The Campaign

by Elizabeth Karre

  I nodded slowly.

  “Holt said you were interested in Grandin. You know that’s his alma mater, yeah? And mine too. You don’t want to mess that up.”

  How did Harmon Holt know I was interested in Grandin College? (Not that I was.) Did Ms. Williams say something? I was starting to feel like he was spying on me.

  He smiled, making his lips a little pouty. “Holt warned me you were something special. You’re smart enough to see inconsistencies, but you can see the context. Not like Maya—she’s so straight and narrow. Not to mention a little bitter.” He laughed and winked. “Now, you got time to go shopping with me?”

  “Shopping?”

  “I need some new shoes instead of these raggedy ones.” He held up his foot. “But I need help from someone with style—please?”

  By the time he dropped me off at home, I was floating on air. I was so busy thinking about his beautiful eyes and lips and the way he kept touching me, I didn’t even hear Mom yell at me for not getting Darius from the neighbor.

  EIGHTEEN

  The rest of the week was calm and kind of boring. Maya didn’t talk to me or Chaz much. I remembered what he said about her being bitter, and I thought he must have turned her down. I bet she didn’t like that he kept flirting with me.

  Sometimes it seemed like everyone had stuff they wanted me to help with. Other times I was totally just surfing the Web for a couple of hours. I tried to read the kind of political news that the blog was about, but I’d get tired of it.

  The next week on Wednesday, Maya said casually, “Just wanted to let you know that Friday is my last day here.”

  “What? How come?” I asked, really surprised.

  “Oh, I just got another job that’s a better fit,” she said, turning back to her computer.

  I looked at her back for a minute and then shrugged. Oh, well.

  On Friday at lunch Chaz brought in a cake to say good-bye to Maya. He mostly talked to me at her “party.”

  I was standing at the bus stop, waiting to go home, when Maya came out of the building. She walked over to me.

  “There’s something I think you should know,” she said quickly. I pulled out my earbud. “You’re right about the video.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what Chaz had told her about it so I wasn’t spilling the beans.

  “And Chaz has always known it was a fake.”

  “Okaaaaay …” I said, looking over her shoulder for the bus.

  “Chaz doesn’t like Holt,” she continued, looking at me hard.

  “Wait, what?” I said, confused.

  “And he has a girlfriend. Sorry.” Maya turned around and walked away fast.

  “What you talking about?” I yelled, trying to decide if I should run after her. Just then the bus pulled up. “Uggghhh!” I exclaimed, giving Maya the finger.

  An old lady getting off the bus shook her head at me.

  NINETEEN

  I tossed and turned that night. Maya was just a bitter b. Chaz had said so. But what if she was right and he did have a girlfriend? What if he was just playing me? I had to know.

  Other people think it’s wrong to listen to conversations and read other people’s stuff and snoop around. I don’t. How else are you going to find stuff out? And why are people always trying to hide stuff anyway? I think I have a right to know, especially if it might affect me.

  On Monday I waited for my chance. As soon as I heard Chaz walk out of the office, I ambled over to his cubicle.

  “Oh, I thought I heard him here,” I muttered.

  “Think he’s in the bathroom,” one of the other guys said from behind a cube wall.

  “Thanks,” I said, unplugging Chaz’s phone and sliding it off his desk into my pocket.

  Soon I was in the ladies’ room going through his texts. The last one was from “Kim Clark.”

  Just glancing at them, I could tell that Kim was Chaz’s girlfriend. Or enough of a girlfriend for them to be sending nasty pictures back and forth.

  Since I didn’t really want to see (okay, so I did want to see Chaz’s body, but not this way), I was about to turn off the phone when something caught my eye.

  “H is going down,” Chaz had written just fifteen minutes ago.

  “WTF U talking about baby,” Kim wrote back. “Better things 2 think about,” she sent next with a picture I didn’t want to look too close at.

  “Come over tonight. I’ll take your mind off it. Don’t do anything stupid,” had come just a few minutes ago.

  I scrolled back up, trying to understand what they were talking about. I went back far, looking for clues.

  Chaz complained a lot about Holt. I thought Kim seemed tired of hearing about it, but I’m not sure Chaz got that.

  “Wish I’d never met him or his money. Better when it was Mom and me against the world even if we was poor,” Chaz wrote.

  “Your mom married him, not U. U don’t even live w/them. Can we do something FUN this weekend?? I’ll spend his money if you don’t want to,” Kim wrote back.

  A couple of days before I had started my internship, Chaz had written, “Holt will regret he left the FOX in charge of the henhouse here. Gotta plan.”

  Kim didn’t seem too interested, but Chaz kept hinting that he was up to something that would be bad for Holt.

  I skimmed through texts with other people. Chaz’s mom, friends, even Holt. Just normal stuff. Until I found some messages with “Monique Atwater.”

  “I have some concerns about possible unethical behavior w/in Chatter. There are some things I’m being asked to do at Polichat that don’t sit well,” Chaz had written to her.

  “Getting up the courage and evidence to go public. Wondering if you can help,” he wrote.

  “Very interested,” Monique wrote. “We can talk off the record first if you want, and I’ll tell you what I’d need for a story.”

  They had made plans to get together next week.

  TWENTY

  I realized I had been in the bathroom a long time with Chaz’s phone. When I walked back into the office, Chaz was talking to one of the guys. I breathed a sigh of relief for a minute, but my pocket was burning.

  While I was trying to think of a plan to get his phone back before he noticed (unless he already had), I Googled Monique Atwater. I got her e-mail right away but had no idea what I’d do with it. First, I had to get the phone back.

  I turned my computer off and scooped up a bunch of papers from Maya’s old desk.

  “Umm, Chaz?” I interrupted his conversation. “My computer’s being all crazy. I tried turning it off, but now I can’t get it back on.”

  Frowning, he headed over to my desk.

  “Oh, and this is some stuff of Maya’s that I was kind of working on, but maybe you should look at,” I babbled, knowing he wasn’t really listening. “I’ll just put it on your desk.”

  While he was tapping his fingers waiting for the computer to restart, I dashed over to his desk, plugged the phone back in, shoved it way back on his desk and under some other papers. Maybe he’d think he just didn’t see it if he had been looking for it.

  After Chaz had “fixed” my computer and headed back to his cube, I held my breath. Everything was quiet.

  I stared out the window. None of my thoughts were making sense. Or at least they weren’t making a kind of sense I liked.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chaz didn’t pay much attention to me the rest of the day. Which was fine with me now that I knew that attention was fake. I just kept my head down until it was time to leave.

  I got Darius from the neighbor lady and told him we were going to the park to shoot hoops. He was super pumped.

  I played with him for a while, letting the movement calm me and shake my thoughts into place. Then I handed him the ball.

  “You keep shooting, D, and work on that jumper. I need to think about something. I’ll watch you from that bench.”

  Darius tried to argue and pout, but pretty soon he was happy playing by himself, doing his spor
tscaster voice as he ran around.

  I started with the thing that hurt the most. Chaz had a girlfriend. He wasn’t interested in me. He had just been using me—why?

  When I first met him, I was crushing on him, but I didn’t think realistically I had a chance. He’s grown and I’m in high school. He’s rich and I’m poor. He runs a political blog, and I don’t know anything about or care about politics.

  But then he started flirting with me hardcore, and I got swept up. Why was he doing it? He only started after I heard Billy and Jeff Johnson talking about the video, and he told me to forget about it. I guess flirting was his way of making me forget. Or getting me to do what he wanted.

  I was still hurt, but now I was angry too, which always made me feel better because at least I felt powerful. I pushed aside Chaz’s playing with me so I could think about the real problem.

  I already knew that Chaz knew that the video was a fake. But now I knew that he wasn’t going to run the story just because it would get people to read Polichat, like he told me. Now I knew that he was going to run it and then tell Monique Atwater at the Washington City Paper that the story was fake. And somehow “take down” Harmon Holt.

  Was he going to say it was Holt’s decision to run the story even though the video was fake? And what was I going to do about it?

  TWENTY-TWO

  I knew when and where Chaz and Monique were going to meet. I thought about going and trying to spy on them to find out more. But I was tired, tired of all this mess.

  I could do nothing, just keep my head down, do my internship. This had nothing to do with me, did it? I didn’t owe anybody anything, did I?

  I dug in my purse for that stapled packet Bosley had given me back in school. It was wrinkled and folded and had some random stains on it. I read the letter from Harmon Holt again.

  … you’re good at finding things out—especially when you smell a rat. I could use those talents at Polichat right now …

  Did Harmon Holt already know what Chaz had going on? Had he been asking me to find this stuff out? What if I didn’t tell and I got in trouble too?

  I could talk to Monique myself, but would she even believe me? I didn’t really have any proof. And wouldn’t that just make Holt look bad, anyway?

  I flipped through the pages of the packet. I never even looked at this stuff, and I wasn’t interested now. All I was looking for was Bosley’s number.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I waited until Friday to call Bosley. I still wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, but if I was going to do it; it needed to be before Chaz met up with Monique. But first, I had a hunch, and I’d need a different phone to do it. So I borrowed my aunt’s fancy iPhone and downloaded a call recorder app. There was only one thing left to do.

  Bosley answered on the first ring.

  “Oh, hi, umm, this is Destiny Davis. I’m the, um, intern at—”

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Davis?” Bosley interrupted.

  I stumbled through my story. It sounded stupider the more I said. Bosley just listened.

  “And Har—I mean, Mr. Holt has done a lot for me with the internship and stuff, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen,” I said, wishing he’d stop me. “You know, I could be totally wrong, but I thought maybe I should tell you so you could, you know, check it out, maybe …”

  “I see,” said Bosley. “I’ll get back to you.” And he hung up.

  I stared at the phone in my hand, and I started to shake.

  Five minutes later, my phone rang.

  “We think it’s best, Ms. Davis, if you don’t return to Polichat. You will, of course, be paid in full for your internship. And let me say how grateful Mr. Holt is that you handled this delicate situation discreetly. Mr. Holt so dislikes the kind of attention his stepson’s misbehavior might have caused. Chaz has been a … disappointment.” Bosley paused, like I was supposed to say something.

  “Uh, it’s all good?”

  “We would also like to remind you that on page three of your contract that there is a nondisclosure agreement,” said Bosley calmly.

  “Wait, what—” I said, reaching for my purse and the packet.

  “That means you cannot talk about any of this with anyone, or we may be forced to pursue legal action against you. Which you don’t want, believe me,” Bosley said.

  “But—”

  “We appreciate your help, Ms. Davis. It was nice working with you.” And he hung up again. This time for good.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I got the check the next day. It was the amount I was supposed to get for the whole summer.

  I read page three of the packet again. It still didn’t make sense really, but I wasn’t planning on telling anyone anyway.

  Obviously I didn’t need to work the rest of the summer now. But I didn’t want to explain to my mom what had happened. I guess I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to from what Bosley said. So I got a job at the fast-food place I’d worked before. (It sucked so much that people were always quitting.) It made me miss my Polichat desk in the first ten seconds I worked there. But at least I had a place to go in the morning.

  I only worked half days so I could hang out with Darius in the afternoons. Mom was surprised I was around more but too busy with her jobs and her own problems to ask much about it.

  I cashed the check and kept the money in my underwear drawer. It felt wrong, but I did it anyway. Every couple of weeks I gave Mom part of the money like I’d just gotten paid.

  When I was someplace I could use the Internet, I looked at Polichat. It seemed the same—not that I’d ever been much of an expert on it. It wasn’t until later that I remembered where it used to have Chaz’s name as editor in chief. So the next time I had the opportunity, I looked again. His name was gone.

  I saw Chaz once. He came into the place I worked. I quick ran to the back where I could watch him, but he wouldn’t notice me. Don’t all us fast-food workers look the same in our stupid visors and shirts?

  He didn’t look good, and he was alone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  One time after school started again, I was in the library messing around on the computer. I went to the website for the Washington City Paper and looked at Monique Atwater’s articles. Nothing.

  Then I went to Jeff Johnson’s website. Nothing there either—nothing about the mayor.

  So I didn’t know what had happened. Except maybe just nothing and that was the story. It felt wrong. Johnson was a liar. The mayor’s son was a jerk, and so was Chaz. But it was all going to be covered up so Holt wouldn’t have to deal with any bad press.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Ms. Williams started bugging me right away to think about applying early decision to Grandin. I had to admit it was a great school—even if I didn’t love it—and it was kind of a long shot. So I just put my head down and, for once, did what I was told.

  But I didn’t know if I could still ask Harmon Holt for a recommendation letter. I really didn’t want to call Bosley (and I had no number for Holt, obviously).

  Ms. Williams also wanted me to write my essay about my internship experiences. What could I say? Bosley said I couldn’t talk about anything. So, no way.

  Don’t think I wasn’t mad about that. I felt like I had done Harmon Holt’s dirty work and then been left high and dry. I did everything I did on my own, but somehow I felt like I’d just been doing exactly what he wanted only I thought they were all my ideas at the time. And now I had nothing to show for it.

  Every time Ms. William would see me, she’d ask me about it. So finally, I decided I’d just apply to Grandin, but I wasn’t calling Bosley. I would know if I got in early enough so I could apply other places if I were rejected.

  I stared at the possible essay topics on the application.

  Evaluate an accomplishment, ethical dilemma, or risk you’ve taken and its impact on you.

  Yep, real funny. No.

  Discuss a current event or concern and its importance to you.

  Nope.
r />   If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be and why?

  What kind of stupid question is that?

  Indicate someone who has had significance influence on you and why.

  Maybe …

  I wrote my essay about Denise, how she was always determined to better herself even when it was hard. I said she had the kind of life I wanted—to be able to take care of business, not be driven by fear of bills and who will watch your kids while you work. Not to let anyone have a hold over you or think they can use you.

  I don’t know if it was any good. I wasn’t showing it to Ms. Williams because she thought I was writing about Polichat. I did ask Mr. R to read it. He fixed some stuff and said it was “heartfelt.”

  I got my recommendations from my teachers. I did list the internship on my application in the “extracurricular and employment” part. I just put “summer” for the time that I’d done the internship.

  When I told Ms. William I had everything ready except for the financial stuff, she looked shocked.

  “Would you like me to read your essay, Destiny?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I had some of my teachers help me with it. It’s just these forms—my mom doesn’t have a lot of time for them.”

  “If you’re sure,” she said, giving me a weird look. “I mean about the essay. I’ll help you with whatever you want. Did you include some samples of the writing you did during your internship?”

  “Oh, uhhh, good idea,” I said. “I will.”

  I wanted to scream.

  TWENTY-SEVEN