The Mockingbirds Read online

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  For my husband, Jeff…

  You have the wiliest mind,

  the best sense of humor,

  and my heart for always.

  That, and you found the dog….

  Chapter One

  FIRST TIME

  Three things I know this second: I have morning breath, I’m naked, and I’m waking up next to a boy I don’t know.

  And there’s a fourth thing now. It’s ridiculously bright in my room. I drape my forearm over my eyes, blocking out the morning sun beating in through my windows, when it hits me—a fifth thing.

  These are not my windows.

  Which means this is not my bed.

  My head pounds as I turn to look at this boy whose name I don’t remember. He’s still asleep, his chest moving up and down in time to an invisible metronome. I scan his features, his nose, his lips, searching for something, anything that rings a bell. A clue to connect me to him. But remembering last night is like looking through frosted glass. I see nothing. But I can hear one word, loud and clear.

  Leave.

  The word repeats in my head.

  Leave.

  It’s beating louder, commanding me to get out of this bed, to get out of this room.

  Get out. Get out. Get out.

  My heart hammers and my head hurts and there’s this taste in my mouth, this dry, parched taste, this heavy taste of a night I don’t remember with… I squeeze my eyes shut. This can’t be this hard. What’s his name?

  Remember, Goddamn it, remember.

  Carver.

  His name is Carver.

  Deep breath. There, no need to panic, no need to be all crazy-dramatic. I’ve got his name. Another breath. The rest will come back to me. It will all make sense, so much sense I’ll be laughing about it any second. I won’t be able to stop laughing, because I’m sure there’s some perfectly reasonable explanation.

  As I look at the matted bedsheets twisting around this boy and me, snaking across his naked waist, curling around my exposed chest, a draft rushes through the room, bringing a fresh chill with it. That must be it. It’s chilly… it’s cold… it’s January. Maybe it was snowing—we went sledding, I took a spill, changed out of my ice-cold clothes, and then crashed here in Carver’s room.

  No, it’s Carter.

  Definitely Carter.

  I’m naked in bed with a boy and I can’t even get his name right.

  This boy, this bed, this room, me—we are like clumsy fingers on the piano, crashing across the wrong keys, and over the jarring music I hear that one word again.

  Leave.

  I slide closer to the edge of this too-small twin bed and dangle my naked feet until they touch the standard-issue Themis Academy carpeting—a Persian rug. His is crimson and tan with interlocking diamonds. I don’t want to see a carpet like this again. Ever. I stand up slowly so the bed won’t creak.

  Then I grab my clothes from the floor, collecting underwear, jeans, tank top, purple sweater, pink socks, and black boots, all scattered on the diamonds of the carpet. I’m cold without them, freezing even, and I’d really like to cover up my breasts. I spot my bra in the indentation of a cheap red pleather beanbag. My adorable, cute, black-and-white polka-dot bra thrown carelessly onto the worst piece of furniture ever invented.

  He threw my bra.

  The room tilts, like I’m on one of those fun-house walkways, angling back and forth. Only it’s not fun, because fun houses never are.

  They’re distorted.

  I snatch my bra, pulling it close to me, and get dressed quickly. As I yank up my socks, I notice a trash can teeming with Diet Coke cans. Carter doesn’t even recycle? Way to pick a winner, Alex. Then I freeze, seeing something worse, far worse. Two condom wrappers on top of his garbage, each one ripped down the middle, each one empty.

  I close my eyes. I must be seeing things. It’s the morning, it’s hazy, the sun is far too bright.

  But when I open my eyes the wrappers are still here, Carter’s still here, I’m still here. And nothing adds up the way I want it to. I zip up my boots in a flash, obeying the voice in my head shouting Leave now! Carter’s still sleeping, his mouth hanging open unattractively. Small lines of white crust have formed on the corners of his lips. His blond hair is sticking up in all kinds of directions.

  I step gingerly across the carpet, spying a small black bag near the closet door that looks as if it holds shaving lotion and stuff boys use. I don’t want to open it and know what else is in there—tweezers? Do boys use tweezers? I don’t want to know what they’d tweeze—but I hate the way my mouth tastes right now, because it tastes like last night. I grab my coat, then crouch down by the black bag and slowly undo the zipper, tooth by metal tooth. I hold my breath, look back at Carter. He shifts, flips to his other side.

  Don’t wake up. Don’t wake up. Don’t wake up.

  I reach a hand into the bag, feel around for a tube of toothpaste. I pull it out, uncap it, squirt some onto my index finger. I scrub it across my teeth, erasing the sour taste, erasing the evidence, and drop the tube into the bag, the cap falling next to it. And at that moment Carter wakes up.

  “Hey…,” he says, not even groggily. He’s just awake, plain and simple.

  “Hey,” I mumble. I don’t usually mumble. No one is a mumbler at Themis Academy.

  He rubs his chin with the palm of his hand.

  A hand that touched me.

  I wonder if I thought he was good-looking last night. In the morning he’s not. He has white-blond hair, a sharp nose, pale eyes. Maybe he was funny is all I can think. Maybe he made me laugh. Maybe he’s a riot and I laughed so hard my sides hurt. I place my right hand on my waist, hunting for the physical evidence.

  He raises an eyebrow, almost winks at me. Something about the gesture reminds me of a politician. “So, did you have a good time last night?”

  Let’s see: I’m tiptoeing across your room, praying you won’t wake up, can barely remember your name. Yeah, I had an epic night, just fantastic. Care to tell me what transpired between, say, midnight and, oh, ten minutes ago? Wait, don’t bother. Let’s just pretend this never happened and we’ll never mention it again. Cool?

  He leans back on the bed, rests his head on the pillow. “Want to go again?”

  I narrow my eyes at him, crush my lips together, shake my head quickly. He thinks I’m easy.

  “I have to study,” I answer, taking a step backward toward the door.

  “On a Saturday morning?”

  Everyone at Themis studies on Saturdays, yes, even on Saturday mornings.

  I nod. Another step.

  “But term just started two days ago.”

  “Crazy teachers giving out homework already,” I say, managing two steps this time. What, you don’t have homework yet? Are you in the slow track? I want to say.

  But he’s not in the slow track. There is no slow track here. I wonder if Carter is in any of my classes…. Then I do the math. A junior class of two hundred, the odds are this won’t be the last I see of him.

  If I were a conductor, I would wave the baton and make all this vanish.

  “Know what you mean,” he says. “Spanish teacher assigned some massive essay already. I haven’t started it yet.”

  That’s one class where I’ll be spared. I take French. Dieu merci.

  “I gotta go.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll call you,” he says, making some sort of stupid phone-to-the-head gesture. Then he practically jumps out of bed. I jerk my head away because he’s still naked and I don’t want to know what he looks like naked. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice him reach for his boxers. He pulls them
on as I wrap my palm around the doorknob, gripping it tightly.

  I desperately want to leave, but I need to know for sure. “So, uh, I have to ask.” I stop, barely able to choke out the words. “Did we…?” I can’t bring myself to say them.

  He smiles, looking as if he would beat his chest with his fists if he were maybe one species less evolved.

  “Yeah, twice. After we saw the band. It was great.” He looks triumphant.

  But I feel like I just tasted tinfoil by mistake, the awful accidental taste that makes you want to spit it out. I pull the door open and do the one thing I should have done last night.

  Leave.

  Because you’re supposed to remember your first time.

  Chapter Two

  MAKE-BELIEVE

  There’s this trick I have on the piano. When I reach a section of music that totally trips up my fingers and mangles my confidence, I call on the experts. I put the score away, close my eyes, and imagine I’m in Carnegie Hall. There’s no audience, I’m not even onstage. I’m sitting in the first row next to Beethoven, Mozart, and Gershwin. It’s just the four of us. I tell them the problem. Then I wait patiently for their guidance. They’ve never failed me before.

  As I slip out the back stairwell, I present them with today’s quandary, only this one is of the nonmusical variety. What we have, gentlemen, is a girl who can’t remember her first time. What we also have is a boy who says he had sex with her twice.

  Please piece together what happened in a way that makes sense to the girl.

  I listen in silence as they ponder, waiting for their answer.

  But today they say nothing.

  It figures—they’re men, after all. Besides, Beethoven’s deaf anyway.

  It’s up to me to piece this together and I know nothing.

  Nothing. I turn the word over a few times. Nothing.

  Maybe nothing happened. Maybe it was all just an honest mistake, just a misunderstanding. Yes, that’s what my composers meant to say. They meant to tell me Carter messed up when he said we did it. Carter goofed. Carter’s the one who can’t remember jack.

  I walk faster across the eerily quiet maintenance lot, arms wrapped tightly around me, and say my new mantra—nothing happened—as I scan the grounds. I’m ready to dash behind a bush if I have to, dive into a foxhole, because my mission now is to return unseen. I’ll go the long way: cross the maintenance lot, pass the track field, then cut onto the quad as if I were leaving my dorm, not returning to it. I will not be caught. I will not have anyone think I’m doing the walk of shame. Besides, I can’t be doing the walk of shame, because nothing happened.

  The more I repeat it, the more I’ll believe it.

  Nothing happened, I say as I pass the Dumpsters, then the shed.

  I reach the edge of the track field next and see the first trap—a flock of girls running laps, clad only in skintight Lycra leggings and body-hugging jackets, carving out endless circles.

  Their backs are to me for now, so I shift gears to power-walk—actual running would draw too much attention. I can’t tell who’s who from here, but I’m betting fellow juniors Anna Marie, Shoba, Caroline, and Natalie are out there. If I can traverse this back path around the field before they turn the corner, they won’t see me.

  Of course, they are runners and I’m merely a musician, so they’re curving around the track before I’m even halfway along the edge of the field. I pull my coat collar up, cast my eyes down, and stuff my hands into my pockets, where I find sunglasses. I cover my eyes with them and now I’m just some press-shy teenage celebrity trying to avoid the paparazzi.

  The track girls are focused, feet smacking the dirt, arms hinging in perfect synchronicity at their sides. Then one of them breaks away, bursting ahead like a Thoroughbred on the final turn. I’m almost at the edge of the field, ready to make a break for the quad, when I realize it’s Natalie, shooting out like an Olympic sprinter.

  Natalie, who’s built like Serena Williams. Natalie, who slaughters track records in the spring, who smashes lacrosse sticks in the fall, who could crush me with her thigh muscle alone, even though I’m no pip-squeak. I’m five-seven. But she’s over six feet and, really, what would I defend myself with? My long, slender fingers?

  Her legs are a blur. She’ll spot me any second and my plan will be shot. Kinda like my reputation. She’ll see me, throw her head back, and grin cruelly because she’ll have a tasty piece of gossip. She’ll tell her friends and they’ll all blab about me in the caf when they go eat their whole-wheat pasta and bananas and broccoli. And she’ll tell her boyfriend, that senior Kevin Ward.

  Because there’s nothing better to talk about than who’s into whom, who’s doing whom, and who screwed whom. And in my case, all the circumstantial evidence—the time of day, my messy hair, my day-old clothes—screams that I’m someone worth talking about.

  But I’m not. I swear I’m not. I picture banging my fist fiercely against a table before a judge, a jury of my fellow students, insisting nothing happened, insisting I wasn’t even with Carter last night. I briefly consider the possibilities of playing possum, just dropping down into a ball, lying completely still on the cold ground. But then I come up with a better plan, a perfect plan. Forget the nothing happened one. Because I’ll tell a new story; I’ll reinvent last night.

  Where was I last night? Funny you should ask. When I went backstage to meet the band—yes, they invited me backstage because they heard I rule the keys—we hung out, chilled to some music, then jammed together, me on keyboards all night long. I just left the club now. I know, wild times. But good clean fun.

  Now that’s a tale worth spreading. I should start the rumor myself.

  “Hey, Alex!” Natalie’s voice calls out. “Nice clothes from last night.”

  There’s no jamming with the band, no all-night music, just me in my boots and bedhead, and the whole girls’ track team now knows I didn’t sleep in my room last night.

  I want to yell back, “You know nothing!”

  But she obviously knows something. She was there. At the club.

  And I’m the one who knows nothing. I’m the one who has nothing to say as I watch my quiet prep school existence seep out the door like an overflowing sink, the water trickling out, slowly creeping up on everything in its path, ruining books, furniture, rugs, and last of all my privacy, my little corner of the world here as the piano girl.

  Water damage is the worst, they say.

  Natalie streaks on by, ahead of the pack. Her teammates are focused on catching her. They don’t see me as I finally slip away from the field. But they’ll know soon enough; that’s how it goes with sports teams.

  Sports.

  I remember now—Carter plays something. He’d had practice for something last night before I met him. He mentioned this. I wonder if I tuned it out because my brain did its best impression of a sieve or because I detest sports. The great thing about Themis Academy is it’s not one of those you-must-do-sports-or-else schools. You’re not even required to play an organized sport.

  I reach the main campus and survey the sprawling quad. It’s deserted. The lawn, cracked and hard now, but lush and green in the spring, is peppered with trees and framed by old buildings—classrooms, dorms, and the cafeteria too, a building built in 1912. Themis was founded a year later by members of the Progressive Party, ironic because Themis is hands-off in the only way that matters.

  The school looks like a mini college campus, with old brick structures, Victorian buildings, and Colonial-style mansions converted into halls of learning. Even McGregor Hall’s redbrick façade is laced with ivy that curls around the edges of the white windowpanes.

  In front of McGregor Hall is a big bulletin board with flyers. I glance at them as I walk by. Casting call for The Merry Wives of Windsor (to be performed in front of the Faculty Club in a patented Themis special performance for teachers). Tryout for Coed Crew. But of course… everything is equal here. Then a notice for the Vegetarian Dinner Club, complete with c
heese and crackers and carrots every night.

  I see one more.

  Join the Mockingbirds! Stand up, sing out! We’re scouting new singers, so run, run, run on your way to our New Nine, where you can learn a simple trick…

  Then there’s a drawing of a bird on the corner, his watchful eye staring back at me.

  It’s code—all code—because the Mockingbirds aren’t an a cappella singing group, as they pretend to be. And they most definitely are not having auditions for singers. No, the Mockingbirds are something much bigger and much quieter too, and it’s tryout time for them, as it is at the start of every term.

  The Mockingbirds are the law.

  I leave the bulletin board in my wake and walk briskly to my nearby dorm, Taft-Hay Hall, a redbrick building three stories tall. I make a beeline for the arched doorway, but there’s Mr. Christie, my history teacher and advisor, striding across the quad, looking as purposeful as I do. He has this crazy long-legged step, chin up, chest out, his reddish beard and mustache almost leading the way.

  “Good morning, Alex. How are you?” he says, his voice deep.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Christie,” I say as he nears me.

  “You’re up early on a Saturday.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m developing insomnia,” I say, trying the ruse on for size. There’s got to be one lie I can tell that’ll fool someone. “I’ve been up for hours,” I add when he nods sympathetically.

  He looks at me, all concerned. As if he knows the cure for insomnia. Like he’s a trained insomnia exorcist and he can tell me just what to do.

  “A cup of chamomile tea before bed might do just the trick,” he says.

  Right. That’ll fix everything, and while we’re at it, do you have anything that’ll help me remember losing it with a guy I don’t even know?

  “I’ll be sure to try that next time,” I say, sounding all chipper and cheery.

  He’s pleased, like he just did his good deed for the day and helped a student in need, and he can now go on his merry way.