Mockingbird (17 page)

  Motes of dust drift in the pillars of wan light.

  The girls' cubbyholes are labeled: not with swatches of tape but rather with little plaques screwed to the wood, a name engraved on each.

  The school has only five hundred girls across seven grades (sixth through twelfth), but that's still five hundred cubbyholes – culminating in what looks like a big version of a wine rack, the holes turned on their sides like empty diamonds.

  She would have to look through them all. That is, if Katey didn't tell her where to look.
Good having an ally on the inside.

  First, drop off the note to Wren. Then, Tavena White.

  Miriam floats along the cubbyholes like a nervous hummingbird.

  "Elizabeth Hope. Gwen Shawcatch. Trisha Barnes." No, no, no. "Molly Deerfield, Carla Rodriguez, Becky, Nellie, Lakeesha, Cristina–"

  And then she sees it. Lauren Martin.

  She squats down, slides the note into the hole.

  Behind her, someone clears his throat.

  
Oh, goddamnit.

  Miriam turns.

  She sees Beck Daniels standing there. Jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt. His lips forming a firm line across that prodigious jaw.

  "I know you," he says.

  "'Sup, Ninja Warrior?"

  "Find anything interesting in the girls' cubbyholes?"

  "That's an awfully dirty question."

  Beck remains unflustered. "You should probably get away from those."

  "I'm just leaving a note. For my sister."

  "Uh-huh. That train has left the station, Miss Black."

  She stands up. Crosses her arms. "Oh. Right."

  "Mind telling me what you're doing here?"

  "The sister part was a lie, but the note part is on the nose. I want to talk to Wren Martin. Just one more time."
And Tavena White
, but no need to give that away. "Hey, give me a heads up: Did you call five-oh on me again?"

  "You mean the guards."

  "I mean Doctor Steroids and his Italian plumber porn-star buddy."

  "Sims and Horvath. Respectively."

  "No respect here, chief."

  Is that a smile? "No, I didn't call them. Seems the other day you did a pretty good number on Sims – I watched the security footage. Pretty impressive."

  "It was." She winks. "Still. I'm kinda busted here, aren't I? You gonna haul me off to the hoosegow yourself?"

  "Hoosegow?"

  "It's a word. Means prison."

  "I know what it means."

  "What? Don't you like words? I like words."

  "Good for you. No, I'm not going to haul you in."

  "You could call the real police. I'm a little surprised nobody called them the other day. Especially if there's video footage of my little cafeteria romp."

  He shrugs. Gets closer to her. Just one step but the threat is there just the same. An exciting threat. A threat Miriam likes.

  "We don't bring the cops around here if we can avoid it. Some of these girls have seen far too many cops. We don't want to disrupt the progress we're making with the more troubled ones. So no, I won't call the police. Not as long as you tell me why you're leaving a note. Why do you want to talk to her? What's your deal? Why you're so fascinated with her to begin with."

  Slowly, Miriam begins to pace to the right. He moves to the left. They're circling some unseen point, some maypole to which they're both invisibly tethered.

  "I'm trying to protect her."

  "Protect her? From what?"

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  "Try me."

  "Not in a million years, Kung Pao chicken."

  Circling, circling. Moths around a light. Blood down a drain.

  "I like to think I'm her protector," he says. "Not you. Me. And the other teachers here. We're the ones who watch over these girls."

  "You're doing a shit job."

  That stings him. He folds in a little bit. Like an invisible hand just popped him in the gut. Surprising. And strange. Is he really so committed?

  "Tell you what," he says. "I saw the footage. You got some moves. Let's go to the gymnasium. We'll spar a little. You beat me, I'll let you go, won't ask any questions."

  "And if you beat me? Which, by the way, won't happen."

  "Then I call the police."

  "Deal." She thinks, No deal, dummy.
What are we, two gentlemen about to duel?
Honor doesn't mean a sack of slippery dicks to Miriam Black. It's just a nonsense idea people made up. Honor. It calls to mind an old drinking toast–

  
Here's to honor–

  
*clink*

  Her hands coil to fists.

  "You okay?" he says. "You look like you saw a ghost."

  "Quit your jawing," she says. "Let's do this."

 

The gymnasium is one big echo. Every footfall on the blue mat. Every shift in stance. Every sniff, knucklepop, and lip-smack.

  Beck goes to bow – steeples his hands into little Buddhist temples and then bends slowly at his waist. But Miriam doesn't have time to fuck around.

  As he bows, she kicks him in the head.

  Her black boot connects with the side of his skull, and he staggers left.

  But he doesn't go down, and he doesn't lose his focus on her. He just shakes himself off. Begins roving left and right, like a boxer – or like a cobra rearing up to strike.

  "Gonna be like that, huh?" he asks, licking his teeth.

  "Gonna be like that."

  "Let's see your next move, then."

  No time like the present. She steps in and fires off a straight punch. But he's already ducking it, and grabbing her wrist–

  –and kicking his knee up into her gut, hard but not so hard she loses air or barfs up her coffee-andcigarettes breakfast. As she's bent over his knee, he shoves her forward and downward until she's flipping over onto her back–

  –and he moves in for the kill. He strides above her like the Colossus. But he's still got honor flashing in his eyes. So she punches up. Straight into his balls–

  –but he turns just so and takes the punch to the outside of his thigh. Again he grabs her wrist, and this time turns it and sees the swallow carved into her hand, the scabs broken, trickling blood, and–

  –he hauls her to her feet the way a child tosses a sock monkey. She twists free, swings for his head. He ducks. Normally she'd fight dirty, real dirty,
double
dirty, throwing sand and feeling around for a golf club in the weeds. But here those options do not exist and so she goes for a four-finger jab against his throat with her now-bloody hand. But his chin tilts down to block the thrust, and before she knows it, he's got his leg behind hers like a gaff hook and he's dropping her to the mat once more and–

  –he's got her on the ground. She bows her leg and smashes the bottom of her boot into his cheek, turning him over so now
she's
the one on top. But that doesn't last, oh no, he traps her with his legs and rolls hard to the right until she's again beneath him, and he pins her there.

  And before she knows what's happening, his lips find hers, and her tongue is crawling around inside his mouth like a mouse looking for cheese. His hands are under her shirt. Her hands are tucking into his pants, hiking them down.

  Everything is hunger and fire and the distant echo of gunshots and the warm and wonderful (and more than a little sickening) collision of kindred spirits, damaged and weak, finding each other for a brief time.

  They tumble into his office. Above their heads, the fluorescent lights buzz like three bees trapped in a jar.

  It's different, but the same.

  Fewer plaques, pictures, awards. That collection is just getting started.

  The desk is neater.

  The room is cleaner.

  He picks her up by her hips and drops her down on the desk. Her knee goes between his legs, but this time it's not a kick – it's just pressure and heat and
intent
.

  She lifts his shirt up over his chest. The muscles there are like the rungs in a ladder – it feels like she could climb them.

  His hands press against the sides of her head. He pulls her close.

  A hard shove and he staggers back. Smiling. Licking his teeth again.

  "That's my job," she hisses, then licks his teeth for him. Her hand dips past the hem of his pants, deeper down until she gets a fist around his cock. He whirls her around and she slams into the wall, her elbow hitting the drywall, rattling a framed picture–

  Worlds collide. Alarms go off. Klaxons.
Awooga,
awooga.

  The office isn't an office anymore. It's a tomb.

  Phantom blood on the wall.

  Brains, black and dead, on a plaque.

  An echoing gunshot.

  The smell of spent powder invisible yet present, like a ghost.

  None of it real. Not today. Not for twenty years.

  
He's damaged goods. Death by suicide
. She pictures herself splayed across his desk, face up, shirt pulled so that her tits are out, legs hanging over the side and a pair of panties dangling from her big toe.

  Death has settled into this room like birds in the eaves and, once again, it only serves to get her hotter. It feels like a brushfire that wants to eat and eat and eat, fires seeking other fires.

  Beck hoists her up, her legs wrap around his hips, and he starts to take her shirt off. But then she sees–

  Behind him stand three ghosts.

  Louis with his eyepatch flipped up, a greasy blackbird's head sticking out of the ruined socket.

  Lauren Martin, her head tilted back too far, the wound in her throat tattered and fringed, air gurgling and blood bubbles popping.

  And Beck Daniels himself. In twenty years. Age fifty. The back of his head a blooming flower with petals of shattered skull and oxidizing brains in the middle.

  Miriam squirms out of Beck's – the
real
Beck's – grip.

  No.

  He thinks it's part of the game and he reaches for her again, but she pulls away. He catches her wrist. She resists. He still thinks she's playing, but she's not. She tries to pull away, but he's strong–

  No! Miriam backs up against the desk. She uses it to stabilize herself and then kicks hard with both feet into his chest, knocking him backward. A few manila folders tumble off a black metal file cabinet, their contents sliding across the floor.

  "I don't get it," he says.

  "I can't."

  
I want to.

  
But Louis…

  
Wren.

  
Tavena.

  "Why not?"

  "I have work to do."

  "You work around here?"

  "Nnnn – yes." It's easier than explaining what she means. "I'm running late."

  "Oh." He's crestfallen. "Oh. Of course. The first bell's soon, so… I should call you." He says it like he's not sure.

  "You should." Not that she's going to give him her number.

  "Is your… hand okay?" The blood is drying again.

  "It's all good in the hood."

  "It's a bird, isn't it."

  "A swallow."

  He goes pale. Like he suddenly realizes who she really is. "Of course."

  Nothing more to be said. She pulls her shirt down, re-buttons her jeans, and quietly removes herself.

 

Miriam feels off-balance from what just happened with Beck Daniels. Like she's still fighting him, still getting thrown to the mat, still almost fucking him.