Running

by Natalia Sylvester

  “Where’s Vivi?” I ask.

  “Didn’t you hear? Her dad changed the locks to their house yesterday, so when she and her mom got home last night, they couldn’t get in.”

  “Oh my god. After dance class? Poor Vivi.”

  “I know.” Zoey’s whole body slumps toward the ground. We’re sitting on the cement bench beneath the stairwell of the science wing, and I scoot a couple of inches toward her and put my hand on her back. It feels awkward there, but she looks like she’s about to cry, and I don’t know what else to do.

  “They had to sleep at her aunt’s house last night. In Miami Beach,” she says.

  “Oh my god.”

  “It’s horrible, right?”

  I nod and wrap my arms around my stomach. I’d hoped to ask Vivi to come over to my house for the Home Invasion interview. I figured if anyone can help me not spiral into full panic mode, it’d be her. But those plans are evaporating faster than a three o’clock rain shower, all because her dad decided to be a jerk.

  “She must be crushed.”

  “Right? I mean, it’s so unfair.”

  This isn’t about me, but still, the timing could not possibly be worse. The interview’s exactly thirty-one hours away.

  “She didn’t even have a change of clothes,” Zoey says. “That’s why she’s not here today. You can’t exactly show up to class in pink tights and a leotard.”

  “I would’ve lent her clothes.” My mind is having a hard time catching up with my words. What if my last day at school with Vivi already happened?

  “Vivi said her mom didn’t want to bother anyone. And she told me to tell you that her phone’s dead because her aunt doesn’t have the right chargers in her house.”

  “This blows. It’s bad enough they have to move, but to lock them out like that?”

  Zoey looks over her shoulders and leans in, so close I see her pupils dilate. It occurs to me that this is probably the longest conversation we’ve ever had, just us two; Vivi’s always been the glue that holds our trio together. She whispers, “My mom says her dad probably has some young girlfriend already, and that’s why he’s in such a hurry.”

  “What? No. That’s pure speculation.” Then I gasp and cover my mouth. “Oh my god. I’m starting to sound like Joe.”

  “Who’s Joe?”

  “He’s this guy that works for my dad. It’s nothing.” The bell rings. I stand up and gather my bag. Vivi would’ve known what I was talking about.

  * * *

  When I walk into first period, Ms. Walker is writing on the whiteboard: COMMUNITY SERVICE PROPOSALS DUE TODAY!

  All my blood rushes up to my face as it dawns on me that I forgot to do mine. Of course. Why wouldn’t this week get worse and worse? There are signs and flyers plastered all over the school, and for months we’ve been getting worksheets full of questions like, What changes would you like to see in the world? What role can you play in this change?

  I place both hands on my desk, like Jamie taught me to in our media training sessions, because she said this would help ground me in a moment. I will most definitely be very grounded very soon, which isn’t fair because I’ve never missed an assignment before. I don’t even know what excuse to give Ms. Walker, or my parents, for that matter. Mami’s constantly logging into the school’s site to check on my grades. There’s no way she won’t notice an “incomplete” and immediately tell Papi. I picture him slapping his palm on the table, saying School is your one responsibility, even though this is really all his fault. If I’d been in school yesterday instead of at his rally in Hialeah, somebody would have reminded me.

  I sink deeper into my chair, trying to ignore both Vivi’s empty seat next to mine and the one behind me, where Patrick Franco is sitting. He lets out a burp and our whole side of the classroom giggles except for me.

  Ms. Walker shoots him a look, but otherwise ignores him. “Who would like to share with us today? What do you want to do and why?”

  When nobody answers, she tilts her head up and scans the room, as if she’s sniffing out someone to pick on. I pray that she won’t pick me. “Justine?”

  From all the way in the back, a timid, high-pitched voice says something about animal shelters. “They need people to walk and play with the dogs,” Justine says. I catch her eye and smile, and she turns bright red.

  “That’s a wonderful idea. Anyone else?”

  A couple more kids volunteer before Ms. Walker can call on them. One of them plans to help write captions for YouTube videos at the School for the Hard of Hearing. Another has signed up to be a mentor with an organization that helps young refugee girls from Syria adjust to life in the United States. There’s even a kid who’s forming a grassroots effort to protest the use of certain soaps and chemicals in our school district.

  It’s becoming painfully clear that she’s going to make everyone in the room share their project. I hate raising my hand in front of the whole class on a normal day, so the fact that I haven’t done the work makes this exponentially worse. My heart starts to race as I try to think of what I’ll say.

  I’m still in shock that all three of us dropped the ball on this. Vivi, I get. She has enough problems to worry about at home, but Zoey? Last time I checked, she’s not on the verge of being homeless or navigating her father’s campaign horrors. I actually don’t know what’s going on in her life since we’re not that close, but still. What’s her excuse? I lock eyes with her in the back of the room and she just raises her shoulders without a clue, like a living freaking embodiment of the shrug emoji.

  “Mariana? How about you?”

  This is my nightmare. My second worst nightmare. “Me?”

  “Yes. What’s your cause?”

  Before I can say anything, Patrick scoffs behind me. “Lemme guess, you’re running for president too?”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense,” I say.

  “Neither does your father.”

  The class erupts into a collective oooh and Ms. Walker tries but fails to get them to settle down.

  “That’s enough, Patrick. Mariana, you were saying?”

  I wasn’t. My mind is a complete blank. I start to wish Patrick would make another inane joke just to cause a distraction. My mouth goes dry and my words feel like rubber bands wrapped in a ball that’s being stuffed down my throat.

  I go through my backpack blindly and reach for my phone. It lights up and when I quickly check it, there’s a text message from Papi. I dim the screen without reading it and blurt out, “Protecting the environment.”

  “A very important cause, Mariana. We need more environmentalists like you.” Ms. Walker stands over my desk, waiting.

  “I left the proposal at home. I’m sorry. My dad had that rally yesterday and . . .” I stop myself midsentence. I know how this sounds.

  The whispers start up again. Behind me someone says,“That’s no excuse,” and some other kid mumbles something about special treatment.

  “Email it to me,” Ms. Walker says, loud enough for the whole class to hear. “No later than tomorrow morning. If I don’t get it by then . . . I’ll be very disappointed, Mariana.”

  Tomorrow. As in the morning of the Home Invasion interview. Ms. Walker can’t imagine that my life could possibly be about so much more than school and this community service project. People like my father are trying to change the world for real, and she calls me out in front of everyone for not BS-ing a couple of aspirational paragraphs?

  The whole rest of the period, I can hear Patrick breathing through his mouth behind me; he sounds like a tiny dog snoring. When the bell rings he stoops next to my desk and whispers, “See you tomorrow night, first daughter.”

  I roll my eyes and jam my books into my backpack. What he meant doesn’t hit me until I’m halfway down the hall.

  Tomorrow night. He meant tomorrow night on TV.

  I walk as fast I can to the bathroom. I think I’m going to be sick.

  “See you tomorrow night,” he said. Because bringing a news
crew into your bedroom is bringing everyone else in with it. It’s like having Patrick Franco peering over my shoulder, seeing where I sleep, where I dress, where I keep my underwear and my journal and all my most private thoughts. It’s like having Jackie Velez there to judge me, telling me all the ways she hates my father every time I look in the mirror. The whole world will be watching, listening, just waiting for me to mess up.

  I make a run for the last stall in the girls’ bathroom and close the door. Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a deep breath. The air smells like a candy version of lavender, like Abuela’s house used to on Sundays, after she’d mopped the floors with Mistolín. It soothes me. I can still feel my heart pounding in my chest, but it’s slower now, steady.

  I hear my phone buzz in my backpack.

  Papi again. There’s his first text, sent thirteen minutes ago, that I ignored:

  Don’t be nervous about tomorrow. You’re prepared. You’ve got this.

  And then his second text, just now.

  Hope you’re having a good day, hijita.

  It’s ok, I text him back. I’m about to leave it at that but for some reason I add: Just chose my service project. Gonna help protect the environment.

  That’s great. We can do a beach cleanup again. I’ll take a day off after FL primaries.

  I smile and nod, alone in a bathroom stall. Ever since the summer between fifth and sixth grade, Papi and I have collected trash and debris that washes up along Biscayne Bay as part of a beach-wide cleanup. We pick up tons of plastic soda rings tangled in the mangroves, and bags that look like jellyfish along the shore until we get close enough to poke them and they crinkle. We do the cleanups every year, and Papi has started helping me reuse all the glass bottles in our house. Sometimes I catch him after dinner, scrubbing off the label of a jar of pasta sauce so we can use it to store other food.

  That’d be cool.

  Proud of you, he responds.

  Me too.

  ten

  “She looks perfect. Doesn’t she look perfect?” Mami asks no one in particular. It took the network’s hair and makeup crew forever, but apparently I’m now camera-ready. My face feels like it got coated in cake frosting. They put a sealant over my lipstick that pulls on my lips when I smile. They even dabbed the bags under my eyes with green goo that blended into my skin to make the dark circles disappear.

  “Here, you might need to reapply later,” the makeup artist says, handing me a small tube. She places her hand under my chin and turns my face side to side to get one last look at it. “She was so excited about the interview she didn’t get any sleep,” she says to the hair stylist, talking like I’m not even there.

  I resist the urge to tell her I was up past one in the morning last night researching the Everglades for my community service proposal, and when I finally got to sleep my brain couldn’t shut up about all these facts and figures—how the swamp’s shrunk to half its size, how even the alligators are not fully grown because they’re short on water, how the Everglades is becoming saltier, which is bad for our drinking water. I ended up dreaming I was being chased by mini gators and giant salt shakers through Jackie Velez’s home. Jackie hasn’t tried to contact me again, but last I checked she’s oh-so-subtly throwing me shade on Twitter.

  Am looking forward to @SenAnthonyRuiz’s interview tonight & a real conversation on climate change. Voters want to know what candidates will do about the issues, not what kind of toys their kids play with.

  It’s obvious she’s hinting at the last Home Edition interview, when the congressman had a tea party with his daughters, but I know it’s a dig at me too. All her talk that day outside the library about her wanting my side of the story was just that: talk. It was stupid to even entertain the idea that my thoughts on this campaign mattered. Sitting here in my overdone makeup and a dress hand-selected by my mom, I feel as powerless as those two little girls playing pretend with their father.

  I try to shake myself out of it. It’s too late for second guessing. I was so busy with schoolwork last night, I didn’t get to rehearse Joe’s edited lines more than the five or six times he made me say them. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s like cramming for a test: I’ll either nail the answers in the moment, or I won’t be able to retain them even if my life depends on it. Which it kind of feels like it does.

  I get out of the chair and mumble thanks to the makeup artist, but she’s already moved on to my mom, who’s directing her to the bedroom.

  “There’s better light.”

  I take deep, chest-expanding breaths as I make my way to the kitchen, catching a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror. Seeing my face in a handheld mirror in the makeup chair was one thing, but taking it in as a whole is bizarre. The crew insisted on making me wear fake eyelashes. They curl so far back they practically touch my eyebrows. When I’d asked them if the lashes were really necessary, the woman just looked at me and said, “You ever see a woman on television without them? Trust me, you want them.”

  Maybe she has a point. I once read that in the “Quiz Show” episode of I Love Lucy, you can tell when she’s about to get her face doused with water because they’re the only scenes where Lucille Ball’s not wearing fake eyelashes. She looks strange without them, which has always made me sad. The camera has a way of making the real seem fake and the fake seem real.

  There’s no time for vanity, though. All around me, production assistants are setting up cables and lights, and Papi’s staff is buzzing about like the sky’s falling. I’ve seen my dad for all of five minutes today. Ricky, as usual, is dressed and ready, playing games on his iPad in the kitchen while Gloria makes him a snack. He seems so excited and carefree, looking at him actually brings me a bit of comfort. Then I remember the other candidate’s twin daughters, with their matching yellow dresses and smiles. They’re not much younger than him.

  “Hey. What are you up to?”

  He pauses his game and folds his hand over the tablet. Any other kid would probably never take his eyes off the screen, but Ricky has a sweetness about him, a genuine interest in paying attention to people first.

  He takes one look at me and his eyes practically pop out of their sockets. “Oh my god. What’d they do to your face?” His words are low and shaky, like he’s worried my features won’t ever go back to normal.

  “I know. I can’t wait to take it off. What about you? You okay?”

  He nods. “I was just about to beat this level.”

  “How’s school? The kids being nice to you?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t they?”

  “And Andrew? Is he watching tonight?” Andrew is the only real friend he’s made this year. It must be odd being the new kid in third grade. Probably not as odd as being a new sophomore, but still.

  “I don’t know. We don’t really talk about it.”

  “You don’t really talk about Papi and the campaign?”

  “No. It’s just our parents’ jobs. That’d be weird, right?”

  Andrew’s mom is a vet, and his father is a cop. Maybe to Ricky it’d be like asking him how many dogs his mom saw that day, or how many traffic tickets his dad gave, but this campaign is different. Huge. And definitely not your everyday job.

  It always startles me that Ricky thinks this is all normal. The cameras. The rehearsing. The constant pressure of knowing any little mistake can cost Papi an entire election. “Listen, if you’re ever not . . . that excited about any of this, you know you can tell me, right?”

  He leans in close. “Why are we whispering? Oh my god! Are you changing your mind? Are you not going to vote for Papi?”

  We have these fake ballots that Mami makes us every election. I keep wondering when my parents will realize I’m too old for them. Clearly Ricky is still very invested. “What? No. I’m just saying . . .” I let my voice trail off. “Just have fun out there. During the interview, okay?”

  He nods and goes back to his game. Our senses of reality exist worlds apart.

  * * *

  I’m
about to head to my room to get dressed when Joe starts following me up the stairs.

  “Do you need something?” I say, stopping halfway.

  “Oh. Right.” He backtracks and gestures silently for me to follow as he hoofs it to the kitchen and then down the narrow hallway that leads to the garage.

  “What are we doing here?” I don’t like how secretive he’s being.

  He brings his fingers to his lips, like he’s about to shush me, then seems to think better of it. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about what you were saying the other day at dinner. About no one ever asking for your thoughts on the issues.”

  “You mean . . . what I said to my dad?” He nods and completely misses the point of what I’m implying. No one ever invited him into the conversation, but he feels free to insert himself anyway. Sometimes I wish my parents would care half as much about my in-person privacy as they do about my online privacy.

  “Yeah, that. And I think you’re right. I think it’d be so much more impactful if the senator’s daughter was opinionated.”

  “You do?” What the hell. Of all the times for him to actually listen to me. We go on the air in under an hour and he thinks now’s a good time to change course?

  “Totally. No other candidate has a kid your age, so they wouldn’t expect it. But you—”

  “But that’s not what I meant. I’m not ready. And I’ve never had a chance to talk to Papi about his policies . . . Mami doesn’t like us to bring his work home, so I’d have to do more research. And, of course, it’s nice to be asked, but couldn’t we have prepared for this like months ago? I still don’t know if I want to talk to anyone. Or if I have anything to say. Oh my god, what if I’m scared of public speaking because I have nothing to say?” I’m rambling now, spiraling through a cluster of words that make absolutely no sense until I start to see little spots in the air.

  Joe waves his hands in front of me. “No no no no no! You’ve got this all wrong. It’s fine, it’s totally fine.” He reaches into his shirt pocket.