The Rivals (10 page)

But I stop short before I reach the theater, nearly tripping as I duck behind a nearby bush, because Carter’s leaning against the theater doors looking the other way, his whitish-blond hair slicked back, his thumbs tucked in the front pockets of his khaki shorts.

My heart slams against my chest, pounding, pounding to get out.

It’s all so clear now. It’s all so stupidly clear. Carter set me up. Carter wrote the note. I close my eyes, running through my regrets. I should have gone with my gut instinct last year when Amy asked me to take over. I should have said thanks, but no thanks. But I said yes, said it in a moment of triumph, a moment that’s now dissolved. I’m reminded again that I’d be better off being the quiet, private piano girl I once was, not this public figure I’ve become.

A public figure who hides in bushes.

I open my eyes and see Carter kissing a girl. And the girl kissing back. The girl
wanting
it. He has one hand on her cheek, one on her waist, and this redheaded girl is leaning into him. Her arms are around his neck. I feel like someone just took my insides and twisted them like a kitchen towel, harder, tighter. I grab hold of the bush, grasping leaves and thin branches to hold on to because I’m about to rock back, to fall off this planet, to plummet through the dark of space.

Doesn’t she know he’s a rapist? Hasn’t she seen the book in the library? Hasn’t she heard?

Or maybe she doesn’t care.

Or maybe she blames me, like Ms. Merritt, like Natalie, like all the others who don’t say it but do think it.

Carter and the girl stop kissing, then switch to holding hands, and walk away from the theater and toward his dorm.

As the door to his dorm shuts behind him, I exhale because he wasn’t the one who wrote the note. But it’s not really relief I feel.

Drained is more like it.

I enter the theater, then walk down the aisle and into the wings. I rap on the dressing-room door, stage left. I’m greeted by Beat Bosworth. He’s a sophomore. Last year as a freshman, he and his good friend Simone were cast as the understudies in
Evita
. But they had stars in their eyes and felt they should have played the lead roles of Evita and Che, so they began drugging the leads. Trouble was, the other freshmen theater students caught on and told the drama teacher. The teacher’s response?
There, there. It’s best not to make false accusations against your fellow students. Perhaps next year you’ll land bigger roles.

Typical.

The informer came to the Mockingbirds. Once the investigation began, Beat and Simone quickly confessed, taking a lesser punishment of only one semester on the theater sidelines rather than a whole year.

“You’re here,” Beat says, as if I’m the nurse on the battlefield bringing him his pain meds. He peers out, glancing side to side, checking to make sure the enemy’s not watching. No one is, so he closes the door gently behind him.

“Please take a chair,” he says, and pulls up a director’s chair for me. He takes the chair next to the dressing-room mirror and I watch as he arranges himself in it, crossing his legs, leaning forward just so, pushing his hair off his forehead. He looks like an old-fashioned movie star. With dark locks and the most smoldering eyes, I could see him in a tux. No, a
dinner jacket
. A white one. Like the kind you’d see Humphrey Bogart wear, with a bow tie and combed-back hair. He’d talk out of the side of his mouth, toss off some quip we’ll all be quoting back to one another for the next hundred years about life or love or friendship. I could see Beat existing only in black-and-white, with the snappy sound of an old film reel as his background sound track. But he’s firmly in the here and now—jeans, black lace-up boots, and a well-worn red T-shirt that falls against his chest and stomach just so.

Just enough to hug his belly in all its glorious flatness.

Holy crap—I am checking him out.

And I have a boyfriend, so I shouldn’t be checking him out.

But then I forgive myself because Beat is a gorgeous specimen. So really, what choice do I have? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to jump him. I make one final sweep of his arms, chest, and stomach before settling on those perfectly dark, deep brown eyes.

“I need your help, Alex,” he says, and though he speaks in the crisp, perfectly enunciated voice of someone who’s taken diction classes, there’s an underlying desperation in his tone. I feel for him.

“What’s going on?”

He breathes out heavily. “Obviously you know who I am. You know what happened last year to Simone and me. You know what I did.”

“Right. You confessed last fall, so your punishment was reduced. I’ve read about your case.”

He swallows, blushes for a second. “Look, I’m not proud of what I did,” he says, his eyes hooking into mine. “And I’d like to think I’ve learned from my punishment. I had no choice but to learn from it, because it sucked not to be acting. I felt like a part of me was missing. God, it was awful. But cathartic in a way, because it was the reminder of what I’d done.” He presses his teeth into his lips for just a second, then looks away, blinks. “Do you believe people can change?”

“That’s kind of an open-ended question.”

“Like do the things we go through truly change us?” he asks, his eyes locked on me still.

“Of course. Sometimes you have no choice but to change,” I say, because what I went through last year is still coursing through me like a poison, and the doctors are waiting, watching to see if I can flush it out, if I can recover.

“I think so too. I really do. And I know this might sound cheesy, but I feel like I’ve changed for the better. And isn’t that
also
what the system is supposed to be about?” Beat says, and it’s as if he’s turning a shirt inside out, showing me the reverse side, the side we rarely see. Because it’s not just the victims who can change. The bad guys can too.

“Definitely,” I say.

“That’s why I told you in my note that I have info, because I know you guys are doing some investigations into the Anderin ring going on right now. And that’s why I’m kind of freaking out that I could be accused again. But I didn’t do it. I’m not involved. So I want to show you I’m innocent.”

“Why would you be accused, though?”

Beat shifts around and reaches into a backpack on the dressing-room counter. He takes something out of the front pocket, then turns back. He holds up a pill bottle. “Because of this,” he says, dangling the bottle between his thumb and forefinger. He unscrews the cap, reaches inside, and pulls out an orange pill. It’s long and oval, and its gel cover is half orange, half clear. Inside the casing are hundreds of tiny little orange balls. He offers me the bottle carefully, meticulously, like it’s a dangerous and highly combustible wire he wants me to defuse. And it is practically a flammable substance here at Themis. “They’re mine. I have a prescription. The same one I’ve had since I was twelve. The same one my parents fill for me every month. The same one only
I
use,” he says. He hands me the bottle next. “See? Look at the label.”

I read it carefully.
Beat Bosworth.
Prescribed by Dr. Dunn in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
I hand the bottle back to him. He drops the pill he’s holding back in, screws the cap on, and tucks the bottle into his backpack.

“I don’t want people to think it’s me just because I’m on the debate team now. I joined while I was serving my time,” he says, explaining why he is suddenly mentioning Debate. “But just because I have a record doesn’t mean it’s me who’s behind it. Someone else is selling and supplying to the debate team,” he says.

Debate Club
.

The words are fully registering now.

Debate Club.
He’s in the Debate Club.

“What did you say?” I ask, hoping I heard him wrong, praying that the thing my roommate loves most is
not
the epicenter of this cheating ring.

“It’s sick, Alex,” he says, his lips curling in disdain. “They’re trying to gain an edge in winning the Elite. The Debate Club has engineered and implemented a detailed and specific plan of regular use solely to win the most prestigious award in the sport.”

The Elite. The thing my roommate wants more than anything. It’s her Juilliard, her World Series, the thing she has spent years training for.

But something doesn’t add up, and that’s Theo. Because as far as I know, he’s not on Debate.

Unless he’s new to the team.

I reach around for my backpack, grabbing the activity roster from inside. I should have looked at it yesterday, should have scanned the list of every group and club for Theo’s name. A thoughtful, diligent leader would have prepped for this meeting, would have memorized the rosters of every activity. But I didn’t, so I go straight to the Debate Club listing now.

There’s a star next to Theo’s name, indicating he’s new to Debate this year.

My heart sinks. This is what Theo meant when he said,
Find something else or die
. He found something else; he found his replacement, his new adrenaline rush. But is he really calculating enough or desperate enough to try out for Debate his senior year for the sole purpose of bringing home a victory in the Elite?

But now’s not the time to ask. Now’s the time to make up for not preparing last night. By asking more questions, better questions, than I did with Delaney. By not letting Beat get away too soon.

“How widespread is it?”

“It started late last year with one or two students, and then I think a bunch were in touch over the summer, but literally since a week or two before school started it’s become about half the team.”

“How often are they using?”

“Every day. Several times a day.”

“Who’s selling?”

Beat holds his hands out to show they’re empty. “I wish I knew. I seriously wish I knew.”

“Is Theo McBride selling?”

He shakes his head, but it’s not a
no
. More like an
I don’t know
. “I have tried to stay as far away as I possibly could. I don’t want to be connected to this. I don’t want to be assumed guilty because I have a record,” he says, reminding me of Delaney.

For a second, it strikes me as odd that two students here are so worried they’d be implicated that they’d come to me for help. But then again, maybe that’s the point—maybe they are the nameless
victims
we’re supposed to protect. Maybe they’re the ones who could get hurt by what’s happening. But even so, I have to make sure I’m not being played.

“How do I know you’re
not
the one selling, though? You could be behind it all. You could be telling me because you think that’ll remove you from suspicion,” I say, because now I am determined to make up for my lost ground, to ask the questions I should have methodically planned out and written down in my notebook in advance of this meeting.

“I was worried you’d say that because of my past,” he says, and I guess whatever side of the Mockingbirds you’ve been on, you’ve got a past. “But I’m not doing it, and to prove it you can take my pill bottle and keep it under lock and key and dispense the pills to me every day twice a day.”

I move into the next question. “How would I know you don’t have more? You could be selling and refilling.”

“Check the prescription. Call the pharmacy. Monitor my refills,” he says, holding me steady with his eyes. In those dark eyes, I can tell he’s laying himself bare.

“I totally appreciate that, Beat,” I say. “Really I do. But I don’t think I’m going to put your pills under house arrest. If you say you need them, I’m going to trust you. Am I right to trust you?”

“Absolutely.” A warm smile fills his face, and he presses his hands together like he’s praying. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough.” He pauses, then says, “So what’s next?”

“I’m going to keep investigating,” I say, and at first the words feel foreign, like I’m playing the part of the chief of police when I’m just making this up as I go along. But then I repeat them in my head—
I’m going to keep
investigating
—and they feel strangely comfortable, like this is how I do the job, this is how I’m supposed to lead, supposed to help.

Beat nods, then takes a deep breath, his chest rising up and down. He opens his mouth to speak, then shakes his head.

“Is there something else you want to tell me?”

He pushes a hand through his hair. “It’s just…,” he begins, then trails off.

“Just what?” I ask.

“It’s just, I don’t even know if you do this, but since I showed you my pills and all, and since I told you what I know, and since I
really
need your help, I was hoping I could have immunity. When it all goes down.”

Immunity.

Is that even an option? Is that even something we do? I think back to the notebook, to all the entries, the words I’ve practically memorized. There’s nothing in there on immunity. No one’s ever asked for immunity before. But no one had ever brought a date-rape case to the Mockingbirds before I did, which means there’s a first time for everything. Which also means rules sometimes must be crafted on the spot. And I believe him. Because I believe people can change. I’m living proof, and I’m changing every day, so why can’t he? He
wants
to move beyond his past. I know that feeling. God, how I know it well.

I also know how people behave when they don’t want to change, because that’s when someone calls you a
whore
when you walk down the hall. There’s a big difference between Beat and Carter, and I don’t just mean their crimes. I mean their actions now. One is contrite; the other is not.

“You have immunity. For now.”

This will be simple. Maia will know what’s going on. She will want to help. Together we can get to the bottom of this and clean up the debate team. We will be partners, just like we were last year when she acted as my student lawyer in my trial. This case will be over in no time and Maia can lead her team to victory, unscathed, untouched by what could potentially be the next big boarding-school scandal. And I will have successfully led us through our first case, no fuss, no muss.