Your Own Worst Enemy

by Gordon Jack

  When Lance texted her the picture of her defaced poster this morning and asked for a comment, she was speechless. First off, how did “Build That Wall!” even apply to her? Wasn’t that a slur directed at people south of the border? Then she realized the tagger assumed that’s where she was from. She managed to choke out a forgiving response, but inside, she was seething. It wasn’t the macro-aggression that infuriated her, although that was pretty bad. She was angrier at herself for letting her guard down and thinking she was safe from this kind of attack now that she wasn’t the only brown person at school. She had even convinced herself that Lincoln students might elect her student body president!

  Immediately after Lance posted his blog entry, she was inundated with Facebook friend requests and Instagram followers. The response was overwhelming. At school, people she had never met before stopped her in the halls and hugged her like she was a grieving widow. Even the guys who normally greeted her by grabbing their crotches were deferential in their greeting, pounding their fists against their chests and raising them high in salute.

  Lance ambushed Julia outside her fourth-period classroom at the start of lunch. As soon as Julia emerged from the door, he grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into a selfie.

  “I can’t believe how many hits I’m getting with this story,” he said.

  “Did you take the photo of my poster?” Julia asked. The question had been bothering her all morning. After the shock of the vandalism subsided, she couldn’t figure out what Lance had been doing on campus so early.

  Lance shook his head. “It appeared in my in-box this morning. Someone obviously wanted people to know the administration was covering up a hate crime. This guy or girl is my Deep Throat.”

  Julia had no idea what “Deep Throat” was and saved the term in her mental “to be translated later” file, along with “Relaysh” and “That’s so dank!”

  “We’ve got to do a follow-up article,” he said, pulling Julia out of the flow of lunch traffic. “Something focusing on your cultural heritage. You didn’t really talk about much of that in our phone interview last night.”

  For a good reason, Julia thought. “I don’t know,” she said. “I kind of want all this to go away.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lance said, placing both hands on her shoulders. “This is the best thing that’s happened to us.”

  “To us?”

  “Yes, us. Your campaign has taken off, and my blog has a wider circulation than the school newspaper. Take that, Abby!”

  “Who’s Abby?”

  “The editor I told you about,” Lance said. “The one who got me kicked off the paper.”

  “I thought you said you were on sabbatical?”

  “I was joking,” Lance said. “So, when do you want to meet? I’m free after school today.”

  Julia squirmed, trying to shake free from his grasp. Lance’s pockmarked face was uncomfortably close, and she felt the instinctive urge to head butt him. She’d always wanted to do that, and now seemed like the perfect opportunity.

  Then, before she knew what was happening, she was engulfed in a sea of black hair. Lance’s odor of sweat and Cheetos was instantly replaced by the sweet fragrance of jasmine and vanilla.

  Jenny had wrapped her arm around Julia’s shoulder and pulled her close. “This guy bothering you?” she asked.

  One of Jenny’s friends, a girl with dark burgundy lips and the painted eyes of an Egyptian queen, pushed Lance backward with two hands. “Step off, asshole,” she said.

  “I wrote the article,” Lance said, holding up his hands in mock surrender.

  “It’s okay,” Julia said, putting her arm around Jenny. Even though the girls had just come to her rescue, she didn’t feel like a victim in their presence. Standing in formation like this, she was a warrior. This posse wasn’t going to let anyone hassle her.

  “I’m on your side,” Lance said to the group of girls standing in front of him. “I want to find the asshole who did this.”

  “How do we know you’re not the asshole who did this?” one of the girls asked.

  “Yeah, you look like one of them preppy racists to me,” another one said.

  “What? No! I want Julia to be president. I fuckin’ hate Stacey Wynn.”

  “Not very objective, are you?” Jenny said.

  “I can separate my personal feelings from my work,” Lance said, fumbling for his phone. “Hey, any of you care to comment on Stacey’s role in creating this hostile environment for Latinos?”

  The girls turned their attention away from Lance and his phone to focus on Julia.

  “LSU is holding a special meeting tomorrow to talk about our response to what happened,” Jenny said. “Can you come?”

  “LSU?”

  “The Latino Student Union,” Rosa said. “Didn’t they have one at your old school?”

  “They didn’t have Latinos at my old school,” Julia said.

  “You should have started your own club,” Jenny said.

  “Girl, you can’t have a club with only one member,” Rosa said.

  “Do you have to be Latino to join the club?” Lance asked.

  The girls looked at Lance like he’d just burped up orange Fanta.

  “No, but it helps,” the girl who pushed him said, getting up in his face again.

  “Of course anyone can join,” Jenny said, stepping between the two. She turned to the other girls and said, “We need allies for this fight.”

  The aggressive girl backed off, rolling her eyes.

  “Great! I’ll see you ladies tomorrow, then.”

  Lance spun around and strutted down the hallway, stopping people along the way and thrusting his iPhone in their face for comments.

  “God, that guy is a tool,” Rosa said.

  “I bet he’s the one who wrote that on Julia’s poster,” Egyptian Eyes said. “He looks hella racist to me.”

  “If it wasn’t for him, no one would know what happened to Julia’s poster,” Jenny said. “The administration took it down this morning before anyone saw it.”

  Julia counted this as a mixed blessing. If no one had seen the vandalism, Julia would have just assumed one of her opponents or their supporters had torn it down. Lance’s story had created an outpouring of encouragement, but it also put Julia in the uncomfortable position of being the most aggrieved Latina at Lincoln High School.

  “Where’s the LSU meeting tomorrow?” Julia asked.

  “Room 309,” Jenny said. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you.”

  The girls escorted Julia to their designated spot on the quad—on the concrete stairs leading from the theater to the expansive lawn. This elevated position gave them a great vantage point to comment on those gathered below and yell out compliments to any passing boy they thought was cute.

  “See that guy over there?” Jenny said, directing Julia’s attention to a tall, muscular dark-skinned boy with a Giants baseball cap turned backward on his head. “That’s Pedro Ruiz, captain of the baseball team. He’s hella fine. I think you should date him.”

  Pedro registered the girls’ stares and nodded in their direction, which sent Jenny and the others into a fit of laughter. Julia turned away, not wanting to send any signals that Pedro might misinterpret. All day long, she’d been looking forward to seeing Brian, her shy, awkward lab partner. They’d had such a great conversation last night. Bits and pieces of it popped up pleasantly this morning, pushing the horrible incident of her poster to the far corners of her consciousness. What kind words would he say in response to what happened? Should she play up her sadness a bit, just to make him work a little harder to comfort her?

  By the time she reached sixth-period biology, she could barely contain her excitement, which made her performance as a tragic hero somewhat difficult. She watched Brian enter the class looking distracted and nervous. When he sat down next to her, he barely glanced in her direction. Instead, he busied himself flipping through his textbook and extracting sheets of paper from his binder. His
silence lasted the entire class period, despite Julia’s best efforts to draw his attention away from Cohen’s boring lecture. When the bell finally rang, she had had enough.

  “Did Stacey do it?” she asked, just outside the classroom door.

  “What?” Brian pulled hard on the straps of his backpack. “The poster thing?”

  “Yeah, the poster thing.”

  “Of course not. Stacey would never do something like that.”

  “Then why the silent treatment?” Julia asked.

  “What? I didn’t . . .”

  “You’ve been ignoring me all class. What’s wrong?”

  Brian broke eye contact and stared at his shoes. “Did you do it?”

  “What?”

  “Did you write that on your poster?”

  Julia felt her face catch fire. “Are you fucking kidding me? Why would I do that?”

  “To make people feel sorry for you. To win the election.”

  Julia stared at him for a moment. This was by far the worst thing she had heard all day. Worse than the “Build That Wall” comment because it had come from someone she liked, not some anonymous asshole. How could he even suspect such a thing? She thought they had really connected last night. But he didn’t see her as a person; she was only a threat to his candidate. Before she started to cry, she stormed off. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the direction of the bike racks. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she get away from Brian and his stupid face with its cute freckles and button nose.

  Halfway down the hallway, she heard the slap of his sneakers behind her and turned around to confront him. He was standing below one of Stacey’s enormous banners with that slogan that told everyone that a vote for Julia was a wasted one.

  “You know, I thought you were different,” she said. “I thought you were a nice guy, but you’re just an asshole. Worse, you’re an asshole who pretends to be a nice guy. At least the other guys I liked didn’t hide the fact that they were miserable cretins.”

  “Wait,” Brian said, smiling. “You like me?”

  “Liked!” Julia shouted, and turned and walked away.

  “Julia, I’m sorry,” Brian said, running to catch up with her. “It was a horrible thing to say. Nothing like this has ever happened at Lincoln.”

  “Maybe because no one has ever challenged the status quo.”

  “Maybe. Stacey’s freaking out, and I guess I let her panic get to me. I’m really sorry.”

  Julia stood there and debated how forgiving she should be. Brian really seemed remorseful. He waited a safe distance away for Julia to make up her mind about him. She liked how vulnerable he appeared in that moment, the way he seemed to stand in front of her like he was in his underwear. She really wanted this shitty day to end on a more positive note. And it could if she trusted her instincts about this guy standing in front of her with the kind eyes and shy smile.

  “I’ll accept your apology on one condition,” she said.

  “Anything.”

  “You buy me ice cream.”

  13

  JULIA INSISTED THEY ride their bikes to iCream. “You see more of a place if you move slower through it,” she said. Brian hadn’t used his bike since he got his driver’s license, but he was pretty sure his old Trek was still functional. Since his house was near the ice cream store, he made plans to meet Julia there, and they would bike the rest of the way together.

  This plan worked out for two reasons. First it gave Brian time to make sure Stacey was preoccupied and not anywhere near the route he’d take with Julia. If she saw him with her rival now, she would flip out, especially in light of Julia’s ascendance in popularity. You wanna get tea? he texted her before leaving the student parking lot.

  Can’t, she responded. Meeting with the Christian Club to discuss possible fund-raiser. I need their thoughts, prayers, and votes more than ever now.

  Go with God, Brian wrote back, and then sped out of the parking lot.

  Meeting Julia at his home also gave Brian a few minutes to calm the fuck down before his first date with her. Had she really asked him out? After he said that horrible thing to her? How could he have been so stupid? He would have punched himself in the face, except he wanted his face to look good right now.

  Brian pulled to a stop in front of his garage, happy to see the family car wasn’t parked anywhere nearby. That meant that his mom must have taken Kyle to his therapist appointment and he had the house to himself. Brian didn’t want Kyle to know anything about his relationship with Julia. If Kyle even thought Brian liked her, his little brother would find some way to use it against him. Unlike the other times Kyle tortured him, this was something he could use to inflict real damage.

  Brian entered his house and went straight to the bathroom. He had about five minutes before Julia arrived. Not enough time to shower, so instead he dampened a towel and wiped himself clean. Then he brushed his hair and teeth and reapplied his deodorant. Would it look weird if he changed outfits? Probably. He needed to appear casual, like biking to get ice cream with the most beautiful girl in the world was something he did every day.

  Brian entered the garage from the kitchen and found his bike lying on the cement floor like a murder victim. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he said, kneeling down in front of it, preparing to do chest compressions. He prayed to God to save his bike for one last ride. “If you fix this thing now, I promise to attend the next two Christian Club meetings with Stacey.” Brian lifted his bike up, and it appeared to be in perfect working order minus the deflated tires, which he easily fixed. This meant Brian was contractually obligated to God, the Christian Club, and Stacey, in that order.

  He opened the garage door and found Julia waiting patiently by the sidewalk on her cruiser. “Were you talking to someone in there?” she asked.

  “Me? No! Must have been someone else praying to God.” He didn’t say this last bit out loud. At least he hoped he didn’t.

  “Let’s go,” she said, pushing away from the curb and setting her bike in motion.

  It felt like a dream. Or a perfume ad. Julia pedaled in front of him, occasionally glancing back and smiling, her long, brown hair blowing in the gentle breeze. The streets were mostly quiet in Brian’s neighborhood. He listened to the light grinding his bike chain made in its easy rotation. He passed a single-story home and heard someone inside practicing piano. It would be nice if they had this accompanying soundtrack on their way downtown. The light and buoyant tune perfectly matched the warm afternoon. Maybe this was a preview of what his summer was going to be like, Brian thought hopefully, although he’d have to find alternative destinations to the ice cream shop if he wanted to avoid returning to his freshman size. He didn’t have another appendix to help him lose weight by leaking poison into his body.

  The two arrived at iCream, a self-serve, soft-serve ice cream shop at the end of downtown. The place was designed to look like an Apple store, with gleaming, metallic dispensers that oozed their contents into paper cups or waffle cones. An island in the middle of the store contained every topping imaginable, from your fruits and nuts to your Skittles and chocolate-covered espresso beans. Brian actually preferred the old-fashioned parlor that had been here since he was a child, with its limited choices and judgmental scoopers. Now it was up to him to limit his intake, which was a responsibility he didn’t feel ready for.

  The place was empty so Brian and Julia spent the first twenty minutes going from machine to machine sampling the different flavors, trying to decide which would taste best mixed together. In the end, they were pretty full, so they only filled their cups halfway with their favorite flavors. Julia had mango and strawberry with white chocolate chips, and Brian went with the vanilla bean and pomegranate, no topping. “My treat,” Brian said when they went to pay.

  “Okay, but I get the next one,” Julia said, smoothly implying that this was not going to be their only date.

  The two grabbed a table outside and watched the day draw to a close. The leaves of the tree-li
ned street almost glowed in the late-afternoon sun. It was very European, Brian thought, sitting curbside and talking with a French Canadian. He remembered seeing whole neighborhoods take breaks like this when his family took him to Paris last summer. It was amazing to witness so many people doing nothing at once.

  Julia swirled the flavors in her cup together and brought the spoon to her mouth. Brian found himself staring at her lips. They were the most beautiful objects in the world, he decided. They were more expressive than the eyes because they were both singular and a pair, like two dancers performing their separate moves in sync.

  “Can I ask you something?” Brian said.

  “Sure.”

  “Why do you want to be the ASB president? I mean, I know you said you thought it would be ‘fun,’ but there has to be another reason, right? It’s such a big responsibility.”

  Julia paused. “My aunt wants to send me back to Canada.”

  “What? Why?”

  Julia shrugged. “She’s afraid I may do something shameful.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not really. But she is a bit more paranoid than I expected. I thought that if I had some big responsibility at the school, it would show her I had changed. Make it harder to get rid of me.”

  “So, you never thought it would be fun?”

  “I just wanted to get under Stacey’s skin. I felt bad as soon as I said it. That’s the kind of person I hoped to leave behind in Canada. The girl who said mean things to get reactions out of people.”

  “You don’t seem like that kind of person.”

  “I’m trying to reinvent myself. You ever want to do that?”

  “Yes,” Brian said.

  “I feel like this is my opportunity to become someone new.” Julia stabbed her ice cream with her spoon. “It’s weird. I’ve only been here a month, but I already feel like I belong in California more than Quebec.”