Your Own Worst Enemy

by Gordon Jack

  Julia pulled away. Now that she had bared her soul in this Nordstrom confessional, she wanted to see its impact on Brian. If he had anger or disgust on his face, it would kill her. But all she saw was pity.

  “That’s horrible,” he said.

  “It’s okay if you hate me,” Julia said, turning away. She caught a glimpse of herself in the floor-length mirror and quickly averted her eyes. “I needed you to know. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.”

  The next song on the Spotify playlist came on; “First Love/Late Spring.” Julia hoped it was true. Mitski had never gotten anything wrong before. But how could someone forgive a person for something so horrible? Julia couldn’t even forgive herself.

  Brian stepped closer and wrapped his arms around Julia’s waist. She listened to him breathe softly in her ear. “I kissed a boy once,” he finally said.

  The admission was so surprising, Julia couldn’t help but laugh. “So?” she said.

  “I just . . . if we’re being totally honest . . . I thought you should know.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I didn’t not like it. But I prefer kissing you. Like by a billion times.” Brian pressed his lips against Julia’s and showed her how much he liked kissing her.

  “Well, that’s good. I like kissing you better than the girls I’ve kissed too.”

  “Girls?”

  “That’s a story for another time,” Julia said.

  And so, the two went back to kissing.

  Twenty minutes later, the salesclerk knocked on their door. “How’s everything?” she asked.

  “Just great,” Julia said. “I think I found what I’m looking for.”

  Julia bought the summer dress, and she and Brian walked hand in hand through the maze of clothes toward the escalators. She couldn’t remember a time she was happier. Somehow, out of all the various outfits she could have put on, she had found the perfect fit. She felt as soft and light as the fabric in her shopping bag.

  “This girl who tried to kill herself,” Brian said as they made their way toward the escalator. “Did you ever, you know, apologize?”

  “There wasn’t time,” Julia said, but then added, “That’s not true. I was too scared to see her.”

  “I get that,” he said, squeezing her hand. “You have to, you know, at some point.”

  “I know,” Julia said. “How do you make amends for something like that?”

  “You’ll find a way,” Brian said. “I have faith in you. Oh my God!”

  Brian immediately pushed her away. And not in the typical way boys do when they suddenly become emotionally unavailable. He literally shoved her into a circular rack of summer sweaters as they were rounding the corner to the down escalator.

  “What the—?” she said, regaining her balance.

  “Brian!” a blond woman in her late thirties said. She was tanned and fit, like a personal trainer who anchored the evening news.

  “Hi, Ms. Wynn,” Brian said, stepping away from the sweater rack as fast as he could.

  Holy shit! This was Stacey’s mom. Julia could see the resemblance now. She suddenly became a Black Friday shopper and started frantically flipping through the items on the rack in front of her, hoping to duck behind the sweater curtain when no one was looking.

  “You’re going to have to get used to calling me Mrs. Park,” the woman said. “The wedding’s in three weeks.”

  “That’s going to be weird,” Brian rambled. “Not the wedding. The name. I’m sure the wedding’s going to be awesome.”

  “You’re Stacey’s date, right?”

  “You know it,” Brian said. “I’m here, actually, shopping for something nice to wear.”

  “In the Juniors department?”

  “What? Is that what this is? No. I’m coming down from the Men’s department upstairs.”

  “The Men’s department is on the bottom floor.”

  “I know. I got confused. Anyway, nice seeing you. Gotta get home for dinner.”

  Brian stumbled off, leaving Ms. Wynn with a bemused look on her face. Julia ducked down and crawled between the sweaters hanging on the rack in front of her. She prayed Stacey’s mom would move on to Bridal and not find her. She didn’t know how long she could hide in all this cotton before she started to suffocate.

  After a few minutes, she poked her head out and saw that the coast was clear. Just to be safe, she grabbed a few sweaters and took them into the changing room to buy herself some time. That was a close call, she texted Brian when she was safely locked inside. She waited there for a response, but there was none. After five minutes, Julia left the discarded sweaters in a heap on the floor and told the salesclerk that nothing fit quite right.

  25

  FIVE DAYS TILL ELECTION DAY

  TONY LISTENED TO Mohawk discuss the upcoming election with the five other munchkins sitting at his table and wondered if this is what it was like to have siblings. He was an only child and had grown accustomed to solitude, both at home and at school. Now he had to share everything with these underclassmen—from his chocolate milk to his thoughts and feelings. Most days, it wasn’t so bad, but there were times he wanted to be left alone. Today, for instance. He could really use this time to review his Chinese vocabulary, but instead, he was forced to listen to these little dudes brainstorm about how to win votes.

  “I’ve started sharing my homework in math in exchange for Instagram posts,” a sleepy-eyed kid with a lisp said.

  “What math class are you in?”

  “Geo 9.”

  “Any of you guys in upper-division classes?” Mohawk asked.

  The boy with the glasses that hung crooked on his face raised his hand. Were his ears lopsided? Tony wondered. It was hard to tell with all that dirty-blond hair hanging over them.

  “What class?” Mohawk asked.

  “Trig Honors,” the boy said.

  Shit, Tony thought. He’s in a higher math class than I am, and he’s not even Asian.

  “What can you offer the kids in exchange for their support?” Mohawk asked.

  The boy thought for a moment. In the ensuing silence, Mohawk refilled each of the boys’ glasses with squirts of chocolate syrup from his bottle. They were drinking it straight now, as if it were tequila shots.

  “Olivia Seto cheats off me on practically every test,” the boy said, smiling diabolically. “I could make my help conditional for her support. A kind of quid pro quo.”

  “What’s that mean?” Mohawk asked.

  “One vote for every answer I give her,” the boy said.

  “I like it,” Mohawk said, squirting more syrup in the boy’s now-empty glass. “What about you, Roger?”

  Roger was the only black kid at the table. Tony had asked his older sister to the junior prom this year and had been rejected, somewhat unkindly, to his recollection. After going to the trouble of painting his car with the promposal Wanna go to prom? she had ignored him until he blocked her exit from the student lot with his vehicle, at which point she took out a Sharpie and wrote a big NO on the driver’s-side window. The paint, it turned out, was indelible, and he had to get a whole new paint job to remove the invitation from the passenger side of his dad’s Mercedes.

  “I’ve been sneaking on to my sister’s computer,” Roger said. “I got all sorts of shit I can blackmail her with.”

  “I like it,” Tony said, speaking up for the first time since this meeting began. “Give this dude a double shot,” he instructed Mohawk.

  Roger slid his paper cup over to Mohawk, who made a big commotion of filling it with syrup.

  In the middle of his generous pour, a murmur arose in the crowd around them. Assistant Principal Evans had entered the building, escorted by a campus security guard, the one who was always escorting Tony back to class after he got lost on his way to the bathroom. The guy—a giant who would easily blend into the 49ers defensive line—was carrying a large, black garbage bag.

  Evans wasn’t doing his normal meet and greet with stu
dents. He made his way through the circular tables like a professional skier doing a slalom run. Sammy, his security detail, did his best to keep up, but his large frame made it challenging for him to step between bodies without knocking them over. On their way to Tony’s table, they confiscated all the paper cups Mohawk had distributed to give the constituents their daily chocolate fix. The chorus of boos grew as the two men moved toward the back.

  Sammy turned to the room of munchkins and did his best to intimidate them with his snarl and bug-eyed stare. When the booing was reduced to an audible grumble, Mr. Evans turned to Tony and smiled. The man had the bland look of the first guy killed off in alien movies.

  “Mr. Guo,” he said, placing his hands on his hips. Tony’s dad struck this pose whenever he wanted to convey he meant business. “I hear you’re providing these students with chocolate milk, is that correct?”

  “Don’t speak without a lawyer present,” Mohawk advised.

  “I assume you know,” Evans continued, “that the district has dropped chocolate milk from the cafeteria menu.”

  “I do, sir.” Tony always added “sir” and “ma’am” when addressing adults. Most adults at his school hated it. “I’d like to know why students weren’t involved in that decision.”

  “It wasn’t their decision to make,” Evans said.

  “Do district officials eat their meals in the cafeteria?” Mohawk asked.

  Evans nodded in Sammy’s direction. The security guard moved over to where Mohawk was sitting and placed one of his huge hands on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Mr. Guo,” Evans went on. “We can have this conversation here or in my office. Which do you prefer?”

  Tony looked around the room and saw all eyes were on him. Normally, having this many people staring at him would freak him out. It always did in class when he had to give a speech, or solve an equation, or ask to go to the bathroom. But now he felt strengthened by the audience’s gaze. He was fighting for these small, pathetic creatures. For the first time in his life, he understood why people had babies or pets—their weakness made you stronger.

  “Mr. Evans, sir,” Tony said. “I am running for ASB president to protect the rights of these munchkins.”

  “You’re running for ASB president?” Evans seemed genuinely shocked at hearing this, so much that he got on his walkie-talkie. “Can you confirm for me that Tony Guo is a candidate for ASB president?” he said. “Really? Well, yes. That is a surprise.”

  Evans clipped his walkie-talkie back onto his belt. “Be that as it may,” he continued, still a little bewildered. “I cannot allow you to serve chocolate syrup to students when it has been removed from the cafeteria menu.”

  “What about Stacey’s cupcakes?” Mohawk whispered.

  “What about Stacey’s cupcakes?” Tony said, louder.

  Evans rolled his eyes. “Those are allowed under the Pupil Nutrition, Health, and Achievement Act, as long as she gave them away off school premises, which she did.”

  “And Julia’s sweet buns?” Mohawk whispered.

  “And Julia’s sweet buns?” Tony said.

  “I wasn’t aware Miss Romero was giving out baked goods as part of her campaign. I promise to speak to her about this. In the meantime, you will no longer provide chocolate milk to any student here on campus,” he said. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Mr. Evans, sir. You are denying these children their human rights!” Tony pounded on the table for emphasis. “I, for one, will not stand by and let you do it.”

  Evans sighed and nodded in Sammy’s direction. In a flash, the security guard had Tony by the forearm and was hoisting him up. A few seconds later, Tony was being led through the tables to the exit.

  “I promise all of you,” Tony said as he was dragged from the room, “I will not let the Man stop me from helping the little guy. You are the future of this school, and no one will keep me from fighting for your interests.”

  Just before they reached the door, Tony glanced back and saw Mohawk leap from his chair, climb onto a table, and say, “Captain, my captain,” in a voice that echoed through the cavernous space.

  “Sit down, Mr. Little,” Evans said. “You hear me, sit down!”

  One by one, the other boys followed Mohawk up onto tables, until every boy stood in silent solidarity with their leader. Then one of the tables buckled under the weight, and five boys fell to the floor in a tangle of spidery legs and elbows. The boys erupted in laughter after that, which sort of dampened the majesty of the moment. The last thing Tony heard as he was escorted out of his makeshift convention hall was “Smooth move, dumbass!”

  “CAFETERIAGATE DERAILS WYNN CAMPAIGN”

  by Lance Haber

  On Thursday, April 5, the administration marched into the school cafeteria and forcibly removed Tony Guo from the premises. His crime? Speaking to his constituents.

  “It was a political gathering,” Kyle Little told me in a recent sit-down interview. “I thought the administration was supposed to protect our freedom of assembly, not make it more difficult.”

  As usual, the administration declined to comment.

  “It is not the school’s policy to share information about student punishment with reporters,” Buckley said. “How would you like it if, for example, you were suspended for inflammatory speech, and I told our student newspaper all about it?”

  Again, it appears you can’t ask the administration a question without them threatening you with disciplinary action.

  “This was a clear retaliatory measure by the Wynn campaign,” Little said. “Tony’s campaign is gathering momentum, and she now sees him as a threat. She did the same thing to Julia when her campaign first started.”

  When asked to comment, Wynn was typically evasive and only responded to my questions via email. “I had nothing to do with the administration shutting down Tony’s illegal chocolate milk distillery,” Wynn wrote. “He was violating Education Code 49431.5, which requires all beverages sold to students on school grounds be approved for compliance with state nutritional guidelines.”

  “We weren’t selling chocolate milk,” Little said. “We were giving it away like Stacey did with her cupcakes, which by the way contain way more fat and sugar content than our tiny squirts of chocolate syrup. Did they shut her operation down and drag her away to the front office? No, they did not.”

  Again, it appears the powers that be have already voted in this election campaign. Their candidate: Stacey Wynn.

  First they refuse to fully investigate her role in the now-infamous Postergate scandal of last week. Now they shut down rising star Tony Guo just as his message of limited government is striking a chord with voters.

  And what do we make of Wynn’s recent pivot to loosening the restrictive cell phone policy? That should put the principal’s beloved candidate at odds with her administration.

  Before you get too excited about Wynn’s new platform, think about it for a minute: she wants us to be able to use our cell phones in class more, claiming they are valuable educational tools.

  The reason we like our cell phones so much is because they are a digital safe zone from school. We get to create the world we want to appear on the screen. What do you think will happen if the school starts using our iPhones and Samsungs as learning tools, as Wynn advocates? Not only will we be inundated with homework reminders throughout the day, but our devices will turn into tracking mechanisms, a GPS narc, able to locate us at any time. Is that the kind of digital world you want to live in? To me, it sounds like the start of every dystopian novel where the beleaguered citizens are under constant surveillance by their totalitarian overlords.

  Unless you’re looking forward to being grouped into personality-type factions and asked to fight to the death at annual gladiator tournaments, you must resist Stacey’s attempts to control our primary means of communication. Use your cell phones to text your local school board officials today with your concerns and complaints. I provide their contact info below.

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  26

  FOUR DAYS TILL ELECTION DAY

  STACEY AWOKE TO the smell of something burning. She leaped out of bed and raced downstairs to stop the flames from spreading and found her dad making breakfast. He was dressed and grilling French toast, which was in some ways more alarming than the fire she had envisioned consuming her home. Breakfast was not her dad’s thing given that he woke up most days after ten a.m.

  “Dad? What’re you doing?” she asked.

  “Good morning, sweetheart,” he said. “Sit down.”

  Stacey sat and watched her dad slide a couple crispy slices of French toast onto a plate and top it with powdered sugar and blueberries. Just how she liked it.

  “You’re making breakfast,” she said.

  “Yep! I’m taking the drone out for its maiden voyage,” he said. “Thought I’d do it early, before class.”

  “Oh! You’re done already?” Stacey said. She had hoped this project would keep him busy for at least another week.

  “It wasn’t that hard to assemble,” he said. “Of course, now I have all these ideas for modifications.”

  It was great to see her dad excited like this. She hadn’t seen him this engaged since he installed that electric awning in the backyard.

  She stuck a forkful of toast in her mouth and chewed, listening to her dad go on about his ideas for increasing the machine’s wind resistance. While she was eating, she received a text from Priya.

  Found something interesting, she wrote.

  On whom? Stacey typed back.

  Both.

  Meet in library @ lunch? Stacey wrote.

  Priya sent her a thumbs-up emoji.

  “Does the drone have a camera?” Stacey asked her dad, scanning the sky from the kitchen window.