The Mockingbirds (29 page)

Martin’s eyes stay fixed on Kevin. “Yes.”

“And do you regularly engage in physical contact with Alex, like holding hands on the way to the Brain Freeze?”

How could I have been so stupid?

“Yes, we hold hands when we go out for ice cream,” Martin answers, his voice strong and unwavering.

“That’s so sweet. What’s her favorite flavor?”

“Objection!” Maia calls out.

Callie gives Kevin a hard look as he resumes. “So let’s go back to these visits to Alex’s room that are part of
your job
with the Mockingbirds. Is part of your job when you’re there to make out as well?”

“It’s not part of my job,” Martin says.

“So you lied when you said it was your job to visit her?”

“No, I didn’t lie. It was my job. I visited her. We also kissed. That was not part of the job. But I did it anyway.”

“Is it against the rules of the Mockingbirds? Getting involved with a plaintiff? I don’t know. I’m just curious.”

“It is.”

“And you did it anyway.”

“We did it anyway.”

“And was Alex aware it is against the rules?”

“Yes.”

“So you regularly engage in sexual conduct with Alex?”

Martin nods. “Yes, and it’s completely mutual. Completely
consensual,
” Martin says, slowly sounding out the last word, making sure the impact is clear.

“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Kevin says brightly. “Just like with Carter. Because Alex has a pattern of engaging in sexual activity with boys where she wants, when she wants, whenever the mood strikes, regardless of the consequences. And you’re part of that pattern.”

Kevin practically sails over to his seat, ridiculously pleased with himself. He and Carter exchange a mini high-five under the table. Everthing about what Kevin said stings, especially since Martin and I haven’t slept together.

Maia pops up, paces to the center of the room. “Martin,” she begins, “you’re not the one being tried here. So I don’t think we need to get into the ins and out of your relationship with Alex. Your
consensual
relationship. But a few brief questions just to clarify the differences. Was Alex ever drinking when you were with her?”

“No.”

“Was she ever sleeping when you kissed her?”

“No.”

“Passed out?”

“No.”

Maia looks to the council. “I don’t really think there is any need to ask this witness any further questions because to do so would be offensive. Not to him. But to everyone. To you, Callie. And you, Lila. And you, Parker. In fact, it would be offensive to every man and woman on this campus, at this school, in this country, and in the UK as well. To bring up a relationship Alex has that is mutual and consensual, to discuss what she and her boyfriend do—what they both
choose
to do,
choose
being the operative word,
choose
being the only word that matters—when they are together in her room or in a classroom or at an ice-cream shop is despicable. It is distasteful. And it has no place here.

“It undermines all of the progress we as women and men who believe in right and wrong, who believe
no means no,
who believe every act of sex and intimacy should be consensual from both sides, have made. To bring up Alex’s very real and ongoing and
mutual
relationship with Martin
and somehow suggest it has any relation whatsoever to what happened in January in Carter Hutchinson’s room against her wishes, against her will, is inappropriate and completely irrelevant. Being with Martin is a choice Alex made willingly and actively. Being with Carter was not a choice. She had no choice. I urge you to disregard this as it has absolutely zero bearing on what happened the night Carter date-raped Alex.”

Martin is excused. Whether he returns to his post as sentry or whether Amy banishes him—to what? To Mockingbird jail?—I don’t know.

Kevin calls his third and final witness. Carter rises from the end of the table. He’s wearing a white-and-blue-striped oxford cloth shirt, a green tie, and dress pants. His white hair is slicked back.

“Let’s set the scene a bit,” Kevin begins. “How did that evening in January begin, Carter? The one when you met Alex?”

As if there were another night we were discussing.

“Um, well it started in the library….”

I cough-laugh quietly. Give me a break.

“I was studying for Spanish class.”

I tap Maia on the leg, then whisper in her ear. “He’s lying—”

She shushes me before I can continue, before I can say he told me the
next
morning he hadn’t even started studying for any classes yet. He was at water polo practice before we met.

“Then I went back to my room and, uh, called my mom to tell her about my classes. And to check in and see how she was feeling. She’d been sick during the break.”

Don’t they realize he’s lying? Can’t they see through him like I can?

“So after I talked to Mom, I went with some friends to the club. And while I was there I ordered a club soda, because of course you can’t drink there. I can’t drink anywhere. I’m only seventeen.”

Kevin nods, all thoughtful and paternal, as if Carter is the model student, the exemplar of virtue.

“No, you can’t drink when you’re seventeen,” Kevin states.

Thanks for the clarification, asshole
.

I tap Maia again, shrug my shoulders as if to ask her
what do we do next?
She shakes her head, signaling me not to talk. I resist the impulse to cover my eyes with my hands, because if I did, I’d just watch through my fingers like it was a horror movie, because it is.

Carter, the white knight he’s pretending to be, continues, “And then I met Alex. And I just remember thinking how very pretty she was,” he says, painting a shy, almost
lovestruck puppy-dog look on his face. “So I walked up to her and introduced myself, and she shook my hand and smiled. She was very sharp and witty and we talked about how much we liked the band.”

Right, let’s pretend I was straight up and sober the whole night. Because he forgot to mention how I practically stepped on him I was so buzzed. He continues in this vein as he details leaving the club, going to Sandeep’s dorm, playing Circle of Death—claiming he drank only orange juice when it was his turn. Then he describes our kiss there in the common room, like he’s some blushing Southern gentleman overcome by my beauty.

“And then you left to go back to your dorm?” Kevin asks.

“Yes, Alex said she wanted to go to my dorm.”

I snap my head toward Maia.
Do something
I say with my eyes.

“Objection!” she calls out, standing up.

Callie looks to Maia. “Yes?”

“His side is wrong,” Maia argues. “You already heard Alex say it was his idea.”

“You may sit down, Maia,” Callie tells her. “We’re listening to
his
side of the story.”

“Can you tell us what happened when you were back at your room?” Kevin asks Carter.

“We kissed some more and then…” Carter pauses, blushing a bit.

“Yes?” Kevin asks gently.

“Then we moved to the bed and we undressed each other.”

My forehead pounds; the vein I despise is angry too, filling with fire.

“And she lay down on my bed and pulled me closer to her, and I got a condom on so we could make love—”

I cough loudly this time; I don’t bother to cover it up. Carter stops and looks at me for the first time—they all look at me—coughing. “We didn’t make love,” I spit out at him. I don’t care if it’s not my turn.

“We did,” Carter says, gazing—actually gazing—right at me. “At least, it felt that way to me,” he says, then puts a hand on his chest and sighs.

The flames lick higher in me; they coat my body and my skin and I’m boiling inside and out.

“Then we fell asleep. She fell asleep in my arms.”

I close my eyes so I can’t see the lies; I only have to hear them.

“And I fell asleep too, for a couple hours, maybe three,” he continues. “Because when I woke up I looked at the clock and it was around three thirty in the morning then. And she was kissing me.”

“I wasn’t kissing you!” I shout, my eyes wide open now.

He gives me his look again, his demure look. “You were, Alex,” he says softly. He’s not the Carter he was on the phone, all brash and ready for war, or in the library, slick and ready for action. Now he’s a new Carter, the worst one of all. He’s sweet, sensitive Carter, dousing himself in syrup
and honey. I want to peel every last inch of his sugar-coated lies off of him.

“So I reached for a condom again and put it on and we started having sex—I mean,
making love,
” he says, quickly correcting himself, and it’s so clear to me he’s playing a part, so clear to me he missed his rehearsed line. I look to the council next to see if they noticed his mistake. But their faces are stone.

“She didn’t push you away?” Kevin asks.

“She did not.”

“She didn’t say no?”

“She didn’t say no.”

“She didn’t shake her head?”

“She didn’t shake her head.”

“Thank you, Carter,” Kevin says, and sits down.

Maia leaps up, grabbing her chance to ask questions.

“You claim she didn’t say no. But not saying no isn’t enough. The code of conduct says, and I quote: ‘Sexual assault is sexual contact (not just intercourse) where one of the parties has not given or cannot give active verbal consent, i.e., uttered a clear “yes” to the action. If a person does not say “no,” that does not mean he or she said “yes.” Silence does not equal consent. Silence could mean fear, confusion, inebriation. The only thing that means yes is yes. A lack of yes is a no.’ ”

Maia pauses, letting the weight of the words fill the room. Then directly to Carter, her brown eyes boring into his blue ones, she asks, “Did she say yes?”

“She didn’t say no,” he says.

“Did she say yes?” she asks again. “Did she say yes either time? Did she say she wanted to have sex with you?”

“She didn’t say no,” he says again, stealing a
help me
look at Kevin, but Kevin’s got the same lost look on his face as the boy in the witness chair.

The dryers are still rattling, but it’s as if the laundry room went dead silent, and this is one of those moments when everything is shockingly clear. There’s practically a collective holding of breath at the realization of Carter’s fatal error. He never prepped for this question. They never planned the next lie he would tell, because to Carter my not saying no
was
consent. He didn’t devise a lie this time. He didn’t think he had to. It’s as if he never read the revised code or—more likely—that he didn’t care what it said. Because he thinks what he did was okay simply because I didn’t utter a
no
.

When it’s not okay for so very many reasons.

“Did she say yes?” Maia asks for a third time, and each time she asks the question the room grows quieter, waiting for his answer.

“She was breathing.”

“She was
breathing
?” Maia repeats. “She was breathing?”

Carter nods, latching on to this idea. “Yes, she was breathing.”

“That was her consent in your view? Breathing?”

Carter doesn’t know what to say; he’s Bambi without his mom. “Um, yeah.”

“She was breathing,” Maia says, incredulously, then looks at the three students on the council. “A lack of no is not a yes. The absence of a no doesn’t mean consent. Nor does breathing equal consent. Breathing is breathing. Breathing is sleeping. Breathing is not saying yes. Breathing simply means you’re alive.”

She reaches for my hand, squeezes it. I squeeze her hand back, feeling neither fire nor ice, just calm, because for all of Carter’s lies, for his puppy-dog routine, for his faux-gentle demeanor, I’m pretty sure Maia just nailed it right there, when he finally told the truth.

Maia finishes with a quick closing argument. Then Kevin gives his, stumbling a bit on his words, still smarting from Carter’s slipup that neither one of them saw coming.

Callie says “thank you” to Carter, to Maia, to Kevin, to me. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow at noon with a decision.”

“He as good as admitted it!” Maia shouts for maybe the ten thousandth time. We’ve just told T.S. every detail after returning to our dorm ten minutes ago.

“I know,” I say, shaking my head in amazement at how all Carter could come up with was the breathing defense. “Weird, isn’t it?”

“Breathing!” she declares again.

“Breathing,” I repeat. “That’s it. That’s all he could say.”

“And while we’re at it, it would have been helpful if you told me about Martin,” Maia says. “But now that the cat’s out of the bag, do you really like him a lot?”