The Rivals (3 page)

She heads off with her sister to the assembly hall. I notice that Natalie is right behind them. It crosses my mind that McKenna only introduced her sister to me, not to Natalie. Please don’t tell me McKenna would be friends with that evil witch. McKenna’s got to have better taste than that.

Martin turns to me and sees my jaw set tight, my lips pressed together hard. “What did Natalie say when she whispered to you?”

“I don’t want to repeat it,” I say quickly.

“But I already heard the first thing she said.”

“And the second thing she said was far worse. Which is why I don’t want to repeat it,” I say, but I wonder again if people see me as someone who stood up for herself, or if they picture me in Carter’s room, drunk, legs open, on his bed?

Either way, I have become fused to the crime against me. That’s what happens when you take a stand, because then everyone knows what you were taking a stand for.

Martin and I walk into the auditorium together, and I see McKenna slide into a seat near the front and say something to Jamie. Jamie glances quickly back at me. I look down at the hallway into the auditorium, feeling a pang of longing for the way my life was before my past became public.

An hour later, D-Day is in full swing. Technically, the school calls it
Diversity Day
, but we’ve coined our own special nickname. It’s like a pep rally, only the energy is radiating from the teachers, the administrators, the headmistress, and the dean herself. All the adults are hooting, hollering, whooping it up from their seats on the stage. Ms. Merritt is leading the show, and she has been trotting out each and every teacher to wax on and on about each of their subjects and how history, philosophy, French, calculus, and so on can all lead to the betterment not just of our nimble minds but, by golly, society as a whole!

My roommate Maia’s sitting on one side of me, wisely using the time to read her favorite news blogs on her phone—gotta stay current on politics, government, and all that jazz for Debate Club. Her focus is the stuff of legend. She hasn’t once looked away from the stories she’s reading, or sighed, or whispered a comment to one of us. She is machinelike as she digests information, storing it up so she can call upon it at any moment.

Martin and Sandeep are on the other side of Maia, and from the looks of it they’re using Sandeep’s phone to make fantasy football trades. If Martin can segue from Natalie’s insults to pretend sports team ownership, I should perk up too. Besides, if I don’t want others to linger on my past, I shouldn’t either. I should put on my best game face. So I tap T.S., my other roommate, on the shoulder and roll my eyes when she looks my way. She rolls her green eyes back at me, and we proceed to keep ourselves occupied with eye rolls and fake gags for the next few minutes as Mr. Bandoro, the school’s Spanish teacher, effuses about the Spanish language, promising fluency for all students who apply themselves fully to his curriculum and declaring that said fluency will make us better global citizens.

I hold up my hand at T.S., lifting four fingers. “Fourth time I’ve heard this,” I whisper. “And I’m still not a good global citizen.”

“Oh no? I hereby sentence you to four readings of the school handbook and a recitation of it on the quad in front of the entire student body this evening. Backward. And while wearing sunglasses.”

“Is there even a school handbook to read from?” I ask.

“Collecting dust somewhere,” T.S. whispers, her bob-length blond hair swinging against her cheek as she leans in.

“Being sold at a garage sale,” I say.

“Used as a coaster in the Faculty Club,” she says.

“Being peddled as an artifact at a boarding-school exhibit in some museum.”

“You totally win,” she says, giving me a high five.

The voice of the headmistress, Ms. Vartan, echoes through the auditorium. She informs us that she will spend most of the semester visiting prep schools around the world as she gathers best practices to implement here at Themis. “But before I go, let us take the honor pledge, as we do at the start of every year. The honor pledge is the foundation of our academic excellence. We must always keep honor above all else, and your pledge on all tests, examinations, papers, academic activities, competitions, and assignments is that you have neither given nor received any assistance in completing the work. And now…,” she says, holding up her right hand as if she’s testifying in court.

We recite the pledge along with her. “I will not lie. I will not cheat. I will not tolerate any dishonorable behavior on behalf of myself or others.”

Ms. Vartan nods and then gestures to Ms. Merritt. “Our beloved dean will be acting in my stead while I am on my journeys. And she has some very exciting news, so I will pass the baton to our very own Ms. Merritt.”

Ms. Merritt thanks the headmistress and then says, “Some of you may know this is potentially a very special year for Themis, and I personally am so thrilled that the amply decorated debate team is in line to compete for a very prestigious honor with the Elite.” That statement catches Maia’s attention; she pops her head up from her phone and taps me on the shoulder.

“
The Elite
,” she whispers to me, and then grins. The Elite is a very specialized tournament for debaters that occurs the last week in October, just in time to be reflected in early-admissions apps, which are due in early November. But here’s the catch—invitations are harder to come by than Ivy League admission. You have to be handpicked by a supersecret selection committee composed of former Elite winners, Nationals winners, and other past debate stars. Maia’s been praying for an invite since her freshman year. She
finally
landed one for this year’s tournament after taking the Themis team to Nationals, where they placed third, in our junior year. That alone constituted an invite to the Elite.

“Well, you know, you have to live down the shame of that third-place victory at Nationals,” I tease.

“I
so
know,” she whispers. “I will do whatever it takes to win the Elite.”

“You totally will win,” I say.

Then I tune back in to Ms. Merritt, who’s rattling off the rest of her hopes and dreams for this year. “I also have it on good authority that we are one of the contenders to receive the J. Sullivan James National Prep School of the Year Award.”

There’s an orchestrated hush throughout the auditorium, as if it were written into the stage directions. I scan the teachers’ faces, wondering if they too are salivating for this award, and most of them are enrapt, their eyes glossy with desire. But there’s one teacher up there who’s not quite buying it, although it takes a practiced eye to tell.
I
can tell that Miss Damata, my music teacher, doesn’t have J. Sullivan James’s picture taped to her locker. She sits gracefully, with her hands in her lap, but she looks out at the students in the auditorium rather than at Ms. Merritt at the podium.

Ms. Merritt continues. “It’s exciting, I know! It’s been ten years since Themis received such an honor, and I don’t think I need to remind anyone here that the J. Sullivan James Award is indeed the highest honor a prep school can achieve, because it’s voted on solely by our peers in the world of preparatory-school education,” she says, and I do a quick mental calculation. Ms. Merritt started as dean exactly nine years ago, so this would be the first time in her tenure that the school is in contention for whatever this silly award is. I wonder if a win would catapult her to the headmistress level here or elsewhere, and if she’s gunning for it to get a promotion. Maybe she’s even planning a coup while Ms. Vartan is touring the world of academia. “And I have no doubt that your tremendous academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and, of course, rigorous code of excellence in all matters related to character and community will help us bring it home.”

Right home to her office, where she’s prepped and polished the shelf space for this trophy.

“The award is also determined by excellence in the arts. So let us not forget that we must aim for the highest stars when we dance, when we sing, when we play piano. Which is, of course, what you wonderful students do already!”

She claps heartily, turning to the faculty to urge them to join her, and they do. Then she gestures to the students, and we clap as well. I make a mental note that the instrument she singled out was the piano. Somehow, this feels like another message:
Please get into Juilliard, Alex. You’re my only hope.

“On to other matters,” Ms. Merritt says, this time with a sober look on her face. Which means it must be time for Bring-on-the-Experts. “There are, of course, aspects to Themis Academy beyond the intellectual rigors, challenges, and opportunities an education here affords, and they include character. Hand in hand with the honor pledge is character, one of the key pillars of a Themis education. We have an exceptional student body, and our students are exceptional not just in their intellect but in their character. Because they know how to behave…”

T.S. leans close to me, imitates Ms. Merritt’s pregnant pause, and then says on cue with our dean, “…the Themis way.”

Ms. Merritt goes into her introduction of Dr. and Dr. Foster, McKenna and Jamie’s parents, who bound up to the stage from the first row. They’re here to talk about hate speech, bullying, cheating, respect, individualism, and other assorted blah-blah-blah. Look, it’s not that I don’t believe it’s important to talk about those things. I do. But Themis faculty are like the parents who say to their daughter,
Now, be careful not to get an eating disorder
, and then don’t notice when she heads to the bathroom and yaks up every meal.

In my Mockingbirds notebook, I have documentation of every time the faculty looked the other way. Because there’s a common thread with all our prior cases—nearly every time, a student had tried talking to a faculty member before coming to us.

“Peer pressure is intense,” Dr. Foster says, and he sounds like Tony Robbins. “It is scary and dangerous, and we are here today to help you with strategies for dealing with it.”

The other Dr. Foster chimes in. “We have to encourage an environment of trust and honesty and mutual respect, where students can say no to drugs, stand up to bullies, and speak their minds without putting others down.”

Then Ms. Merritt weighs in. “You know I have an open-door policy, and you can always come to me to talk about anything.”

Right.
The only door that gets knocked on is the Mockingbirds’.

Then I sit up straight in my chair, realizing I forgot to add my name and contact info to the Mockingbirds mailbox so students would know how to reach me.

“I have to go,” I whisper to T.S.

“Ooh, Mockingbirds business?”

“Kind of,” I say back.

“I’m going to be a runner this year, right? We’re still on for that, aren’t we?” she whispers, referring to the feeder system for the Mockingbirds. Runners collect attendance slips from classes and can deduct points from accused students. Losing points sucks because points net you off-campus privileges. Above the runners, and chosen from among them, is the council. We pick our juries from the council. Running the show is the board of governors, who investigate charges and decide which cases to hear. The board is made up of two former council members and one person the Mockingbirds helped. Me. But it’s what the runners do that gives us any power at all.

“Of course,” I say, then gesture to Martin that I’ll call him later. He gives me a curious look, but I keep going and slink up the side aisle and out the doors before anyone can notice I’m gone. I race to my dorm, grab some masking tape and a Sharpie, and then head back across the empty quad to the student-activities office in McGregor Hall.

The office is unlocked, naturally. Themis wants us to feel free to enter the student-activities office at all hours, to thumb through the course catalogs, check out the brochures for clubs, learn about drama group, debate practice, sporting events. We can even kick back and have a cup of coffee while perusing all that this fine institution offers to stimulate our extracurricular glands, because an actual espresso machine is perched on an end table. To set the mood, there’s the alternative radio station from nearby Williamson College piping in through some unseen sound system.

I take the roll of masking tape from my back pocket, rip off a two-inch section, and place it on the bottom of the mailbox marked
Mockingbirds/a cappella singing group
. With the Sharpie I write my name,
Alex Patrick
, followed by my e-mail address. Want to register a complaint? I’m your gal.

I linger for a moment on what my first case could be. I don’t
want
anyone to come to me, only because I don’t
wish
the crap I’ve gone through to happen to anyone else. But I know how the world works. We do horrible things to one another. Will my first case be brought by someone like me, or like Amy, who led the group before me? Amy’s case was so cut-and-dried—another girl held her down and carved the first two letters of the word
Queer
in her back before she could get away. Amy pressed charges in the Mockingbirds court, and the girl was found guilty. Then Amy tattooed the last three letters, finishing the job and creating her own badge of honor out of the mutilation, taking back her skin, her identity, her whole self.

She’s probably going to lead some national movement or rally for sexual-identity equality someday. She’ll be a spokesperson for equal rights or gay marriage or something. I wonder if Amy had the same fire, the same drive, before she was cut. Or if the Amy I know now was forged by the crime. If she’s tougher than the Amy who existed before, and if somehow her complete determination to do the right thing was grafted onto her along with the letters on her back. I’ve never really talked to her about it, but I’ll have to the next time I see her.

I put the cap back on the Sharpie and drop it in my pocket. That’s when I hear a noise, a door opening, then quick, determined heels clicking down the hallway toward me. A girl appears in the doorway. Her hair is pulled back in a thick black headband that sits right above her hairline. Her face is framed by square silver glasses with sparkly little rhinestones on the earpieces. She wears baby-pink plastic boots with massively high and thick heels, a white jean skirt with safety pins down one side, and a gray T-shirt that says
Property
of Detroit
.