The Mockingbirds (5 page)

But I can’t move, because I’m boxed in by Casey, who looks me in the eyes and speaks softly, “I don’t give a shit how many guys you hook up with as long as you use a condom. What I care about is whether you said yes. That’s the only thing that matters.”

She leaves it there—
that’s the only thing that matters
—hanging in midair, suspended, light as a feather. I close my eyes, press my thumb and middle fingers against my nose. The ants are gone, but my headache resurfaces, traveling around my body now, setting up camp in my neck, then my shoulders, before sprinting down into my legs, my feet, my toes. My whole body is racked, every muscle tense, every bone on edge.

I hear Casey’s voice again. “Alex, did you say yes? Did you say yes when you had sex with Carter? Either time?”

Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no.

I don’t know.

I don’t know the things about last night that matter. I don’t know what words were said or not said. I push my fingers harder against the bridge of my nose, like I’m directing all the dormant memories there, commanding them like
a sorcerer to break free of their shackles, come out of hiding and reveal everything.

I say the words to myself.

Yes.

No.

Weighing them, one against the other on scales, hoping one scale will tip in favor of the other, making everything clear.

Yes, no, yes, no.

One or the other.

I try desperately to remember, reaching deep into the recesses of last night to recall the one most important word—
yes.
But it won’t surface. All I can see are the band, the drinks, the card game, a kiss, then “Ode to Joy.” Then black, blank nothingness. Nothing at all. Then waking up.

“I don’t know,” I whisper as I open my eyes. The tightness in my body subsides and now I feel like a rag doll, wrung dry.

“You don’t know,” Casey repeats.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” I say, my voice shaking for the first time. “I don’t remember anything,” I say again as my throat tightens.

Fat silence fills the room and I look at Casey next to me, at T.S., who perches on the edge of her chair.

“When a girl doesn’t remember what happened there’s usually a reason,” Casey says.

“What, was I drugged?” I ask nervously because that would explain everything. If Carter gave me one of those drugs…

“I doubt it, but you did drink a lot,” T.S. says. “Sandeep called me last night after you left with Carter. He told me you had three drinks at the card game. Plus, you skipped dinner. You said you were too excited about seeing Artful Rage to eat. You were bouncing off the walls all day about Friday Night Out privileges. You’re skinny, Alex. Three drinks on an empty stomach, that’ll knock someone your size out.”

Knock someone my size out. The words, they ring in my ears.

Knock. Out. Knock. Out.

I picture myself as a boxer, bruised and battered, chin bloody, eyes swollen. I try to do that little toe bounce thing boxers do, but I can’t. I’m too worn out. I’m woozy, thoughts swimming aimlessly around my head. And that’s when it happens. My opponent slams his gloved fist into my chest, then my cheek, then my head. I’m knocked out.

“Knocked out?” I ask quietly, imagining Boxer Alex slumped down in the corner of the ring, clinging to the ropes, head hanging low.

“Alex, I think the reason you don’t remember having sex with Carter is you were passed out,” T.S. says.

“Like a blackout or something?”

“You could have blacked out. And while you were blacked out you could have been totally into him and having the time of your life or whatever,” Casey offers. “But even if that was the case, even if you blacked out, you were not in a condition to be having sex at all. So maybe it went
like this: you made out, you went back to his room. He probably goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth or pee or whatever. So you sit down on the bed to steady yourself. Then it hits you. The room is spinning and you’re wasted. Your head meets the pillow. Boom. You’re asleep, passed out, whatever you want to call it.”

“So if I was asleep we didn’t have sex, then?” I offer sort of feebly, hoping that’s what happened, clinging to a faint, fuzzy memory of slumber.

“I don’t know what happened, Alex,” Casey continues. “Only you do and he does. And you’ll know for sure when you remember more. But I’m just saying something doesn’t sound right. It sounds as if he had sex with you while you were sleeping. Alex, it sounds like he raped you.”

The four-letter word has been lobbed.

Like a bomb waiting to go off, it ticks, ticks, ticks. Louder, a siren screaming closer, a wail starting to surround me. It pierces my eardrums and the word rattles in my skull. It’s a buzzing now, like construction on a New York street and you can’t hear yourself talk or even think. Finally the bomb explodes, blasting the four letters apart, shredding them to pieces, leaving behind silence, cold silence, and…

“What’s it called that a bomb leaves behind?” I direct the question to Casey.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Residue,” T.S. offers quickly.

“It’s not residue,” I insist. “What’s the word for it? It’s not collateral damage. It’s not residue. What is it?”

“Shrapnel. It’s shrapnel,” T.S. says.

“Yes!” I say, snapping two fingers. “Shrapnel. That’s what I was thinking of.”

Then I clasp my palms together and say, “What should we do now? It’s too early for lunch.” Before they can answer, I smack my forehead with my palm. “Oh, I forgot! You guys have your game! You should get to your game, right? I don’t want to hold you up. Maybe I’ll even come to it for once. Cheer you. But who should I root for?”

Casey stands up and puts her hands firmly on my shoulders. “Alex,” she says, cutting me off. I look down at the floor. “Alex,” she says again. I start counting the number of lines in the floorboards. “Alex,” she says one more time. A knot rises up in my throat. I swallow, but it’s still there.

“How did this happen to me?” I whisper.

She pulls me close. I close my eyes, collapse into her, my arms limp at my side. We stay like that for a minute, an hour, maybe all day. Then Casey says, “Alex, I know it doesn’t make it better, but it happens to a lot of girls.”

I untangle myself from my sister, collect my voice, and say, “No. I really don’t understand how this happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how did this happen?” I direct this question to T.S. “You were there. How did this happen? How did this happen to
me
?”

“I was there at the concert, but I left before the drinking game started. I don’t know how drunk you were.” I wince when she says that. I barely drink. I don’t even like the taste
of alcohol. I’m the girl at parties who doesn’t care about booze. How did I become the girl who got that drunk? T.S. continues, “You should talk to Sandeep. He was there until you left.”

I recoil. “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want everyone knowing my business.”

“Sandeep was there the whole time. He knows you left with Carter. He knows you spent the night—” She stops, corrects herself. “He knows you wound up in Carter’s room. He won’t judge. You know he’s not like that. He would never judge you.”

I look away, focusing on a framed photo of a golden blond boy holding a lacrosse stick and smiling wide, way too chipper for my taste.

I turn back to Casey and T.S. “Isn’t it entirely possible we just had bad sex, like it was just a mistake? You know, I slept with him and I just…” I grasp for the words. “Isn’t it possible I just—I don’t know—blocked it out?”

“Alex, there is a
reason
you don’t remember. I don’t think you were ever in a position to say yes. And I also think you need to do your best to figure out what happened. For your own peace of mind,” Casey says.

I close my eyes, sigh heavily. “Sandeep. Natalie Moretti. The whole girls’ track team. We might as well hire a skywriter at this rate.”

But I also know I’ll go to Sandeep. This is like homework and I have never backed down from an assignment.

“Let’s find out how messed up I was,” I say.

“I’m going with you,” T.S. says. “I’m going to skip the game.”

“You never skip games.”

“Well, I am today,” T.S. says.

“And listen, Alex,” Casey begins. “You have options. You could go to the police.”

I whip around. “Are you joking?” I ask, but I don’t wait for her to answer. “Because I would
never
go to the police. Not for something like this.”

“Why not?” Casey asks.

“Because then Mom and Dad would know, and they’d have a collective meltdown that would burn a hole in the solar system. Not to mention they wouldn’t approve of that whole underage drinking thing. And there’s that little fact of my having to recount the whole experience to the cops, who would insist on a rape kit like on TV, and I can’t imagine anything I’d want to do less than that.”

“Then, what about the Mockingbirds? They can help you.”

“You want me to be a poster child or something?”

“I want what’s right.”

“The Mockingbirds are your project, not mine,” I say.

Casey holds up her hands. “It’s totally up to you. You don’t have to go to the Mockingbirds. If you want to move on, pretend this never happened—”

Yes, God, yes
.

“—Then I respect that,” she adds. “It’s your choice.”

But was it really
my choice
? Was it ever my choice last night? Did I choose? Could I choose?

I have to know.

I tip my chin to the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

Casey locks the door behind us and we walk silently down the long hallway. There’s no banter this time, no joking like on the way here. We leave the athletic complex and T.S. texts Sandeep as Casey unlocks her bike. Casey says she’ll call later, come by later too. Then she rides off, and T.S. and I head for Brooks Hall.

It looks like a miniature castle with little turrets, curved windows, and a big set of stone steps leading up to its dark brown double wood doors. I know this much—Carter lives in a different dorm than Sandeep. This is a small victory for me today, both the memory and the luck.

Once inside, T.S. knocks on Sandeep’s door. He opens it, flashes T.S. a smile, and gives her a kiss on the lips. My stomach curls and I look away because I’m not a public kisser. Daniel and I made out in the basement, the music hall, the deserted stacks on the third floor of Pryor Library. Never in the quad, never in the caf, and never in front of friends. But evidently I was quite a public kisser last night. I was exactly the person I’m not.

“Hey, guys,” Martin says, giving us a quick nod. He’s Sandeep’s roommate and he’s busy stuffing a biology textbook the size of an encyclopedia set into his backpack. He was at the concert last night. He saw me drinking; he
probably knows I left with Carter. I focus on the window at the end of the room so I don’t have to meet his eyes. “I’m heading over to Pryor,” Martin adds. He’ll soon be eye-deep in that textbook. Martin is insanely driven to be a biologist. Everyone at Themis is insanely driven about something.

“Did you know a recent study found that the western scrub-jay can plan for the future?” Martin says randomly, perhaps the biggest non sequitur I’ve heard in my life.

“Where do you come up with this stuff, Martin?” T.S. asks.

“Google News,” he says as if the answer were obvious. “Yeah, these birds stored food in different rooms for the next day and they could remember what food they stored, when they stored it, and where they stored it, even when the other birds were watching.”

“Was that a hard test for the birds, Martin? Being able to remember shit when their buddies were watching?” Sandeep teases.

“It gives new meaning to the term
birdbrain,
doesn’t it?” Martin says with a glint in his eyes as he hoists his book-laden backpack onto his shoulder. “There’s a lot going on in those tiny little heads.”

Despite myself I laugh a little, then notice T.S. and Sandeep both are rolling their eyes. “See, Alex thought it was funny,” Martin points out.

“I did,” I manage to say. The least I can do is talk like a normal person, react like a normal person. I’m not going to
be that person who goes mute, who writes on Post-it Notes because she can’t deal.

“Get out of here,” T.S. says playfully.

“Someday, when the world is run by ornithologists, you won’t be so quick to dispatch me.”

He leaves and I sit down at Martin’s vacated desk chair. T.S. makes herself comfortable, sitting cross-legged on Sandeep’s bed. The room is sparse, like most boys’ rooms, though Sandeep has managed to slather his half of the walls with felt pennants for the Baltimore Orioles. He’s from Maryland and possesses an unholy zeal for the home team. Signs of Martin’s personality and his slavish devotion to science are more meager. The only evidence lies in a dartboard above his desk. On the bull’s-eye he’s written
Nobel Prize
.

“This is weird,” I blurt out.