The Rivals (32 page)

“Are you sorry?” I ask pointedly. “Or are you just sorry I can’t play the piano?”

She’s momentarily taken aback. She’s not used to students quizzing her. She recovers quickly, though. “Alex, I feel awful that you’re hurt. I feel awful
for you
that you can’t play right now. It’s a terrible accident you had. Snow can be such a vicious thing.”

The lies we tell ourselves.

“It wasn’t snow, or ice. It wasn’t a fall. It wasn’t an accident.”

She raises an eyebrow, almost daring me to go on.

“What would you say if I told you another girl did this to me? Another senior? The star of your lacrosse team that’s in line to three-peat for Nationals?”

She reaches for a lipstick on her desk and applies a fresh coat of peach to her lips, then rubs them together. When she’s done, she speaks. “I would say that’s quite the allegation you’re talking about. And with such an allegation, you’d need to think seriously whether pursuing it is in anyone’s best interest. It could be very complicated and difficult to go through. Perhaps it might be best to find a way to put the bad blood behind you and move on.”

I’m not surprised, not in the least. But her words don’t eat away at me like they did earlier this year. They strengthen me. “I had a feeling you’d say something like that. So let me rephrase.” I hold my right hand up. “The only
shared culpability
here is yours. Because if you had done your job, this would never have happened. Oh, and there’s one more thing: a brochure on broken fingers isn’t going to fix this. It isn’t going to make this or anything better.” Then I tip my forehead to the empty space on her shelves. “Looks like that spot will be empty for some time. Maybe you should just get a nice vase of flowers instead.
Fake
flowers.”

“You may leave now,” she says.

“I will.”

I continue on to my classes, then to my private lesson with Miss Damata later that day. There’s not much to do. So we talk. We discuss music theory and music history, and I find with Miss Damata I truly can learn as much by listening as I can by playing.

Then she says something random.

“You don’t have to do it alone,” she says.

I give her an
I don’t get it
look. “Do what?”

“Be the good for the school.”

I turn back to the keys, hitting a few notes with my left hand. She lets me run through some chords, then a few more, before she lays a soft hand on mine, silencing my music.

“Alex,” she says in that gentle voice of hers. A few blond strands from her pinned-up hair shine as the sunlight streams through the window. “I know about the Mockingbirds. I’ve known for a few weeks now. I know you’re leading them. And I know you’re trying your best, because the school is an absolute failure in protecting and helping students.”

I consider denying it. I consider walking out. I consider playing dumb.

But there is no point. She knows, and I can’t make her
unknow
.

She tells me how she put the pieces together. First there was the remark I made last year about a group of us “together accusing another student,” then the Faculty Club stunt, and then my questions about codes sealed the deal.

Part of me waits to be reprimanded. But another part, a stronger part, knows that’s not what Miss Damata is here to do.

“I’m not the only one who knows, Alex. Mr. Baumann does too, and we’ve talked about it. We want to help you. We want to work with the students and with the Mockingbirds. To make things better.”

“Why?” I ask, and it’s the first time I’ve verbally acknowledged our existence to a teacher, to an adult.

“Because I would never send my own children here,” she says, an intensity bordering on anger in her voice.

“You wouldn’t?”

“Not a chance. I don’t like how the school looks the other way. I don’t like how the record and the accomplishments matter more than anything. I don’t like how the administration infantilizes the student body, how it puts you all up on a pedestal, and in so doing how it fails to recognize you are all teenagers and you are all real people and you are all going to make mistakes. I want to teach at a place where I can send my own children when they are older. I want to teach at a place that isn’t operated by blind idealization, but someplace that looks problems square in the face and tries to solve them.”

“It’s worse than that, Miss Damata. Ms. Merritt doesn’t just think we’re above reproach. She willfully chooses to look the other way.”

“Yes, that too.”

“So what does this all mean?” I ask tentatively.

“Mr. Baumann and I would like to meet with you and the other leaders if you’re willing. We don’t want to expose you; we don’t want to turn you in,” she says with a laugh. “We want to help and work with you. We want there to be a better system. We want to help you get there. We don’t want you to have to do this alone anymore.”

The plan is clear. This is what I need to do. This is how we need to change. And if these two teachers want to help, then there is a matter that needs to be tended to. It’s one that has evidence, one that is clear-cut, and one that needs much more than our brand of justice. Because our brand doesn’t work like it used to.

“You can help me with this, then,” I say. “Natalie Moretti broke my fingers. Ms. Merritt isn’t going to do anything about it. But there are two sophomores who saw it and are willing to say so on the record. I think Natalie should be kicked out. Can you help us?”

“I promise we will do everything we can.”

“Let me ask the other board members about the meeting, then.”

When I ask my fellow board members, the decision is unanimous. Martin and Jamie want to hear them out. So the next day I tell Miss Damata we’ll take the meeting. “But it has to be on our turf,” I say.

“Of course,” she replies, no questions asked.

“We meet in the basement laundry room of Taft-Hay. Can you and Mr. Baumann be there at eight tonight?”

“We can be there at eight.”

I leave the music hall, and Jones is waiting outside for me on the step. “You know, Alex, I’ve been thinking it’s time to revise my position on something.”

“What would that be?”

“It’s a long-standing position, so you might want to sit down,” he says playfully.

“I like standing. Actually I like walking,” I say as we head to lunch.

“Well, I warned you,” he says, and then claps his hands together. Before he can speak, I stop and say, “Wait. Don’t tell me you’re actually secretly in love with the violin and this whole electric-guitar phase is over?”

“Never. That will never change.”

“Then what is it?”

“Well, I kind of decided that I think you could really use my talents.”

“I could?”

“Well, I think the Mockingbirds could.”

“Jones, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He shrugs and holds out his hands. “I’m saying if you need a runner, or whatever, I’m your man.”

“You want to be a Mockingbird? Are you for real? You don’t believe in the Mockingbirds.”

“Last time I checked, it wasn’t a religion, was it?”

I laugh. “Definitely not.”

“Look, Alex,” he says seriously. “Things changed. They broke your hand. I figured you guys could use all the help you could get.”

I grin and hold out my left hand to shake his.

“Welcome to the Mockingbirds, Jones,” I say, and as we continue on to the cafeteria, I think how some decisions are hard, some are easy, but either way it’s our choices that matter. Who we choose to align with. What we choose to give in to. What we choose to resist.

And most of all, who we choose to be. Because it is always our choice.

At seven forty-five I leave my dorm to round up Martin and Jamie, then we walk together along the stone pathway on the quad as an early November wind blows by.

“Man, it’s cold out,” I say as I wrap my scarf—a warm, wooly one, not a flimsy Frenchie one—up and around my chin.

“I think it’s quite balmy,” Martin says. He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

“Figures. Typical guy,” I say to Jamie.

“Totally,” she says, enjoying the camaraderie, the teasing, the small talk with us, her new friends because her old associates no longer fit.

Besides, Martin’s the furthest thing from a typical guy. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

He reaches for my left hand. “Your hands are cold,” he says, and Jamie walks a bit faster, giving Martin and me some space.

“I know. I need gloves. I didn’t realize how cold it was,” I tell him.

“Actually, mittens might be better right now,” he says. Then he reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt and pulls out a pair of striped mittens—blue and green. “I got them for you. I figured you’d need them for the next few weeks. You have to take extra care of your hands now, so you’re ready
when
you get your Juilliard audition in January.”

I put them on and then hold up my hands. “I love them,” I say. Then I stop walking and so does he. I wrap my arms around his neck and his warm lips meet mine and instantly the heat has been turned way up. My hands even feel warm. I wriggle my fingers a millimeter or two under the splint as far as they can go, picturing them in a month or so, maybe more, free and flying across the keys with abandon.

I will hold on to that image for as long as I have to—until it becomes real again.

We cut the kiss short and catch up to Jamie at the door to my dorm. She walks in first. Martin holds the door for me. Before I go in, I look back across the quad, quiet for now on this frigid night. I imagine it at the start of school, stirring with students, with all the people I have vied with, spied on, sided with, fought with, lied to, lied for, played with, ate fire with, escaped with, laughed with, and loved. I think about the kind of people they are.

Those who run when the going gets tough.

Those who make bad choices but then with grace start anew.

Those who break your bones.

And those who do the hardest thing of all, who mess up but have the guts to say,
I will not abide by it anymore
. Like Jamie. That, I think, takes real courage. That is something you don’t learn. That is something you just do one day, and then when you realize you have it in your core to do, you keep on doing, relentlessly, ceaselessly.

Then there is Martin, who lives and loves with a gentle yet ferocious intensity, who can make integrity sexy, and who, at the end of the day, is just a boy who loves a girl. And that girl loves him.

I am somewhere in the middle of all of them, or maybe I am circling, or maybe I am even at the center, as I try to understand the kind of person I am and want to be. I wasn’t always sure. But then I failed; I screwed up spectacularly.

Only, I won’t stop there.

Because I won’t let one bad landing define me.

And in trying again, I know who I am and I know who I’m not.

Because even though they took away the thing I love, I will not give in. I am more than just the thing I love. I am a friend. I am a girlfriend. I am a keeper of secrets. I am the girl with the blue streak. I am the one who confronted Ms. Merritt. I am someone who asks for help. I am the person who didn’t cheat on her boyfriend. I am a one-handed pianist. I am the audience. I am a fire-eater.

I am a survivor.

I am a Mockingbird, and I will not look the other way, and I will definitely not go quietly.

I will fight.