Mockingbird

by Chuck Wendig

  "You're hiding food," Miriam says, flabbergasted.

  "What?" Chubby Cheeks says, a red algae bloom rising to her cheeks. "No! No. Uh. No?"

  Latina just clicks her tongue. "Yeah, whatever. We were eating Tastykakes."

  "And that's a bad thing?" Miriam asks.

  "HFCS."

  "I don't know what that is."

  "Corn syrup."

  "I still don't get it."

  "We're not supposed to eat unhealthy food," Chubby Cheeks blurts out, seemingly embarrassed at having done so. "Sorry."

  "Right," Miriam muses. "Sure. So, here's the deal. You give me some information and I won't tell the Headmaster that you're hiding naughty sugary boogity-boogity foods in your textbooks. I also won't tell him you're smoking crack and carving shivs out of your Trapper Keepers."

  "We're not smoking crack!" Chubby Cheeks bleats.

  "What the fuck's a Trapper Keeper?" Latina asks.

  You're old, Miriam, an old-ass twentysomething broad with a memory of Trapper Keepers and Tastykakes. "Never mind. Just tell me where I can find Katey's – uh, Miss Wiz's classroom, will you?"

  Chubby Cheeks describes, in excruciating detail, how to get there.

  Miriam finds herself outside a classroom that screams English Teacher! so loud its voice must be hoarse. Books everywhere. Posters of Shakespeare and James Joyce and Mark Twain. There's Stephen King and Kermit the Frog, telling everybody to READ. On the blackboard is a pyramid labeled "Freytag's Triangle."

  Behind a desk – on which sits a wooden apple with a faux-bite taken out of it – sits Katey Wiznewski.

  As soon as she sees Miriam, she's up on her feet, shaking her head.

  "You should go," Katey says. "I heard about yesterday. You in the Headmaster's office. I never should've had you come here, like inviting a snake into a parakeet cage–"

  "You're dying."

  Those two words. A falling axe.

  The teacher stops. Like the breath has been kicked out of her by a mule.

  She smiles then. A little laugh. Nods. "Go on."

  Miriam swallows. "You've got nine months. You die on May 3rd, a few minutes shy of noon. It's pancreatic cancer. I'm so sorry."

  She tells the teacher everything.

  How the cancer has already spread.

  How the iced tea isn't sweet enough.

  How she drops the glass.

  How she does not die so much as just… stop.

  How that's a good death – as good, at least, as a death can be.

  It's then that Katey ushers Miriam back into the classroom. She gently shuts the door and goes and sits behind her desk.

  She opens a drawer with a small key while Miriam pulls over one of the two-seater Victorian desks and plops her butt onto it.

  The teacher withdraws a bottle of wine and a red plastic cup. One cup becomes two as she separates them.

  She plunks them on the desk, fills them both up, and holds out one to Miriam.

  Miriam takes it and drinks. It's a lush, bitey red. She's not a wine fan. Everyone always says they can taste something in wine (chocolate, pipe smoke, figs, grass clippings, the sweat off a nine-year-old Cuban boy who's been floating around the ocean for two weeks on a raft made of banana crates), but Miriam can only ever taste "angry grape."

  All the same, it's good going down. Toothy, acidic, just right.

  "I knew it," Katey says, nodding after taking a long pull of the vino. "I knew I was dying."

  "Sorry," Miriam says. She's not sure what else there is to say.

  "Don't be. Well. You should be sorry, but only for lying to me." Katey chuckles, shakes her head. "I knew you were lying, too."

  "You seem almost happy."

  "I'm relieved, really. Everybody thinks I'm crazy. But maybe I had a little psychic something going on upstairs in my own head, you know? Because I… I just felt like it was true. And you're the only one who confirmed it."

  Katey finishes her wine. Pours another.

  "So, what's your plan now?"

  "Gosh. I dunno. What do you do when you learn you're going to die?"

  "Beats me." This isn't usually how it works, she thinks.

  A flash of sadness crosses Katey Wiz's face, like the shadow from a cloud passing in front of the sun. Or the shadow from a buzzard above. Or a red balloon.

  But then it's gone.

  "So be it," she says, tapping her plastic cup against Miriam's. It makes an unsatisfying thunk. Then she tips it back, finishes it. "It reminds me of the old song: London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. Everything falls apart and entropy wins in the end."

  "Cheery."

  "It gets cheerier. You know the London Bridge story?"

  "Not so much."

  "The story is they used to sacrifice children to bridges – a dead child hidden in the brickwork would keep the bridge up, or so the legend went. But it didn't matter. Because in the end, all bridges collapse." It's then that Katey holds her cup aloft and affects a haughty, academic, almost-British accent. "Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina. Quando fiam uti chelidon – O swallow, o swallow, Le Prince d'Aquitane–"

  Miriam snaps her fingers. "What the hell is that?"

  "It's from a poem."

  "A poem."

  "Mm-hmm. T.S. Eliot. The Wasteland."

  "A swallow. Why a swallow?"

  Katey has snapped fully into English-teacher mode, a mine cart locking onto its tracks. "The phrase quando fiam uti chelidon is Latin. It means, 'When will I be like the swallow?' Though the whole phrase is quando fiam uti chelidon, ut tacere desinam, or, 'When will I be like the swallow so that I may stop being silent?' It's a reference to the myth of Philomela, who has her tongue cut out–"

  Crunch. Miriam doesn't realize it, but her hand has tightened around the cup and now it sits crushed in her grip. A dribble of red wine escapes the shattered plastic and crawls down her forearm, dangling at the elbow.

  Miriam swoons. Swallows and severed tongues and dead children trapped in bridges. A barrel fire of fear and uncertainty lights up bright and hot in the deepest dark of her gut.

  "We need to talk about this. But not now. I need you to help me with something and I know you're not going to be inclined to help me but I need your help just the same. I need to know about a student."

  "Oh. I don't know. I shouldn't–"

  "Lauren Martin. I need to know where she is. Right now."

  "I can't give you information on a student."

  "If you don't," Miriam says, "she might get hurt. I don't need personal information. I just need to know where she is. So I can go talk to her. C'mon. Katey – you gotta help me."

  Finally, the teacher concedes. She pulls a Macbook laptop out of her desk drawer, and then pulls up a schedule.

  "Lauren Martin, Lauren Martin. I don't have her as a student but I know her a little bit… ah, here we go." She traces a finger down the screen. "Right now she's in Self-Defense class. With Beck Daniels. Downstairs, not far from the cafeteria. What's going on?"

  Miriam sucks on her lower lip. "I don't know yet."

  As she moves to head out the door, Katey calls to her. "You want to get a drink tonight? Maybe a meal?"

  Miriam hesitates, but sees opportunity. "All right. I'm in."

  "Applebee's? Say, six o'clock? I don't know if you know where it is–"

  Miriam forces a smile, crosses her fingers. "Me and Applebee's, we're like this."

  TWENTY-ONE

  Fighting Dirty

  At the doors to the gymnasium, Miriam pops her head up just in time to see through the porthole windows Lauren Martin, twelve-year-old ginger pixie, knee another girl in the crotch, flat-punch her in the throat, and flip her over onto a blue gym mat.

  The ground shakes a little.

  The other girl, a pale porcelain thing with a black mane bound up in a scrunchie, gets right up, though, and the two girls bow.

  Ti
me, then, for her entrance.

  Miriam opens the double doors quietly, sliding in through the crack like a slip of paper through a sewer grate. The girls are already moving back into formation: a dozen of them in a line, all in the same Caldecott School gym uniforms.

  The man at the fore of the class is long, lean, and ropy. His chest is a point-side-down triangle trapped behind a too-tight white tee. Dark eyes. A swoop of sweat-slick hair. A jawline like a bent rebar.

  He claps his hands. "All right. Remind me again of the six primary strike zones."

  The girls, in unison, speak the mantra: "Eyes, nose, throat, groin, knees, and feet."

  "Again. Faster."

  "Eyes nose throat groin knees and feet."

  "Again! Louder!"

  "Eyes nose throat groin knees and feet."

  He claps his hands together and bows.

  As he does, Miriam sees a whiteboard behind him. Those six words, the strike zones, are all listed.

  Above it: HOW TO FIGHT LIKE A GIRL.

  Miriam approves.

  As the girls bow to their teacher, he spies her out of the corner of his eye.

  He doesn't approach. He addresses her with, "Yes?"

  The girls all turn and stare.

  "Oh. Uh." That was unexpected. "I'm looking for my sister."

  "Your sister. Well, did you find her?" He's grinning.

  "Yep. That's her." Miriam points to Lauren. "Lauren."

  He waves Lauren over. She eyes Miriam up and down. "May I go, sensei?"

  "And this is your sister?"

  The girl doesn't miss a beat. "Yeah, that's Megan."

  "Then you may go, Wren."

  Wren? Lauren. Lau-ren. Ah.

  Great. Another fucking bird.

  The girl trots over, giving Miriam a wary look. She pushes open the door and empties out into the hall, backing away. "You're not going to touch me and freak out again, are you?"

  Miriam thinks about it. "No promises."

  "You really spazzed out."

  "Yeah. Well." Miriam can almost smell the burning flowers. Can almost feel the way the ground shakes when the axe falls. Don't think about it. "So. You have a sister named Megan?"

  "Nah. Just felt right at the time."

  "Nice move."

  The girl is dubious. "Uh-huh. What do you want? You know we're not actually trading moms. That was just a joke."

  "Yes, little girl, I understand the concept of a joke."

  "So what, then?"

  "I just… wanted to see you again." She doesn't know how this helps her solve a murder years before it happens, but what else can she do?

  Wren's face scrunches up. One eyebrow raises so high it looks like the St. Louis arch. "You're some kind of creeper."

  "No, I'm just protective."

  "Like I said, creeper. What are you, some kind of gash-lapper?"

  "I'm trying to help you. You know what? You're a pain in the ass."

  "Nice. Real nice."

  Miriam thinks, Fuck it, the truth shall set you free. She's only been hamstrung by lies lately. Better to puke up the truth than stand sick with a belly full of bullshit.

  "Here's the poop, little bird. I have this power. Like, a psychic power? Except, not your everyday average psychic hoodoo. I can't levitate shit, I wouldn't know palm reading from a pile of donkey guts, and Tarot cards weird me out a little. But what I can do is touch a person and see how they're going to die. I saw how you're going to die. And I don't want that to happen."

  Blink, blink.

  Wren takes one ginger step back. "Yeah, I gotta go."

  "Wait. Hold up. You don't want to hear more?"

  The girl backs toward the gymnasium door. "I'm good, thanks."

  "You're going to be murdered."

  Wren gives a thumbs-up, fake smiles, nods exuberantly. "Uh-huh! Sure, no problem, let's talk again!" Then the façade falls and she mutters, "Psy-cho."

  "Wait!"

  The girl's butt bone thumps the door open, and she ducks back into the gym. Leaving Miriam alone.

  Shit.

  Well that didn't work.

  She's about to go outside, maybe have a smoke, when the gymnasium door opens again. It's the teacher. The "sensei." Mister Firm-Jaw, Mr Strong-Chin

  "Miss," he says. "Hold up."

  The dude radiates confidence. Chin up, back straight. Self-assured smile. He seems healthy. Together.

  It's a total turn-off.

  "What's up, Caine-From-Kung-Fu?"

  Broad white teeth. Run your thumb over them, they'd probably squeak.

  "You're not Wren's sister."

  "Really? I'm not? You heard her. I'm Melissa."

  "Megan."

  "Right. Megan. Melissa for short. Nice to meet you. Beck, was it?"

  "Short for Beckett."

  "It's a good name. You get a pass."

  "You're the woman from the Headmaster's office."

  Miriam narrows her eyes, pretends to think about it. "Hmm, no, no, doesn't sound familiar. Sounds like a porno I might've watched, but those aren't real. They're just fiction, silly. Do you think girls bend like that? We do not. And most guys don't have giant wangle-rods the size of a fat baby's arm, either. You ever wonder how much Viagra those dudes have to pop to keep that shit going? Those porno dicks are pretty freaky looking, actually. That's the problem with porno these days. Too many close-ups. You can see every vein, every ingrown hair, every mole, crab, zit, cigarette burn–"

  "I want to know what it is you think you're doing." His façade doesn't crack. Smile so placid it drives her batty.

  "Standing here, soliloquizing – is that a word? – about pornography with some kind of girls' school karate-master. I bet those girls like having you for a coach. Don't they? Uh-huh. Real eye-candy."

  Blunter this time: "What do you want with Wren?"

  "To help her."

  "She has all the help she needs here."

  "Yeah. I don't believe institutions are all that helpful, honestly. Besides, this is not the kind of thing they can help with. This is something of an edge-case. Requires a specialist."

  "And you're that specialist."

  She winks, fake-kisses the air.

  His gaze flicks to the right, down the hall at the Tbone intersection, and Miriam follows his eyes–

  Coming out of a stairwell are Roidhead and Mario, security guards extraordinaire.

  "You called the cops on me," she says. "How sweet."

  "I'm very protective of my girls."

  She shakes her head. "Now who's the creeper?"

  Heavy footsteps – running now, not dawdling – come from the direction of the guards. She doesn't have to look. They're bolting toward her.

  Which means it's time for her to bolt, too.

  She breaks away down the hall, giving him the middle finger as she flees.

  The guards are hot on her tail.

  Up ahead, the cafeteria doors.

  The murmur of lunching students getting louder and louder.

  Perfect.

  Miriam gets to the doors and cuts a hard right, shouldering them open and darting into a cafeteria full of girls.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Fighting Dirty II: Food Fight Boogaloo

  This isn't your typical grade-school cafeteria.

  Girls sit at round wooden tables, not long ones of steel and laminate. Beneath their feet is a dusty old red carpet. Above their heads are not buzzing fluorescents but rather chandeliers with a warm golden glow.

  At the far end are the food stations. Drink machine. Buffet. A guy in a froofy white chef hat slicing prime rib like he's serving guests at the White House.

  The smells hit her: gravy and pizza and something sweet, something with apples and cinnamon. Hunger pangs tweak her gut.

  I wish I had school food like this, she thinks.

  No time to take it all in.

  Because her pursuers are upon her.