The Mockingbirds (26 page)

One week before the trial, she sweeps into the room, opens her black-and-white composition notebook, and goes into prosecutorial mode. “Let’s review potential witnesses.”

“Again? Don’t you think we’re overpreparing?”

She gives me a hard stare. “There’s no such thing,” she says, and launches into the list of names, what they’ll say, what Carter’s team will try to rattle them on. After an hour,
I become convinced Maia could do this all night long and not lose a beat. But I need a break.

“I left something in the music hall,” I tell her. She just nods and scribbles something in her notebook.

I walk down the hall and call Martin from my cell. “It’s Friday night,” I say. “Do you know what that means?”

“It means we have Friday Night Out privileges and you want to take me out on a secret date and have your way with me?”

“Something like that,” I say.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks.

“The Brain Freeze,” I say, referring to the ice-cream shop on Kentfield Street. “Meet me outside McGregor Hall in”—I look at the clock—“two minutes.”

“Done,” he says, and hangs up.

When I open the door to my dorm, I look furtively from side to side. But I’m not looking for Carter this time, and the realization thrills me. Instead, I’m checking to see if the coast is clear, and it is. I rush across the quad to McGregor Hall, where Martin’s waiting. I’m like a normal girl, sneaking off campus with a boy, even though we’re sneaking away from Mockingbirds, not teachers or campus cops. That’s Themis for you, because the Mockingbirds are our police.

“You must have a fierce mint-chocolate-chip craving,” Martin says as we slink past McGregor into the night.

“Best flavor ever,” I say.

He moves closer to me. “You have no idea how much I want to hold your hand right now,” he whispers in my ear.

My heart races ten thousand times faster. “How much?” I ask.

“I’m using all my powers of self-restraint,” he says.

“You are powerful, indeed.”

“The second we’re far enough away, I’m holding your hand.”

“I’ll consider myself warned, then,” I say. “Though don’t you have spies all over?”

“Spies?” he asks.

“Yeah, isn’t it possible Amy or Ilana could be hiding in the bushes down the street or something, waiting to bust you?”

He laughs. “There you go again, with your conspiracy theories.”

“Well?”

“No,” he says emphatically. “They trust me. That’s why I’m in the group.”

“Do
they
know your favorite flavor of ice cream?”

He shakes his head. “But I’ll tell you,” he says, and slips a hand into mine as we head farther away from Themis. His skin is warm, tingling against my hand. He leans in to whisper, his lips brushing against my ear. “I like mint chocolate chip too.”

“Oh, stop it!”

“Oreo mint chocolate chip,” he says playfully.

“Close enough. I guess it’s a good thing we’re hanging out,” I tease as we turn onto the block with the Brain Freeze. “Or hiding out, I should say.”

“Speaking of,” he says, and I tense.
Speaking of
sound
like adult words, like breakup words, like
this isn’t working out
words. But then he places a hand on my cheek, soft and warm. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”

“Oh,” I say. “Am I allowed? Are you allowed?”

“Allowed,” he says, laughing. “You always want to know if we’re allowed.”

“You’re the one who told me we weren’t allowed to be together,” I point out. “You wouldn’t even hold my hand till we were a block off campus.”

He sighs. “I know. I’m really not supposed to be doing this.”

“So how can I be your girlfriend, then?”

“It’ll be between you and me, okay? Then when the trial is over in a week and things settle down, we won’t have to pretend.”

“So I’m like your secret girlfriend?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“And you’re my secret boyfriend?”

He nods.

“Okay, I say yes.”

Then, a recurring fear swoops down from the sky, black cape billowing behind it, like a dark superhero with a dark past. I tell myself to shut up, to keep quiet, to say nothing. But the fear, it’s stronger than I am. “You’re not doing this because you feel sorry for me?” I ask.

“C’mon. I thought we were past that.”

“I know. I know you think I’m crazy. But just tell me.
You’re not doing this because you feel like it was your fault?”

He pushes a hand through his floppy brown hair, shakes his head.

“But you said that night in my room bringing me a sandwich was the least you could do,” I say.

“You’re not a pity project, Alex. I wish you’d get that.”

“I know. But I just want to know that this is just for this, not for any other reason. You know you can’t change what happened.”

“I’m not trying to change the past. The future, maybe. Like tomorrow night. Maybe we could hang out then too?”

I nod, but as we order ice cream a part of me worries we’re both fooling ourselves in thinking this is real—being with me eases his guilt, being with him helps me heal. But for now, I’ll have an ice-cream cone with my secret boyfriend. Who knows how long these secret boyfriends can last, anyway….

I get raised eyebrows from both T.S. and Maia when I return two hours later.

“Late night at the music hall?” Maia asks, her brown eyes like a ray gun surveying the telltale sign of my true evening activities on the way home from the Brain Freeze—messed-up hair, extra-red lips, shirt freshly tucked in.

“Yes,” I say, and change into my pajamas.

“And you got all your practicing done for your performance?” T.S. throws in, and I wonder if she’s getting ready to cross-examine me too.

“Yes,” I mutter, and then head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I open the toothpaste, I remember the cap that rolled onto the floor that morning in Carter’s room, and I’m suddenly somewhere else.

“Uh.”

There’s a noise, a sound, like a cross between a bark and a whisper, like an “oomph.” It’s like someone just sat on my chest. It’s dark and my mouth tastes like a sock, feels like wool. And there’s Carter. On me. Over me. In me. He’s pushing in me and I can feel him. I can feel his penis in me, even though I’m barely aware, half-asleep, half-awake, half-dreaming, half-dead. But I can feel him and he’s breathing. He’s breathing kind of heavy, hitting some sort of rhythm
.

I realize the noise came from me. The “uh” came from me, from the feel of someone’s weight on me, someone’s body on me. And it’s as if I just came to or something, the “uh” marking the line between sleep and awake, there and here. Now I’m here, still in his bed, still naked, still under him. Only now he’s pressing into me and he’s going faster
and faster and I want to do something, say something, but all I feel is slower and slower and slower and all I can do is breathe, breathe, breathe….

I stand there, the toothpaste tube in one hand, the toothbrush in the other and the memory of my second time no longer dormant but vivid, alive and awful. I brush my teeth furiously as if I could erase the memory.

But I can’t. It’s here now, it’s part of me.

I don’t leave my dorm the rest of the weekend. I don’t see Martin, I don’t call him, I don’t text him. Who was I kidding? I’m not the girl who sneaks off campus with her secret boyfriend. I’m the girl who got date-raped.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Miss Damata says after I practice the Ninth Symphony one more time for her during my free period Monday morning. “One of my colleagues at Juilliard will be visiting with my family and me next weekend. The weekend of your performance. And he is an admissions officer at the university.”

“Does he,” I start, practically tingling with the possibility I think she is dangling before me, “want to come see my performance?”

She nods, a smile unfolding into a full-blown grin across her face.

I jump up and down, “This is amazing; this is too good to be true. Are you totally serious? You’re not joking?”

“I think you know me well enough by now to know I’m not much of a joker.”

“This would be…” I trail off, because the sheer and utter coolness of having scored a real, live Juilliard admissions officer at my performance is too awesome for words.

She adds, “You know this won’t count toward your application next year. I just figured it couldn’t hurt.”

“It definitely can’t hurt,” I say, feeling like a bottle of Coca-Cola about to burst fun, frothy, fizzy bubbles everywhere. “I am so happy.”

I lean in and give her a hug, she hugs back, then I leave for French, ducking into the classroom early, ten minutes before the bell. I’m the first student there, so I take my seat
in the back. Ms. Dumas is writing on the board. “
Bonjour,
Alex.”

“
Bonjour,
Madame Dumas.”

I take out my French book as Martin walks by, tapping my desk as he does. I look away. I
should
feel guilty for not calling him, not seeing him on Saturday like I said I would. But I’m sick of feeling, sick of
should
s.

A few minutes later, Ms. Dumas asks us to hand in our essays chronicling our school day using the
on fait
construction. Then she tells us we will use
ça fait
for the remainder of the class.

When class ends I jam papers and books into my backpack. I can feel Martin near me, behind me, maybe waiting by the door. I zip my bag shut and stand up.

“Hey, you,” he says.

“Hi,” I say halfheartedly.

“You holding up okay? I know the trial’s in less than a week.”

“I don’t want to talk about the trial,” I say coldly.

Martin tenses, then starts to ask something else. But there’s nothing I want to say about me or the trial or the Mockingbirds. So I deflect with a question. “What’d you do this weekend?”

“Wrote half of my paper on barn owls, watched hockey. My Buffalo Sabres lost. I know that breaks your heart too. So I took an epic three-hour afternoon nap, you know the kind where you’re dead to the world?”

“God, I could use one right now.”

“So ditch.”

“Ditch and nap?”

“Ditch and nap. What’s better than that?”

“Who would have thought you had such a lawless side to you,” I say.

“Sometimes I like to break the rules,” he says.

Then we lapse into silence, walk a few more feet to nowhere.

“So, I was hoping to see you Saturday like we talked about, but maybe you didn’t want to,” he says quietly.

I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to do anything. Then I look at him, his brown eyes, the green flecks muted right now. And I see the slightest bit of hurt in them. Because he wanted to see me; he hoped to see me. He is
feeling,
feeling for me. He’s not just Martin the Mockingbird, Martin the science geek, Martin the most excellent kisser. He’s Martin, just a boy who likes a girl.

A girl the Juilliard admissions officer wants to see perform. A piano girl.

So I do something I’m not supposed to do. I reach for his hand and pull him into an empty classroom. I put my palms on his face, then push my fingers back through his hair, soft and feathery on my hands. I press my lips against his mouth, sweet and salty, warm and hungry for me. I take a few steps backward, holding on to him the whole time, until my back meets the blackboard, far out of view of other students, of any teachers. I lean against the blackboard and kiss him
harder, draw his body closer to mine, his jeans against mine, his belt loops against mine. He’s mine and I want him and I’m not letting him go. I pull him tighter and he responds, pushing up against me, his body pressed against mine, so there’s no space between us and I can’t stop kissing him and he can’t stop kissing me and we’re pressed together skintight and snug and I can’t stand it—really, I
can’t
stand it—how much I want him in every way right now.