I, Claudia Read online

  Julia could have been before the Honor Council for any of those things, but if it was something like that, why did Augustus sound so cold? How hard was it to understand that Julia was going through a rough time, that what she needed most was a little human kindness?

  “Ty will be your counsel,” Augustus said.

  “My counsel for what?” Julia burst out. “What have I done?”

  “Julia, please. I know this is hard, but—” Livia started.

  Julia laughed her 1940s film star laugh that made her sound like she should be lighting a cigarette while she broke your heart.

  “You don’t know anything about what this is like, Livia. Maybe you would if you’d spoken to me in the past month.”

  “Julia, this isn’t personal,” Augustus said. It was exactly the same thing he’d said to Soren, and I wondered whether he meant it or not.

  “Then tell me, what is this? Because I don’t even know.”

  “Ty, why don’t you take a minute to go over the charges with her. You can step into the hallway if you’d like some privacy,” Livia said, and the smirk in her voice made me wonder if she was enjoying this. I thought back to the day at the Venice boardwalk when she’d only hugged Julia to avoid looking rude. She and Maisie had never included Julia in their plans—that was how she’d ended up with me.

  It was like Soren; like Jesse Nichols and Rebecca Ibañez. If you were the wrong kind of person, they’d find a way to put you in your place.

  “I don’t need to go over anything in private. Just spit it out. What’d I do?”

  “This is about the cheating ring, Julia,” Livia said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “This is about the research papers you sold, the copies of the tests, all of it. We found everything. We talked to your clients. We’ll need to confiscate your laptop,” Livia said.

  “Wait, are you kidding me?” Julia asked.

  Augustus didn’t say a word. It was like he’d enlisted Livia to act as his proxy, and clearly, she relished the job.

  “You know me,” Julia protested. “We sat together at lunch every day. We did things together on the weekend. Do you really think this sounds like something I could pull off? Even if I could, do you really think I’d do that? Do you?”

  There was a long silence. The branches of the alder tree rapped against the glass in the wind, and the old Imperial Day furnaces rattled to life, ready to face off against the chill of the fall evening. Ty offered no counsel, Livia no friendship, Zelda no allegiance, Augustus no answer.

  “Oh my god,” I heard Julia say after a moment. “You do.”

  IX

  Fuck You Either Way

  Dear Claudia,

  I’m not supposed to tell you any of this, but I don’t think it matters anymore what I signed or what I pledged. They got me. I’m finished, so why shouldn’t I tell you anything I want to? What keeps people from doing this? Is it because they’re embarrassed? Maybe I’d be too embarrassed to talk if I’d actually done the things they say I did.

  I knew that I couldn’t just break up with Marcus and have it be easy, but I didn’t think they’d punish me for it either.

  I guess there were some rumors going around about me, how I turned into some massive slut after Marcus and I broke up. (Also, don’t you just love the way everybody talks about it? That we broke up. Not that it matters at this point who ended things with whom, but I guess it bothers me that I can’t even get credit for doing that one little thing.) Livia and Maisie never asked me how I felt or offered to take me to the pool at the Standard so we could get umbrella drinks and talk about what a cock my ex-boyfriend was. Livia never liked me—she always thought Marcus deserved someone cuter or more popular or nicer (she was always trying to set him up with this perfect little freshman Esme Kovacs behind my back). But I was surprised Maisie never offered to talk to me about it either. In fact, the only person who ever tried to talk to me about it was you.

  The rumors are mostly stupid. Yes, I hooked up with Soren, like, once. We didn’t even do that much because while it was happening, I realized how sad I was and that fooling around with Soren wasn’t going to make me feel any better. I’m not sad that I broke up with Marcus. Mostly I’m sad that I wasted all that time and I can’t ever get it back. I could have had different friends. I could have been a completely different person. So, you may have heard that I was getting blackout drunk every weekend and sleeping my way through Imperial Day, but mostly what I was doing was being sad.

  I don’t blame Marcus for what happened either. I doubt he had anything to do with it. He’s just not a particularly vengeful kind of guy. Besides, he knows I didn’t mean to hurt him, just like he probably didn’t mean to hurt me. That’s just how it happened.

  As for what happened to me, Augustus had this list of things he wanted to accomplish while he was Honor Council president. Marcus told me about it. Marcus told me a lot of things about Augustus that no one else knows about, like how he practices making small talk in the mirror and how he always hits on the barista at the Starbucks on Montana Avenue when Livia isn’t around. Augustus was convinced there was some huge cheating ring at Imperial Day. He heard so many little cases—copied homework, cheat sheets, plagiarism—and I think it started to get to him. He was like one of those police chiefs on a crime show who thinks that if he busts someone important enough, nobody will ever do anything bad again.

  Anyhow, he believed there was somebody out there with a bank of tests and essay prompts. He was a little obsessed about it; he was sure this person would turn up if the Honor Council waited for the right tip. I used to think it was sort of funny, until someone told him that the person he was looking for was me.

  They searched my locker, and sure enough, they found a stack of every test given at Imperial Day in the past two years. I’d never seen them before and I don’t know the first thing about running a successful cheating ring. But then during the “trial” or whatever that was, Livia points to my clothes and mentions that I’m on scholarship and wonders, how do I always have nice stuff when I’m not supposed to have money, and I must have gotten it somehow.

  Marcus recused himself from the hearing, which I get, and your sister wasn’t there, which means that the two Honor Council members most inclined to believe me didn’t even get to weigh in, and I know that wasn’t an accident. I wonder if Maisie or the other two Honor Council representatives even knew they were hearing cases that day. I wouldn’t be surprised if Livia never told them about it.

  I thought all they had were the tests, which I’d never seen before, but then Ty came forward and produced a written statement from this unnamed mystery witness saying I collected old tests and sold them. Then, he says he wouldn’t reveal the person’s identity because the witness feared retaliation.

  At first I thought it might have been you, Claudia, but it didn’t make sense, and I didn’t want it to be true. You’re not one of them, and you wouldn’t do that to me. Would you?

  After the “evidence” has all been heard, they send me out and when I come back, I can tell from the look on Livia’s face that something’s going to happen, but I think, what’s the worst they can do to me?

  I thought they’d suspend me for a week or two, so when Augustus opened his mouth and said I was expelled from Imperial Day, I thought I’d misheard him. Then he started droning on about the legacy of the school and how I’d threatened the legitimacy of the Honor Council by cozying up to its members and winning their trust, all the while operating a cheating ring under their noses. And I start to realize, He actually believes that I did this.

  And then I saw Livia and Ty give each other a look while Augustus was talking, and I knew what was going on, but there was nothing I could do about it. Sure, I can appeal my expulsion to Principal Graves and the Board of Commissioners, but they aren’t going to overturn it. They give the Honor Council anything they want.

  And what they want now, Claudia, is blood.

  My life is kind of over right now.
My parents are furious. I tried to tell them my side of things, but they wouldn’t listen. They think I’m the mastermind behind the Imperial Day paper mill–test bank–cheating extravaganza, which is hilarious. If I had copies of every single test given at Imperial Day in the past two years, don’t you think I might have something over a B average? No wonder the Honor Council can do whatever they want.

  The reason I’m telling you all of this is that I want someone to know what happened to me, and when I tried to think of someone who would care, the only person I could think of was you.

  Unless it was you who set me up with your secret testimony, in which case, fuck you.

  Actually, fuck you either way.

  I never should have listened to you. I should have waited it out, been unhappy with Marcus for a few more months, and maybe none of this would have happened. He would have graduated and we would have broken up afterwards, and maybe then I would have been the kind of girl Livia could feel sorry for instead of the kind of girl she wanted to get rid of.

  Or maybe it would have happened exactly the same way.

  So fuck you, Claudia, and whatever you do, be careful.

  Love,

  Julia

  “How did you feel when Julia was sent away?”

  “I was angry.”

  “With whom were you angry?”

  “Livia. Ty. Augustus. Zelda. The people in the room. The people who did it.”

  “What about the people who weren’t in the room, Claudia? What about Maisie?”

  X

  No I’m Not

  “What happened to you?” Maisie asked one morning as we were standing in front of the bathroom mirror, getting ready for school. It was the middle of December, three weeks since Julia had become one of the disappearances. “Something’s different. I don’t even feel like I know you anymore.”

  “I’m the same as I always was,” I said, even though we both knew that wasn’t true.

  “You never talk to me any more than you have to. You sit there at lunch looking around the cafeteria like you’d rather be at any other table than mine. Did I do something wrong?”

  Livia was always over at our house, or Maisie was over at hers. I hated it, and I hated that there were secrets between us. I hadn’t seen Maisie do anything wrong, but Livia and the others were her friends. They were the people she chose to be around; the Honor Council was something she chose to do. It was Livia and Cassidy Jones and Mr. Arnold all over again. Was Maisie really so naïve that she didn’t see what was going on? Or did she know, and she just didn’t care?

  It wasn’t like I could talk to her about my suspicions either. I couldn’t turn to her and ask, Why didn’t you help Julia? because I wasn’t supposed to know that she hadn’t.

  “You didn’t do anything,” I said. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  Maisie locked eyes with me, stared right into the center of me the way she always could.

  “No, it’s not.”

  My heart fluttered, and I noticed a little tremor in my hand, and then all of a sudden, I blurted, “Why are you friends with Livia?”

  And then it was out, the great, unspoken topic between my sister and me.

  “What do you mean?”

  I could tell I’d struck a nerve by the way she stiffened her shoulders at Livia’s name. She already knew how I felt, but I’d come this far. I needed to say it.

  “I don’t think she’s a very nice person,” I said at last. “I don’t know why you’re friends with her. And I’m worried about you. You know what she did at the Griffith School, don’t you?”

  Maisie sighed, then took me by the shoulders and looked at me squarely.

  “I think that you don’t know Livia as well as I do, and you’ve never really given her a chance. I know about the Griffith School, but this isn’t eighth grade anymore, Claudia. People change.”

  This was the first time Livia’s past crimes had ever come up between us, and now I finally understood what Maisie thought of them. That’s the funny thing about history: two people can look at the same set of facts and arrive at different conclusions, depending on their assumptions about human nature. When archaeologists first saw Stone Age cave paintings, they assumed they were forgeries because it was widely accepted that cavemen were violent brutes. Turns out they were wrong about the amount of art and beauty in caveman souls.

  Maybe that was the difference between Maisie and me. Maisie knew what Livia had done, but she believed in forgiveness and second chances. She believed that people could change. I believe some things are unforgivable, that there are things a person with art and beauty in their soul would never do, things that a person can never come back from.

  “You can go around worrying and being suspicious of everyone if you want to,” Maisie continued, “but I can’t.”

  “That’s how you get fucked over, Maisie.”

  “Geez, when did you turn into such a cynic? Is this about Julia?”

  “This is about Livia,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

  “I will say this much and absolutely not a thing more, but if Julia didn’t do it, I promise you, she would still be at Imperial Day. And I know that she’s your friend, but, Claudia, maybe I’m not the one with the blind spot this time.”

  “But you weren’t even there!” I said, before I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know that.

  A little crease formed between Maisie’s eyebrows.

  “What do you mean I wasn’t even there?”

  “Nothing. I just meant Julia was my friend, and I know she wouldn’t have done something like that.”

  Maisie went quiet and focused on trimming her bangs with nail scissors, angling the blades so the ends were just a little bit jagged. When she had them just so, she started putting on her eyeliner.

  “Are you still looking for your people?” she asked.

  I spit a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink and rinsed my toothbrush under the faucet as I considered the question. I’d signed up for another semester of newspaper, and had traded in stage-managing the musical theater kids for equipment-managing the track team. Since there was no history club, I joined Model United Nations, which seemed like the next closest thing. I knew a lot of people. But after what had happened with Julia, I held them at arm’s length.

  But all I said to Maisie was, “Still looking.”

  Maisie stopped putting on her makeup and gave me a long, sad look. We used to be each other’s people, I realized. Us against the rest of our family. Us against the world. It used to be enough, just the two of us.

  “I hope you find them,” Maisie said at last. “I miss you, Claudia.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  XI

  Augustus’s Most Likely Successor

  As I’ve said before, Maisie tried to make me feel like I belonged at Imperial Day. She invited me to sit with her at lunch, introduced me to her friends, included me in things like that strange trip to the Venice boardwalk. But sometimes I wonder if all of this could have been avoided if she’d cared less. It’s possible I never would have appeared on Livia’s radar; maybe I never would have found my way into politics at all.

  I’m not saying I blame Maisie. I’m just saying it’s interesting.

  The whole school year, I’d avoided Livia as studiously as I could, considering we ate lunch together most days. I didn’t speak directly to her, didn’t look her in the eye, didn’t try to engage in her conversations, and for the most part, she seemed to appreciate this. So, I was surprised when she turned to me at lunch one day at the end of March and said, “Claudia, you should run for Student Senate.”

  Ty nearly choked on his Snapple at this suggestion, and Livia gave him a dirty look. I looked down at the table and mumbled that I hadn’t thought about it since there was no way I could win.

  “Don’t run yourself down, Claudia,” Maisie said, leaping to my defense. “Why couldn’t you win? You know everyone, and everyone knows you.”
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  “She’s right,” Livia said. I took a sip of my milk and tried to calm the nervous feelings swarming in my head. I was not accustomed to having this much attention directed toward me at the lunch table.

  “What about Esme Kovacs and Chris Gibbons?” I asked. As far as I knew, my class already had two senators, and it was them. Not that I thought they were doing a bang-up job or anything, but I know enough about history to know that it’s difficult to unseat an incumbent, even if that incumbent is a thoughtless clod like Chris Gibbons.

  “Esme’s giving up her seat on the Senate to run for Honor Council,” Livia explained, and everyone at the table nodded in tacit approval because there was a freshman Honor Council representative they very much wanted gone.

  You see, there is built into the Imperial Day Academy electoral system, and perhaps all electoral systems, the potential for error. Sometimes, the voters are misled or misinformed. Sometimes they do not have all the facts, and that is how you end up with mistakes.

  One of these mistakes was Jesse Nichols, the Honor Council representative Esme Kovacs no doubt hoped to replace. As I mentioned earlier, Jesse Nichols is without doubt the stupidest person I have ever encountered. Teachers avoid calling on him. Entire classes cringe when he opens his mouth. When he approached Augustus—Augustus!—one day and asked if he could join us at lunch, Augustus shook his head sadly and said, “Sorry, dude. No room.”

  However, since the freshman Honor Council representatives and senators are elected during the first two weeks of the school year, and it took a solid month for Jesse Nichols to fully reveal the range and depths of his stupidity to us all, he was elected to the Honor Council, and then there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  “Is Gibbons actually running for reelection?” Augustus asked, and the entire table groaned in unison.