The Mockingbirds (31 page)

“So that’s why you started the Mockingbirds? Because you couldn’t get them to stop calling her names?”

“There’s more to it than that. She knew I’d defended her, so she came to visit me one night to say thanks. And I said it was no big deal. And then she said, ‘I want you to tell me the truth, Casey. You’re the only one who will. So I’m going
to ask you something, and I want you to promise to tell the truth.’ And I agreed to. Then she said, ‘Is it true what they say? Am I really that fat?’ And I said, ‘No, of course not.’ And she laughed at me. She said, ‘I know you’re lying. I want the truth. I’m not afraid of it. Am I that fat?’ So I said, ‘The truth? It probably wouldn’t hurt if you lost a few pounds.’ She nodded her head and said, ‘Thanks.’ ”

My heart sinks because I know what happened next. But I ask anyway. “And then?”

“The next day she was dead. Overdose of pills.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I say immediately.

Casey nods. “I know that now.”

“But you didn’t at the time?”

“I felt horrible. I felt as if it was my fault. So I started the Mockingbirds—to help other girls like Jen. Well, to keep other girls from becoming like her.”

“That’s why you stopped playing soccer,” I say suddenly, because it just dawned on me. Casey gave herself the very punishment she built into the Mockingbirds system—she took away the thing she loved most.

She nods. “That’s why I stopped.”

“But you started again.”

“I finally forgave myself.”

“It took you this long?”

She shrugs. “I guess I wanted to see that it could work, see that the Mockingbirds could do what I couldn’t do. That a group committed to good could do good. I wanted to see if they could solve the problems the school couldn’t
solve and I couldn’t solve alone. I wanted there to be other options.”

Other options
.

That’s what I need right now.
Other options.

I need to do what my sister did when she thought she had done something wrong. She fixed it. I have to fix this.

“I have to go,” I say.

“I’ll take you back,” Casey says.

And I let her. Because I need this day to be over.

T.S. gets up first and leaves for a run. I say nothing to her.

Then Maia wakes up and cracks open a book. I say nothing to her either.

They’re not the ones I want to talk to right now. They’re not the ones I need to tell. They’re my friends. They’ll get my back. They always do. But right now, I need the truth, the cold, hard truth.

I take a shower, where I try to practice saying the words I need to say. Only I barely know what those words are. I barely know what happened anymore.
I was pretending. Then I wasn’t?

Pretending, that’s what I do. That’s who I am, the pretender.

I turn the water off; wrap a towel around myself; return to my room; put on jeans, a sweatshirt, and my Vans. I dry my hair, twist it up in a clip, and leave.

Because I know where to go.

I have to find the purple door. I have to find Miss Damata. She will know what to do. She will tell the truth. She’s the only adult, the only teacher, who has a clue and now I need her. It’s Sunday morning and she won’t be in the music hall, she won’t be in her office. But she lives a block off campus, in the blue house with the purple door, she told me.

There is little else I know about her. I don’t even know why she’s a
Miss.
I don’t know if she was once a Mrs. and is now a Miss again or if she’s simply never been married. She’s mentioned
family
once or twice but has never said more, and I haven’t asked. Maybe she has kids. Maybe she’s raising them alone. We students pride ourselves on knowing everything about teachers’ private lives. But she’s managed to defy the natural order of students and teachers. She’s maintained her privacy, and this only bolsters my decision to seek her out.

I walk through the quad and out to the street that wraps around campus, looking for a house with a purple door.

I don’t see it on the first block.

There are no homes on the second block with purple doors. Their absence makes my forehead hurt. By the time I reach the third street, the vein in my forehead is beating so hard I’m sure it’s about to have its own personal heart attack right now.

I try the final block, my last hope. No purple, no purple, no purple.

But then when I near the end of the street, I see it. There’s a faded purple door on a light blue house and I want to run to it and away from it and through it all at once. I want to be on the other side and have said what I need to say without going through the saying of it.

Instead, I walk up the stone steps, across the crickety porch, and knock lightly on the purple door. I pray Miss Damata answers, not her boyfriend, if she has one, not her kids, if she has them, and certainly not the Juilliard admissions officer who thinks I have mad talent. I don’t want him to see my hands.

Someone pulls open the door, and I hold my breath. It’s Miss Damata, already dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve brown polka-dot blouse. She smiles. “You were amazing last night, but I have a feeling that’s not why you’re here.”

I shake my head. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“There’s a park a few blocks down. It’s always quiet there on Sunday mornings, quieter than my house.”

I nod and she tells me she’ll be right back. Five seconds later she has boots on and a sweatshirt. She shuts the door behind her. We start walking and we reach the park, a tiny little thing with just a wooden bench and some gardens that are bare but aching to bloom soon.

“I’m guessing this has to do with
stuff,
” she begins as we sit down, using my word when I almost told her everything.

“Yes,” I say.

“Do you want to tell me this
stuff
?”

I turn to look at her. “I think I made a mistake,” I blurt out.

She nods. “Which makes you human.”

I shake my head. “This isn’t an ordinary one.”

“So tell me what happened and we’ll figure it out.”

“We will?”

She smiles briefly. “Yes, we will.”

I feel calmer already, like I can manage this, like I can say this, like I can do this. She said we can figure it out. If she said so, it must be true; this must be figure-out-able.

I look down at my shoes, then at the ground, then at Miss Damata. “One night at the beginning of the semester, I got really drunk and I was date-raped that night. I mean, it seemed that way. And I told some other students.” I pause, considering my words. “Some students and some friends,” I add. I don’t mention the Mockingbirds. That’s a secret just for students. “And together we sort of accused this other student. Everything seemed so clear at first. Certain, you know? I didn’t remember much because I’d been drinking. And I don’t usually drink. I haven’t even had anything since then.

“And I didn’t remember a lot of what had happened at first, but then I’d remember more and everything I remembered seemed so certain. Like I’d remember saying no and putting my hands on his chest and I’d remember everything feeling kind of fuzzy and it all made sense as date rape. And then it stopped making sense.”

“Why did it stop making sense?” she asks.

“Because last night I remembered something,” I say stiffly, fighting back tears of shame, tears of embarrassment. I am not going to cry. I am absolutely not going to cry.

“What did you remember?” she asks gently.

I tell her how all I wanted was just to get through it, so I told myself to pretend. But then before it was over I had my hands on his back. And isn’t that the proof, the evidence, I was wrong, I enjoyed it, and I made a mistake in accusing him?

I say this all and the words taste horrible in my mouth, like fire, like bleach.

“What do I do?” I ask.

“Alex,” she begins, “you were drunk.”

“I won’t drink again. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not in trouble for drinking. Of course, I’m glad you know it’s not a good idea to drink like that, or frankly at all. My point about the drinking is a simple one. You couldn’t give consent. You were drunk.”

“But…”

“But
everything,
” she declares, her voice rising firm and steady, her hands cutting through the air for emphasis. “
Everything
that happened to you, everything this boy did after that point, after you were drinking too much to give consent, was wrong.
Everything
.”

I give her a look as if she’s from another planet. “Miss Damata, don’t you understand what I’m saying? I stopped resisting! I stopped pushing him away! I gave in. I gave in and let him do it and then it was like—” I stop, then choke out the rest. “It was like I was enjoying it.”

“Were you enjoying it?”

“No,” I say adamantly, shaking my head.

“You don’t have to have been fighting him off the whole time for it to be date rape. You don’t have to have been saying no the entire time either. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if you were having the time of your life, Alex,” she says, her words precise, like individual slices of certainty. “What he did to you was nonconsensual, and it doesn’t suddenly become consensual because for one moment you put your hands on his back. That one moment doesn’t wipe the slate clean and make you sober. You were drunk. And you said no. That’s why it’s date rape.”

I press my fingertips to the vein in my forehead and strangely enough, it’s not hammering like mad. It’s not going crazy under my skin. It’s quiet and calm. And my head is starting to clear.

“So you’re saying…,” I begin.

“I’m saying it’s unfortunately very normal to doubt, to think it was your fault, that you let it happen. And it’s also completely awful to feel that way, because you’re the one who got hurt. You’re the one whose rights were taken away. And you’re the one—I’m getting the sense—trying to stand up for yourself now.”

I tense for a second, thinking she knows about the Mockingbirds. But if she does, she doesn’t let on.

“Standing up for what’s right is a huge burden to bear. It’s normal to have some doubt.”

“But that doesn’t mean I made a mistake?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Alex, there’s a boy you like, right?”

“Yes, there is,” I say, and for a second my mood lightens just thinking of Martin.

“When you remember the
other
boy, even the tiny sliver where you think you were enjoying it, did it feel like it does with the boy you like?”

“No. Not at all. Not even close,” I say, because being with Martin
only
feels right.

Miss Damata nods and places her hand on mine. “Nobody said this was easy. Nobody said you were going to get over it right away. But I think inside”—she points at my heart—“you know what happened was wrong. That’s why you’re taking a stand.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “Do you want to go to the police?” she asks gently.

I shake my head.

“I can take you if you want to go.”

“I don’t. But thank you.”

She simply nods, accepting my decision. “When you’re ready, there are people you can talk to, people who can help you feel like your old self again. I will help you find someone to talk to.”

At noon I file back into the laundry room. Martin’s still standing guard, waiting for Amy to deal with him later. Maia sits down; I sit down. A minute later Carter enters. He sits down, then Kevin. I look at the three students in
front of us who form the council, the three students who will decide the fate of Carter Drake Hutchinson, the junior-year student at Themis Academy who has been charged with a crime he committed against Alexandra Nicole Patrick, a fellow junior-year student.

Callie clears her throat. “We have reached a decision in the sexual assault case against Carter Hutchinson.”

I wait, and in the interminable moment before Callie says the next words—words only the students will hear, decisions teachers won’t be privy to, verdicts parents won’t learn—I know I did the right thing. I know in the way Amy was sure when she took on my case; in the way T.S. understood from the start; in the way Maia, Sandeep, Martin, Casey, Jones, Amy, Ilana, and now Miss Damata all saw the truth that I now know too.