by Gordon Jack
“From Canada.”
“No, I mean, like, originally?”
“My mom’s family is from Italy.”
“What about your dad?”
“I don’t know. You want me to get you a fucking DNA sample?”
That usually shut people up. After a while, people stopped asking. Or they noticed that her dad wasn’t around and made up their own stories, which were always much duller versions of what actually happened.
Julia’s phone buzzed with a message from her aunt. Where are you?! You’re supposed to be at the curb at 2:45.
Shit, Julia thought. She texted a quick reply: Meeting with bio teacher. Be there in a sec.
Are you in trouble? her aunt wrote back. Typical, Julia thought.
No, she wrote, picking up her pace and rushing past the other students who didn’t have a seventh-period class. There was a group of cheerleaders gossiping by the bathrooms. She noted their mixed racial makeup and felt her dark mood suddenly brighten. Two white girls, an Asian, a Latina, and an African American. She felt an instinctive urge to rush over and perform a little cheer for them. Two, four, six, eight. Who do I appreciate? You guys! You guys! Back in Boucherville, that squad would be all white, as would the athletes, the refs, and the fans. Julia hadn’t realized how blinded she had become to all that whiteness until she moved to California. When she first stepped onto the Lincoln campus, she felt like Dorothy, exiting her whiplashed house into the Technicolor land of Oz.
A group of brown boys hanging out in front of the library called something to her in Spanish as she hustled past them. She didn’t understand what they’d said but felt sure it was derogatory in some way. You don’t have to be fluent in Spanish to know that when a comment is shouted at you with a simultaneous crotch grab, it’s probably not a polite inquiry about your day. She didn’t care. She was happy to see them, happy to be seen by them, so she responded with her own crotch grab, which threw them into hysterics.
In the few weeks she’d been at Lincoln, Julia had observed how the social classes divided themselves at the end of the school day like boxers who retreated to their corners at the sound of the bell. The rich kids drove off in their own cars, the middle class were picked up in family cars, and the poor took the bus. The school might pride itself on throwing this diverse mix of kids into their melting pot, but at the end of the day, the students knew where they belonged.
If Aunt Gloria hadn’t insisted on picking her up, she would have gladly joined those on the bus. Or better yet, ridden her bike. That’s what she missed most about coming to America: her bike. In Boucherville, she rode everywhere when the weather was this nice. Her bike gave her her first sense of freedom. Now she was restricted to her aunt’s car and schedule. But she supposed that was the point. Her mom didn’t send Julia to live with her sister because she wanted Julia to be more independent; her mom had lost control and decided to ship her here.
Julia stood in front of the school’s marquee and scanned the line of minivans parked along the white zone for her aunt’s car. Her aunt hated getting stuck in this clogged drainpipe of a street, which is why she insisted Julia be at the curb immediately after class. She’d have to be extra helpful at dinner tonight to make up for this inconvenience.
“Hey,” a boy said, sidling up to her on the sidewalk. “You’re Julia, right?”
At first glance, Julia thought he was kind of cute. Tall, muscular, and a buzz cut of reddish hair. As he stepped closer, though, she felt an instinctive impulse to pull away. His face had been jackhammered by acne, and his yellow teeth were encased in iron. He smelled of dried sweat and some body spray made from sandalwood and spoiled fruit. Julia quickly reevaluated her first impression and decided that he would be handsome in a few years, but only if he survived the seven plagues of puberty.
“Yes,” Julia said, continuing to look up and down the street for her aunt. If she caught her talking to this boy, she’d catch all kinds of shit.
“I’m Lance,” he said, extending his hand.
Julia shook it and noticed he was a nail biter. Tiny specks of dried blood dotted his cuticles.
“I write for the school paper. Sorry, used to write for the school paper. I’m kind of on sabbatical right now.”
“Sabbatical?”
“I had a disagreement with my editor over my doping-in-dodgeball investigation.”
“What? Like, steroids?”
“Nothing that serious. The winning team got high before every game. My editor wanted me to bury the story because she’s friends with the team captain.” Lance paused. “I want to do a story about you.”
A gob of spit flew from his mouth and landed on Julia’s arm. Out of politeness, Julia waited a few seconds before rubbing her skin dry.
“I thought you said you were on sabbatical,” Julia said.
“I have a blog. Life at Lincoln. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Julia shook her head.
“I like to profile new students and, well, you’re new.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“C’mon,” Lance said, flashing a crooked smile. “People are curious about you.”
“I’m sure they’re not,” Julia said. She heard the blare of an insistent horn and found her aunt leaning on her steering wheel four cars away. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll text you,” Lance said.
“You don’t know my number,” Julia said.
“Here’s mine,” he said, grabbing her hand and writing a sequence of numbers on her palm.
Julia hurried away, hoping her aunt hadn’t witnessed this little exchange. When she reached the van, she hopped in and greeted Gloria’s ruddy face with a warm smile.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, strapping herself in.
Aunt Gloria grumbled something and pulled away from the curb. As they passed Lance on the sidewalk, he mimicked a phone call with his hand.
“Who is that boy?” Gloria said.
“I don’t know,” Julia said. “Some reporter, I think.”
“Why does he look like the cat that just swallowed the canary?”
“What does that mean?” Julia asked. She didn’t understand many of her aunt’s euphemisms.
“Like he just had his way with you.”
“Had his way with me?”
“Is this why you were late? Because you were with him?”
“No, I told you. My teacher wanted to talk after class. You can email him if you don’t believe me.”
“Hmpf,” she said, and focused her attention on the road. No matter what the driving conditions, Gloria always looked like she was navigating an icy road with woodland creatures darting out from the underbrush. Her nervousness had caused her face to become lined with cracks like a piece of pottery left in the kiln too long.
“Say hello to the girls,” Gloria reminded her.
“Bonjour,” Julia said, turning to face her eight-year-old cousins strapped into their booster seats in the back, giggling over some secret communication. The girls freaked Julia out, to be honest. The other day they got simultaneous nosebleeds on the way home.
“Madison, Olivia, respond,” Aunt Gloria barked.
“Bonjour,” the twins said in unison. One of Aunt Gloria’s conditions for taking Julia was that she only speak to the twins in French. She hoped this immersive experience would develop their language skills and make them more cosmopolitan. Julia spoke to them mostly in swear words.
They drove a few blocks in silence before Gloria brought up Julia’s infraction again. “I’m worried you’re falling back into bad habits, Julia. What do you think your mom would say if I told her you were flirting with some playboy after school?”
“I wasn’t. . . .”
“This is just a trial separation,” her aunt cautioned. “If you can’t show us that you’re serious about changing your ways, it’s back to Canada. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Julia said. “I promise you, I wasn’t flirting with him. He’s a reporter or blogger. A
re they the same thing here?”
“They most certainly are not,” Gloria said.
“He wanted to do a story on me because I’m running for student body president.”
“You’re what?” Gloria risked a quick turn, her pinched face momentarily softening the way a dried sponge does with a few drops of water.
“I’ve decided to get more involved,” Julia said, improvising. “I want to give something back to my community.”
“Well, that’s great,” her aunt conceded. “Your mom and I talked about channeling your energies into more positive directions. She’ll be happy to hear about this.”
Gloria reached out to pat Julia’s knee but fell short a few inches and tapped the seat cushion instead. Julia stared at her aunt’s pale skin already dotted with age spots, like an archipelago on a sepia-toned map, and thought of her mom. She and Gloria were twins too, although not identical like Madison and Olivia. Still, they shared enough qualities to make living with her aunt a challenge. Gloria was like an updated iPhone, something familiar but with questionable new features that took some getting used to.
Julia furtively glanced at Lance’s number written on her hand. Tonight, she would friend him online, which meant creating brand-new social media accounts. Ugh. She hated the thought of getting caught up in all that cyberdrama again, but there was no other way of communicating with people her age. If she was serious about running for president, she would need an online presence. She only hoped the digital ghosts of her past didn’t come back to haunt her.
4
14 DAYS TILL ELECTION DAY
TONY GUO DIDN’T like change. He especially didn’t like it when he was high and craving his favorite snacks. He counted on a degree of normalcy in the school cafeteria, especially at brunch. The lunch menu might change from day to day, but for his morning meal, he could always count on there being a routine supply of blueberry muffins and chocolate milk. But not today. Today was different, and Tony didn’t like different.
“What the fuck?” he said to no one in particular.
He looked at the rows of milk cartons neatly arranged inside the metal bin, hoping to see his beloved Space Cow. The cartoon icon was so cute the way it looked like it was dressed for space, its udders carefully concealed in a dotted jumpsuit, its face peering through a circular helmet. Tony loved it so much he adopted the DJ name Space Cow and infused all his mixes with loops of cowbells and gentle mooing. So far, his signature DJ stylings hadn’t caught on with mainstream partygoers, but he knew genius sometimes took time to get recognized. That’s what that nice lady said after those bar mitzvah kids booed him off the stage at his last gig anyway.
“Doris, where’s the chocolate milk?” he asked the bosomy woman dishing out hash browns. Doris slid the potato square onto the tray in front of him and stared at Tony over the cat-eye glasses balancing on the bridge of her nose.
“Sorry, Tony. No more chocolate milk.”
“You sold out?” This had never happened before in the three years he’d been at Lincoln. There was always chocolate milk, and Tony always drank it. He credited it for making him the tallest Asian at the school. It was his antidote to all the weed he smoked, which people said was supposed to stunt your growth.
“We’re no longer serving it,” Doris said.
“What?” Tony looked around the room for the hidden cameras. He was sure they were planted somewhere to catch his reaction to this horrible news. The skate rat next to him looked like he might have a GoPro stuck on him somewhere. Tony had to fight the urge to run his hand along the vertical bristles of the boy’s blue Mohawk. “Is this some kind of joke?” He leaned down and asked the freshman.
“C’mon, man, you’re holding up the line,” the boy said.
The kid was right. There was a long line of munchkins with trays full of reheated “food,” waiting to check out. But Tony wasn’t moving until he got some answers. None of these kids was going to hassle him anyway. As a six-foot-two junior, he ruled over them like that personal trainer on that TV show with all those fat kids stranded on a deserted island.
“Doris, please tell me this is some kind of joke,” he said.
“No joke, Tony,” Doris said. “School ruled that chocolate milk is not good for you. Too much sugar.” Doris looked at him with sad eyes. She understood the pain he must be experiencing, having served him every day for the past three years. She didn’t try to hurry him along. She knew he needed time to grieve.
“This isn’t happening,” Tony said, staring at the cartons of homogenized white milk. He couldn’t imagine drinking such a bland and boring beverage. That left him with what? Orange juice? He picked up a carton and stared at the faceless orange stabbed in the head with a straw. “Can’t do it,” he said, placing the orange juice back in the tray.
“Fuckin’ nanny state,” the Mohawk kid next to him said.
“Totally.”
Tony began moving down the line toward the cashier. It felt more like a funeral procession than a checkout lane. After paying for his items, he walked to his usual table in the back corner of the cafeteria and sat down. A group of nearby boys screamed about a devastating loss on Alien Sniper, their pungent BO from morning PE class adding to the already-ripe odor of the room. Mohawk sat down next to him with his egg-o-rito and orange juice, which was strange. The freshmen who filled this cafeteria usually preferred their own company and left him alone in the dark recesses of the cavernous space.
“They want to tell us what we can and can’t drink,” Mohawk said. “Next thing you know they’ll be taking away your muffin. Lots of sugar and fat in that too.”
Tony clutched the cellophane-wrapped blueberry muffin to his chest. “They’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands,” he said.
“If you keep eating that junk, that won’t be hard to do. That stuff will kill you.”
“Wait? What?” He thought Mohawk was on his side.
“Listen, I’m on your side,” Mohawk said, reading Tony’s mind. Tony scooted his plastic chair away from this telepath lest he dig further into his consciousness and see his masturbatory fantasies involving Doris the lunch lady. “We have to stop this.”
“Stop what?” Tony asked.
“Stop this government overreach. They can’t just come in here and tell us what to do.”
“Uhm, it’s school,” Tony said. “That’s kind of the point.”
“No, the point is to create informed citizens capable of making their own decisions.”
Tony laughed at how worked up Mohawk was getting. The little kid’s pale face was turning an angry rash-like pink. Tony broke the seal of his blueberry muffin and offered the boy a bite, which he refused. Tony had forgotten how nice it was to share a table with someone. Most of the time he dined alone and watched YouTube videos on his phone.
“We should stage a hunger strike,” Mohawk said.
“Yeah, right.” Tony peeled the bottom wrapper off his muffin and shoved the moist cake into his mouth. He closed his eyes in an ecstasy of chewing.
“We could talk to the principal.”
Tony, mouth full of muffin, just shook his head. The last time he met with the principal, it was to assure her that Space Cow would not be performing at the annual talent show.
“We could take hostages,” Mohawk whispered.
“Dude, you’re trippin’. Do you mind?” Tony reached for Mohawk’s orange juice and drank half of it. The acidic citrus taste a sharp reminder of what he’d lost.
“You’re right,” Mohawk said. “The only way to change things is from the inside.”
“Inside the cafeteria?”
“No, the government. You know anyone on ASB?”
“What’s that?”
“Student government,” Mohawk said. “We need someone on the inside to fight for our cause.”
“You want to run for student body president?” Tony said. This guy! First he sits at the big-kid table, then he talks about running for student body president.
“Not
me. You.”
“Me?”
“I think you’d be a natural. Like Kanye. You know he’s planning a run for president.”
“I would totally vote for Kanye.”
“Just like people here would vote for you,” Mohawk said, scooting closer. “Trust me on this. You’re the only one who can bring back our chocolate milk.”
Tony thought about this. Or tried to. It was a little hard with all the screaming going on. This place—with its open floor plan and high ceilings—amplified every conversation to cacophonous levels. Plus, he was still high from the wake-and-bake routine he had fallen into ever since his parents had left to attend that casino opening in Macao.
“Tony Guo for president,” he said, trying out the words for size. They fit about as well as the tight shirts at Banana Republic.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” Mohawk said.
Space Cow sounded better. Maybe this was a way to get noticed as a DJ. Tony imagined playing at campaign events, election rallies, and his inauguration. As president, he could probably pass a law that required the school to hire him for all dances. And graduation! No one liked listening to that same old stale tune every year. What was it called? “Pot and Circumstance”? What did that even mean anyway?
“Let me think about it,” he said, and shoved the remaining half of his blueberry muffin into his mouth. By the time the bell rang, he had forgotten what they had been talking about.
5
STACEY WALKED INTO room 401 and found half the class crowded around the whiteboard. Her classmates looked like some nerdy football team gathered by the coach to learn some complicated play. James, dressed impeccably as usual in a crisp, white button-down and skinny jeans, was fielding questions at the front. When he saw Stacey enter, he immediately stopped talking, a cue everyone else took to turn around and stare.
“What’s going on?” Stacey asked. Her feet instinctively positioned themselves into a fighter’s stance. She didn’t like surprises. Two years ago, she hook-kicked a cake platter out of Brian’s hands when he surprised her for her birthday.
“Looks like you’ve got some company,” James said, smiling, showing off his movie-star teeth. Their whiteness distracted Stacey for a second and made her think about James’s orthodontic history.
