My Perfect Life

by Dyan Sheldon

  If I’d been in a movie, that would have been the moment when the entire student body of Dellwood High School stood up, applauding, and an angel won his wings.

  But I wasn’t, of course. And angels in Dellwood are thin on the ground.

  Carla rounded on me as soon as the last word was out of my mouth.

  “Oh, listen to you…” she crowed. “I’m surprised you don’t have violins playing in the background.” She rolled her eyes at Alma in the front row. “It’s typical, isn’t it, Ella, that you want everyone to feel sorry for you, instead of acting responsibly and solving your problems yourself.”

  Nearly two decades of reticence and good breeding beat a hasty retreat. “Oh, that’s pretty rich,” I said. I wasn’t shaking any more. “Coming from you.”

  “And just what do you mean by that?”

  There was a popping sound and the mike went dead.

  “Sound!” shouted several voices at once. “Sound!”

  Neither Carla nor I gave a hair clip about sound.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what I mean,” I answered.

  It was downhill after that.

  Dr Alsop eventually stepped in and more or less literally pulled us apart.

  “Ladies!” he shouted. “Ladies, please! This is a little more energy and passion than is really necessary!”

  Carla and I kept right on.

  Dr Alsop started flapping his arms. “Close the curtains!” he ordered. “Close the curtains!”

  Somebody turned out the lights.

  That’s when the audience stood up and cheered.

  And the winner is…

  After the sound and the lights came back on, Dr Alsop quietened everyone down and made one of his impromptu speeches. Amazingly enough, he wasn’t really angry over what happened; just a bit overwhelmed.

  Dr Alsop claimed our election was the most interesting, vital, and truest in spirit to American democracy of any that he’d seen in his many long years as a professional educator. Happy that all of his education and hard work had finally paid off, he beamed at us. “This is the most enthusiasm the Dellwood High student body has ever shown in its own government,” he concluded, “and I’m proud of every one of you.”

  There was more clapping and cheering at that, and then Dr Alsop made Morty, Carla and me shake hands and wish each other luck. Like boxers.

  “And come out fighting,” Morty whispered as I shook Carla’s hand.

  “May the best candidate win!” cried Dr Alsop.

  Alma, Tina and Marcia started to chant. “You know she’s the best! You know she’s the best!”

  “Oh, I plan to,” purred Carla.

  Only the three of us on the stage with Carla heard her; and only Dr Alsop thought she was making a joke.

  As Carla strode down the stairs at the front in what can only be described as a triumphant procession of one, the Santini satellites all gathered around her.

  I looked over at Morty. “You think she already won and nobody told us?”

  “Well, she seems to think so.” Morty sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve pulled the plug on the mike. I was trying to stop her from blabbing your private stuff all over the school, but it looks like I protected her from publicly revealing her darker side.”

  “You did your best.” Together we walked down the stairs after Carla.

  “So did you,” said Morty. “You were fantastic. I wish I had a picture of Carla’s face when you were giving your perfect life speech. I’d have it framed and would hang it in the office.”

  To tell the truth, I was feeling pretty triumphant myself. I felt like a new woman. By my standards (which were admittedly low), I’d done really well. I’d stood up to the Santini and lived. I could probably get into the Guinness Book of Records for that.

  We were still behind Carla and her entourage as we shuffled out of the auditorium.

  “Look!” I pulled Morty’s arm. “There’s Lola and Sam.”

  They were standing together just outside the doors.

  Morty and I both waved, but only Sam waved back. Lola was already marching towards Carla, her shawl flapping behind her and a murderous look in her eyes.

  “Lordy, Lordy,” muttered Morty. “I think we’re about to find out why Lola missed the debate.”

  The Santini radar was still working. Overwhelmed by her own success and practically smothered by her supporters, Carla still clocked Lola before Lola could open her mouth.

  “Lola!” screeched Carla. “Thank God you’re all right.” Her voice showed both relief and concern. She was acting her heart out. “We were all so worried when you didn’t show up for the debate. I mean, it’s not like you to leave Ella on her own like that. We were afraid something must have happened to you.”

  “Really?” Lola came to a stop, blocking Carla’s way. Her smile was luminous. “How touching.”

  “I’m sure Ella will tell you all about it.” Carla made a move to get past Lola. “You’re in my way, Lola.” She was still smiling. “I have a class to get to.”

  “Not yet, you don’t,” said Lola Cep. “You and I are going to have a little talk first.” She raised her head for better projection. “Sam and I have a chilling, dastardly tale to tell.”

  In an almost unprecedented display of independent thought and action, Alma Vitters linked her arm through Carla’s and took a step forward, “Come on, Carla,” said Alma. “We don’t have time for this crap.”

  Lola didn’t budge. “But you do have time for kidnapping.”

  You have to hand it to Lola; she knows how to catch people’s attention. Everyone had been edging around them, but now they slowed down or stopped. One or two even turned back.

  “Kidnapping?” Carla shrieked with laughter.

  In a perfect example of a chain reaction, Alma, Tina and Marcia all started shrieking with laughter, too.

  “Are you accusing me of kidnapping someone?”

  Lola’s look was haughty. She was doing her Dietrich. “I’m accusing you of kidnapping me,” she replied. “And of tampering with my bike.” Sam gave her a poke with his elbow. “And Sam’s car.”

  “Oh, please…” Carla looked so flabbergasted and sounded so genuine she could probably have passed a lie-detector test. “You know, you really should be on medication, Lola. The strain of living among normal people’s beginning to show.”

  “You mean the strain of trying to act like a human is beginning to show in you,” countered Lola.

  Carla adjusted her books with a deep sigh. “Try to listen to me, Lola – and try to understand. I’ve been here since eight o’clock this morning, helping to set up the auditorium for the debate.” She glanced at the coven. “Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Alma.

  Tina and Marcia nodded. Vigorously.

  “And these are supposed to be independent witnesses, are they?” asked Lola.

  “If you don’t believe us, ask Dr Alsop,” cut in Alma. She was obviously practising for the office of Vice President. “We met him in the carpark.”

  “And what does that prove?” demanded Lola. “You’ve never been one to do your own dirty work if you could find someone else to do it for you.”

  “You really are letting your considerable imagination run away with you, you know.” Carla’s sigh was filled with pity. “Just why do you think I’d want to have you kidnapped, if you don’t mind my asking? It’s not as though anyone would pay ransom for you, is it?”

  “You know why you did it. So I’d miss the debate.”

  “You really do think the planet revolves around you, don’t you?” Carla smirked. “In case you didn’t realize, Lola, you weren’t supposed to be in the debate. It was just the Presidential candidates.”

  The coven sniggered.

  “And let’s get another thing straight,” Carla went on. “If I did have you kidnapped, you wouldn’t be standing here trying to make yourself look important.” She started to walk away, but her eyes were on Lola like hooks. “You’d be halfway to
Alaska by now.”

  Lola, Sam, Morty, Farley and I all gathered on the lawn at lunch for the telling of the full chilling, dastardly tale of Lola’s close brush with death and kidnapping.

  “So anyway,” Lola was saying, “there I was, bruised and shaken, pushing my bike along Rushmore Drive when this girl stopped and offered me a ride.” She paused – as much for dramatic effect as to take her lunch from her book bag.

  “A girl?” asked Farley. “What girl? Did you know her? Did she come from around here?”

  “God,” Lola sighed. “How I admire the scientific mind.”

  “Did you check the tyre, Sam?” asked Morty. “Do you really think it was tampered with?”

  Sam shrugged. “It’s possible, but it’s hard to tell.”

  Lola sighed again. “Am I going to get to tell my story, or what? I mean, it’s not every day that I get kidnapped, you know.”

  “You seem to be taking it pretty well,” offered Farley.

  “I always try to be philosophical, and see the good in the bad,” explained Lola. “For an actress, being kidnapped is a priceless experience.”

  “I don’t know…” Farley was shaking his head. “A flat tyre could’ve been dangerous. Do you really think Carla would sabotage you like that?”

  Lola, Sam, and I all answered at once. “You don’t?”

  Morty pushed his glasses back up his nose. “But it could’ve been a coincidence, couldn’t it?”

  Lola’s laugh was shrill with derision. “Today of all days? You don’t think that’s a little unlikely?”

  “Unlikely, but not improbable,” said Morty.

  Sam pointed his juice carton at him. “I’ll tell you what’s not only unlikely, but also completely improbable, and that’s that I ran out of gas. I do not run out of gas. Not ever. Somebody drained my tank.”

  “So then what happened?” asked Farley.

  “Well…” Lola put her sandwich down and looked at each of us in turn. “Then this girl in a Cherokee stopped and offered me a ride.”

  “And you took it?” Farley looked genuinely shocked. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to take rides from strangers?”

  “But it was a girl!” Lola protested. “She wasn’t much older than we are. Who expects trouble from a girl?”

  You’d think she’d never met Carla Santini, wouldn’t you?

  “So then what happened?” asked Farley.

  “She said she had to stop somewhere before she took me home,” Lola continued. “Only it took her a while to mention that that one stop was the mall. And then when we got there, she suddenly remembered a dental appointment, so she left me – and that was the last I saw of her.”

  “Did you catch her number plate?” asked Morty.

  Lola picked up her sandwich and slowly began to unwrap it. “Sadly, Morton, you weren’t there to offer the benefits of your logical mind. And I was a little too wound up worrying about the debate to actually think about writing down her car number plate.”

  “It’s not really very convincing, is it?” Morty has the indomitable perseverance of the born scientist. “I mean, you got a puncture, you fell in the bushes, and you got a ride from some space cadet. You can’t prove anything. It would never hold up in court.”

  “I wasn’t planning to press charges,” Lola informed him. “Anyway, it turned out that Ella didn’t need my presence to defeat Carla.” She smiled at me. “And all’s well that ends well, isn’t it?”

  A dark shadow fell over our little group.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Lola?” Carla enquired politely.

  Lola suddenly bit into her sandwich. “And what’s that?” she asked through a mouthful of bread and cheese.

  “It’s not over till tomorrow afternoon.”

  It wasn’t like me at all, but the truth was that I didn’t give a hoot what Carla said. I’d been given a standing ovation. Now when I walked down the hallways of Deadwood High, people nodded, smiled and said hello. A few even gave me the thumbs up. For the first time since the election began, I felt that there was actually a chance – no matter how small – that I could win.

  As far as Lola was concerned, of course, the election was already won. Which, as Sam said, was probably the only time in the history of the world that Lola and Carla Santini had ever agreed on anything. They just didn’t agree on which one of us had won.

  “Listen to her,” muttered Lola in homeroom on Friday morning. She glared at the back of Carla’s head. Carla was telling the coven, and everyone else in the room, what the first things she was going to do once she took office were. Lola snorted. “Talk about counting your chickens before they’ve hatched. She’s not only counted them, she’s decided how they’ll be cooked.”

  “Carla’s an absolute monarch,” said Sam. “It doesn’t occur to her that the peasants could ever revolt.”

  “Well, I hope they behead her,” said Lola.

  We decided to eat lunch outside to avoid any contact with Carla, but it was to no avail. Carla and her coven rooted themselves a few feet away from where we were sitting.

  “I want to go through my acceptance speech just one more time,” she announced loudly as they sat down. I could hear the smirk in her voice. “It has to be perfect.”

  “It will be,” Alma assured her.

  Marcia and Tina bleated their agreement.

  The winning candidate’s acceptance speech is another Dellwood High tradition: at the end of the last period, all of the candidates go to the office while the Principal reads out the results of the election over the tannoy. Then the winner takes the microphone while the losers smile and pretend they don’t mind.

  Lola ripped her lunch from its brown paper bag. “Is she the most irritating person who ever lived, or what?” she demanded.

  Carla heard her. She raised her head, cleared her throat, and started to thank her supporters. She sounded so warm and sincere that you’d think the words were coming from her heart and not the notebook on her lap.

  Lola gave me a look. “You do have your speech ready, don’t you, El?”

  I could feel myself redden. “Well … I mean, I didn’t write anything down, but I kind of know what I’d say if I won.” I should. I’d spent hours going over it in the bathroom last night.

  “Not if,” corrected Lola. “When.”

  Lola doesn’t understand the concept of jinxing yourself because you’re too confident.

  Carla had moved on from thanking her supporters to thanking God when Sam turned up.

  “What’s Her Royal Highness doing?” He threw himself down on the ground between us. “It sounds like she’s won an Oscar.”

  Lola scowled at her sandwich. “She’s trying to bore us to death with her acceptance speech.”

  “Really?” Sam leaned back on his elbows. “It’s too bad she’s not going to have a chance to give it, then, isn’t it?”

  Lola and I looked over at him. He was smiling as if he knew where to buy a vintage Mustang in cherry condition for a hundred bucks.

  “What?” hissed Lola. “What have you found out?”

  Sam shrugged.

  Lola punched him on the shoulder. “What?”

  “Only that informal polls show a sharp drop in Santini supporters.”

  Lola and I said, “Really?” at the same time.

  Sam grinned. “Really.”

  Sam had been talking to Morty and Farley. Morty had helped one of the running backs on the varsity team with his maths homework, and this guy said that a lot of the boys thought Carla was way out of line. Farley’s sister was a junior cheerleader, and she said her friends thought Carla had gone way over the top.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Lola’s shriek was pretty restrained, for her, but it caught Carla’s attention. Without the slightest pause in her monologue, I saw one perfect eyebrow twitch.

  I was excited by this news, too, but one of my jobs in life is being the Lola Cep reality check, so I tried not to show it. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to chan
ge their votes,” I reasoned.

  “No.” Sam grinned. “But it means that they might.”

  “You know what I think?” Lola clapped her hands together. “I think we should have a party.” She raised her voice to make it easier for Carla to overhear what we were saying. “We’ll call it ‘Good Triumphs over Ego’, and invite everybody.” She grinned happily. “Except the Santini,” she added more softly.

  I’d sort of expected Sam to be his usual voice of reason, but I was mistaken. He didn’t tell Lola she was crazy. What he said was, “Shouldn’t we be generous in our triumph?” He smiled slyly. “I mean, what’s the point in not inviting her? She isn’t going to come.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Lola tilted her head to one side, in the thoughtful pose of a serious President maker. “She’s not Al Gore, is she? She isn’t going to be gracious in defeat.”

  And it didn’t look like I was going to be the voice of reason, either. I hadn’t had a party since I was in junior high. I liked the idea. Especially a victory party. I’d never had a victory party, least of all celebrating a victory over Carla. I was still trying to hold on to reality, but my grip was loosening. “And where are we going to have this party?” I managed to ask.

  Lola didn’t bat an eyelash. “At your house, of course. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Just chips and stuff like that. As befits the party of the people.”

  “When?” asked Sam. “Next weekend?”

  Lola shook her head. “No, tomorrow. That makes it more impromptu. You know, like a spontaneous gesture born of democratic joy.”

  “You mean so Carla doesn’t have time to throw a counter party,” said Sam.

  Lola winked. “That, too.”

  Lola, Sam and I walked to the office with Morty and Farley that afternoon. Technically, Lola wasn’t meant to be with us, but there was no way a mere technicality or even a teacher was going to keep her away.