The Mockingbirds (23 page)

“Yes,” I say emphatically.

“And Amy told you the trial will be—”

I cut him off. “Can we just talk about science or something?”

His eyes sparkle as I say that, then he starts in on the latest scientific findings about dogs, then dolphins, then pigs. I’ve never been a science person, but I’m strangely entertained by his tales, partly because his stories come alive the way he tells them. Then he reaches into his back pocket and takes out his cell phone. I tense for a second, thinking maybe the Mockingbirds have just paged him and he’ll have to go. I don’t want Amy to take him away from me.

“I promised I’d show you those Meissner effect pictures,” he says, flipping his phone open.

“Right, I’ve been dying to see them,” I tease.

“Hey! Sarcasm doesn’t work on me. I’m showing them to you anyway,” he says as he drags his chair across the room so he’s right next to me. He leans in closer, and for a second I’m distracted by his nearness and how he smells clean and how much I like the way he smells. As he scrolls through some pictures of a magnet hovering, I bend into his neck, my lips brushing his skin, and he groans lightly. I like the sound of it.

“You really don’t want to see my pictures, do you?” he teases.

“I do want to see them. I swear,” I say softly as I graze his neck again.

“I have no idea where they are now,” he says, and drops
his cell phone onto the chair. He makes the sound again, that groan, and it makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel in charge.

“No idea?” I ask as he closes his eyes and reaches his hands up into my hair.

“No idea at all,” he says before he silences me with his lips. We twist around so we’re closer to each other. His breathing grows heavier, his fingers play with my hair and a little zing rushes from my belly down to my toes and back up again.

I drift into the kiss, then another, then yet another.

Amazing
.

Yes, this kiss is amazing.

Then another.

Heat
.

I am warm all over.

Then a touch.

Weak in the knees
.

This is the guy who makes me weak in the knees. The guy who makes me laugh. The kind of guy worth waiting for.

Worth waiting for
.

Then like a kick in the gut, I’m doubled over. Because I’m
not
worth waiting for. I have no virginity to give up because mine was taken.

I pull away.

“Mmm. Come back,” he says. His eyes are still closed; he’s in the moment, still wanting me. His hand loops around
my hair and he pulls me back, kisses me more, firmer, harder, trying to bring me back to now. But I’m not into it anymore. The connection’s broken. I put my hands on his chest and push him away.

He opens his eyes. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“You’re not fine. One minute we were here. And the next minute you were somewhere else. Is this too soon? Are you okay with this? I don’t want to push you.”

Then another word appears in front of me. And it’s a nasty word. It starts with an
R
and ends with a
D
and it’s
rebound
.

I want Martin because he’s not Carter. I want Martin because he’s the reverse of Carter, the antidote to Carter. My eyes glass over with the realization that I’m using him to get over what happened.

“I should go,” he says, and stands up.

I nod.

He gathers his backpack, stuffs his phone back into his jeans pocket.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have done this. I should have known it’d be too soon.”

Too soon
.

I let the words play, stretching them out letter by letter.

Too.

Soon.

Like they’re the low notes on the piano. Warbling. TooooooSooooon.

Then I snap out of it.

“Don’t go,” I say quickly.

He gives me a look. He doesn’t believe me.

“I want you to stay. I
want
you to stay.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

I reach for his hand and lead him to my bed. “I’m not ready for more than kissing, but the bed is more comfortable.”

“The bed it is,” Martin says, stretching out next to me. Then he taps me on the nose lightly. “You’re in charge. You know that, right?”

“I do. I do know that. So tell me about the freshmen theater students.”

He gives me a grin. “You’re only interested in me for access to information, aren’t you?” he jokes.

“Yes, I want you to give up all your Mockingbird secrets,” I toss back.

He smiles at me, brushes a strand of my hair behind my ear, and says, “Good thing I like you. It makes me want to tell you things.”

“So the freshmen last semester, what did they do?”

Martin chuckles lightly, the memory amusing him. “It was really stupid and immature. That’s why they confessed. They knew they had no defense.”

“Tell me. What happened?”

He props himself up on an elbow and rests on his side. “You remember the musical last semester?”

“Wasn’t it
Evita
but set fifty years in the future, and Eva was a princess warrior?” I say jokingly, because that’s how Themis would do
Evita
.

“Something like that. Anyway, so the Theater Department cast a couple freshmen as understudies for the main roles. So there was a Che understudy and an Eva understudy, and they were also in the chorus. But these two freshmen thought they’d been robbed. They thought they should have been cast as the leads. They thought they were unfairly discriminated against because they were freshmen. So they…” Martin tries to suppress a laugh, but it doesn’t work; he can’t stop laughing. “It’s so ridiculous what they did.”

I start laughing too. “Tell me, tell me.”

“They tried to make the leads sick so they could take over. Because apparently the leads had this ritual of drinking tea and honey before every rehearsal. Standard acting process, we learned. Anyway, so the freshmen started spiking the tea with cough syrup one day, Benadryl the next, Tylenol PM another time.”

“Did it make them sick or just sleepy?”

“The latter,” Martin says. “Dumb freshmen didn’t have a clue.”

“The seniors couldn’t just deal with this themselves?” I ask. Because while spiking tea is petty and infantile, it also seems as if Che and Evita could have held their own.

“It wasn’t the seniors who came to us,” Martin said. “It was a couple other freshmen in the play. Freshmen who were
in the chorus along with the understudies, but who were just chorus members. These
other
freshmen thought all the first-years were getting a bad rap because of what the two understudies were doing, so they wanted to press charges.”

“For what? Character defamation?”

Martin shrugs. “Kind of. I mean, it doesn’t always have to be the wronged person, the victim, who comes to us. Sometimes other people do. People who hear about what’s going on and who bring it to our attention, who want us to investigate. A lot of people are afraid or they think what’s happening to them isn’t a big enough deal. And sometimes when bad things happen, the impact goes beyond the people being wronged. Like in this case. The other kids saw it happening and wanted it stopped, so they came to us. The sleepy seniors didn’t have to be the ones to initiate a case.”

“When did the freshmen understudies confess?”

“Not long after we looked into it.”

“So when you say
looked into it,
what does that mean?”

“It means we investigate the claim,” he says, and I realize that must be what’s happening with the math whiz who lives near Jones. The
investigation
phase.

“You’re detectives too?”

“We look into what happened, talk to both sides if that makes sense, if that’s what we’ve been asked to do.”

“Asked? You mean sometimes when students come to you they don’t want a trial, they just want an investigation? What’s the point of an investigation?”

“Some cases can be settled before a trial.”

“And the punishment is less, then, if it’s settled?”

Martin nods. “Yeah, or reduced if the guilty party cops to it and is willing to make reparations.”

“So why didn’t we ask Carter to settle?”

“Your case is different, Alex. We’re talking about a different level of offense. Plus, he had the option when he was served papers to discuss a settlement,” Martin explains, and that jibes with what Carter seethed to me on the phone earlier today. There will be no settling in my case, no compromise, no coming to terms. My case will be black or white. But I’ve had enough of my case for the day, so I return to the thespians.

“And what happened when Che and Evita realized they were being drugged?”

“They laughed it off. They thought it was very
All About Eve
and said they used it as motivation for their roles.”

“Actors,” I say, and roll my eyes.

“Anyway, so now you know. What else do you want to pry out of me?” he says while tracing my arm with his fingertips. Suddenly I don’t feel like talking anymore.

“I think that’s all for now, Mr. Summers,” I say, and relax into the feeling of his hand on my arm. Then I rest my head on his chest and before I know it I’m asleep.

When I wake up a couple of hours later, he’s gone. But Maia is here changing into her pajamas. I blink a few times and look for signs of Martin. Maybe he went to the bathroom, but his backpack is gone; he’s gone.

“What’s up with you and Martin?” Maia asks casually.

Forget being a lawyer, she should be a detective. James Bond, indeed.

“Nothing,” I say, wondering what she saw. Did she walk in while I was sleeping next to him?

Maia raises an eyebrow at me. “Nothing?”

“Yeah, nothing. He’s a Mockingbird, Maia. He’s helping,” I say.

“I’m sure,” she says.

“Why are you asking?”

“He was reading at your desk when I walked in,” she says. “He said he came to check on you, then you fell asleep and he stayed here to read because it was quiet.”

“Yeah, he stopped by to visit,” I confirm.

“He’s cute, don’t you think?”

“Um…”

“Oh, come on, Alex. He’s handsome. Why wouldn’t you be into him?”

I scoff. “There’s nothing going on,” I say. Then I grab my history homework before my red cheeks give me away. “I need to study.”

Maia plops down on her bed, reaching for a book too.

But the words aren’t registering as I read. Because there’s only one word on my mind right now and it’s slinking on top of the textbook, slithering into my thoughts.

Liar.
The word is
liar
.

Because I’m the liar now.

A few days later Mel talks to me again in French class. She swivels around at the end of the lesson and says hi.

“Hey,” I say.

Then she leaves again, quietly, like a mouse.

This keeps up for the next few classes. Each time she adds a sentence or two more. Something about homework or the weather, since it’s still freezing cold here in late February. It’s kind of weird, to tell the truth. But who am I to judge? We’re all weird here in our own ways. Then it shifts one afternoon. She turns around, as usual, her hair braided, as usual, her voice low, as usual. But she says something meaty this time.

“It happened to me too,” she whispers.

I know instantly what she’s talking about. “It did?”

“Not with him. But someone else. When I was a first-year.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“I’m glad you’re doing this,” she whispers.

“Do you want to talk about it sometime?”

She nods and we agree to meet in my room at four.

When she shows up I have tea ready, like Casey did for me. I guess tea is what you give people when bad stuff has happened to them. So I offer tiny little Mel a cup of tea I’ve borrowed—taken, really—from Maia’s never-ending stash. It’s imported too. Her parents ship her a new batch every month so my English roommate is never out of her English tea.

Mel wraps her hands around the mug and blows on the contents.

“Thanks for meeting me,” she says. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for a couple weeks now.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Sorry to be so strange about it. I was just trying to get up the nerve.”

“Hey, no worries. I understand.”

“But ever since I saw his name in the book, I wanted to know who he did it to, and then when word got out about the charges, I knew I had to talk to you.”

“You saw the book?”

She nods. “I check it every week just to see who to watch out for.”

“You do?” I ask, quietly amazed at the reach of the Mockingbirds.