The Rivals (9 page)

“Has that douche bag left you alone since then?”

“No more run-ins.”

Theo squints for a second, glances down at his knee quickly, then back up. My heart caves in a bit, aching for what he’s lost, what he’s losing. Now is not the time to question him about the pill bottles. Now is the time to just be there for him, like he was for me.

“I keep meaning to tell you that I heard about your injury. I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“How bad is it?” I ask.

“Bad.”

“Are you dancing, though?” I ask, and nod toward the studio.

“I’m not supposed to. But I do it anyway.”

A pang of sympathy shoots through me, knowing that’s what he’s been doing for the last week, dancing through the pain. “What did it feel like?” I ask, and in this moment I’m not a Mockingbird at all. I’m just another student, another aspiring artist.

“When I got injured? Or just now?”

“Now. When you were trying to dance through the pain.”

“Like shrapnel in my leg. Like a grenade exploding in my knee.”

I wince, and he puts a hand on
my
shoulder as if
I’m
the one in pain. “Hey. I’ll survive,” he says, and gives me a halfhearted smile.

“Are you still going to apply to Juilliard?” I ask, and I can’t hide the hopefulness in the question, like maybe there’s a way around this, a way out for him.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything,” he says, then sighs. “Want to hear something funny?”

“Sure.”

He brushes a hand through his caramel-colored hair, and I watch as the pieces fall through his fingers. “Ms. Merritt wrote to me over the summer when she heard about my knee,” he tells me.

The name of our dean causes an instant reaction—I roll my eyes. “What did she say?”

“She was
saddened
—that was her word—to learn that my dreams might not materialize. And she had some
suggestions
for what I might be able to do with my
creative energy
.”

“What were those suggestions?” I ask cautiously, my antennae now up where Ms. Merritt is concerned.

He shrugs. “Not worth mentioning,” he says. “Anyway, I guess it’s up to you to carry the torch for her. You’re her only hope,” he says playfully, but we both know there’s a sick truth to it.

“What about you? Are you done with dance forever?”

“I have no idea.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“The way I see it there are two options: find something else or die.”

I nod, knowing I would feel precisely the same way if I were him. And in knowing this, I don’t know how I can think of him as a cheater right now. I don’t know how I can
investigate
him. Because all I can think is we are one and the same. He is my mirror.

“See you later, Alex,” he says. I watch him as he leaves, and even with his hobbled knee, barely noticeable when he walks, he still moves like a mountain stream. Beautifully.

All that talent, all that skill, wasted because of one bad landing.

It could happen to anyone.

I return to the music hall, thinking that there is probably a vital clue in our conversation and I should tell my fellow board members.

But something about sharing it feels like a violation. Because Theo doesn’t feel like a defendant; he doesn’t feel like the bad guy. He seems like a friend. So I tuck the exchange away, keeping it personal, keeping it private.

Mr. Friedrich scribbles out a painful-looking equation on the whiteboard, then instructs us to graph it.

I do as I’m told, but it’s hard for me to take my math teacher seriously.

Okay, Mr. Friedrich
does
know his way around differential equations and asymptotes, I’ll grant him that. But I’m pretty sure numbers and limits of functions are all he cares about.

Last year there was this math genius whose roommates were forcing him to do all their homework. He came to the Mockingbirds, but only
after
talking to Mr. Friedrich first, saying he was feeling pressure from his roommates. Mr. Friedrich sat him down and explained—as the Fosters did at D-Day—that peer pressure is intense and it’s best not to give in to it.
No, really?
Then the teacher sent him on his merry way. I can even picture the jovial smile on Mr. Friedrich’s face, maybe even an encouraging pat on the student’s head before he swiveled around in his well-worn leather chair and returned to the advanced integral derivative quadratic equation Fibonacci sequence or whatever he was working on before.

It’s not that Themis attracts the callous kind when it comes to instructors. It’s that this school breeds institutional blindness. “Smile and look the other way” is the school’s own creed, handed down by the dean herself. The teachers follow suit. The more they look the other way, the easier it is to keep looking the other way. Blissful ignorance fosters more blissful ignorance.

Ah, but at least we have the best math scores in the prep-school world!

Mr. Friedrich assigns us several more migraine-inducing equations to graph over the weekend. Then the bell rings and the classroom fills with the sounds of books snapping shut, backpacks zipping, and a sprig of excitement that the weekend is here.

T.S. and I leave together.

“I am in dire need of a lip-gloss reapplication,” she declares, so we head to the nearest bathroom. “Can I borrow yours? I don’t like my color anymore.”

This is typical of T.S. She changes her mind constantly about makeup. I root around in my backpack and hand her a shimmery dark pink gloss. “No fair. This is for brunettes,” she says, giving a playful toss of her sun-streaked blond hair, then puts it on.

“So color your hair brown, then,” I say as I look in the mirror and adjust a few strands of hair. “I might do a blue streak.”

“That would rock,” she declares as she smacks her lips at me in the mirror. “I bet Martin would be into it.” Then she winks at me.

I give her a playful shrug back.

“C’mon. He’d totally think it was hot.”

“You think so?” I ask.

She nods.

“Why do you say that? Has he said something about liking girls with streaks in their hair?” I ask, and I feel my stomach fluttering, a bit of nerves taking flight because she knows something about Martin I don’t know—something about girls.

“Because he’s Martin. Because he’s into you, dork.”

“Oh.”

“He’d be into you even if you suddenly decided to shave off all your hair.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to worry about that because I’m not going that far.”

“Speaking of how far you’re going,” T.S. begins, then lets her voice trail off as she raises her eyebrows.

I hold out a hand for my lip gloss but don’t answer right away. She knows what I see sometimes when I’m with him. She knows the memories still crash back into me. But still, she wants me to be able to move on. She wants me to be like her—carefree and happy-go-lucky, all the wounds erased, all the baggage packed up and shipped off. She’s not naive, though; she knows she can’t wave her magic wand and wash last year away.

She shakes off the levity when I don’t answer. “Are you ready?” This is the T.S. who took me to the Mockingbirds last year, the T.S. who can be serious, certain, determined. I can feel a weight start to fill up the bathroom as her casual self vacates the room.

“I don’t know,” I say.

She places a hand on my arm. “Don’t rush into it. Just let it happen when it happens, if it happens.”

I nod.

“And if it doesn’t happen, that’s okay too. You don’t have to do anything until you’re ready, and when you’re ready is totally up to you.”

“I know. Martin knows that too.”

“Of course he knows that. I want to make sure
you
know that,” she says, and she’s got that look in her eyes that says the lip-gloss conversation might as well have happened in another lifetime.

“I do. I do know that,” I say, and then let out a long breath. I look away briefly, then back to T.S. “I really want to with him, T.S. I really do.”

She lets out a small squeal and almost bounces on her toes.

“You are the dork now,” I say, laughing.

She slings an arm around me and we leave. “Whether you do the deed or not, nothing could make me happier than just hearing you say the word
want
.”

“You like it so much, you’ll buy me a macchiato right now?”

“Make mine caramel and I’m there,” she says, and starts to break toward Kentfield Street, where the nearest coffee shop is.

I point to McGregor Hall. “I have to stop by the student-activities office. To check the mailbox.”

When we’re inside the office, T.S. grabs some flyers from her soccer captain mailbox. In mine I find a few random notices from the school on how to book space for your meetings, as well as the school’s official roster of members of every club, group, and team. Then there’s a blue index card folded in half and taped shut with red masking tape. On the front is my name in slanted black writing.

“What’s that?” T.S. asks.

“Nothing,” I say quickly, and slide the card into the back pocket of my shorts.

She puts her hands on her hips. “Oh, Alex, I forgot to tell you: in the last twenty-four hours I turned stupid,” she says. “I saw the note. What is it?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. It’s taped shut.”

“Well, open it.”

“Not here,” I say quietly, because other team captains and group leaders start squeezing into the student-activities office, including McKenna. This time her hair is pinned back by a pair of cranberry-colored sunglasses. When she sees me, she wags a finger at me. “Hey, Alex! I have been wanting to talk to you because I have the
best
idea,” she says, stretching out
best
, making it like a declaration, an announcement unto itself.

“Okay,” I say, waiting to hear about this best idea.

“Since my sister, Jamie, is in orchestra too, and she’s in your music class, what if you were to be her mentor this year?” McKenna asks.

I had almost forgotten about our Senior Mentor Program, in which the school pairs seniors with freshmen who have the same interests. I was matched up with a saxophonist back when I was a freshman, fellow musicians and all. We should get our mentees any day now.

“I don’t know how much say we have. Don’t the teachers make those picks?”

“That’s what they say,” she says, then blows air out her lips to show what she thinks of that. “But I’m betting if
you
made the request, Miss Damata would totally go for it. My sister said Miss D.
loves
you. And I want my sister to be paired with the best,” McKenna adds. She leans in closer to me, like we’ve got a secret or something. “It would mean so much to me. It’d be like a little gift I can give her. She is always talking about the music competitions you’ve won.”

“Sure,” I say, feeling at once flattered and a little freaked out to have a fan, especially one who knows my musical curriculum vitae. I’ve never been one to advertise it. “I’ll make the request.”

Thank you
, she mouths, then turns to her mailbox.

I grip the note tightly in my pocket as T.S. and I walk down the hallway. As I step outside, I feel something hard and muscle-y slam against my shoulder. “Ow,” I say loudly.

When I look up I see Natalie. Her fingers cover her mouth and she says, “Oops, so sorry,” in a faux dainty voice. “I must not have seen you coming.”

“Right, Natalie. I’m sure you had no idea it was me.” I have a feeling there’s going to be a fat bruise on my shoulder tonight. I think Natalie’s muscles might be made of sheet metal.

Once we’re out on Kentfield Street, T.S. asks again, “Are you going to open it?”

“I can’t.”

“What? You said you would. You said
not here.
”

“T.S., I can’t show it to you,” I say.

“But I’m in the Mockingbirds. Why can’t I know?”

“Because I’m not supposed to.”

“Where does it say that? I’m officially a runner. You and the rest of the board approved me as a runner, and aren’t runners supposed to be helping the board? I mean, it’s just a note anyway. Why can’t I see it?” she pleads.

“What if this were last year and someone left something in the mailbox about me? Would you want Amy to share it with just anyone?”

“But I’m not just anyone. I’m your best friend. Don’t you remember the BFC?”

The Best Friend Code is the keeper of all sorts of secrets, like how every now and then when T.S. kisses her boyfriend, Sandeep, she thinks of the hot TV star of the month, or how I’m really, truly petrified that I might not get into Juilliard and the possibility feels a bit like death, or like life as I know it would be over. Or how when she thought she might be pregnant last fall (she wasn’t), what scared her the most was knowing she wouldn’t abort. These are the things only I know, only she knows.

“Of course I remember the BFC. But this isn’t about the BFC,” I say, and now I’m some sort of traitor to my best friend, a turncoat. “It just seems wrong.”

“Fine,” she says, and looks away.

“I’m sorry, T.S. I want to. I really do. But…” My voice trails off.

“It’s nothing,” she says, putting on her game face. “I get it. It’s Mockingbirds business. It doesn’t involve me.”

“T.S.,” I say.

“It’s no biggie,” she says brightly. Too brightly. Then she glances down at her watch. “Hey, I gotta go. I forgot I’m meeting Sandeep.”

“But I thought we were getting macchiatos,” I say. It comes out like a whine, and I hate the way I sound.

“Next time,” she says, and then takes off.

I’m left in the middle of the quad, just me and my clue, and my best friend mad at me. I slide my index finger through the red tape, breaking it. I unfold the note and read it silently:
I have information to share about Annie. Meet me in the dressing room Saturday at noon. Stage left. Alex only.

Looks like I have a meeting at the theater tomorrow.

Like an operative, I embark on my mission. I should be wearing a catsuit and carrying high-tech gadgetry to communicate back with headquarters.
I’ve apprehended the thespian and am questioning him beneath the spotlight. Indeed, the glare of one thousand watts is wearing him down. I’ll have a confession soon at center stage.