by Mary McCoy
“I can’t tell you,” she said. Was it my imagination or did I see a look of relief flash across her face when I walked into the room? “It was submitted anonymously.”
“Shouldn’t the newspaper have a policy against that?” Cal asked, pacing back and forth in front of Ruby. “Aren’t you encouraging people to say any irresponsible thing they want to without repercussions?”
“We don’t print the irresponsible ones,” Ruby stammered.
“And who decides? You?”
“We all do,” Ruby answered. “The whole editorial staff.”
“So the whole editorial staff agreed with the decision to print this letter?” he asked.
That was when I heard that dangerous edge creep into Cal’s voice, the one that meant his ranting was about to become specific and personal. He hadn’t noticed me yet, so I cleared my throat to let him know there was a witness to whatever he was going to say to Ruby next. He looked back over his shoulder at me, then said, “I don’t remember the editorial staff losing their shit last year when Claudia and Hector took over the Senate.”
“Nobody is losing their shit, Cal,” I said.
Except you, I thought.
“What do you want, Cal?” Ruby asked, looking eager to have the conversation done with.
“A voice,” Cal replied. “A column where I can explain myself, and maybe keep the Weekly Praetor from turning the school against me.”
To anyone else, the appropriate response would be “No one is trying to turn the school against you,” but the way Cal loomed over Ruby, the way he’d gradually backed her up against a row of computer tables as he paced, kept her from arguing.
“Write something up and send it to me,” she said. “I’ll take it to the rest of the staff and we’ll see if we can run it.”
Cal glared at her. It didn’t matter that she’d said “maybe.” All he heard was that she hadn’t said “Yes. You’re right. Of course, Cal. Whatever you want.”
Within a week, Esme Kovacs revealed character—and perhaps foresight—I had not known she possessed, and resigned from the Honor Council in protest. Cal made no move to stop her, and wasted no time bringing back the spineless, witless Jesse Nichols to take her place.
I don’t know how Cal sold another special appointment to Dr. Graves, but ever since his swift—and almost certainly unjust—handling of the Homecoming Turtle Massacre, he was a golden boy to Imperial Day administration. We were a bunch of turtle-murdering sickos, but there was Cal Hurt to keep us in line. He made problems like us go away, quietly and forever, and in return, they gave him whatever he wanted.
If you stood in the third-floor hallway after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the Honor Council heard testimony, you would see a nonstop stream of sycophants, cowards, liars, rats, and reprobates going in and out the door. No one cared if they were seen because the Honor Council brought charges against so many people, it became almost impossible to guess who was testifying against whom. People disappeared right and left, and no one knew why.
Though not yet the darkest time, it was well on its way there. Everyone was on edge. Hector wasn’t the only one with insomnia—it became endemic. Some people picked at their lunches, developed nervous tics, and cried in the bathroom between classes when it became too much. Others began cutting class and partying too much. Chris Gibbons was in higher demand than Soren had ever been. People figured it was only a matter of time before they were brought up on Honor Council charges, so they might as well have done something to deserve it.
Meanwhile, Cal and his friends—Chris Gibbons, Astrid Murray, and the underclassmen who aspired to their delinquency—roamed the school like apex predators, looking for anything smaller and weaker, anything that confirmed what they already suspected: that they could do whatever they wanted.
One day, Cal and Chris Gibbons were making their daily procession down the hall to Ms. Yee’s fourth-period AP European History. This was always a raucous affair that involved checking each other against lockers, leaping in the air to whack any sign or ledge within jumping distance with the palms of their hands, and bothering freshman girls.
There was one girl in particular, Moira Riggs, who was a frequent target because her locker was right outside Ms. Yee’s room. We had five minutes between classes, and Moira’s fourth-period class was on the other side of the building. If she got in and out of her locker by the two-minute mark, she was fine, but if she stopped to use the bathroom or was late getting out of third period, she was still there when Cal and Chris came by. Moira wasn’t an especially pretty or popular freshman, but she did have an enormous rack, and it was for this that Cal and Chris sought her out.
They would bounce down the hall toward her, chanting, “Boingy, boingy, boingy!” and then they would surround her. Don’t get me wrong. They were nice to her—sort of, if you thought that an aggressive combination of teasing and flirting was nice. In fact, many upperclassman girls at Imperial Day loathed Moira because of the attention that Cal and Chris paid to her.
But then Moira would start trying to extricate herself from that attention so she wouldn’t be late to class, and they would barricade her at her locker. The whole time they’d say things like, “You don’t have to go yet,” and “You can be late,” and “If you get in trouble, we’ll get you out of it.” They could do that because their fourth-period class was right there, and the second the bell rang they could slip in the door and be in their seats before Ms. Yee even started taking roll.
It was all friendly, it was all in fun, but you could see Moira’s face turn panicked as the seconds raced by, and then the bell would ring and her panic would turn to resignation as Cal and Chris ran into Ms. Yee’s room without even saying goodbye to her.
This went on until one day, Ms. Yee was standing out in the hallway between classes and watched the whole thing happen.
“Mr. Gibbons! Mr. Hurt!” she barked, hands planted on her hips like Napoleon. “Leave Miss Riggs alone and get in your seats this minute.”
“The bell hasn’t rung yet,” Chris Gibbons said.
“Even so,” said Ms. Yee, her voice drawing a line on the linoleum that even Chris Gibbons should have known better than to cross.
Moira Riggs had taken advantage of the distraction to gather her books and slam her locker door shut. She’d only taken a step or two down the hall when Cal caught her by the bra strap and tugged her back.
“You aren’t even going to say goodbye?” he asked, as if Ms. Yee wasn’t standing right there.
“You’ll get in trou—” Moira started to say.
I was not there that day, but I heard from an eyewitness that Ms. Yee marched over to them, pried Cal’s fingers from Moira Riggs’s bra strap and barked, “Get to class.”
“Get your hands off of me,” Cal said, pulling away from Ms. Yee like she’d struck him. “I didn’t do anything.”
It was then that five years of teaching at Imperial Day, being pestered for extra credit and grade changes, badgered to participate in Honor Week and chaperone dances, tasked with maintaining order over students who felt free to ignore or question even the most reasonable of requests—it was then that it all finally caught up with Ms. Yee.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Get out of here. Get out of my sight.”
Moira Riggs stood rooted to the spot until Ms. Yee turned to her and added, “You. Get to class.”
According to my eyewitness, Cal pointed at Ms. Yee and said, “You don’t talk to me like that.”
She didn’t reply, but turned and went back into the classroom, slamming the door shut behind her. Cal’s reptile smile spread across his face as he ran down the hall after Moira, probably already thinking about how he was going to get even.
The handful of people still in the hallway when it happened stared after them, still half-stunned by what they’d seen. Later, Cal would call them all as witnesses, and they would confirm certain portions of his story: that Ms. Yee had grabbed his hand, sworn at him,
turned her back to him, and slammed a door in his and Chris Gibbons’s faces.
In mournful tones, Cal would explain to Dr. Graves and the Board that Ms. Yee had been rude to him in the past, that she’d snapped at him when he asked her to participate in Honor Week, ignored him when he asked her about grades he’d received.
Nobody said a word about Moira Riggs’s bra strap, not even Moira Riggs.
Rumor has it that Ms. Yee refused to speak on her own behalf, refused to defend herself against any of the charges.
Maybe she thought that a teacher with an advanced degree from an esteemed university, five years of experience, a track record of impeccable student AP scores, and no prior complaints need not dignify such accusations with a response. Maybe she didn’t think anything would come of it. I mean, it wasn’t like what she’d done was that terrible. It wasn’t like Cal didn’t have it coming.
But that’s where I was wrong.
After the Board recommended that she be suspended without pay for two weeks for improper conduct toward a student, Ms. Yee tendered her resignation.
“That you would blindly accept the word of a tyrant and a bully who has cowed your student body into the service of his whims and vendettas through fear and intimidation, that you would place so much power in the hands of such a person, leaves me with little choice but to conclude that Imperial Day is not the place I thought it was when I accepted this position five years ago.”
She wrote a letter to Dr. Graves, to the Board, and to Ruby Greenberg, who was fool enough to print it in the Weekly Praetor.
Around the time of Ms. Yee’s disciplinary hearing, Rebecca Ibañez finally had enough and quit the seat she’d fought to win back, and Cal had the gall to bring Chris Gibbons in to replace her. That did it. The Honor Council was officially a mockery, and the most frustrating thing was, Hector and I couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t like the previous year when we’d swept in with an ambitious agenda and made things happen, while the Honor Council stumbled under Ty’s leadership. Now we had twice as many senators and got half as much done. Cal had us so on edge, we couldn’t act; we could only react.
Macro Stinson, Jesse Nichols, and Chris Gibbons began showing up to every Senate meeting, not just the Tuesday ones that were open to everyone, but the closed, senators-only Thursday meetings, too. The three of them never talked. They never explained what they were doing there. They didn’t have to. They recorded a lot of things on their phones and wrote a lot of things down, and there was nothing we could do about it. Every idea we mentioned, whether it was something innovative like planting a community garden, or something mundane like buying a senior class gift to the school, Cal would make a big show of announcing the idea as his own in his new weekly newspaper column.
I could tell that having to weigh every word was starting to exhaust Hector. The thing was, no matter how careful we were, it was only a matter of time before they would find some way to take something out of context and use it to smear us.
So when we talked about how the mock trial team would carry on until a new advisor could be found, or who would chaperone the Model UN trip to the University of Southern California, we never mentioned Ms. Yee’s name. We spoke like she’d vanished and our memories had been wiped and no such person had ever existed.
Cal’s message was clear: there was no one he couldn’t touch, and if you stood up to him, he’d come after you.
That was why I decided to run away.
XXXVIII
Respect
History is filled with stories of people who fled oppressive regimes. The Marquis de Lafayette saw Robespierre’s mob gathering up their kindling and pitchforks and got out of town before they could kill him. After English prisons and homophobia broke Oscar Wilde, he fled to France, not that it fixed anything or unbroke him. And Trotsky fled Russia more times than anyone can keep track of, though they did eventually find him in Mexico City and put an ice axe through his head anyway.
So I knew that running away wouldn’t necessarily make things better, but it would have the advantage of getting me out of the way during an extremely crucial time.
I remembered the Honor Council hearing during my freshman year, when they’d blindsided Soren with the ridiculous indecent-conduct charges. They’d done it quietly, right before Thanksgiving break. It was a classic Livia move, and I knew there was a very good chance that Cal would use it. I knew there was a very good chance he’d use it on Hector and me.
“When are you doing your college visits?” I asked Hector one day at lunch.
He looked at me like I was insane. “Spring break? Summer? I don’t know. Why?”
“Because I was thinking about going to visit Maisie before Thanksgiving, and I thought maybe you’d want to go with me.”
It wasn’t a normal suggestion, but it also wasn’t the most unreasonable thing in the world to ask. We were college-bound juniors. No teacher ever did anything important the two days before Thanksgiving break. We could fly out Saturday, come back Wednesday, and be munching turkey with our families on Thanksgiving Day. Hector looked at me like I’d suggested we run off to Paris together instead of to Sarah Lawrence.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But thanks.”
I wouldn’t let it drop, though. This was our one hope, our escape. If there was one place Cal and the Honor Council couldn’t follow us, it was on a plane to New York.
“We don’t just have to go to Sarah Lawrence,” I said. “We could tour NYU, Columbia . . .”
Hector cut me off. “I am well acquainted with the schools in the greater New York metro area, Claudia.”
“Then why don’t you want to go?” I asked. “I can help with your plane ticket. My parents have a lot of miles they can cash in.”
“It’s not the money, Claudia.” His eyes narrowed, and I could tell that I’d pushed past Crabby Hector into a Hector I’d never seen before. “Maybe your parents are cool with you taking a week off of school to jet off to New York with a boy, but mine will not be. Mine would flip their shit, as would my girlfriend once she got wind of it—which she would. So, no, it’s not happening. I am not going to New York with you.”
“Fine,” I said, and that was all I said to him for the rest of the day.
Was it because of the money? Was he on edge? Were things strained between him and Esme? I didn’t know why the invitation had upset him so much.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop worrying about Macro and Jesse and Chris and whatever they might be pouring into Cal’s ear from our Senate meetings. He’d twist their words to justify whatever it was that he wanted to do to Hector and me.
I sat up in bed and reached for my phone.
I’m worried, okay? Getting out of town seems like a good idea. For both of us.
Nothing came back even though I knew there was at least a 45 percent chance Hector was also awake, still staring at his ceiling and doing his usual insomniac rituals. Esme was probably his late-night correspondent now, not me.
I had to give the girl credit. I thought she’d fall into the same trap Zelda had once Cal set his eye on her, but Esme saw through it. She stood by Hector, rejected Cal, and resigned her seat on the Honor Council rather than let Cal take it from her. She’d lost, but at least it was on her terms. I had to respect that.
I was about to give up and go to bed when my phone buzzed. Hector had written back:
I know what you’re trying to do and I’m not going to run from him. If he wants me he can come get me. I hope you have fun in NYC.
I had to respect that, too.
XXXIX
Stronger at the Broken Places
When Maisie picked me up at JFK Airport, she had a very conspiratorial look about her.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does your enjoyment of this week hinge upon spending a lot of time on a college campus?” she asked.
“Zero,” I said, because my enjoyment of the week hinged entirely on being with my sister and not at the Imperial Day Academy
.
“Brilliant,” she said, grabbing my luggage off the carousel. She didn’t even have to ask if it was mine, it being the only suitcase plastered with 1992 Jerry Brown presidential campaign stickers.
Even though Maisie carried my suitcase, I could tell that New York City was not going to be easy for me. Everyone walked so fast here. As Maisie and I made our way through the airport terminal toward the shuttle that would take us into Manhattan, Maisie explained that one of her friends from school lived in the city and that she and her family were out of town for the holiday. They’d offered Maisie the run of their Gramercy Park apartment in exchange for the care and feeding of two geriatric cats and some light plant watering.
“If you absolutely need to tour some colleges, we can do that, but otherwise, the city is ours. We can totally rage.”
For a minute, I had fearful visions of Maisie dragging me, stuffed into a midriff top, to a club where we’d brandish fake IDs and do shots.
“Want to go look at some Caravaggios?” she asked, and I was relieved to discover that college life had not changed my sister, at least not in any dull or predictable ways.
After dropping my suitcase off at the apartment, our first order of business was to go uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then afterwards, to a wood-paneled Viennese café, where we drank something called a Kaiser Mélange that was basically coffee with whipped cream and ate chocolate-hazelnut torte. There was even a chamber music quartet.
The next day we went to the Tenement Museum, Grand Central Station, and a diner that used to be a hotel ballroom. We refused to eat in any restaurant that was not at least fifty years old. My sister had always been good to indulge me in the occasional history bender, but this time, she’d outdone herself.
