The Mockingbirds (6 page)

Sandeep sits down next to T.S. I look away from them, from him mostly. I don’t want to meet his eyes. I don’t want to have that moment where I know and he knows and we both know I was easy and drunk and stupid. But Sandeep was the last one standing. He was there the whole time, there until I left with Carter.

Sandeep was sober. He doesn’t drink. He just supplies. I think he likes supplying because it makes him cool, but he likes not drinking because it preserves his brain cells. He plans to be a hand surgeon, the best hand surgeon there has ever been. So he doesn’t want to risk losing even one particle of gray matter to booze, he has said.

I steel myself for what I’ll learn, then begin. “So what
happened last night? The details are kind of fuzzy to me and I want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

Sandeep’s a good guy and a good-looking guy. His skin is brown and his eyes are light green and he has close-cropped and, I’m told, very soft black hair. It’s his eyes, though, that melted T.S. They’re pretty much unnervingly beautiful. He doesn’t know about the pregnancy scare. T.S. got her period that afternoon and never told him she’d taken a test; she never told anyone but me.

“Well, you know we went to Artful Rage, right?”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I remember that. We met in the quad—Martin, you, me, T.S., Maia, Cleo, Julie from down the hall, and Julie’s boyfriend, Sam, from town.” I motion with my hands for him to speed up because I know what happened next. We made up songs about our new Friday Night Out privileges as we walked the mile or so to Salem Jim’s. They stamped our hands with the no-drinking sign—a baby bottle, so emasculating—and we went inside. The band played, we sang and screamed and made our voices go hoarse. Then things got fuzzier.

“Is Artful Rage where…,” I stop, take a breath. “Where we met Carter?”

Sandeep nods. “He was with another group from the school, the water polo guys.”

“What were we doing even talking to water polo guys?” I ask. “We never hang out with them.”

“Everyone was kind of talking to everyone,” Sandeep recounts. “All the juniors were psyched about finally having
Friday Night Out privileges, so it was one of those nights, you know. About twenty-two people from Themis at the concert.”

“My, aren’t we precise,” T.S. says to Sandeep.

He raises his eyebrows at her as if his precision is no big deal. Because to him, it isn’t a big deal.

“I remember the band,” I offer.

Sandeep nods. “Yeah, they were pretty good. I don’t think you were totally smashed until later on.”

I don’t like the way he says that, even though it’s true. I don’t like being the girl who was totally smashed, or even just “tipsy” or “buzzed.” I should be more like Sandeep and T.S., more in control. I’ll just drink grape soda from now on.

“Anyway, so everyone starts talking to each other and—”

“Wait, wait, wait!” T.S. interjects, waving her hand frantically. “That’s when I said just because we don’t usually like water polo boys doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to them.” She says this excitedly at first, then clasps a hand to her mouth and her eyes go wide. “Alex, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”

I give her a look. “What are you talking about?”

“I told you to talk to him.”

“Actually, you said it to everyone, to the group, not to Alex,” Sandeep corrects.

She ignores him, keeps her eyes on me. “Alex, I’m sorry.”

“T.S., that is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said
in your entire life, or at the least the entire part of your life I’ve known you. So I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say it, since obviously it has no bearing whatsoever.”

I turn back to Sandeep. “So we’re all going kumbaya and talking at the show. I remember that mostly. Then the show ends….”

“Right, then we all came back to the common room here. And you’d had one shot at the concert.”

He says it so clinically, so medically; he’s not judging me, just giving his residents the report on his patient, teaching them how to do rounds. I see him wearing dark blue surgeon scrubs, a cap for his hair. He still has hair when he’s thirty-five, I decide, and practicing medicine at some leading hospital. He doesn’t even have to look at the patient’s chart. He knows it all by heart, everything about the patient.

“So I poured some more for everyone,” he says, rattling off names next. “T.S. and Maia had already left, Martin was long gone after the concert, so it was Cleo, Julie, Sam, Carter.”

I put my head in my hands. Cleo, Julie, Sam, and Carter. Natalie, the track team, and on and on and on…

“And then you suggested Circle of Death,” Sandeep says.

“How much more did I drink?” I ask, looking up again.

“You had two and a half more shots with your orange juice.”

T.S. raises her eyebrows. “Two and a half?”

“Yes. She didn’t finish the third shot.”

He doesn’t falter as he informs his charges. The residents seize their notebooks and write this down in their doctorly scrawls,
two and a half more shots,
translating the amount perfectly into milliliters or cc or whatever doctor language they write in.

“Three and a half total is a lot of vodka on an empty stomach,” T.S. says sympathetically. “It would be hard for anyone to remember what happened.”

“You weigh about one hundred and ten pounds,” Sandeep instructs. “So three and a half drinks in three hours would make your blood alcohol content point zero eight. Which is considered legally drunk. At your size, on an empty stomach, you’re dealing with slowed reaction times, emotional swings, impaired judgment.”

Impaired judgment
.

There it is again, a word, a phrase, hanging in the middle of the room, having legs, arms, and a life form of its own. Just like when Casey said, “That’s the only thing that matters,” back in the Captains’ Room an hour or so ago.

“And he kissed you, in front of everyone,” Sandeep adds.

Because I would never kiss a water polo boy, I would never make the first move, I would never get it on with a soon-to-be frat boy. He started it, he started it all.

“And you guys were kind of going at it on the couch, making out, but the game kept going on and then Carter just pulls you up and leads you out of there.”

Out of there
. To the place where I can’t rely on anyone
else’s account, anyone else’s unassailable recollection. Just my own splotchy one.

“Thank you.” I stand up.

“Where are you going?” T.S. asks.

“Back,” I say.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, you don’t have to.”

“I want to. We want to.” She speaks for him as if she’s his representative or something. Maybe she is, because he rises and the three of us head out together, down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the cold and far-too-sunny January day. They walk me all the way back to Taft-Hay Hall.

“You going to be okay?” T.S. asks.

“I want to take a nap.”

“Call me if you need anything. We’ll talk more later, okay? Promise?”

I nod, head inside, up the stairs, and back into my room. Maia’s here, listening to The Clash, drinking afternoon tea and reading a book.

“Good afternoon. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve decided to forgive you for dashing off this morning without giving me the goods,” Maia says, half chiding, but she never really sounds annoyed. I suspect that’s because of the British accent. Maia’s parents are from Singapore, but they have lived in London her whole life, so she’s this amazing mix of Asian and British. She’s wearing her sleek black hair in a high ponytail, as she does most days. She has that kind of gorgeous long hair that would probably stop traffic if she
wore it down. Maybe she wears it up as a courtesy, as traffic accident prevention. The hair, the accent—she was given the gifts that only make her better at what she was born to do: debate.

“Thanks, but there aren’t any goods,” I say, then kick off my Vans into the closet.

She waves a hand in the air dismissively, her other hand holding a mug of Earl Grey, which she drinks pretty much every afternoon. You can take the girl out of Britain….

“I bet you told T.S. what you did last night,” she says quietly.

Any other day the words would be a sharp knife. Because they’re true. We might look like a threesome, but we’re really a pair plus one. Maia and I were matched up last year in English lit to give a presentation we called Great Sidekicks in Literary History. We chose Falstaff from
Henry V,
Jim from
Huck Finn,
and Watson from
Sherlock Holmes
. Then Maia tossed in the Nurse from
Romeo and Juliet
and launched into her very own soliloquy on how English literature scholars should expand the definition of a sidekick to include the very impressive
curriculum vitae
of several female supporting characters. She was brilliant and the whole class gave her a standing ovation.

“You are a goddess of words,” I told her afterward. “Like Zeus or something.”

“Athena,” Maia corrected. She stopped, reconsidered. “Scratch that. I’m Wonder Woman. She doesn’t even need a sidekick.”

“Want to go to lunch with me, Wonder Woman?” I asked.

She said yes and we became fast friends. Then Maia’s roommate got kicked out at the end of last year. It was our very own Themis scandal since the only thing that gets you kicked out is failing, and her roommate was so addicted to painkillers she spent most of her days too loopy to finish a sentence, let alone a homework assignment. So we asked Maia to room with us junior year. The three of us are super close, but T.S. is still the one I turn to first.

“So listen to this,” Maia says, quickly moving to a new topic. “Mr. Baumann already wants the whole debate team to do one of the patented Themis performances for the Faculty Club. Can you believe it? We’ll be doing a parliamentary debate on the pros and cons of the foreign policy of the current White House administration when the club meets again.”

“First
Merry Wives
, then foreign policy,” I say, grateful there’s one person who doesn’t want to talk about last night.

“It’s pointless too. I mean, it doesn’t count toward the debate circuit,” she adds, referring to the national debate tournaments held every year. “But they say it’s practice, good practice, for the circuit.” She pumps a fist in the air, imitating her debate advisor. “You know it’s just for show though.”

“Totally for show.”

“I swear, Alex, someday I’m going to write a bloody exposé on this weird fetish, practically an obsession, Themis has for its students. The teachers constantly want us to perform.”

Themis fancies itself as some sort of Utopia, drawing the best and the brightest, and the school loves to trot us out in these bizarre sort of private performances for the faculty—debate, music, acting. It’s the faculty’s reward for teaching here or something, puppet shows by the students themselves.

“Hey, do you happen to know Hadley Blaine?” Maia asks.

I shake my head. “Why?”

“He mentioned your name today at the Debate Club meeting.”

“Why would he mention my name?”

Maia shrugs. “I don’t know. I overheard him talking to another guy there.”

“Who?”

“Henry Rowland. They’re both swimmers.”

“What’d they say?”

“Don’t know. I asked them to be quiet because I had to start the meeting.”

“Oh,” I say. Then I see a flash of red.

I point to Maia’s neck. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“On your neck.”

“Oh, it’s my new scarf. Isn’t it delicious? I went to the basement to get my clothes out of the dryer, and there it was on the floor, next to the lost-and-found bin. I thought it was vaguely ironic to wear something from the lost-and-found bin.”

“Take it off.”

“What?”

“Take it off, Maia.”

“Why? I think it’s kind of cool, don’t you, in a retro kind of way?”

“No. Just please take it off.”

“It’s just a scarf, Alex. Are you okay?” she asks. “You’re kind of freaking me out here.”

No, I’m not okay. Because it’s not just a scarf. It’s a reminder that Carter was nothing like Daniel at the lost-and-found bin.

“I’m sorry, Maia. I have this crazy headache and I just need to sleep.”

And without looking at her, I slide into my bed, under the covers, where I should have been last night.

I don’t run into Carter the rest of the weekend, but I know I won’t be lucky enough to avoid him altogether. So on Monday morning I survey English class cautiously. I peer over my left shoulder, then my right. I don’t see his white-blond hair, so I breathe. He’s not in English, not in French. I tell myself it’s entirely possible I could have zero shared classes with him. Of course, it’s also entirely possible I could fly to Jupiter tomorrow.

Themis isn’t one of those so-small-it’s-claustrophobic schools, but it’s not massive either. There are about two hundred students in each year. It’s hard to know everyone, but it’s easy to know
most
students.