shouldn’t even be here. She’s only here because I pushed Beat into a lie. Because I went too far.

  But Beat’s not done. Vengeance, or drama, runs deep in him.

  “And you even asked me to share my supply too. You said if you were sharing, it would be the magnanimous thing for me to share as well,” he adds.

  I watch as the word magnanimous slices into her like an arrow. Because that’s just the kind of word she would use too, the kind of thing she would say.

  She hasn’t met her match.

  She has met her vanquisher, and he has learned from the master; he is defeating her by playing her part. He is Maia right now. He is better than Maia.

  For a second, just the tiniest hair of a second, I understand why he drugged the seniors last year. Because he has unparalleled talent. Because he deserved the lead. He deserves all the leads, all the roles, all the parts ever. He has charisma, he has presence, he has the council in his hands as he unfurls this beautiful, seductive, magnetic lie.

  Maia calls her character witnesses, two other debaters who testify that she didn’t do what Beat said she did. But their words fall flat. The damage has been done.

  When the council adjourns, there is no reasonable doubt.

  When they return the next morning, the verdict is everything I expect to hear.

  They find Maia guilty. They find Jamie innocent.

  What they don’t say is the part I know to be true beyond a reasonable doubt—it is all my fault.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  SCHOOL RIVALS

  Maia is a zombie.

  She barely speaks, barely talks, barely looks at anyone. It’s not because she’s mad anymore. It’s because she’s broken.

  This is what happens when we take away. This is what happens when we punish. This is what happens when the innocent are found guilty.

  Fine, it’s only debate. But it’s not only debate. It’s Maia’s love. I would be a zombie too if someone took the piano away from me. I would be Theo, homeless, helpless, the inside of me cratered.

  Because we are what we love. We are the things, the people, the ideas we spend our days with. They center us, they drive us, they define us to our very core.

  Without them, we are empty.

  Maia lies in bed, still wearing her courtroom attire hours later, as the sun sinks low in the sky and the evening chill sets in. She returned to the room after the trial and she hasn’t moved from her bed all day.

  “Maia, I’m so sorry,” I say again.

  “S’okay,” she mutters, the only words she’s said all day.

  Her black hair spills out beneath her, a fan around her face.

  “Maia, I’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise, I will.”

  “S’okay.”

  “I will figure out who set us up.”

  “S’okay.”

  But nothing is s’okay or okay or anything. Because she didn’t just lose. She was humiliated, called out publicly, branded a cheater. But so much worse—a cheater who forced her whole team to cheat, a dealer who made her whole team take drugs to win. Word travels fast at Themis Academy.

  And like me last year, her private life has become public. Only, I chose to step forward then. Maia didn’t choose; she just had to defend herself, her secret, the thing she didn’t want anyone to know.

  If I ever questioned whether I would be good at leading the Mockingbirds, if I ever wondered if I was cut out for the administration of justice, I don’t have to ask anymore. The answer is clear.

  I have failed spectacularly.

  One innocent person has been found guilty. One alleged perpetrator was wrongly accused. Score: two screwups for the price of one. Three, if you count the fact that we were played, faked out, clearly set up by someone. Or by several someones. I already have a growing list of suspects and I am adding more by the hour.

  Was it Beat? Or Theo? Or Beat and Theo? Or Calvin? As remote as that possibility sounds, I can’t discount it. Or perhaps Delaney protecting Theo somehow? Or Natalie, that loose cannon Natalie who’s had it in for me, and for the Mockingbirds, since last year? Natalie, who mocks me when she sees me, who jams her elbows into my body? Or Parker? I can’t help but think Parker is responsible. Parker cried over the evidence. Plus, Parker was tasked with tracking Theo and he came up short. It took me only a few nights to find him dealing. Parker has always been the weak link on the board. To
top it off, he’s always questioned me, tried to undermine me. Maybe Parker has been playing me all along. But why? As he asked during our first board meeting before classes even started, what would the motivation be?

  What would anyone’s motivation be?

  What scares me is not that I don’t know who’s behind the setup but how many valid options there are, how many students might want to take us down.

  And how I played into their hands.

  But I have to find a way to fix the mess I made. And that mess isn’t just Maia. It’s Jamie too. So I pay her a necessary visit.

  McKenna is with her. If I had a younger sister who’d been accused of masterminding a drug-using cheating ring, I probably would be all mama bear with her too. I probably wouldn’t let the big, bad Mockingbirds talk to her without being there either. I’d spit it back in my face and be all, I told you so. I told you she was innocent.

  McKenna doesn’t say that. Neither does Jamie. When I visit them, Jamie invites me into her room, and McKenna offers a chair. I sit down and begin. “I want to offer my sincerest apologies for the accusation that prove to be false,” I say, though it’s more a recitation. I practiced before I came over, reviewing the section in our notebook on how to handle accusations that prove to be unfounded. I suppose it’s no different from a real court. Some are found guilty; some are found innocent. And I suppose too that having a mechanism in place in case the accused is found innocent keeps things fair, so we don’t simply favor the victims all the time.

  Still, none of this makes it any easier to say the words that come next.

  “We are truly sorry for all that you went through. I will remove your name from the book, restore all your points, and announce that you will indeed stay on in the VoiceOvers as a member in good standing, which will signal to the student body that you were found innocent,” I continue. I have this strange sense of déjà vu, but it’s not that I’ve been here before; it’s that I somehow knew I would be here.