The Wrong Side of Right

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  She was trying to bait me. I didn’t respond.

  “I mean, you’re Miss Junior Republican now, right? Somebody at the convention called you ‘The next generation of the GOP.’ What does GOP even mean?”

  “Grand Old Party,” I answered. I could hear her choking on the other end of the line.

  “What? I always thought it stood for something serious.”

  “It’s a nickname. Like the elephant’s our mascot.”

  “‘Our’?”

  My defenses started to flare. “Yes. Our. I’m a part of this campaign, so I’m a part of the party too.”

  She didn’t say anything. So I kept going.

  “Question, Penny—when I was asking for advice back in June, weren’t you the one who told me I had to do this?”

  “Go along on the campaign, not go along with everything—”

  She cut herself off with a sigh. I knew what she meant. I ignored it.

  “It’s not so horrible, you know. They’re good people with worthwhile goals. Freedom is a good thing. Personal responsibility is a good thing.”

  “Wow, you’re really into this.” Her voice was quiet. “That must be why I’ve hardly seen you this week.”

  I started to apologize. “There’s just so much going on—”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m watching it on TV.”

  • • •

  I couldn’t sleep that night, and not just from my conversation with Penny. There were no huge events planned Wednesday, just the usual succession of breakfasts, donor handshakes, and volunteer meet and greets. Nothing I hadn’t done a million times this summer. But my stomach was in knots, my limbs jumpy under the covers.

  It was Marta, I realized. I was nervous to see her and I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  When my car arrived at the Starlight Diner the next morning, I felt my nerves sink into dread. More than that, something familiar and unwelcome. Grief.

  I asked the driver to pick me up in exactly forty-five minutes. He was hesitant to leave me, but there were no cameras in sight, the street was quiet, and the diner empty, except for Marta’s slumped silhouette in the usual corner booth.

  Opposite her was an empty seat. The one my mom used to take.

  I drew in a breath and held it as I clomped in my low heels across the shiny diner floor, too nervous to exhale until Marta jumped up to hug the air out of me, her eyes glittering.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You look . . . different.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but I sensed that it wasn’t quite a compliment.

  After we’d ordered, Marta asked tentative questions about how my life had changed since the last time we’d talked.

  “Do you like the Coopers?”

  “Yes, very much,” I answered. “They’ve been wonderful. I haven’t gotten to know the senator as much because of the campaign . . .”

  Marta blanched. Before I could ask her why, she smiled. “And you’re a big sister!”

  “Yeah! They’re great. We get plenty of bonding time out on the road. The campaign bus is big, but—”

  “Have you seen Penny since you’ve been back?”

  After chatting for a few more minutes, it occurred to me that Marta was changing the subject every time the campaign came up. If I didn’t know her so well, I would’ve suspected she hated talking politics. Something was off.

  “No Freddie today?” I asked, thinking that question would be safe enough.

  She took a gulp of water. “Freddie actually passed back in May.”

  “Oh no.” Freddie too. “I’m so sorry.”

  Marta’s fingers kept tapping the edge of the booth, as if she were waiting for a buzzer to go off. It wasn’t like her to be this antsy.

  She’s feeling what I am, I told myself. The emptiness of the booth. Last time there were three of us, four with Freddie, and now it’s just us. And we don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.

  I tried again to break the ice. “How’s the Cocina?”

  She froze even more at that, eyes wide like I’d caught her with her hand in a cash register. “I actually moved on a few months ago.”

  So that was why she was anxious. She felt guilty about leaving my mom’s organization. Maybe she saw it as breaking a promise to her best friend, but who was I to hold that against her? I reached out to put my hand on top of her restless one. It balled up under my palm.

  I tried to smile. “So where are you working now?”

  She swallowed, pulled her arm back.

  “I’m fundraising for the Lawrence campaign, actually. I’ve always been an active Democrat and it was too big an opportunity to pass up.”

  She said it quickly, defensively. It did come as a bit of a shock to hear that she was working on the opponent’s campaign, but I made sure not to show it.

  “That’s amazing, Marta—”

  “You’re happy, right?”

  She was holding on to the booth, staring at me so intently that it was impossible not to read the bare emotion in her eyes. The fear, the doubt. No.

  The guilt.

  And then I realized. Had I been standing, I would have staggered back.

  The waitress brought our lunch plates. Neither of us looked at them.

  “It was you,” I said. Her head fell in acknowledgment, but I had to say it anyway. All of it. “Mom told you who my father was. And you told them.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I thought—he had to know! Cooper, I mean.” She shook her head, correcting herself. “Your father. He had to have known about you by then. All those experts around him, researching every single angle—it seemed impossible that he wouldn’t have found out. And if he knew, then he was the biggest hypocrite I’d ever seen. I owed it to you, Kate, to make it known. Make him acknowledge you.”

  My voice barely came out and when it did, I didn’t recognize it. “Who did you tell first? The Lawrence campaign? Dina Thomas?”

  Her eyes widened at the name, as if she were surprised that I knew the reporter. How naïve did she think I was? But she recovered.

  “The campaign first. They encouraged me to contact the Times, so—”

  “Why not . . .” I shrugged, cutting her off. “I don’t know, me? If this was really about me, Marta, not your career, it seems like I should have been the first to know.”

  She winced. “It was a mistake. I acknowledge that. And I also acknowledge that I was wrong about Cooper. He didn’t know, Kate. About you.”

  I stood, roiling with anger. “I know he didn’t! I live with him, he’s my father. I’m not an idiot, or—or a victim. I know everything.”

  “Okay,” she said, even though I’m sure she suspected I was lying. I didn’t know everything. Not even close. The affair was a big black hole, a blank spot in history, and my impression of the man himself was still fuzzy after weeks of traveling and living with him.

  The only reason I knew that he hadn’t found out about me, hadn’t abandoned me, was that I’d seen his face the first time I met him, the shock on it, the raw truth behind the politician’s mask he so rarely took off.

  “Can you forgive me?” Marta was asking, and I didn’t have an answer, so I just slapped some money on the table and said: “Maybe I’ll see you at the debates.”

  And strode out the door, clutching my cell.

  “I’m done early,” I said when the driver answered his phone. “You can get me now.”

  22

  Back at the hotel, our suite was empty, the TV still on, Fox News interviewing manic convention-goers. There were two publications sitting on the coffee table, Time magazine and the Washington Post. I was too riled up even to sit, but the cover of the magazine stopped me like a whip crack.

  I was on it.

  It was the last photo they’d taken on Sunday—me, Gracie, and Gabe, sharing funnel cake at Magic Mountain. The caption stretched wide across the bottom of the page.

  “The New American Family.”

  I sat and touched the magazine lightly, my anger giving
way to dizzy wonderment, not just because I was on the freaking cover of Time magazine—but because of the warmth I felt reading the headline.

  For once, the public’s spin was right. We were a family. The photo was proof. On the cover, Gabe was smiling up at me, Gracie going for a corner of the funnel cake as I watched her, laughing. We looked glittering, strong. Blessed.

  This cover was evidence of something amazing. I had become a sister, really and truly, and a stepdaughter to Meg, who cared what I thought, who wanted to know my hopes and help me achieve them. The Coopers cared about me. They belonged to me.

  The door to the suite flew open. Elliott’s eyes landed on me and narrowed.

  “You satisfied?”

  With the Time cover? What was wrong? This seemed totally innocent. More than that—positive.

  He leaned over the coffee table, picked up the Post, and threw it at me—actually threw it at me—sending pages fluttering wild as he stalked to the window. Meg walked in as I was trying to gather the paper, Nancy close behind, chattering into the senator’s ear.

  “We blame it on the mother, on the school district. We make Kate the victim here—”

  She cut off when she saw me. I riffled shakily through the pages, seeing nothing about me except an image from the convention that showed half my face on the edge of the frame. Nancy looked to the senator, whose eyes were locked on the carpet, his mouth frozen in a frown. Even Meg wouldn’t look at me.

  I turned another page and finally found something, just as Nancy murmured, “We’ll have to change your speech, Mark.”

  It was the photo of me with my friends, the one that had appeared on the news, making CNN accuse us of pandering to the Hispanic vote. This article took a different slant.

  Cooper Daughter’s Checkered Friendships, it began.

  Kate Quinn attracted national attention earlier this week when she was photographed at a gathering of friends in East LA. Now reports have surfaced that shed new light on the life of the sixteen-year-old prior to her joining the Cooper campaign.

  The neighborhood of East Los Angeles in which a group of thirty friends hosted a welcome home party for Quinn is widely known as a haven for undocumented immigrants. In fact, our investigations found that several of those photographed that day—who have declined to be interviewed—are the children of parents who have been incarcerated and deported, and another, Chester Washington, is himself a convicted criminal . . .

  “Convicted criminal?” I bolted from the sofa and threw down the paper. “Chester? He shoplifted when he was eleven! He was in juvie for like six months and won’t so much as jaywalk now because of it—”

  “Quiet.”

  Everyone froze, staring at the senator. He hadn’t yelled the word, but he’d said it sharply enough to make even Elliott and Nancy retreat to the edges of the room. Meg sat and took my wrist, trying to pull me down next to her, but, my heart racing, I stayed where I was, daring the senator to look up at me.

  He did, slowly.

  “What. Were. You. Thinking.”

  He squinted, waiting for an answer, and the anger that had been thrumming through my veins since seeing Marta flared like alcohol thrown on a bonfire.

  “I was thinking I’d be able to see my friends and be myself for one day. Apparently I was wrong.”

  He flinched, surprised by my tone. I was surprised too. I hadn’t heard that voice come out of myself in a long time, maybe ever.

  The senator breathed in, controlling himself, rinsing the anger from his face but only partly succeeding.

  “Did you know that your friends were the children of illegal immigrants?” His eyes were wide now, imploring, though his face remained grave.

  I sucked in a breath. “I—I don’t think of them that way. I went to school with them. A magnet school, by the way.”

  “That’s not the question.” Nancy’s voice rose up from across the room. I saw Meg’s eyes darting to her but couldn’t read them.

  The senator was still watching, still hopeful.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”

  As the room fractionally relaxed, I steadied my footing, reeling from my own lie. I did know, of course. Not about the two boys who were mentioned in the article along with Chester. But about others much closer to me, who, thank God, had not been exposed. Yet.

  My breath came ragged, my skin prickling with panic. They were right to be mad at me, I realized now—but for the wrong reason.

  What was I thinking, putting the Diazes in the spotlight? How could I be so stupid?

  “That’s what I thought.” The senator sat down and patted the seat opposite him. I obeyed, still shaking a little.

  Elliott strode quickly over. “She’ll need to make a statement.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” I snapped. Meg reached out to hold my arm. “You can drop the third person.”

  As Elliott smiled, his eyes narrowed, a cat watching a mouse. “You. Need. To make a statement. We’ll write it. You read it.”

  “Saying what?”

  The senator cleared his throat. “Exactly what you just told us. You weren’t aware that these people were in the country illegally, and you apologize for your association with them.”

  I could hear an echo of Andy’s voice from that night outside the White House, so sudden and vivid it was as if he were whispering in my ear right now.

  They’ll keep trying to shut you up, or make you say exactly what they’ve written . . .

  I stayed silent for a long time, maybe too long, because when I looked up, Nancy was crouched in front of me, her hands pressed together as if in prayer.

  “Our position is to firmly oppose illegal immigration,” she explained, and my throat went dry. “It’s one of our major policy issues.”

  Our. I turned to the senator, but he was peering at Nancy like a student watches a teacher.

  “It’s important that you fall in line with that.”

  It seemed so reasonable coming from her that I took the legal pad she was handing me, on which she’d hurriedly scribbled a paragraph.

  The words swam on the paper. I pressed my hand over the page to cover them.

  “I won’t read this.”

  Elliott laughed sharply and stalked away, shouting over his shoulder, “I told you. It was only a matter of time before the liberal mother reared her head from beyond the grave.”

  “How dare you!”

  I’m not sure whether Meg said it or I did, but I was the one who stood so quickly that Nancy nearly stumbled onto her backside getting out of my way.

  For one endless moment, I contemplated crossing the room and slapping Elliott across the face. It would be so easy. Instead, I barely managed to get my legs to move me out of the living room and into my own.

  I sat with my back to the door, muffling my tears, wishing my dead liberal mother were here, to tell them all to leave me alone, pack my bags for me, and take me home to our little stucco house a few short blocks from Penny, my best friend, who didn’t deserve to be a “major policy issue,” who I swore, I swore, I would never, ever apologize for.

  We were in sixth grade when Penny got up the nerve to tell me. It was a sleepover night and she’d muted the TV in my bedroom to whisper the secret she’d been keeping since the day we met. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor, our knees touching, her eyes on the ground.

  “Do you still want to be my friend?” she’d asked, and I’d hugged her and promised that we’d be friends forever. I’d kept that promise for five years. I wasn’t about to abandon it now.

  My stomach ached with shame. How could I not have seen this coming? No. How could I have ignored it? Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? I hadn’t wanted to see it. That first day at headquarters, the senator’s stance on immigration felt like a roadblock between us. Now it felt like the Grand Canyon.

  Out in the living room, Meg’s voice rose up in anger, then the door slammed shut into silence.

  After a few minutes, Me
g knocked softly. “Kate? You want to come out and talk about this?”

  I opened my mouth, but didn’t trust myself to answer. A few shaky breaths later, I heard her footsteps moving away, and a little while after that, the door to the suite quietly thudding shut.

  The suite was silent after that. I realized slowly, dully, that they’d left me here. I crawled into my bed, pulled up the covers, and watched the commentary on my room’s TV, the scrolling news tickers finding gleefully creative ways to publicize the burgeoning scandal. After two hours of coverage, three different stations were calling it “Kategate.” I had to admit, it was pretty catchy.

  And then, at about 3:00 P.M., I watched the spin kick in. As the senator left that afternoon’s luncheon, swarmed by reporters, he made light of the situation.

  “Look, this is a non-issue,” he laughed. “These are friends Kate knew from her magnet school, where she and a number of other kids in this photo were straight-A students.”

  There was a flurry of voices, and then he raised his hand.

  “My views on immigration remain the same, but that’s not what this is about—this is an attack on my daughter and my family, and I won’t respond to such low tactics. Thank you.”

  He was so convincing.

  The news footage showed Meg and Gracie behind him as he walked away. No Gabe.

  I muted the TV, confused, and heard a tiny sound, glass clinking against glass. Creeping out of my room, I saw Gabe on the sofa, playing a game on the suite’s Xbox with the volume turned down, a half-full glass of orange juice sitting on the coffee table in front of him.

  “How long have you been here?”

  He shrugged. I curled up beside him, watching as he shot down zombies from a helicopter.

  He paused the game to turn to me. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed and settled back against the sofa. “Why aren’t you at—”

  “I didn’t feel like it,” he said, but there was something in his watchful stare that made me smile.

  “You didn’t want me to be alone?”

  He blinked slowly. “I didn’t want you to leave.”

  His words hit me like a cold wave. I felt first the impact, then the shock.