I, Claudia

by Mary McCoy

  Curse your insomnia, Hector Estrella, I thought. You desperate, beautiful fool.

  And then, before I could text Hector to ask what he’d been thinking, all of a sudden, there was a message from Cal in my inbox. It read:

  Thanks to the Senate for drumming up a little suspense . . . Honor Week was great last year, but we thought it would be even better if it came back where it belongs—under the leadership of the Honor Council.

  More details to come, but it’s going to be excellent.

  Go to sleep, Estrella.

  That was it. The first time Cal wanted something that was ours, he just reached out and took it. Hell, we practically handed it to him. The worst part was, I could tell it had been fun for him, thwarting us, watching us flail. I knew that he’d do it again for no other reason.

  Whoever put that message in my locker may have thought they were doing me a favor. Instead, we’d ended up doing the very thing I’d tried to avoid. Hector and I hadn’t kept our heads down. We’d gotten on Cal’s radar in the worst way possible.

  XXXIII

  Ask Someone

  Now it was Zelda Parsons walking through the halls of Imperial Day with fingers wrapped around Cal’s arm, giggling and batting his hand away when he tried to grab a fistful of her ass like it was his due.

  Zelda Parsons, of all people. It was like Livia had never existed.

  If Zelda had dressed like Livia before, now she looked more like the girls Cal usually tormented with his attentions. She’d added silvery-blonde highlights to her hair, did a smoky eye, and wore tight jeans. She did hold on to the horn-rimmed glasses though.

  The main thing that was different about Cal’s Honor Week was that it was mostly about Cal. He and Zelda presided over every event like royalty, smiling for every camera they saw. Hector had abolished the car wash because he thought it was insulting to the teachers. Cal took things one step further. He assigned a team of Imperial Day students to each teacher, and for the duration of Honor Week, each team was required to get the teacher’s lunch, clean up the classroom, run multiple-choice tests through the Scantron machines, carry bags out to their cars. Cal said he did this to engender goodwill between educators and students, and also because he thought it might encourage the teachers to participate.

  The funny thing about the word encourage is that people often use it when the word they’re really looking for is force. I’ve always found that the easiest way to find out what the person “encouraging” you really means is to refuse to do it.

  Jesse Nichols, stupid as ever even in his junior year, was assigned to Ms. Yee, who very politely but firmly stated that she had no need of his services. Jesse Nichols went away and that was the end of it. Except the next day, Cal went to see her and asked why she’d insulted Jesse when he was just trying to be helpful.

  “It isn’t necessary,” Ms. Yee said.

  “Will you be helping out at the Homecoming dance on Friday?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Ms. Yee said.

  “It would mean a lot to your students if you were there,” Cal said.

  “I’m not entirely sure it would be the best use of my time,” Ms. Yee said, or at least that was how the conversation was reported later at her hearing.

  While Cal couldn’t exactly make you do Honor Week, he could pay attention to whether you showed up or not, then let you know he’d filed that information away for future reference.

  Of course, my Honor Week activities—or lack thereof—were also the subject of his scrutiny. I was getting books for first period when suddenly, Cal was there, leaning up against my locker and blowing spearmint-gum breath in my face.

  “Have I done something to offend you, Claudia?”

  How to even begin to answer that question? I said nothing, but shook my head.

  “When the Senate president and vice president can’t even be bothered to put in an appearance at Children’s Hospital, it sends a bad message,” he said, peering inside my locker.

  He studied the pictures I had hung up inside the door, peeling off one of Eleanor Roosevelt and putting it in his pocket. There was a tube of ChapStick on the top shelf of the locker. He twisted off the cap and applied it to his lips before putting it back. The whole time he did this, he hummed a tuneless little song to himself, like he’d momentarily forgotten I was there.

  Why did he do it? Why did he do the things he did? I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I think I understand now. Augustus wanted a legacy. Ty wanted people to respect him. Livia wanted power. And Cal? I think Cal did the things he did because it amused him. It amused him to be in charge. It amused him to have people do what he said. It amused him to annoy people, to play with them, to hurt them. He enjoyed all of it equally, and by the time we realized how much he enjoyed it, we were all much too scared to stop him.

  “We had a lot of Homecoming dance s-s-stuff to take care of,” I said.

  That was really what Cal meant when he said Honor Week would be bigger and better. He meant he was going to steal Hector’s ideas, take all the credit for himself, then top the whole thing off by throwing a dance just like old times. The real insult was, Cal took over everything, but left all the grunt work to us. While Cal got his picture in the LA Times petting stingrays at Heal the Bay, we were trying to find a DJ and bribe freshmen into stringing up decorations.

  “You and the Mexican are going to Homecoming, though, right?”

  How does every offensive remark start? With the jerk who wants to make it looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody within ass-kicking distance is listening.

  “He has a name, asshole.”

  “A-a-a-asshole. You’re funny, Claudia,” Cal said, chuckling as he mocked my stutter. Apparently, the looking-over-the-shoulder thing didn’t apply where I was concerned. “So, are you two going?”

  This would actually be my first dance at Imperial Day. Last year’s had been cancelled, and it never would have occurred to me to go my freshman year. This year was different. As Senate VP, Honor Week co-founder, and the person assigned to deliver the check to the caterers at precisely 11:15 p.m., there was no getting out of it.

  I didn’t actually own a dress. My mother had stopped trying to make me wear them when I was about ten. If anyone asked, I told them it was because my legs were two different lengths and dresses called attention to that, but that wasn’t strictly true. When I wore a dress, I felt like I was wearing a bad costume, one that wasn’t fooling anyone. It didn’t make me feel pretty. Nothing did, but when I put on jeans and my political campaign shirts—or even my dress shirts and neckties—I felt like myself. I hadn’t quite figured out how I was going to feel like myself at a Homecoming dance.

  I was thinking about that when Cal asked if Hector and I were going to the dance, so without thinking, I answered, “Not together.”

  “Horrors,” Cal said, gripping his t-shirt in his fists. “C-C-Claudia and her Latin lover on the outs! Alert TMZ!”

  Cal’s insults always did operate on so many horrible levels. First, there was the way he managed to say at least one racist thing whenever he mentioned Hector, and then act like his progressive white-boy irony made the whole thing hilarious. Second, there was the fact that he never said Hector’s name, like he didn’t know it or couldn’t be bothered to learn it. Third was how obvious it was that he didn’t even care—and acted like, Who would?—whether Hector and I were going to the dance together or not. Fourth was his acting like the relationship he’d imagined us to be carrying on was funny, either because it was ludicrous and sad that anyone would want me, or because we were two losers who’d found one another so we could be losers together. Possibly it was both of these things at the same time. When Cal insulted you, he was always thorough about it.

  At lunch I found Hector and pulled him aside. “Cal is . . . displeased with us.”

  “What? Is our Honor Week homage to his greatness insufficiently groveling? Does he want us to play with his balls a little bit, too?”

  “Something like
that,” I said, laughing ruefully. “He wants to make sure we’re going to the Homecoming dance.”

  Hector looked across the cafeteria to the table where Esme Kovacs was sitting with her friends, all of whom would have been described first and foremost as “nice.”

  “Yeah, we’re going,” Hector said, clasping at the back of his neck with his hand like he was sheepish about this, like there was something embarrassing about going to a dance with Esme Kovacs. I had no doubt she would be a vision in petal pink with freshly manicured nails and perfectly coiffed curls.

  “How about you?” Hector asked, which caught me off guard.

  “I don’t think I have a choice,” I said, but that wasn’t what he was asking about, I knew. “I’m not going with anyone.”

  Hector looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “You should ask someone.”

  “Like who?” I scoffed.

  “Like whoever you want to.”

  “But . . .” I was about to go on about how no one would want to go to a dance with me and I didn’t know who to ask anyway, but Hector held up his hand to stop me.

  “What if instead of saying whatever horrible thing you’re about to say about yourself, you just asked someone? You’re smart, you’re interesting. You’re a good conversationalist. Not now, maybe, but in general.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I’m tired of watching you tear yourself down. I know you think that nobody would want to go with you, but I’m saying that you’re wrong.”

  Oh god, I thought. He knows. He knows I almost kissed him last year. He knows I was in love with him.

  Or worse, what if he felt guilty? In the couple of weeks since he’d gotten together with Esme, I’d been spending a lot more time by myself. No more Saturday night treks to The Last Bookstore or eating greasy slices of pizza on Hollywood Boulevard. This was probably his way of prodding me out of my solitude so he could enjoy going to the dance without worrying about whether I was going to be okay.

  “I do not tear myself down. I would be a lovely Homecoming date,” I told Hector, my chin raised haughtily.

  “Then ask somebody to go with you.”

  “I will.”

  Hector knew me too well to let it go at that.

  “I dare you,” he said. As coercion techniques went, I was a sucker for this one every time.

  I scanned the cafeteria until my eye fell on the first person with whom I could imagine spending an evening at a high school dance without actively wishing for death.

  Soren Bieckmann looked surprised to see me when I presented myself at his lunch table and told him I thought we should go to the dance together.

  “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am straight-up legitimately asking you.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re asking.”

  “Sorry,” I said. In my nervousness, I might have been a little brusque. “Let me try again. Would you be interested in going to Homecoming with me?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need a date, and I think going with you might not be without its merits.”

  “You know I don’t do that anymore, right?”

  That explained why he’d sounded so suspicious of my motives. Poor guy, I thought, realizing things like this must happen to him all the time.

  “I don’t want drugs, Soren,” I explained. “All I want is not to go by myself.”

  And that’s how we ended up going.

  XXXIV

  Raw, Naked Feelings

  In the days leading up to Homecoming, the anonymous notes in the blocky all-caps handwriting started to appear in my locker again.

  HELEN NORWOOD: SUSPENDED—3 DAYS

  EDWIN STIRATT: BANNED FROM EXTRACURRICULARS—2 MONTHS

  LETICIA PURCELL: CAFETERIA DUTY—1 WEEK

  The Honor Council punished lots of people. None of these sentences was particularly tough, but it didn’t take a genius to see what Deep Throat was suggesting: that maybe the Honor Council was punishing people who hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Deep Throat—that was what I’d started calling this person who left notes in my locker, in my head anyway. It was the nickname those Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave to their high-ranking, deep-cover informant when they were reporting on the Watergate scandal.

  Because that was who my informant was, right? That was who it had to be, someone inside Cal’s twisted regime, just trying to make sure that someone on the outside knew what was going on.

  Which one of them was it, though?

  Rebecca Ibañez was no insider, having clawed her way back onto the Council after losing her seat the previous year. However, I wondered if that fact would make her less, rather than more, inclined to leak classified information. Esme would have taken the information to Hector, not me, and if it was Zelda Parsons, then her cover was even deeper than the real Deep Throat’s, who had worked for Nixon but stopped short of actually dating him. Kian Sarkosian actually seemed to be friends with Cal, so that left Maddie Urrea, she of the alleged quinceañera after-party that Cal had been threatening to crash, and two freshmen, about whom I knew nothing other than their names. And then there was the possibility that Cal himself was trying to mess with me.

  Not only did I not know who Deep Throat was; I wasn’t sure what he or she wanted me to do with any of this information.

  Not knowing what course to take, I did nothing, except worry about it. On top of that, I worried about all the last-minute details Hector and I had to take care of—the DJ who’d cancelled at the last minute, the impossibility of getting anybody who owned a food truck to reply to a text and let you know if they were going to show up.

  On top of all of that, I worried about my date with Soren.

  The only thing I knew about him was that he’d once been a drug dealer and addict, but now supposedly wasn’t. He probably found politics and history horribly boring, and I didn’t know anything about surfing or video games. There was an extremely good chance we would have nothing to talk about.

  When I found him waiting for me outside of third period the day before the dance, I assumed he’d also had second thoughts and was going to back out. Instead, he asked if he could pick me up at six so we could go to dinner beforehand.

  This seemed like overkill for a date I’d entered into on a dare, but I said sure.

  “What color is your dress?”

  “I’m not wearing a dress.”

  “Then what color corsage should I get you?”

  Was this what formal dances did to people? Was this how they acted? Was it normal? I still don’t exactly know, but I had to admit, it was strange and nice. No matter how nice, though, I wasn’t wearing a corsage.

  “You should donate the money to science.”

  “How about I buy you tacos instead?” Soren suggested, and I mentally congratulated myself on having had the good sense to ask him out in the first place. Since Soren was going full-on gentleman, I decided to make an effort, too. A dress and a corsage and a manicure were still out of the question, but so, too, was my JOHN MCCAIN IS MY HOMEBOY t-shirt.

  Eventually, what I decided to wear was a pair of black satin cigarette pants with a sleeveless tuxedo shirt and a bowtie. I parted my hair and slicked it to the side, and in a nod to the festive spirit of the evening, I put on some silver eye shadow and body glitter. The result was a kind of androgynous quirk that most people probably wouldn’t have called “pretty,” but as I turned from side to side in the mirror, there was no denying that it worked on me.

  My parents told me how nice I looked, then found reasons to hover around the front door, waiting for a glimpse of my Homecoming date. It made me nervous. For the first time in a while, I saw my parents as other people might see them. I was used to my father’s coffee-stained teeth and mad-scientist hair. I found my mother’s nasal Midwestern intonations to be somewhat endearing, but I was not sure what Soren would make of them.

  When Soren arrived, tho
ugh, I didn’t care what he thought about any of us. He was dressed in faded cargo shorts and a threadbare Fugazi t-shirt, carrying a giant plastic bag, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said when I opened the door.

  “Are you, like, on something?” I asked, inspecting his pupils.

  “Fuck no,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis. “It’s salt water. I was surfing all afternoon and my phone died and I totally lost track of time.”

  He held up the plastic bag, which I realized was a dry cleaning bag with hangers sticking out of it. “Can I change clothes here?”

  “Bathroom’s down the hall,” I said.

  As Soren disappeared down the hall, I noticed my parents whispering to each other behind their hands.

  “What?” I asked them.

  My mother straightened up defensively. “Are you going to introduce us to your friend?”

  “Once he’s dressed.”

  A few minutes later, Soren emerged in a black pinstripe suit, purple shirt, and a purple and navy blue necktie that I seriously coveted for my own collection. He’d combed his hair and it looked like he’d applied eyedrops, too.

  “Ta da,” he said, soft-shoeing down the hallway.

  “Soren, these are my parents, Tessa and Jason McCarthy.”

  As Soren shook their hands, I saw my father clear his throat and adjust his posture so that all present would notice and recognize that he was the Father of a Teenage Daughter.

  “Young man, have you been drinking?” he asked, trying to sound stern and paternal.

  “I’m eight months sober, so no,” Soren said, unrattled by my father’s somewhat rude, if reasonable, question. “There is nothing stronger than Peet’s coffee in my bloodstream.”

  My parents did not have shit to say to that. I don’t think they felt much better about sending me out into the night with an 18-year-old who attended AA meetings, but at least they seemed to appreciate his sincerity.