The Mockingbirds (2 page)

I walk faster across the eerily quiet maintenance lot, arms wrapped tightly around me, and say my new mantra—
nothing happened
—as I scan the grounds. I’m ready to dash behind a bush if I have to, dive into a foxhole, because my mission now is to return unseen. I’ll go the long way: cross the maintenance lot, pass the track field, then cut onto the quad as if I were
leaving
my dorm, not returning to it. I will not be caught. I will not have anyone think I’m doing the walk of shame. Besides, I
can’t
be doing the walk of shame, because
nothing happened
.

The more I repeat it, the more I’ll believe it.

Nothing happened,
I say as I pass the Dumpsters, then the shed.

I reach the edge of the track field next and see the first trap—a flock of girls running laps, clad only in skintight Lycra leggings and body-hugging jackets, carving out endless circles.

Their backs are to me for now, so I shift gears to power-walk—actual running would draw too much attention. I can’t tell who’s who from here, but I’m betting fellow juniors Anna Marie, Shoba, Caroline, and Natalie are out there. If I can traverse this back path around the field before they turn the corner, they won’t see me.

Of course, they
are
runners and I’m merely a musician, so they’re curving around the track before I’m even halfway along the edge of the field. I pull my coat collar up, cast my eyes down, and stuff my hands into my pockets, where I find sunglasses. I cover my eyes with them and now I’m just some press-shy teenage celebrity trying to avoid the paparazzi.

The track girls are focused, feet smacking the dirt, arms hinging in perfect synchronicity at their sides. Then one of them breaks away, bursting ahead like a Thoroughbred on the final turn. I’m almost at the edge of the field, ready to make a break for the quad, when I realize it’s Natalie, shooting out like an Olympic sprinter.

Natalie, who’s built like Serena Williams. Natalie, who slaughters track records in the spring, who smashes lacrosse sticks in the fall, who could crush me with her thigh muscle alone, even though I’m no pip-squeak. I’m five-seven. But she’s over six feet and, really, what would I defend myself with? My long, slender fingers?

Her legs are a blur. She’ll spot me any second and my plan will be shot. Kinda like my reputation. She’ll see me, throw her head back, and grin cruelly because she’ll have a tasty piece of gossip. She’ll tell her friends and they’ll all blab about me in the caf when they go eat their whole-wheat pasta and bananas and broccoli. And she’ll tell her boyfriend, that senior Kevin Ward.

Because there’s nothing better to talk about than who’s into whom, who’s doing whom, and who screwed whom. And in my case, all the circumstantial evidence—the time of day, my messy hair, my day-old clothes—screams that I’m someone worth talking about.

But I’m not. I swear I’m not. I picture banging my fist fiercely against a table before a judge, a jury of my fellow students, insisting nothing happened, insisting I wasn’t even with Carter last night. I briefly consider the possibilities of playing possum, just dropping down into a ball, lying completely still on the cold ground. But then I come up with a better plan, a perfect plan. Forget the
nothing happened
one. Because I’ll tell a new story; I’ll reinvent last night.

Where was I last night? Funny you should ask. When I went backstage to meet the band—yes, they invited me backstage because they heard I rule the keys—we hung out, chilled to some music, then jammed together, me on keyboards all night long. I just left the club now. I know, wild times. But good clean fun
.

Now that’s a tale worth spreading. I should start the rumor myself.

“Hey, Alex!” Natalie’s voice calls out. “Nice clothes from last night.”

There’s no jamming with the band, no all-night music, just me in my boots and bedhead, and the whole girls’ track team now knows I didn’t sleep in my room last night.

I want to yell back, “You know nothing!”

But she obviously knows something. She was there. At the club.

And I’m the one who knows nothing. I’m the one who has nothing to say as I watch my quiet prep school existence seep out the door like an overflowing sink, the water trickling out, slowly creeping up on everything in its path, ruining books, furniture, rugs, and last of all my privacy, my little corner of the world here as the piano girl.

Water damage is the worst, they say.

Natalie streaks on by, ahead of the pack. Her teammates are focused on catching her. They don’t see me as I finally slip away from the field. But they’ll know soon enough; that’s how it goes with sports teams.

Sports
.

I remember now—Carter plays something. He’d had practice for something last night before I met him. He mentioned this. I wonder if I tuned it out because my brain did its best impression of a sieve or because I detest sports. The great thing about Themis Academy is it’s not one of those you-must-do-sports-or-else schools. You’re not even required to play an organized sport.

I reach the main campus and survey the sprawling quad.
It’s deserted. The lawn, cracked and hard now, but lush and green in the spring, is peppered with trees and framed by old buildings—classrooms, dorms, and the cafeteria too, a building built in 1912. Themis was founded a year later by members of the Progressive Party, ironic because Themis is hands-off in the only way that matters.

The school looks like a mini college campus, with old brick structures, Victorian buildings, and Colonial-style mansions converted into halls of learning. Even McGregor Hall’s redbrick façade is laced with ivy that curls around the edges of the white windowpanes.

In front of McGregor Hall is a big bulletin board with flyers. I glance at them as I walk by. Casting call for
The Merry Wives of Windsor
(to be performed in front of the Faculty Club in a patented Themis special performance for teachers). Tryout for Coed Crew. But of course… everything is equal here. Then a notice for the Vegetarian Dinner Club, complete with cheese and crackers and carrots every night.

I see one more.

Join the Mockingbirds! Stand up, sing out! We’re scouting new singers, so run, run, run on your way to our New Nine, where you can learn a simple trick…

Then there’s a drawing of a bird on the corner, his watchful eye staring back at me.

It’s code—all code—because the Mockingbirds aren’t an a cappella singing group, as they pretend to be. And they most
definitely are
not
having auditions for singers. No, the Mockingbirds are something much bigger and much quieter too, and it’s tryout time for them, as it is at the start of every term.

The Mockingbirds are the law.

I leave the bulletin board in my wake and walk briskly to my nearby dorm, Taft-Hay Hall, a redbrick building three stories tall. I make a beeline for the arched doorway, but there’s Mr. Christie, my history teacher and advisor, striding across the quad, looking as purposeful as I do. He has this crazy long-legged step, chin up, chest out, his reddish beard and mustache almost leading the way.

“Good morning, Alex. How are you?” he says, his voice deep.

“I’m fine, Mr. Christie,” I say as he nears me.

“You’re up early on a Saturday.”

“Yeah, I think I’m developing insomnia,” I say, trying the ruse on for size. There’s got to be one lie I can tell that’ll fool someone. “I’ve been up for hours,” I add when he nods sympathetically.

He looks at me, all concerned. As if he knows the cure for insomnia. Like he’s a trained insomnia exorcist and he can tell me just what to do.

“A cup of chamomile tea before bed might do just the trick,” he says.

Right. That’ll fix everything, and while we’re at it, do you have anything that’ll help me remember losing it with a guy I don’t even know?

“I’ll be sure to try that next time,” I say, sounding all chipper and cheery.

He’s pleased, like he just did his good deed for the day and helped a student in need, and he can now go on his merry way.

I should be glad Mr. Christie didn’t notice, didn’t put two and two together, didn’t ask any more probing questions. Or maybe he’d already heard the story that I was up all night jamming with the band. It’s a cool story, he thinks, and I am his advisee, so he doesn’t report me.

Then I laugh silently to myself as I pound up the stairs into Taft-Hay Hall, my boots clicking on the stone steps. Because of course he believed me. The teachers, the headmistress, all the freaking administration, they never think we’re up to anything. They think we never skirt the rules here at perfect, progressive, prestigious Themis Academy.

We’re above the law, that’s why we came here.

Right…

I don’t go to my room. I go downstairs to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs there’s a bin for lost-and-found, an enormous mound of hats, scarves, watches. Nothing ever gets found here. No one wants the stuff that’s been lost. But I need to see the bin right now bacause it reminds me of a night I
can
remember.

One night last year I dared my boyfriend at the time, Daniel, to try to assemble a whole outfit from the lost-and-found bin. He rose to the challenge, digging all the way to the bottom of the bin, where he found a pair of red plaid pants likely from the seventies. Then he unearthed a canary-yellow cardigan, a mismatched pair of Dr. Martens—one black, one green, two sizes apart—and a tattered baby blue mesh cap that was trendy once upon a time.

“No wonder that’s here,” I said. Then he pulled me close and kissed me. It wasn’t our first kiss. We’d been together for three months then. But it was memorable—one of those kisses you couldn’t stop if you tried. I wanted to kiss him all night long.

So I run an experiment. I close my eyes and swap out the leading man. Daniel’s dark blond hair becomes Carter’s pale, almost white hair. Daniel’s shoulders turn into Carter’s. Daniel’s lips, his cheeks, his hands, they all belong to Carter now. And I’m kissing Carter like I kissed Daniel. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, forcing Carter to fit, forcing this kiss to become Carter’s. But the puzzle pieces won’t fit. I don’t remember kissing Carter like this. I don’t remember pulling him close to me, wanting it, wanting him.

But even though I was crazy about Daniel—he was the cellist here, and the way he held that instrument between his knees, the way he played it like he was caressing it, would make any self-respecting piano girl go weak in the knees—I didn’t sleep with him. We didn’t go all the way that night at the lost-and-found bin. We didn’t any of the times we hung out in the summer.

We came close, very close, several times. Something always held me back, though. Daniel and I were connected in so many ways, two musicians after all. But except for the night in someone else’s plaid pants and yellow sweater, he always took himself a bit too seriously. And the thing that really gets me, that makes my stomach turn in all sorts of good knots, is someone who can make me laugh.

All I can figure is Carter must have been really fucking funny.

Then I flash on something: a fuzzy muted memory of laughing with someone else back at the club, well before I wound up in Carter’s room. Last night a whole group of us went to see Artful Rage, my absolute favorite band. They were playing in town, and juniors finally get Friday Night Out privileges the second half of the school year. My roommate’s boyfriend, Sandeep, smuggled vodka into the club. I remember having a drink or two and then…

Maybe I met Carter there, maybe Sandeep introduced us. Or maybe Daniel’s a dick for going away to college two years before me. He’s at Dartmouth now, and we didn’t even pretend to do the whole I’ll-still-see-you-on-weekends thing because the last thing a college guy wants is a high school girlfriend tagging along. But if he were here, I would have been with him last night and not Carter.

I open my eyes and glare at the lost-and-found bin for a minute. I have this sudden, intense desire to topple it, to spill all these unclaimed, unwanted clothes in a huge messy pile. I put my hands on the edge and push, but it probably weighs more than a hundred pounds so I can’t flip it over. I grab a handful of scarves and shirts and toss them on the floor, leaving a red scarf on top of the pile, like litter.

I head upstairs to my room.

T.S. is wide awake when I unlock the door. She’s brushing her short blond hair, sitting on the edge of her already-made bed. She’s dressed in her soccer uniform. I notice
Maia’s bed; it’s made too and her bathroom stuff is gone. She must be in the shower.

Then there’s my bed and it’s also made.

Only difference is I never unmade it last night.

I hate my made bed right now. I wish the comforter were tangled up in the sheets, wish it were proof I’d slept
here
all night long, like both my roommates did.

I brace myself for the inevitable inquisition from T.S., but instead a devilish smile fills her face. “Look what the cat dragged in!” she says.

I bet she’d been bubbling over, just waiting to use her cat-dragged-in line, and that’s distracting her from asking other questions, like
Why are you coming home at seven thirty in the morning when you’ve never done that before and tell me everything, absolutely everything?!