I, Claudia Page 9

  VISION & INTEGRETY

  Hector stopped pacing, leaned against the row of lockers, and slid to the floor as he listened. He hadn’t noticed me yet.

  “What I’m saying is that maybe the top one was fine and there was a problem with some of the others.” There was a pause, then Hector crushed his forehead into the palm of his hand. “You’re saying that’s not possible?”

  There was another long pause, then I heard him say very quietly, “I know how to spell integrity.”

  I waited until he hung up, then walked over to him, waving to show that I came in peace.

  “They ratfucked you,” I said.

  Hector looked up at me, then down at his misspelled poster, then back at me, and he burst out with some mildly deranged-sounding laughter.

  “I’m Claudia,” I said. “I’m running against you, actually.”

  I pointed to the campaign button on my messenger bag.

  “I know who you are, Student 1439,” he said with a smirk.

  “I’m sorry about your sign,” I said, taking a seat next to him in the hallway. “And, like, obviously, I didn’t do it and all that.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said, “because it would be pretty sociopathic if you sabotaged my posters then came over here to tell me about it.”

  He really did seem relieved once he knew what had happened, that he hadn’t momentarily lost his mind and his spelling abilities.

  I watched as he relaxed his shoulders, leaned his head back against the locker, and closed his eyes. It felt odd sitting that close to him in the otherwise empty hallway. There was all this space, and yet there I was, close enough to smell his cologne or whatever guy thing it was—sandalwood mixed with something green. He wore a plaid shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps, like a cowboy’s, only he wore wingtip bowling shoes with it instead of boots.

  “You’re new here,” I said, shaking myself out of a, doubtless, very important and fascinating examination of Hector Estrella’s smell and his mother-of-pearl buttons and back to the matter at hand. “I just wanted to tell you not to take it personally. They do it to everyone.”

  He opened his eyes. “That mysterious they again. Who is they exactly?”

  “I have theories, but no firm leads.”

  “Chris Gibbons would be the most obvious suspect.”

  “Baby Monkey Guy.”

  “Next to you, of course.”

  “I said I had nothing to do with it,” I said holding up my hands.

  “Until two minutes ago, I’d never even talked to you. Why should I believe you?”

  “Because even if I was the kind of person who would ratfuck somebody’s campaign, I wouldn’t ratfuck you.”

  The words were out before I could think about how they sounded, but I meant them. Maybe it was because he was so polite to the person at the print shop, taking the time to tell them they’d done a great job even though he was pretty sure they’d screwed up his posters. Or maybe his sandalwood deodorant had temporarily addled my brain.

  “Good luck,” I said, pulling myself to my feet as gracefully as I could manage. “I hope you beat Baby Monkey Guy.”

  “Thanks,” he said, looking a little bit puzzled. I wasn’t sure if he was touched by the gesture or weirded out by the whole conversation, but I waved and told him I’d see him around.

  Hector had been the first target of the ratfucks, but he was far from the last.

  A rumor circulated that one of the Honor Council candidates, Cecily Stanwick, had tried to pay someone to take the SAT for her (and it was perhaps no coincidence that she was running against Livia for vice president). Someone drew engorged penises on all of Chris Gibbons’s campaign posters and X’ed out the monkey’s eyes, a design change that was really far more reflective of the candidate as we knew him. Even Chris Gibbons seemed to think so. He replaced the posters, but kept one of the vandalized copies hanging in his locker.

  Rebecca Ibañez, the incumbent sophomore class Honor Council representative, suddenly dropped out of the race, and no one knew why. She hadn’t been the most popular elected official, but she was no Jesse Nichols either. What made the decision especially baffling was that she and Livia were the only serious candidates running for their class’s seats. She was all but assured reelection, and then suddenly—poof—her posters disappeared from the halls and she had her name stricken from the ballot.

  I patrolled the hallways of Imperial Day, watchful for any sign that someone meant harm to my sister’s campaign, but of her campaign there was, mysteriously, no sign at all.

  “I think they’re taking your posters down,” I told Maisie two days into election season. We were sitting at the breakfast table, Maisie sketching in her notebook while I chugged coffee and fretted over answers for my Weekly Praetor profile.

  “Actually, I haven’t put any up yet,” she said, tearing a sheet out of her notebook and throwing it in the trash. I snuck a look at it before she tossed it—the page was covered with feathers, daisies, and peace signs. Not her best work.

  “I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but shouldn’t you get on that? People aren’t even sure you’re running.”

  “Trust me,” Maisie said. Then she slipped the notebook into her shoulder bag and got up from the table. “Come on, we’ll be late for school.”

  Of course I shouldn’t worry. Maisie knew what she was doing, and really, getting a late start was a fairly ingenious strategy. You couldn’t ratfuck someone who wasn’t campaigning. Maybe that was what Maisie was banking on.

  No one ratfucked Jesse Nichols either, but that was because no one had to. His stupidity shone like a beacon warning ships at sea so that they might not crash on the rocks of his dimness.

  On the fourth day of election season, the ratfuckers came for me.

  I was on my way to eighth period when all of a sudden, Hector appeared at my side, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me down the hall. I started to tell him that I was going to be late, but when I saw the look on his face, I realized that this almost-stranger would not be dragging me toward the stairwell without a good reason.

  It was hanging outside the library, four feet high by three feet wide, glossy paper printed with the words VOTE CLAUDIA McCARTHY FOR SENATE. In the center of the page was a gigantic picture of me, up close and in high definition. The artist had Photoshopped away my pores, evened out my complexion, and significantly thickened my hair. Cheekbones I do not possess had been shaded in, and the bags under my eyes had been removed. Obvious, pathetic levels of Photoshop had been deployed on this picture, and of course, I still wasn’t pretty.

  That was the joke, I guess.

  A good ratfuck needs verisimilitude. Scrawl obscenities and insults on your opponent’s poster, and your opponent looks like a victim. Vandalize with subtlety, and your opponent looks however you want them to look.

  Anyone who knew me well would know it was a fake. But how many people was that? Maisie, of course. If Julia had been there, she would have known, but Julia was gone. To anyone else, though, it would seem like the obvious: ugly girl wants to be pretty, goes pitifully overboard in the attempt, forgets her classmates see her every day and know what she actually looks like.

  “I’m sorry,” Hector said as I gaped up at the poster.

  Then I wondered, why had Hector shown me? He’d talked to me once. Why had he come to get me?

  “I just thought . . .” Hector fumbled for words that wouldn’t add to the poster’s insult. “I know I don’t know you, but after the other day, I just wanted to return the favor.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Suddenly Maisie was there, breathless, as though she’d come running the moment she’d heard. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the poster up close, then her head whipped around as she looked up and down the hallway, as though she’d be able to use heat-seeking glares to suss out the guilty party. She reached up and tore the poster from the wall, ripping it in half in the process.

  “Let’s go,” Maisie said, storming down
the hall. I looked back over my shoulder to see the few people who’d witnessed the whole scene staring after us. Hector picked the tattered poster up off the floor, wadded it up, and threw it into a trash can.

  Maisie’s fists were balled at her side and she walked with a clear and purposeful intent.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To see Principal Graves,” she said. “This has to stop.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Maisie, please. No.”

  I didn’t see what good could come of it. Dr. Graves wouldn’t stop it. Nothing would change. Word would get around that I’d tattled like a kindergartener. I’d look thin-skinned and weak and like someone who called in her big sister, someone on the Honor Council no less, to fight her battles for her.

  Maisie must have been ten feet ahead of me by the time she realized I wasn’t following her. She stopped, turned around, and studied my face. There had been a time when Maisie and I couldn’t keep anything secret from one another. Without speaking, our faces told everything.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Things like that never go all the way away. Maisie didn’t ask for my reasons. Instead, she turned down the hallway that led past the West Gym. The hallway was seldom used during the school day, and the doorway at the end of the hall led directly to the student parking lot. If you wanted to leave campus unseen, this was how you did it. I just couldn’t believe that Maisie—rule-abiding, clean-living, Honor Council presidential candidate Maisie—was leading me out the door.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Anywhere you want,” Maisie said.

  Visions of Peet’s Coffee and ice cream and pastrami sandwiches danced in my head for a moment before I realized that I felt too depressed to enjoy any of it.

  “Home,” I said.

  “You’ve got it,” Maisie said. “I just need to make a quick stop first.”

  It is scientifically impossible to peel out of a parking lot in a Toyota Prius, but Maisie came close. We sped away from the school, winding down Sunset Boulevard until we came to a shopping center. Maisie pulled in and parked.

  “Wait here, okay? I’ll just be a minute,” she said, then cocked her head to the side and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”

  I nodded, and motioned for her to go. As soon as I saw her disappear into the shop, I leaned my head up against the passenger-side window and closed my eyes. Grateful as I was for Maisie’s rescue, I hadn’t said much of anything to her since she’d found me in the hallway. For once, I didn’t feel much like talking.

  When she got back in the car a few minutes later, she looked at the way I was slumped against the window and said, “You’re not okay.”

  “I told you, I’m over it. Now what’s in the package?” I asked, dodging and deflecting her concern.

  “I’ll show you when we get home,” Maisie said, reaching back over the seat and laying the brown paper–wrapped bundle on the backseat.

  My thoughts wandered back to the Photoshopped poster. Chris Gibbons was the likeliest suspect in that instance, but with the other cases—Hector’s misspelled signs and Cecily’s SAT cheating scandal and Rebecca’s sudden withdrawal from the election—I couldn’t quite shake the idea that somehow Livia was involved.

  Ratfucks don’t lose elections by themselves. They’re minor things, little annoyances. What they do is keep their victims off balance and ill at ease, and that was exactly where Livia wanted all of us—too preoccupied with reacting to really act. I wondered what she’d do to throw Maisie off her game.

  “Maisie, you need to watch your back,” I said.

  Maisie laughed at me as she pulled out of the parking lot. “What are you talking about, Claudia?”

  “If Ty wins, he’ll basically let Livia run the Honor Council, which is exactly what she wants. I was there when you announced you were running for president. I saw the look on her face. She didn’t even wish you good luck.”

  Maisie clenched her fists around the steering wheel and took a deep breath.

  “You saw a look on her face,” Maisie said, her voice steady and deliberate. “And that’s how you know that Livia is out to get me?”

  That was why I hated talking about Livia with my sister. It was just like the conversation we had after Julia got expelled: I suggested that maybe her friend wasn’t a very nice person, and Maisie made me feel like some paranoid conspiracy theorist.

  Maisie continued, “Sure, Livia was caught off guard. She was a little hurt that I hadn’t told her first, but it’s no big deal. We made up. She said she was happy for me.”

  “Can you at least . . .” I started to say be careful, but I knew Maisie would think I was going after Livia again.

  “Tell me you’ll keep your eyes open,” I said.

  “My eyes are open, Claudia. I know what I’m getting myself into. Why would I be running for president if I didn’t want to change things, if I didn’t want to make things better than they are?”

  We were home then. Maisie parked the car in the garage and turned to me. “Hey,” she said, her voice softening. “Come on inside. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Once we were in the kitchen, Maisie set down the package from the shopping center and ripped off the brown-paper wrapper to reveal her campaign posters.

  “Do you like them?” she asked, beaming.

  They were black ink on white cardstock, clean and simple. In the center was an old-fashioned line drawing of a feather. Above the feather, MAISIE McCARTHY was spelled out in block letters. Beneath the feather was the word TRUTH.

  When your last name is McCarthy and you’re involved in politics, even at the high school level, it’s hard not to think about your namesakes. On the one side, you had Joseph McCarthy, who lied, pointed fingers, and spread hysteria about the imaginary Communists lurking in our midst. And then on the other, you had Eugene McCarthy, a peace activist who ran for president on the promise to end the Vietnam War. His campaign posters included only his name, a picture of a dove, and the word, PEACE.

  He lost.

  The ancient Egyptians believed that the hearts of the dead were weighed on a scale against the feather of truth. If the scales didn’t balance, the heart was devoured by Ammit, the eater of souls, and the dead, condemned to the underworld. But if the person had lived an honest life, their heart would weigh the same as the feather and they’d pass on into heaven.

  I didn’t think anyone but me was going to know what it meant, all the history that Maisie had packed into that simple black and white poster. And then I realized why Maisie was smiling, why she’d taken so long getting her posters ready, why she wanted me to be the first person to see them.

  The past few months, things had been so strained between us, and now it felt like Maisie was reaching out to me through her 1968 throwback campaign poster and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, saying, I don’t care if people think this is weird. I don’t care if they don’t get it.

  I made it for you.

  “Claudia, what’s wrong? Don’t you like them?”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and sniffled.

  “They’re perfect,” I said.

  XIII

  The Real, Unvarnished Me

  To be included in the Weekly Praetor’s Spring Election feature, please complete this questionnaire and return it no later than 3 p.m. on May 5. Answers may be edited for clarity and space.

  1. Why are you running for office?

  Because I was vain and stupid and easily tricked.

  To fix things with my sister.

  Because I am a student of history, and even though I shouldn’t believe in the democratic process, I do.

  2. Why should we vote for you?

  What kind of asshole question is this?

  I am scrupulously honest, hardworking, and will do a good job. If you don’t vote for me, though, I think you should vote for Hector Estrella. He seems like a decent guy.

  3. What makes Imperial Day great?r />
  The belief that if we say it enough times, it will be true.

  Nobody has ever set it on fire.

  Its storied history and legacy of excellence.

  4. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do for fun?

  Read presidential biographies.

  Go to museums.

  Cooking show?

  Think about the past. Worry about the future.

  ***

  At first, they looked like easy questions, but when I started trying to answer them, everything sounded either too sincere or too bratty. I agonized over it for hours. They went up on the Weekly Praetor website over the weekend. By running for Senate, I avoided the tedious job of having to spellcheck, format, and publish thirty-two candidate profiles, which surely would have been assigned to a freshman. That, in and of itself, probably made the whole thing worth it.

  Each profile was more boring than the last. Ty was running for Honor Council president because “it is an honor and a privilege to serve the school that has given me so much.” Shocker. And in her spare time, Zelda Parsons volunteered at the children’s hospital. I wondered what child would be comforted by the sight of her pinched, disapproving face. Even Chris “Baby Monkey Guy” Gibbons only hoped that his fellow students appreciated the spirit with which he “fought” for them.

  I could not imagine the warped soul of the person who would sift through thirty-two of these and read them all.

  Before first period on Monday morning, I received a text from Livia:

  Meet me in the Honor Council office before lunch. URGENT.

  I had no idea what she wanted, and no idea how to get out of going. If I blew her off, she’d know I was afraid of her or she’d be pissed, and either one of those things was worse than just going and seeing what she wanted.

  When I arrived at the Honor Council office, Livia was already there, sitting on one of the desks with her legs primly crossed, a kitten-heeled pink pump dangling from her toe.

  “We have a problem,” Livia said, motioning for me to sit down. The chair she pointed to was low, and I realized I’d have to crane my neck up to make eye contact with her.