The Rivals (30 page)

“
When
you get one.”

Martin is gentle with me as we slide into the backseat of another cab, but I know he is seething inside. He wants to crack heads or snap wrists or do something. He wants retribution. So do I, but not tonight, not yet. For now I am exhausted.

“You’re staying with me tonight,” he says as we near campus. “I already told Sandeep and Parker to find another place to sleep.”

“I’m staying with you?” I ask, but stop at that, not daring to ask what else it might mean.

We pull up to campus and walk to his dorm. I sink down on his bed. Martin sits gingerly on the edge of his bed, afraid he might break me.

But he can’t break me.

No one can break me but me. If I wasn’t broken by what Carter did to me, I won’t break myself by what I have done, and I won’t let those girls break me either. I will put all of this back together, everything, starting with Martin. Because I can’t remember, nor do I want to, why we weren’t together for the last few weeks. He is here and I am here, and this is where I came when they broke my hand, to him, the pull irresistible.

“I miss you,” I say.

“You have no idea how much I missed you,” he says, and like that, with words—words that stand alone and stand together—everything is behind us, and we move forward, only forward.

“Come closer,” I say as I manage to kick off my shoes. I slide my feet, then my legs, under his covers.

“Are you sure?”

“Lie down next to me,” I say.

He takes off his shoes and follows my lead, sliding under the covers. He pulls the blankets up to our chests, careful not to jostle my right hand that’s resting on my stomach. His shoulder touches mine and it feels so good and so different from how my shoulder felt in the common room when Natalie jammed it.

“Mmm,” I say. “Tell me something nice. Tell me a story. What would we be doing tonight if we weren’t at the ER?”

“Ah,” Martin says. “I had planned to take you to a movie.”

“Oh, you did?”

“There’s some new movie out with talking animals. You’d like that, right?”

I laugh. “Talking animals. Perfect escape.”

“And I wouldn’t just take you to some crappy Providence theater. I’d take you all the way to Boston.”

“Ooh, fancy.”

“That’s me. Fancy,” he says. “We’d take the train to Boston.”

“I like trains.”

“No one would ask where we were going. No one would care.”

“Of course not. There are no rules here.”

“We could do whatever we wanted. Slip away and no one would notice. Wouldn’t even have to use our points. And when we got to Boston, I’d take you out for dinner.”

“A proper date.”

“Well, if you call a greasy pizza joint a proper date,” he teases.

“I love greasy pizza, the kind you can fold.”

“Folding pizza is the only kind I permit. And maybe we’d get cannoli after.”

“I don’t like cannoli,” I say.

He places the back of his hand on my forehead. “I think maybe you did hit your head when you took that
fall
.”

“How about ice cream?”

“Mint chocolate chip for you.”

“Of course.”

“Then we’d see the talking animals and you’d laugh the whole time.”

“Would you laugh too?” I ask.

“Oh sure. What’s not to like about talking animals? Especially raccoons.”

“Raccoons are the best kind of talking animals,” I say softly. “Martin?”

“Yes?”

“Nothing happened. Nothing ever happened with Jones. It’s his—” I get the first letter out of
dad
before Martin places a finger on my lips.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”

“But…”

“But your blue streak is totally hot. And I’d be touching your hair the whole way on the midnight train back,” he says, returning to our fantasy as he traces my cheek with his finger.

I wriggle closer to him. “Would it be empty?”

“Of course,” he whispers.

“What would we do?”

“Whatever you wanted to do,” he says.

“What would you want to do?” I ask.

He brushes a strand of blue hair from my face and leans in to my ear, then says something that’s so ridiculously sexy, so incredibly hot, that I feel like I’m melting from the inside out.

“Please kiss me,” I say.

He props himself up on an elbow, bending his face to mine, his lips brushing me softly, starting with my eyelids, then down to my cheeks, then finally my lips. He kisses me tenderly, and it’s the sweetest kiss in the world, the softest kiss any girl has ever gotten. I close my eyes, drifting into the kiss, into his touch. He runs his hand gently down my left arm, then moves his lips to my bruises, to the black-and-blue marks Natalie left on my hand. I imagine him taking the pain away with his kisses, the opposite of what the Watchdogs did to my hands.

This is how I fall asleep, damaged, bruised, broken, but completely peaceful and wholly content in my own way.

I don’t wake up for a long time. I sleep through breakfast, then brunch, then lunch. When I wake up, Martin is there with Jamie.

“We’ve been busy,” he says. He’s holding an ivory envelope in his hand, the kind society women send thank-you letters in.

I sit up in bed, self-consciously patting my messy hair.

Jamie shows me her right arm. There’s a black twisty ponytail holder on it. “Want it?”

“Yes, please,” I say, and hold out my left hand. She drops the black rubber band into my palm and I try to pull my brown and blue hair back, but it’s awfully hard to do one-handed.

“Let me help,” Jamie says. She scooches next to me and twists my hair neatly into a ponytail.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Theo stood up in the cafeteria at dinner last night,” Jamie says. Her smooth black hair is long and sleek against her shoulders, and her brown eyes are as innocent as they have always been, but somehow savvier too. She’s aged a few years overnight.

“He did?” I ask cautiously, eagerly, waiting to hear.

Jamie nods. “He said it was him after all, not Maia.”

“Holy crap,” I say. “He really did it?”

“He said that the wrong person was accused, the wrong person took the fall, and that it should have been him.”

I try to say something, but I am speechless. If I could form words, if I could give voice to the swirl of thoughts racing in my head, I’d say something about bravery, something about hope. Because Theo may have been point zero in all of this, but maybe he can change. Maybe, in some way, justice has been served after all. A new kind of justice. The kind that matters, the kind that helps you become the person you can truly be, the kind that helps you overcome the person you’re leaving behind.

“Was Maia there?” I ask.

Jamie shakes her head. “No. But I suspect she’s heard the news by now. News travels fast at Themis.”

“But that’s not all. We have a double agent,” Martin adds proudly, nodding to Jamie.

“Really?” I ask.

Jamie nods. “I was going to tell McK today that I was done with her side, but Martin found me first and told me what she did to you.”

“Your sister didn’t do this,” I correct her. “Natalie did.”

“And we need to get back at her,” Jamie says firmly.

I snort. “What are we going to do? Try Natalie? For us to be the good side,
others
have to believe in what we do,” I say.

“There are other ways,” Martin points out. His eyes are sparkling, though, and he’s clearly been working on those other ways.

“And what are those other ways?” I ask.

“We paid a visit to your dorm this morning. Well, to the first floor, to be precise,” he says.

“To the scene of the crime,” Jamie adds.

“And we asked around. Knocked on doors. Went up and down the whole hallway. Turns out there were a couple of sophomore girls on the first floor who saw what happened,” Martin explains. “Maxanne Braff walked by when Natalie broke your fingers. She texted Rory Bell and told her what she saw. Rory showed us the text, and Maxanne told us what she saw.”

“So now what? Like I said, Natalie would never consent to be tried by us.”

“I know, Alex,” Martin says heavily. “We’re not talking about going to
us
on this matter.”

I shake my head in disbelief. He can’t possibly be suggesting I go to Ms. Merritt. Besides, I didn’t go to her last year.

Last year.

I feel like I’ve been plunged back in time, the victim again.

But then just as quickly, I return to the here and now, because this
is
different. Not the crime but the environment. Last year, there were no Watchdogs to give Carter other options. Last year, the Mockingbirds were the
only
option for any of us.

Now there is a new threat.

And because of them we are not the same. We have to change. But I don’t know how exactly we should change, so I shift gears.

“Can we go back to this whole double agent thing first?” I say, and turn to Jamie.

“I don’t want to be like them anymore. I want to be on the good side,” she says, and I want to say I’m not even sure we’re the good side anymore. I’m not sure if we did any good this semester. It seems that all we did was weaken. The termites got into the foundation and ate it away little by little.

But then again, here’s Jamie. Here’s the girl who
chose
another path. Here’s Jamie actively
choosing
the Mockingbirds. “I don’t want to be on the same side as someone who’d break your hand,” Jamie continues.

I glance down at my splint, at my fingers that may be
normal
soon, but may not ever be good enough. A fresh surge of anger courses through me, and I am ready to jump up and find Maxanne and Rory and then tell everyone—every single last student and teacher here—what happened in the common room.

But I need a plan. I need to be methodical. I need to be smart and strategic every step of the way, because that trio of girls is dangerous.

“They had their spy. Let me be yours,” Jamie pleads. “I can help you even more this way.”

I want to ask how I will know she’s not playing me. But there’s no test to show loyalty. I can’t prick her finger with a needle and then run her blood through a machine that’ll tell me it’s okay to trust her.

I have to rely on instinct, and instinct can be wrong.

“Alex, you know how I said I was going to prove myself to you?”

“Yes.”

“You know that redheaded girl who’s been seeing Carter?”

“Yes,” I say tentatively.

“I know who she is. She’s a freshman. She didn’t know what he did to you last year. Now she does,” Jamie says.

“You told her,” I say, and I can’t resist—the corners of my lips curl up.

Jamie nods proudly. “I didn’t rub her face in it. I just took her to the library and showed her his name in the book.”

“What did she do?”

Jamie shrugs. “Let’s just say they’re not together anymore.”

“Jamie Foster. You little vigilante. You Mockingbird.”

“So, you’re not going to kick me out?”

“Jamie, I already told you I wasn’t going to kick you out. I meant it. You’re in. You’re a Mockingbird.”

“And?”

“Fine. Take advantage of me while I’m down,” I tease. “If you want to be a double agent, Jamie, it’s your choice. It’s going to be risky, very risky. You’re going to have to be amazingly careful. And you’re going to have to watch your back every step you make.”

“Sounds like just your average day at Themis Academy,” she says wryly.

“Yeah, it does,” I say.

“There’s something else,” Martin says.

“Oh, joy,” I say.

“You’ll like this one,” he adds, and hands me the ivory envelope.

My name is written on the front in sharp black letters. I slide a finger under the flap and open it. It’s a letter from Parker Hume.

I laugh out loud. “This is brilliant. Did you see it?” I ask.

Martin shakes his head, so I hand it to him. He grins as he reads it, then narrows his eyes in a faux serious gesture. “Very professional.”

“I’m sure he learned it from Daddy.”

“Speaking of, that’s why he quit. He told me this morning. He said what happened to your hand freaked him out too much. He’s too worried about Daddy finding out about the Mockingbirds.”

Because of my hands, he quit. I look over at Jamie. Because of my hands, she stayed.

Sometimes instinct can be wrong. But sometimes it can be right too. And sometimes you just have to take it on faith.

I reach up and run an unbroken finger through my blue streak. Then it hits me. “Jamie, I have your first official assignment.”

I have another assignment too, and this one’s for T.S. and me to handle, because I need to pay my debts to others first.

“I bet you learned a lot from having three brothers,” I whisper to T.S. when I find her in the library studying.

She gives me a look and raises an eyebrow. “What
sort
of things do you think I learned from having three brothers?”

“Like how to cause trouble,” I say.

“What sort of trouble?”

“Fun trouble.”

“Like giving someone a wedgie?” she asks eagerly.

“I’m thinking wedgie times one hundred,” I say.

“Dude, I’m in,” T.S. says.

And it’s that simple with T.S.

Even with my broken hand, we manage the assignment in under an hour because T.S., as she always does, comes through. She knows how to take what we need, flit by unseen, and do the dirty work without making a sound.

“My brothers would be so proud,” T.S. says when we’re done. “I’m so going to have to take pictures. This is exactly the kind of stuff they trained me to do.”

“Let’s show Maia,” I say, and we return to our room to fetch our other roommate. She is resistant at first and this—this spark in her, this tiny little fire—is how I know she is coming back.