The Rivals (23 page)

He turns around and walks away. Before he can go, though, I blurt out, “I’m leaving for Juilliard tomorrow.”

He looks back, slightly puzzled. “I know. You’ve told me before. I remember it’s this weekend.”

“I’m taking a tour,” I say.

He nods. “Right.”

“And then there’s that jam fest thing.”

Then he gives me a curious look. “And I hope it goes great.”

I haven’t mentioned I will have company. Every time I’ve tried, something came up, made me stop. My stomach curls, and I feel like I might throw up.

“Are you okay?”

“Jones is going. Miss Damata invited him too.”

Martin doesn’t say anything for a second, then a minute, then what feels like an hour, a day, a week. I watch his eyes as they cycle through a myriad of reactions. Why I didn’t mention it before, why I’m mentioning it now, but most of all he wants to know if something is going on with us.

“Why are you telling me now?” he asks slowly.

I shrug. “I just remembered.”

“Really? You just remembered?”

I gulp, then nod.

“You just remembered? Like just now? Like just this second? You remembered you’re going away for the weekend with the guy I told you two nights ago that I am insanely jealous of and you said there was no reason to be insanely jealous?”

“There’s not a reason,” I say, and the bell rings for class. But neither one of us makes a move to go.

“There’s not?” he asks, giving me a sharp look.

“There’s not.”

“So why didn’t you tell me?”

I toss my hands up. “I don’t know. I forgot. I’ve been busy. This case is all freaking consuming. My roommate’s mad at me. The dean cares more about my college apps than a cheating ring. And I’m busy chasing down suspects because Parker’s not doing his job. Maybe that’s why,” I say, feeling like everything is falling onto me, everything that shouldn’t be my responsibility, so then I really start going. “Oh, and I forgot. I also have classes too. I have an English paper due. And a history paper. And I still have to finish my Juilliard audition CD. That enough for you?”

He holds up a hand. “You can just spare me the details, okay? Because the same applies here. I go to the same school. I’m in the same group. I have the same crap to deal with, and I would have remembered to tell you if I was going away with some girl for the weekend to visit MIT.”

I close my eyes at the words
some girl
, picturing Martin with
some girl
. Walking around MIT, touring the campus, working on science experiments together.
Hey, come watch this cell mutate.
He nudges the microscope closer to her and leans in as she peers through the lens. I walk into the scene and yank her hair back.
Get away from my boyfriend.

“I’m sorry, Martin. I should have told you,” I say softly.

“How long have you known?” he asks, his voice bursting with an uneven mix of hurt, anger, confusion.

“A few weeks,” I admit.

“Alex,” he says in a low voice as he shakes his head. He turns away for a minute, and I watch how his broad shoulders curve into his back. My hands have touched that back, touched his naked skin. I know that back. I know the freckle under his left shoulder blade. I’ve traced it with my index finger. I’ve run my hands along the length of his smooth skin and pulled him closer to me.

He looks at me and pushes a hand through his hair. “Don’t make me say this.”

“Say what?”

“Don’t make me be this guy.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, and for a second I’m scared. I’m scared of what he’s going to say.

“I don’t want you to go,” he says, and I can tell the words taste bitter, like vinegar to him.

I have done this to him. I have made him do something he hates doing. I have made him be that guy.

“I don’t want you to go away with him,” he says again, and holds up his hands in a terribly defeated gesture. “There. I said it. And now I am the guy who tells his girlfriend what to do.”

“Martin, I can’t tell him not to go. That’s not fair,” I say.

He says nothing.

“And I can’t not go. I mean, I’ve been dying to go.”

He still doesn’t speak.

“Please don’t make me choose,” I say.

“I’m not making you choose.”

“Yes, you are,” I protest, and I clench my own hands into fists, and suddenly I build up my defenses, I assemble bricks around me, stacking them higher, walling myself in as I say, “I just feel like you want to come between my friends and me. You want to try Maia because it’s the supposedly noble, unbiased thing to do. And then when I am going away to New York for the weekend and not even staying with Jones, just going to a performance with him, you’re like a different person and you say no.”

“I didn’t say no, Alex. I said I don’t want you to. There’s a difference.”

“But is there?”

“You tell me. Is there a difference? Do you like Jones?”

“Of course. He’s my friend.”

Martin points a finger at me. “That’s not what I mean at all, and you know it. Do you like him, Alex?”

I fumble for a second before I answer, asking myself if maybe I do, if somehow all along this is why I haven’t said anything to Martin, because of the
zing
I felt that night, because of the way Jones’s hand felt on my shoulder that afternoon before music class. “Not like that,” I answer, and I’m not lying, I’m telling the truth, I know I’m telling the truth, but I feel like I’m lying.

“It took you long enough to say it.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not all levelheaded and reasonable like you and sure of all my convictions and beliefs every single second of the day.”

He closes his eyes, exhaling heavily. “But I’m not like that, okay? I wish you could see that. I wish you could see that this—you—is the one area that I am not Mr. Calm-and-Cool and whatever it is you think I am.”

“What does that mean?”

He softens for a second and takes a step toward me, reaching his hand out to my shoulder, holding me there tight. “You,” he whispers. “You are the thing in my life that I am not levelheaded and reasonable about. And I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. Because I am fucking in love with you, okay? And that makes me not want to see you get on a train with another guy and go to New York. The thought of you on that train with him, with Mr. Guitar Hero, Rock Star, whatever, makes me absolutely crazy.”

I am torn between wanting to fold myself into his arms and let his intensity, his desire, his strangely sexy jealousy envelop me, and needing to take a stand for myself, for my friends, for my own convictions.

“I can’t just ditch Jones, Martin. You have to understand,” I say quietly.

“I’m sure I would understand if you would tell me. But you won’t tell me. You won’t tell me why you’re always racing off to see him. And you didn’t tell me you were going away with him when you’ve known for a while. And you tell me now. You tell me now like it’s a confession. Like you know you should have told me. Like you know you should have said something. And you should have, Alex.”

“Well, I didn’t. And I can’t go back and change it. So I’m sorry, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, but what he really means is
whatever
.

“So, what now?” I ask.

“What now?” he repeats.

“Where does this leave us?” I ask, and I am terrified of the answer.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I am late for class and I need to go.”

I watch him the whole way, till the door swings shut behind him. Then I go to my room and I get into bed and I pull the covers up over my head and I cry. This year is turning out to be nearly as crappy as last year, and that’s saying something.

“More than two hundred and fifty pianos. The school has more than two hundred and fifty Steinway grand pianos. It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven, only better, because I’m alive and playing music,” I tell Jones.

I’ve just finished an official tour of the Juilliard campus, which didn’t take long because the school is actually quite small, just a few buildings and only one residence hall. But size doesn’t matter in this case.
Location
does. The school is next to the Metropolitan Opera House, the New York City Ballet, the Lincoln Center Theater, and the New York Philharmonic.

Jones strokes his chin. “Hmm…where have I heard this before? Let me think. Could it be from you? The seventy-five or so times you’ve told me this before.”

“I know, but here it all is in person! And I just walked through it,” I say as I sit down next to him at the fountain in Lincoln Center. It’s not the first time I’ve toured the campus. But being here doesn’t grow old. Being here is also the only thing that can distract me from thinking about Martin, from thinking about whether we’re even together still. He didn’t call me after class yesterday. He didn’t text me. He didn’t come to see me. But I didn’t do those things either.

So I focus on what’s in front of me, what I can see and touch and hear. It’s Saturday afternoon and the October sky is painted a perfect powder blue. The air’s crisp but not chilly. Lincoln Center is filled with people heading to their Saturday matinees. Here in the epicenter of the arts, where I want to be next year, surrounded by all those glorious Steinways. I watch a stream of theatergoers pour into the Vivian Beaumont Theater for the two o’clock curtain. The crowd is filled with pretty women in autumn coats and crisp heels, handsome men in pressed suits and sharp ties, tourists in sneakers and JCPenney jackets, and everything in between. New York is truly for everyone. It’s also the furthest thing from Themis Academy that I can imagine. I might as well be moons away, galaxies even. There are no Mockingbirds here, no underground student-justice league at Juilliard. Why would this school need one? Juilliard does not labor under the same delusions that Themis does.

Coming here, going anywhere, will be a relief.

Jones places a hand on my thigh. “We’d better get going. Our jam fest starts in an hour.”

“Which means we can soak in this ambiance for another few minutes and still be early,” I say as I twist around to watch the fountains spurting water behind me. “This is really perfect, isn’t it?”

“If you like this sort of thing. Culture, that is,” he teases. As I turn back, I notice his hand is still on my thigh. I don’t move his hand. I look at it, drawn again to his fingers.

“Jones, do you think we should try Maia?” I ask quietly, and it feels so good to unburden myself. It feels so good to share all these things I’ve kept from him. “These three debaters came to us and said it was her. And they went into all this detail, and the other board members say we can’t just ignore it. They say we can’t ignore three people.”

“You can’t try her, Alex,” he says, his hand gripping my leg more firmly as he speaks. “Friendship is more important than your code. Besides, there are other codes that matter, and that includes the one that says you don’t do dickhead stuff like try a friend in your mock court. It all comes down to the kind of person you want to be, right?”

I nod. “I’m glad you agree with me.”

“Why are you glad I agree?”

“Because you have your own moral compass or something that has nothing to do with what other people think.”

“Funny. I’ll often imagine a hot girl telling me I rocked the guitar, or she likes my blue eyes, or she dreams about what I can do with my hands. But liking my
moral compass
? First time for everything.”

I blush for many reasons. For
hot girl
. For
blue eyes
. For
hands
. For all the times I’ve noticed parts of Jones. When I shouldn’t notice parts of him. Especially not here in New York City, far away from Themis, so far away it isn’t just in another galaxy, it’s in another universe, maybe even an alternate one. Not here on the steel edge of the fountain, the water shooting up behind us, making its own sort of aquatic music. Not here where I want to escape to and escape from everything I left behind for the weekend.

But I want to know if Martin was right to ask if I liked Jones. I want to know if maybe there is something more. If I do have feelings for my friend, feelings I haven’t acknowledged.

So I look up, but not at him. I don’t ask if he’s calling me a hot girl. Because I don’t care about that. I don’t tell him his eyes are beautiful, because that doesn’t matter now either. What I do is this: I lean my head back. I let the sun warm my face. I imagine. Turning to face him. Looking into his indigo eyes. Closing mine as I let him kiss me. It’s like a rock song, a guitar riff, fingers spreading across strings, stretching to reach faraway notes, strumming them in ways they’ve never been strummed. He kisses like he should kiss—hot and electric and alive and solo.

How utterly easy it would be for me to kiss him. No one would know. No one would have to know. It could be our secret stolen kiss by the fountain in Lincoln Center.

Fountains don’t talk.

But if I’m going to be the kind of person I want to be, that person doesn’t cheat. That person doesn’t give in to a fleeting thought, however momentarily tempting. I’m sure it would be a delicious kiss. I’m sure there are many boys all around the world who kiss deliciously. But that doesn’t mean I am going to test the theory, especially when I already know a boy who kisses deliciously and I am
so
in love with him.

“Hey, Moral Compass. Let’s get the hell out of here,” I say.

We catch the nearest subway down to the Village, where the Juilliard alums welcome us into their inner circle as if we’re just like them, as if we’re equals. As we play I have this fleeting image of how it could be, how it should be. Adults and teens in concert, as equals, striving for the same goal—for now it’s musical harmony. And it could be so much more.

When I return Sunday afternoon, my mission is singular and it’s Maia.

On the way upstairs I overhear other students talking about how the debate team not only placed first but crushed the competition in the tournament in Miami this weekend. I open the door and she’s there, lying on her bed reading
A Separate Peace
, the next book on our English class syllabus.