The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney Read Free Book Online

Julie’s boyfriend, Sam, from town.” I motion with my hands for him to speed up because I know what happened next. We made up songs about our new Friday Night Out privileges as we walked the mile or so to Salem Jim’s. They stamped our hands with the no-drinking sign—a baby bottle, so emasculating—and we went inside. The band played, we sang and screamed and made our voices go hoarse. Then things got fuzzier.
    “Is Artful Rage where…,” I stop, take a breath. “Where we met Carter?”
    Sandeep nods. “He was with another group from the school, the water polo guys.”
    “What were we doing even talking to water polo guys?” I ask. “We never hang out with them.”
    “Everyone was kind of talking to everyone,” Sandeep recounts. “All the juniors were psyched about finally havingFriday Night Out privileges, so it was one of those nights, you know. About twenty-two people from Themis at the concert.”
    “My, aren’t we precise,” T.S. says to Sandeep.
    He raises his eyebrows at her as if his precision is no big deal. Because to him, it isn’t a big deal.
    “I remember the band,” I offer.
    Sandeep nods. “Yeah, they were pretty good. I don’t think you were totally smashed until later on.”
    I don’t like the way he says that, even though it’s true. I don’t like being the girl who was totally smashed, or even just “tipsy” or “buzzed.” I should be more like Sandeep and T.S., more in control. I’ll just drink grape soda from now on.
    “Anyway, so everyone starts talking to each other and—”
    “Wait, wait, wait!” T.S. interjects, waving her hand frantically. “That’s when I said just because we don’t usually like water polo boys doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to them.” She says this excitedly at first, then clasps a hand to her mouth and her eyes go wide. “Alex, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”
    I give her a look. “What are you talking about?”
    “I told you to talk to him.”
    “Actually, you said it to everyone, to the group, not to Alex,” Sandeep corrects.
    She ignores him, keeps her eyes on me. “Alex, I’m sorry.”
    “T.S., that is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever saidin your entire life, or at the least the entire part of your life I’ve known you. So I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say it, since obviously it has no bearing whatsoever.”
    I turn back to Sandeep. “So we’re all going kumbaya and talking at the show. I remember that mostly. Then the show ends….”
    “Right, then we all came back to the common room here. And you’d had one shot at the concert.”
    He says it so clinically, so medically; he’s not judging me, just giving his residents the report on his patient, teaching them how to do rounds. I see him wearing dark blue surgeon scrubs, a cap for his hair. He still has hair when he’s thirty-five, I decide, and practicing medicine at some leading hospital. He doesn’t even have to look at the patient’s chart. He knows it all by heart, everything about the patient.
    “So I poured some more for everyone,” he says, rattling off names next. “T.S. and Maia had already left, Martin was long gone after the concert, so it was Cleo, Julie, Sam, Carter.”
    I put my head in my hands. Cleo, Julie, Sam, and Carter. Natalie, the track team, and on and on and on…
    “And then you suggested Circle of Death,” Sandeep says.
    “How much more did I drink?” I ask, looking up again.
    “You had two and a half more shots with your orange juice.”
    T.S. raises her eyebrows. “Two and a half?”
    “Yes. She didn’t finish the third shot.”
    He doesn’t falter as he informs his charges. The residents seize their notebooks and write this down in their doctorly scrawls,
two and a half more shots,
translating the amount perfectly into milliliters or cc or whatever doctor language they write in.
    “Three and a half total is a lot of vodka on an empty stomach,” T.S. says sympathetically. “It would be hard for anyone