The Rivals (28 page)

“No, I don’t,” I say, the answer coming more quickly than I expected. “We accused you, and you didn’t do it. I’m not going to rescind the offer just because it was a setup. The rule’s there for a reason. To keep us in check. To balance out our power. If I break that rule, I’m just as bad as”—I stop myself before I say
your sister
—“they are.”

“I want to stay, Alex,” Jamie says, and she clasps her hands together and looks up at me with those puppy-dog eyes. “I know you probably hate me, though.”

I don’t hate her. How do you hate a pawn? Besides, she may have done the hardest thing of all. She turned against her family. She returned to herself.

“I don’t hate you, Jamie. Oddly enough, and I’m not entirely sure why, I still kind of like you.”

“I’m going to prove myself to you,” she tells me, a new determination filling her, like a paint can being poured over a canvas, a new color covering the old.

A flash of doubt streaks by. This could be another setup, another layer to another intricate lie. But now is not the time to ask. Now is the time to confront.

“I have to go see Theo,” I tell her, and I leave for Richardson Hall.

I bang hard on his door, waiting, ready, eager to pounce on him.

But he’s not the one who answers.

When the door opens, I’m greeted by my informant.

I give Delaney a quick nod and turn to Theo. He’s sitting on his bed. I glance around his room and notice there are two suitcases pulled out. One is a hard-backed navy suitcase, the other an army-green duffel bag, the kind that comes to your chest if you stand it on end. “So you skipped out on the trial but managed to travel to Dallas for the Elite.”

“I didn’t go to the Elite,” he says.

“Why not? Wouldn’t that be your moment of triumph? Isn’t that what you wanted all along?” I say, because now I don’t feel any sympathy for him. I don’t feel any sadness. I am nothing like him. “How could you miss it? You were training, prepping all along.”

“I withdrew,” he says.

“Oh, how noble of you. To withdraw from the competition you practically rigged.”

“Alex,” Delaney says in that raspy voice of hers, butting in. “He’s not talking about the Elite.”

But I barely hear her words. Just the sound of her voice, that husky voice hunting me down in the student-activities office, brings me back to the night this all started, and she was the one who set it all in motion.

She was the first domino.

“You always told me to keep you out of this. You always said you couldn’t be associated with this,” I say to her, holding up my index finger. “And now you’re in this. So which one is it, Delaney Zirinski? Were you in on this?”

“You asked me that before, and I told you. No.”

I wait for her to say more, to explain herself.

“He told me everything just now when he got back from New York. All the details I didn’t know and didn’t want to know before. And I told him I went to you. I told him I was the one who tipped you off.”

“That is so sweet. The two of you comforting each other in your mutual confessions,” I say to Delaney, then I swivel around to Theo. “Does that include how you let someone else take the fall for you? Does that include how you let Maia take the fall?”

“I was already gone. I had no idea she was being tried until I got back.”

“Yeah, but would you even have confessed if you knew it was going on? Would you have confessed it was you?”

He looks straight at me, his eyes worn out but painfully honest when he says, “It’s not like I have a track record of making good decisions. But I’m hoping that changes.”

“Why is that going to change?” I ask, because all I can think is he should be standing up in the cafeteria and taking his punishment.

“You know our English teacher? Mr. Baumann?”

“Of course.”

“I started talking to him about it a few weeks ago.”

I take a moment to process what he just said. That he confided in an adult, a teacher, no less. Just like when I told Miss Damata last year what happened to me. “He’s been helping me,” Theo adds. “With everything. Not just the Anderin, which I stopped taking, but everything. How to deal with what happened to me. How to move on. I started seeing a counselor. Someone he put me in touch with. That’s why I was gone for the last few weeks. I was back home with my parents.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I manage to say, and for the first time all year, I feel like maybe we—the Mockingbirds, the students—don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. There are teachers and parents who care.

I watch Theo’s eyes travel to the suitcases. Delaney’s gaze follows, but I speak next. “You’re withdrawing from Themis, aren’t you?”

Theo nods. “Yes. Mr. Baumann is great, but he made it pretty clear he won’t sanction cheating.”

I think back on the honor pledge for a second. Maybe it does work.

“Did he turn you in to Ms. Merritt or something?”

Theo shakes his head. “No. Because it doesn’t matter. I’m leaving Monday. I just came back to pack. It was my choice. But I told my parents what happened, and I’m going to finish high school at home in New York and keep seeing the counselor there.”

“There’s something you have to do before you leave,” I tell him.

“I know.”

“Are you going to?”

“Yes,” he says. “Tonight at dinner.”

I want to reach out and grab his shirt by the collar, twist it, push him into the corner, and make him swear on it. But I know those tactics don’t work. They won’t do any good. I can’t control him. I can’t control anyone here.

I learned my lesson when I lied to Beat—the lie that ricocheted back with so much collateral damage, hurting my friends, the Mockingbirds, and me. So all I can do is wait, because dinner, and a certain someone’s regular chess party, won’t start for a few hours.

I look over at Theo, remembering the way he danced for me, the way he favored his right knee. It strikes me as almost funny that one bad landing was all McKenna needed to set in motion a drug ring that turned dozens of Themis kids into buyers, dealers, addicts.

Then again, we are all addicts here. We are all hooked on something, whether it’s the piano, or the microscope, or the soccer field, or one another. This school lures us in like magnets, the overachievers, the ambitious of our world, and we spend our days and nights here aspiring, wanting, desiring like we’ve never done before.

Delaney catches me on the way out. She grabs my arm, and I turn around to look at her, her blue-gray eyes tough and steely through her silver glasses.

“I wasn’t jerking you around. Ever,” she says. “I wasn’t in on it. I always wanted it to end. I always wanted it to stop. For me and for him.”

I look at her, at the way she wears her convictions on her sleeve. I know she’s been telling the truth all along. “I know. Sorry I said that. So what happens to the two of you?” I ask, nodding back at the room.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s not like I’m going to see him much now.”

“Will you miss him?”

She nods. “More than you know.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Ridiculously.”

“Are you glad he stopped?”

“Immensely.”

“Are you addicted to adverbs all of a sudden?”

She laughs. “Evidently.”

Then it’s my turn to laugh. “Can I touch your hair?” I ask.

She laughs lightly and nods. I reach a hand out, thinking it’ll feel like straw from all the bleach and coloring, but it’s silky.

“You really can rock the purple hair,” I tell her as I pull my hand back.

“Not everyone can pull it off,” she adds playfully. “But you would kick unholy ass with a blue streak.”

“I would, wouldn’t I?”

“Do you want to do it?” she asks conspiratorially, like she’s offering me drugs, a pill, something that tastes good. But this is her drug; this is what she plays with—color, style, boldness. And maybe it’s not a drug. Maybe it’s just who she is.

“I’ve got three hours,” I say, and it’s that easy. I don’t worry about drawing attention to myself anymore, because I’m already public and that’s just the way it is.

Delaney takes me back to her room, where she gathers her supplies, bleaches and dyes and shampoos and other assorted bottles and potions, then to the girls’ bathroom in her dorm. She drags a chair in and positions it against the sink. She won’t let me take a peek until she’s totally through, which includes blow-drying my hair. When she’s finally done, she spins me around to the mirror.

I touch the blue streak on the side of my head. It’s like a badge, a medal of honor, a declaration even. It makes me look tough; it makes me look cool.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go kick unholy ass,” I say, and return to my dorm. I don’t go up the stairs. I go down the hall and toward the common room on the first floor, and my instincts were right. They’re here, getting ready for a chess party.

Anjali has a bright orange scarf with tiny white flowers patterned on it wrapped around her neck and silver flats on her feet. She even has a clip in her hair, a shimmery blue one with a metallic butterfly. She looks so celebratory. She sets up tables and boards and wineglasses for her famous lavender, rhubarb, and vanilla organic sodas. I briefly entertain the idea of smashing a few bottles together or just knocking them over and letting them break, the bubbly liquid spreading into the Themis Academy common-room carpet. Who wants lavender soda, anyway?

McKenna is there, lounging on the couch. Where she was tightly wound a month ago, calm and gracious a few days ago, now she is loose and languid. She wears formfitting jeans and a long, slinky gray shirt, her feet perched on one end of the couch, her head on a pillow, and an arm dangling to the side. She might as well be holding a cigarette, carelessly letting the ashes fall to the ground. Instead, it’s a remote in her hand. An iPod remote. She uses it to change songs. She has on a beige cap with a dusty rose pattern, and its job is to hold back that wild hair.

I am muted in comparison—jeans, sweater, Vans; standard gear—except for the blue streak in my hair.

“I guess it’s a good night to have a party,” I say as I step inside. “Lots to celebrate, right? I mean, chess is really working out for you, isn’t it, Anjali?”

They both turn to look at me.

“At last! You’re finally taking me up on my invite for a chess party!” Anjali says. She doesn’t realize I was being sarcastic. She is still playing me.

“I think I took you up on that earlier this semester without even realizing it. And I think you won the first match,” I say.

She widens her eyes. Then they register that I know. I detect the slightest bit of embarrassment in her when she looks away. Good. She should be embarrassed. She should feel bad.

“Hello? Were you going to say hello? I’m here, people,” McKenna says, clearly not bothered at all to have been found out, perhaps even wanting it to have happened. I wonder if she knows her sister was the one who ratted her out. But it’s not my place to let on how I know.

“Hello, McKenna,” I say. “I think you guys are missing someone, though. Aren’t you a threesome after all? Where’s your heavy?”

“Right behind you.” It’s Natalie and she’s carrying more of that vile soda as she walks in. I look down at the six-pack in her hand. Lemongrass flavor. In her other hand she carries seaweed chips. Thank God I never said yes to an Anjali chess party. Natalie plunks the six-pack down on the counter and taps one, then looks to me. “If they were beer, I’d give you one. Oh, wait, your drink of choice is vodka, isn’t it?”

I don’t respond. I don’t bother telling her I don’t drink and I won’t drink ever again. Instead I say, “That’s why you did this, Natalie? Because the horse you bet on last year didn’t win?”

Natalie snorts in response. “So typical, isn’t it?” She directs this to her cohorts. “She thinks it’s all about her.”

“Speaking of, your hair looks stupid,” McKenna says to me, then stretches like a cat. I half-expect her to start cleaning herself like a feline would. She starts by licking one hand, then uses that hand—no, paw—to reach behind her ear. Then the other. Her tail swishes side to side.

I’ve never been one for cats.

“So does yours,” I say back.

McKenna doesn’t respond, just flicks the iPod controller and picks a new song. “I get so bored sometimes with the same songs over and over.”

I stare at her, at McKenna the Cat changing the music. “Is this all just a game to you? Is this because of student council? Because it has no power?”

“If only I were that petty. But I’m not that small, Alex. This is much bigger than student council,” she says, then crosses her feet at the ankles and stretches her arms above her head. “It’s about responsibility. And not that collective responsibility crap you espouse. But
personal responsibility
. That’s what we believe in.”

“Oh. That makes perfect sense. You believe in personal responsibility, so you set up a drug ring. Naturally.”

“Maybe you should never have looked into it in the first place. Maybe not everything should be in the Mockingbirds’ jurisdiction. But you have to stick your nose in everything. I mean, a cheating ring, Alex? This is the kind of thing no government or group should be getting involved in. But that’s why it was so
easy
to trick you. Because we knew you Mockingbirds weren’t going to be able to resist waving your holier-than-thou flag.”

“But yet the students thought we should get involved. We took a vote,” I point out.

She waves a hand dismissively. “A vote. Ooh. That proves so much. You know what it proves? It proves the student body is afraid of
one
group ruling it. That’s what we call an oligarchy, Alex. And that’s what you guys have been. Besides, it was all too easy to take down the Mockingbirds, because your group had a lot of holes in it.”

“It was like a sieve!” Natalie says, and laughs at her own lame joke, then takes a swig of her lemongrass swill.

“You should have picked me as the board member, Alex,” Anjali says, and her voice is cutting now; her eyes are cruel. She stands against the sink and the cupboards, her arms crossed in front of her. Gone is the bubbly, enthusiastic, happy-to-help girl. “But you passed me over for Parker Hume, the senator’s son. I never liked Senator Hume, and I never liked his son either.”