“That was where it all started. It seems so long ago.” She pauses for what seems like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds. “It was also where we met when you went after Vince, Peyton, and Brian. And it was where I went to be alone after …” Her voice trails off, but her message was clear.
Chelsea looks at me, waiting, but there’s nothing I can say. No words can undo the past. No simple apology can ease the hurt. There is only the future yet to be written. Actions speak louder than words, and I know it’s time to take action. This time I know the right path, and I don’t care if it take me through the depths of Hell itself, I’m going to take it.
“I agreed to meet you, Blake. You said what you had to say. Now I think you should leave.” Chelsea turns away from me again.
“I’m so sorry,” I manage to mumble again before turning to walk away. She never bothers to watch me go.
I walk back to my car, determined to finish this chapter in my life once and for all. Seeing Chelsea was brutal, but I have a feeling the next visit I need to make might be worse. That will be the only thought on my mind as I drive back to my place in D.C. I have to pick something up before heading back north to New York City.
.
-SIXTY-SEVEN-
KYLIE
I am no stranger to staying in on weeknights. In my world, there’s nothing wrong with opening a bottle of merlot and curling up on the couch to watch reruns of old sitcoms on television. Tonight is no different, except I eschewed the sitcoms in lieu of a romantic movie. That and I’m nestled in the arms of the most amazing man I have ever met.
Fate brought us together. It was a perfect storm of events that led to this wonderful moment on a dreary, rain-soaked, mid-November night. My getting fired, Beaumont being involved, his bet with the students, breaking up with his fiancée, and all the ups and downs of the campaign have led us to this.
A dinner out in the city never materialized. We shunned it for a night in, content to laugh at ourselves trying to cook and not to burn down my building in the process. We haven’t left my East Village apartment since we arrived, and with all the groceries we bought before driving down from Millfield two days ago, we shouldn’t have to leave for five more. As much as I would love a night out on the town with Michael, I’m unemployed and have to bear in mind the unpleasant thought that there are bills to pay. His suspension is bound to become a permanent termination, so he will be rowing in the same part of the creek I am shortly. Savings accounts only last so long.
The knock at the door startles both of us. “Expecting company?” Michael asks.
“No. It must be a neighbor,” I say, reluctantly leaving his warm embrace and getting off the couch. It is the only explanation since visitors need to be buzzed in.
Actually, an image flashes through my mind where Jessica picks the lock to the building and is waiting outside my door with a shotgun. Not realistic, I know, but still. She is out there, our relationship is new, and I am insecure about both.
I am trying to convince myself that Jessica would never want him back, but if she did, it scares me to death that he might consider it. The break-up with the woman he was about to marry was only two weeks ago, and it somehow feels wrong that we are this involved so quickly. I know there was a lot of tension between them for months, so maybe it’s not as extreme as it seems. Regardless, a small part of me is nervous that I’m only a rebound fling.
I open the door and almost gasp at the sight in front of me. He looks disheveled, and is soaked from the rain, but the sad, tired eyes have this spark of determination in them. Now what is he up to?
“What do you want?” I ask sharply.
“I’ve come to give you something,” Blake says, sounding emotionally defeated, but still somehow resilient.
“You don’t have anything I want,” I snap, annoyed this sorry excuse for a human being interrupted my perfect evening.
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Let him in, Kylie. Let’s at least hear what he has to say,” Michael says from behind me. Ugh. I forgot how infuriating men can be, even this one.
Blake’s eyes grow to the size of saucers, shocked to see the former iCandidate himself standing in my apartment. I can only imagine what must be going through his head right now.
“Michael? I mean, are you guys—”
“Kindred spirits finding comfort and companionship while on emotional sabbatical following the rigors of prostituting ourselves to the media and money-driven American political process? Yes.” Okay, infuriating or not, God, I am falling for this man. Is there a more eloquent way to say we’re dating?
“Oh, okay,” is all Blake can manage as he crosses the threshold into my small Manhattan apartment. We adjourn to the living room, and he declines the drink I offer him. Probably a good thing since I would have most likely poured it on him.
“I’ll get straight to the point. You were writing an article last spring about Winston Beaumont being wrapped up in some shady dealings with the Lexington Group. I know, because I’m the one who got you fired.”
“You’re a little tornado of destruction, aren’t you?” I am seriously considering throwing him out the window without opening it. It’s raining out, which would ruin my couch. Then there’s the expense of replacing the glass. So my unemployment will save him, but oh, imagine the satisfaction of seeing this prick go splat on the street outside. Or better yet, the sight of him impaled on the wrought iron fence below the first floor window.
“She’s plotting about ten ways to kill you right now, Blake, so you should probably get to the point pretty quick.” Damn! How does Michael know that?
“I need her help,” he says to Michael. “I want Kylie to finish that article.”
“You have some nerve,” I say, getting even angrier. He got me fired over it in the first place. “I can’t even if I wanted to. Everyone knows I covered Michael’s campaign. And now we’re together so nobody would take it seriously.”
“I know, you need a source.”
“A source? You mean a source like you?” I give a quick sarcastic laugh and shake my head. “News flash, Beaumont fired you, so nobody would ever believe you either. An ex-staffer spilling his guts won’t get it done.”
“What will get it done?” he asks, without any sarcasm.
“Hard evidence even the most ardent skeptic would find compelling. Documents, emails, voicemails, recordings. I need incontrovertible proof.”
I didn’t notice it when he walked in, but Blake takes the fat accordion file that was tucked under his arm and drops it on the coffee table. In that instant, I knew our world was about to change again.
“You mean this kind of proof?”
.
-SIXTY-EIGHT-
CHESLEA
It’s hard to believe the disappointment of Election Day was exactly a month ago. Our final press conference did little to ease the shock of the whole thing. Since then, the phone calls and interviews that accompany the fallout from any media frenzy slowly dissipated until they died out all together. What I was left with was an uneasy silence in my life, and an inability to fill the void that the absence of the campaign left.
Maybe this is the new normal for me. Things are relatively quiet now, outside of the occasional snarky comment in the hall about sleeping with my teacher. Blake admitted to the lie while trying to undo the damage he chose to inflict. It has been shown on the news a thousand times, but apparently not everyone got the memo, figuratively speaking.
If this campaign taught me anything, it’s you can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle once it’s released. While most of my peers accept what was said were lies, the sideways glances I get from them prove an element of doubt still exists and always will. Thank God I graduate in six months.
My former campaign colleagues seem to share the uneasiness of the situation, although for different reasons. I never truly liked being in the limelight, but Vince and Peyton relished it. Now they walk around like former child actors whose shows were cancel
led.
Xavier and Vanessa at least had sports to fall back on. Xavier is leading the varsity basketball team in scoring, as usual, but is not attacking the game with the zeal he showed last year. His heart is just not in it like it once was. Vanessa feels the same way, or at least that’s what she told us. For them, a new world with fresh opportunities was opened up and then suddenly jerked away. For three months, they weren’t just jocks like everyone had defined them. Now they are.
This whole ordeal may have hit Emilee the hardest. The campaign really brought her out of her shell and gave her a confidence she never knew she had. We have become closer since early November, and she’s now a better friend than Stephanie or Cassandra ever was. I still talk to my old BFFs, but the former campaign staff shares a bond no one else in school can really understand. I think I know how soldiers who serve together in combat feel.
We are all sitting in the cafeteria, staring at our untouched lunches. All except Brian and Amanda, whose first half schedules landed them a different lunch period. Since September, the rest of us have all sat together, using our meager twenty-five minute break to plan strategies, develop action items, and outline tasks for the election. I thought when it was over we would end up going our separate ways. Each of us has other friends in the room we could eat with, but through either habit or necessity, we still all opt to sit with each other under the large flat television mounted over our heads.
“It's still a little weird looking out this window and not seeing reporters creeping around,” Emilee says, staring blankly outside.
“I actually miss having the police escort us into school,” Vince adds with a chuckle. “Why do you think that is?”
That forces me to smile, because I heard it was entertaining watching him fight though the mass of media until the Millfield Police finally stepped in. “You were a paparazzi favorite, Vince. You miss the attention.”
“But I like my privacy,” he offers, almost shamefully.
“Life in a fishbowl.” Xavier mumbles, not looking up. “Just like the fish, you got used to it. Now that you’re back in the wild, you miss the people staring in at you.”
“I’m still having a hard time hanging out with my friends,” Vanessa confesses. We all look at her, but are at a loss for anything to say. It’s silent agreement. We all know what she means.
“It's just different,” she continues after a moment. “They are different. It's like after all this happened, they changed.”
“She’s right. Who would have thought I could ever relate better to my parents than my friends?” Peyton asks.
“Maybe you changed,” Emilee says.
“I think we all changed,” I conclude. And that explains it. It is why, more than a month after we had no business sitting together, we still do. We’re participants in teenage alcoholics’ anonymous meeting where notoriety and value was our booze. We’re a support group for each other, and this isn’t lunch in a high school cafeteria so much as a group therapy session.
Nobody can relate to what we have been through, and that includes Mister Bennit. He may have shared many of the ups and downs that came with the experience, but the view is different for us than him. I’m sure it is different for Miss Slater, too.
When I see her in the hallway between classes, her face is devoid of both emotion and interest. Friends of mine that have her for class say she hasn’t been herself since she called off the engagement. Rumors are circulating around school claim she is dating again, but they are only rumors. She doesn’t talk to any of Mister Bennit’s former campaign staff anymore, so none of us really knows how she’s doing.
“Do you think they are ever going to reinstate Mister Bennit?”
“I wouldn't hold your breath, Peyton,” Emilee says. “They know he did nothing wrong but they’re still dragging this out.”
“He’s not coming back,” I whisper remorsefully. Nobody challenges me because deep down I think they know the truth as well. Mister Bennit took on the principal, the school board, and a lot of parents who thought he was out of line having students run his campaign. He won the chance to run in the race, but lost everything else in the process.
As far as the Millfield Public School District is concerned, he’s a maverick. A loose cannon that broke its tether and must be kicked off the deck before it sinks the ship. How well he teaches, and what he means to his students, are secondary in their minds. Welcome to twenty-first century America. What a shame.
It’s absurd that they haven’t at least bothered to apologize after the truth about the accusation against us came out. I guess the school board has their reasons, but I don’t understand them. All I know is I miss him in class. Ms. Ramsey is a good teacher, and she keeps class interesting, but it’s not the same. The building just seems emptier with him not in it.
“You are awfully quiet for once, Vince,” Xavier asks, barely looking up from his tray.
“I’m still tired from being the voice of the campaign. A human being should not be forced to exist on four hours of sleep a night.”
We all smile because we know exactly how he feels. Between the campaign, school, and tons of homework, I was buried. Sacrificing sleep was the only way to keep up. ‘You have bags under your eyes I could put groceries in’ my dad kept saying. I guess it took its toll on me.
To everyone’s surprise, my grades never really suffered during the campaign. I somehow always found a way to get it all done. The only one of us who struggled was Vince, although he found a way to stay above Mister Bennit’s B grade threshold. Peyton’s grades dipped a little too, but nothing that wouldn’t have been attributed to a case of senioritis if she wasn’t involved in the campaign.
The only real positive from all my new-found free time is the attention I can devote to the ‘Leaning Tower of College Literature’ in our kitchen. Before the campaign, I really wanted to go to Marist up in Poughkeepsie. As good a value as you can find in colleges these days, it was still out of Dad’s price range.
Thanks to my role in Bennitmania, paying for school isn’t a concern anymore. More than a dozen schools offered me full scholarships, including a few from the Ivy League. As appealing as Harvard and Princeton are, I am seriously considering Yale since it is much closer to Millfield. I love Marist, but you just can’t turn down a free Ivy League education.
“I’m bored,” Emilee says, tossing her fork back onto her tray. “Is this what the rest of the year is going to be like?
“You mean feeling like we should be doing something more than sitting here waiting for the bell to ring?” I ask.
“Better get used to it Em,” Vince warns. “This is our new reality.”
Vince is right. This is our new reality. And as much as it is hard to swallow, we might as well get used to it. That is easier said than done though, because part of me is still clinging to hope that the rest of the year doesn’t feel like this.
“Yeah, unless a small miracle happens to change it.”
.
-SIXTY-NINE-
KYLIE
This is a call three weeks in the making. I have dreamt of pressing send ever since Blake showed up at my apartment in the pouring rain. He ruined my perfect night with Michael, and then made my day each of the nineteen that followed.
The phone calls from Madison ceased about two weeks after the election. Her desire to rub her ill-gotten victory in my face succumbed to the realization that I would never pick up the phone. In truth, we had other plans that needed be executed before I spoke with her.
Things like this take time. There are a lot of moving pieces to be accounted for. A lot of things have to happen when playing the game at this level.
I knew where I needed to be at the exact moment the lights dim and the curtain goes up on the next great political scandal of our era. It was a lot of work, but Michael supported me every step of the way like I imagined the man of my dreams would. With all the pieces finally in place, I press send on my phone.
“Kylie?” she says, answering on the th
ird ring.
“Hi, Madison.”
“I didn’t think I would ever hear back from you. I called a few times after the election.”
“You called a few dozen times, actually,” I say without exaggerating. I know because I sent her straight to voicemail for most of those calls.
“Well, I was pretty excited, as you can imagine.”
“Of course.”
“Oh, Kylie, don’t sound so glum. It’s not like you didn’t see this coming. I told you I would beat you.” Not yet. Reel her in a little more.
“Yeah, I suppose you did.”
Madison actually squeals in delight. “Well, it was very brave of you to face me in defeat like this. Even if it took you this long.” Almost there, just a little longer.
“Yeah you won, even if you had to lie and destroy people’s lives to do it.”
“Don’t be like that, Kylie. The ends justify the means, or didn’t you read Machiavelli in college?” Now.
“Sorry, I must have missed that class, Madison. But since we’re speaking in clichés, have you ever heard the phrase ‘he who laughs last, laughs loudest’?”
“Yeah, but so what?” she scoffs derisively.
“Well, tune into CNN and you’ll find out exactly what. There’s about to be some breaking news you’ll be interested in.”
“What?”
“Five minutes, Miss Roberts,” a newsroom producer announces to me.
“Who was that?”
“All glory is fleeting, sis. And so is gloating. I’d say have a nice day, but after this, I know you won’t. And I would say have a nice life, but I doubt that will be much fun either.”
“What are you talking about? Who was that?” she demands.
“Just get to a TV. Goodbye, Madison.”
.
-SEVENTY-
The iCandidate Page 30
