I, Claudia

by Mary McCoy

  “What if you and Kian had walked in to school that Monday holding hands? What do you think would have happened?”

  “Cal would have made his life miserable.”

  “But Kian didn’t seem to care.”

  “He would have been off the Honor Council within the month—either kicked off or forced to resign.”

  “He didn’t seem to care about that either.”

  “Well, then I would have lost my informant, wouldn’t I?”

  “Was that all he was to you?”

  “I wasn’t going to let him throw that away for me.”

  “Wasn’t that Kian’s decision?”

  “It would have been the wrong decision.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “Which part, Claudia?”

  “The part where he decided that he wanted to be with me.”

  XLVII

  The Part of the Story Where You Will Like Me Less

  We are all the heroes of our own stories, aren’t we? There is always a reason we act as we do, and when we act in a way that is less than admirable, the contrast to the rest of our lives provides the context.

  All of this is to say that we are approaching the part of the story where you will like me less, which is not to assume that you like me now.

  I am telling you what happened. The fact that these things happened near me makes me look bad enough even if they were not caused by me. At this point, all I can ask is that you try to separate the things I did from the things that happened, to remember that these are, in many cases, two completely different sets of things.

  What I told you I said to Kian was really all that I said. It’s not like I told him we could be together once Cal was out of the way. Besides, the way we left things that night probably killed any lingering desire he had to be my boyfriend.

  I never told him to do anything except leave.

  XLVIII

  Better Off Before I Came Along

  It was around the time we came back from spring break that Cal’s grip on reality became increasingly tenuous. He was suspicious of everyone, even his closest friends. One day he’d be walking down the hall with his arm thrown around Chris Gibbons’s shoulder, the next, he’d stand up in the cafeteria, knocking Chris’s chair over backwards and accusing him of undermining his authority in some way.

  He announced that he was overriding Hector’s decision and instead of a row of cypress trees honoring Soren’s memory, the senior class gift would be a row of lemon trees honoring Soren’s memory. Not that it mattered, not that Cal even cared about anything except getting his own way.

  People were like mice around him, tiptoeing past, trying to avoid his attention because if Cal was aware of you, Cal would find a way to punish you. If you were weak or shy or vulnerable, he loved that, but if you were confident or powerful or popular, he loved that even more. By April, everyone on the Senate except for Hector had been called up on some minor charge, most of them bogus—using cell phones during class; plagiarizing math homework; unexcused absence from school (I had the flu the day we came back from spring break, and while the timing was undeniably convenient in allowing me to avoid Kian, a firmly worded note from Dr. Christina Xiu, head of pediatrics at Cedars Sinai Hospital and my longtime physician, absolved me of Cal’s charges).

  I often thought about what Livia had said to me her first day back at Imperial Day: Are you happy with the way things turned out?

  Livia and I blamed each other for Cal’s power grab. We blamed each other for not being able to stop him, but I wondered, did Livia blame herself the way I did? When she passed me in the hallway, did she think about that afternoon in the West Gym and how we’d run away instead of doing something?

  The Tuesday Senate meeting after spring break was the first time I’d seen Hector in two weeks. After we’d dispatched our business and everyone had cleared out of the room—even Macro and Jesse Nichols, who always stayed until the bitter end—it was just Hector and me. It was weird to think how sophomore year we’d been inseparable, and now, I couldn’t remember the last time we’d been alone together.

  Did I still have feelings for him, or were they just gone? Would they come back if he and Esme broke up? I’d fallen for Kian, I cared about him—whatever you think about what I did, you should know that I did care about him—but it wasn’t the same as the secret, all-encompassing, desperate thing I’d felt for Hector last year. I’d chosen Hector. I’d seen him patiently dealing with his misspelled, ratfucked campaign posters freshman year, and the first time I talked to him, something inside me sat up and took notice.

  “Where were you over spring break?” Hector asked, taking advantage of our rare unstructured solitude to actually talk. “Did you get grounded? Were you trapped under something heavy?”

  “I—” I felt the blush creeping up my cheeks until they tingled, and the truth just came out. “I met someone. It was weird. In a good way.”

  Even if I couldn’t tell him the whole truth, I didn’t want to lie to him any more than I had to. Besides, a secret like that? You just want to tell someone. It’s too good to keep to yourself.

  As for what Hector thought about it, I couldn’t tell exactly. He half-chuckled, then ran his fingers over the close-shaved hairline at the nape of his neck and looked down at the desk.

  Finally, he looked up and smiled at me. “That’s great, Claudia. Who is it?”

  And you see, that’s the problem with telling people things. It makes them want to know more things.

  “He doesn’t go here. He might live in Canada. He might be a figment of my imagination.”

  That would be the easiest thing to believe, right? That no one would want to be with me? But Hector just shook his head, like he was disappointed in me.

  “Fine, don’t tell me. I wish you’d have come over to Esme’s last weekend is all. It was boring without you.”

  “It was boring being with your girlfriend?”

  “It was boring being with my girlfriend and all of her friends, none of whom likes me very much.”

  “Why not? You’re Hector Estrella,” I said. “You’re delightful.”

  “They seem to think she was much better off before I came along.”

  “Well, that is demonstrably true,” I said.

  The past few months had not gone well for Esme, as if Cal was punishing her for choosing Hector instead of him. She’d been suspended once for tardiness and sent home twice on dress code violations. Between the harassment, the turtle murders, and Soren’s death, her parents were one step away from pulling her out of Imperial Day midyear.

  “The only way she’s allowed to hang out with me anymore is if a whole shield-like legion of her friends is there. It’s awful.”

  “Is it worth it?” I asked, and I wasn’t just asking for Hector’s sake. Why did Esme stay with him? It would be so much easier on her if she let him go.

  “Actually, we broke up.”

  “When?”

  “Saturday. She sent everybody else home, and for a minute, I thought I was actually going to get to be alone with her. I was, but only because she was about to dump me. I tried getting ahold of you, but . . .”

  But I was up in my room with Kian.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s okay. Maybe we’re both better off this way.”

  It was the way he said it that pissed me off, like he was just going to give up because this was the way things were now. I wasn’t going to let Hector Estrella go around thinking that this was just one of those normal things that happened. This was something that had been done to him. It had been done to all of us.

  “You know it’s all his fault,” I said.

  “Whose fault?”

  “Cal’s,” I said. “Who else? He’s the one who basically tried to coerce Esme into—who knows what—at Homecoming and he’s made her life a living hell ever since. Your relationship, Esme’s life, Soren, the whole school walking around like they’re
expecting to get a hatchet between the eyes, and it’s all that fucker’s fault, every last bit of it, and if we can find some way to take him down, impeach him, recall him, have a vote of no confidence, I don’t know, we should make it our life’s fucking mission to do that.”

  A strange look passed over Hector’s face. Did he agree with me? Did he already know all of this? Did he know in his bones that if we didn’t take action, no one would? The ordinary channels had failed, there was nothing else but to turn vigilante.

  All Hector said to me, though, was “I think you’re taking all of this too seriously, Claudia. You should rest, pull back from the Senate stuff if you have to. I can take care of things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just things. I’ll take care of them.”

  That’s what he said. That’s all that he said. That’s all I knew about it.

  Just like Kian, just like Livia, I never told him to do anything. Whatever people are saying, I certainly never told Hector to hurt anybody.

  XLIX

  Because You’re a Rapist Scumbag

  It was a Friday when it all came to an end, the Friday after I’d told Hector that Cal needed to be taken down, and it began, like so many Fridays, with a school assembly in the auditorium.

  At high schools all over the country, people just like us were filing into dimly lit auditoriums, pulling up the hoods on their sweatshirts and settling in for a nap as the principal took the stage to welcome the college admissions counselor or dating violence expert or traveling circus performers who would be enriching them that morning.

  At Imperial Day Academy, however, this assembly had been planned by Cal, and its featured speaker was Cal. The bastard even introduced himself. We were ostensibly gathered there that morning to honor all the seniors who’d won scholarships, but it was clear Cal had been looking for an excuse to stand in front of the student body and list off all the prestigious schools he’d been admitted to and all the scholarships he’d won so far.

  “I didn’t get into Harvard, by the way,” he said with a wolfish grin. “And the reason I’m telling you that is to inspire you. If someone like me can apply to Harvard and not get in, the lesson you should draw from that is that if the admissions office at one school is too dumb to appreciate you, remember, it’s their loss.”

  I decided I’d had enough. I got up and walked out of the auditorium, looking back over my shoulder just long enough to see Cal glare at me, and I knew that he would file away the fact that I’d left in the middle of his speech, and that sooner or later, he’d make me pay for it.

  At that moment, though, it was worth it. The hall was empty and quiet, and standing alone in it with my eyes closed, my head tilted back against the wall, I felt better than I’d felt since spring break.

  I didn’t hear the auditorium door open, so when I opened my eyes and saw Mrs. DiVincenzo standing in front of me, I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “Are you okay, Claudia?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t feeling well,” I said. “I needed some air.”

  “Do you need to go to the nurse’s office?”

  That sounded nice, I thought, a cool, dark room to hide out in for an hour or so. I wondered how often the nurse’s office was used by legitimately ill people and how often it was just people like me who needed a rest from the bleakness and misery of the world.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. “I just need a minute.”

  Mrs. DiVincenzo nodded and had just turned to go back into the auditorium when my phone rang. I groaned. I’d forgotten to turn off the ringer, which never happened. Because at Imperial Day, we turned a blind eye to coercion, election fraud, and abuse of power, but woe upon your head if you left your cell phone turned on during school hours.

  It was Kian, too, which made the whole thing worse. What made him think that I’d answer a phone call when I hadn’t replied to any of the texts he’d sent since he left my house the Saturday night before? What did he want that was so important? And where was he calling me from when he was supposed to be in the assembly like everyone else?

  Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure, but given what happened later that day, I have a few ideas what Kian might have been calling about.

  A pained look crossed Mrs. DiVincenzo’s face, like it hurt her more to do this than it would hurt me.

  “Can’t you let it go just this once?” I asked, even as I handed the phone over to her.

  “You can come pick it up in my room after eighth period,” she said, then motioned back toward the auditorium. “Just be glad it didn’t happen in there, right?”

  And then I realized why Mrs. DiVincenzo had followed me out in the first place. She was trying to help me. She was trying to get me back inside that auditorium before I was gone long enough for Cal to punish me for it, and I realized that if the teachers knew about it, knew what he was and what he was capable of, and this was all they could do—light damage control at best—then we were all good and fucked.

  After the assembly, I saw Chris Gibbons, Astrid Murray, Macro, and Jesse Nichols huddled together in the hallway whispering. They kept their distance from Cal. None of them went up to tell him what a great job he’d done. Cal passed through the crowd with a dangerous, stormy look on his face, daring someone to get in his way. I could have sworn I saw Livia pass by, lock eyes with Chris Gibbons for a moment, then nod at him, like they were sharing some kind of secret signal.

  The Honor Council goons were nowhere to be seen during lunch. People filled up every table so there were no extra seats, spread their meals out so there was no extra room. For the first time in his life, Cal ate lunch by himself.

  We all knew to stay out of his way when he was like this, and today was worse than usual. Only an idiot would have engaged him when he was in this state, much less picked a fight with him—which was exactly what Kian did.

  Kian walked up to Cal while he sat alone at that lunch table, leaned down, and said loudly enough for the surrounding tables to hear him, “Maybe the reason you didn’t get into Harvard is because you’re a rapist scumbag.”

  If the reason he’d called was to tell me what he was planning to do in the cafeteria that day, I would have tried to talk him out of it. It was possible he hoped I’d try to talk him out of it.

  However, there is also the possibility that there was more to it than that. After all, Kian wasn’t an idiot. He’d basically been an undercover informant on the Honor Council for two years, and the only person who knew a thing about it was me. Kian was the best liar I’d ever met, so why would he choose that moment to blow his cover unless there was some greater purpose to it?

  Cal grabbed his lunch tray in both hands, swung it around, and hit Kian in the face, knocking him to the ground. His head smacked against the tile.

  “Say that again, you little bitch,” Cal said, then threw the tray down on Kian’s prone body and walked out of the cafeteria like he’d just remembered he had something else to do. There was no look of horror on his face at having lost control, no fear of what would happen to him next, no regret at what he’d done or shame at what we’d think of him.

  He was Cal. He did whatever he wanted, whatever he did was right, and no one ever stopped him.

  A hush fell over the cafeteria as he walked out, and I saw something come over the faces of every person in the room. I don’t know what to call that look exactly, so I’ll call it this: motive.

  The thing that happened to Cal later on that day—I know that some people think Kian did it, or that Hector did it, or that I told them to, but I was in the cafeteria that day, and what I know is this:

  The moment Cal smashed Kian’s face with the cafeteria tray in front of a room full of witnesses, none of whom had the power to stop him, everyone in that cafeteria, every single one of us, became capable of doing the thing that happened next.

  L

  I’m Not a Monster

  This is the story of what happened to Cal, but it is also the story of how I came to be t
he president of the Imperial Day Academy Honor Council, and after I finish telling it to you, it will become the story of why they are putting me on trial.

  They say they’re putting me on trial for fraud and election tampering and for what happened to Cal, but really, it’s because they realize they made a mistake in naming me president and they’d like to take it back.

  A person like me was never supposed to be the face of the Imperial Day Academy. A person like me was never meant to wield that kind of power. It was bad enough that the son of a disgraced State senator was running the Senate, but to have a limping, stuttering, ugly, unpopular, foul-mouthed malcontent in charge of the Honor Council was unthinkable.

  So why did they choose me?

  Why was I there, in exactly that moment and exactly that place?

  I swear to you, no one told me what was about to happen to Cal. I hadn’t even been in the hallway by the West Gym since the day Livia and I had gone there together.

  The whole week, Kian had been waiting for me in the hallway after eighth period. Every day, I’d managed to spot him and take a different route in time to avoid whatever he planned to ask me.

  The day of the assembly, the day Cal had bashed his face with a cafeteria tray, I almost had a change of heart when I saw Kian standing by my locker, his lip swollen and split, a bruise blooming on his cheek. I thought about listening to whatever he had to say to me, whether it was to ask me again to be his girlfriend or to tell me I was a rotten person for kissing him in private, then treating him like a stranger in public. I thought about it, but I didn’t go to him because I realized it would require less of me to leave things broken between us than it would to fix them.

  So I did what was easier, and I walked down the hall in the opposite direction.

  Even so, I wouldn’t have ended up near the West Gym if I hadn’t remembered at that moment that I’d forgotten to pick up my phone from Mrs. DiVincenzo. I trotted toward the nearest stairwell and hobbled up to the third floor. Of course I’d been busted by the teacher with the most inconveniently located room, and of course it was a Friday, after an extraordinarily trying day and Mrs. DiVincenzo had already gone home for the weekend by the time I got there.