The Voting Booth

by Brandy Colbert

  The woman behind the table sighs again, clearly not appreciating the scene unfolding in front of her. We’re backing up the line and it’s not even seven thirty. She does another scan of the voter roll. “Are you sure you’re registered in this jurisdiction?”

  I think back to when I registered. Or preregistered, when I was sixteen. The same year we moved here…when we were using Dad’s address for everything.

  Shit.

  “What?” Marva says, fingers thrumming against her hip. Damn. Can she see all this from my expression?

  “I, uh…I might be registered somewhere else.” My eyes sweep from her braids down to her black combat boots. “My dad’s address.”

  The woman nods, already looking past us. “Would you mind stepping aside so I can check people in?”

  Marva marches out of the church, a dark storm cloud practically appearing above her head. Outside it’s crisp but bright.

  “Hey, thanks,” I say, looking toward the parking lot where Ida’s waiting in my car. “I’m just gonna go after school, but I, uh, appreciate you fighting for me like that.” I feel like I need to say something else to give this a proper ending, so I mutter, “Have a good day.”

  Jesus. Like she’s working a drive-through or ringing me up at the drugstore.

  But before I can take a step, there’s a tight grip on my arm. She may be small, but she’s strong.

  “Listen, we have to try to figure this out,” she says, the desperation in her voice damn near palpable. “I didn’t spend months helping people register and educating them on the ballot measures only to see someone throw away their vote.”

  I frown. “I’m not throwing it away. There’s nothing to figure out. I told you, I’ll go after school. Got plenty of time before my gig.”

  Her eyes narrow at the word gig, but it doesn’t deter her. “How do you know you’ll be registered there? You can’t just wait hours to find out. The lines will be out of control. Don’t you care about democracy?”

  Has she been talking to my mom?

  “I gotta go,” I say, backing away. “Killer test in Calculus, third period. I’ll figure this out. I promise. Peace.”

  I half expect her to tighten the grip on my arm, but she lets me go freely. No doubt glaring, but once I turn around, I don’t dare look back to check.

  Ida is waiting in the passenger seat, furiously texting. She glances over as I get in next to her.

  “Who was that girl you were talking to?”

  I toss my headphones in the backseat and look out the windshield. Marva is still standing there, now focused on her phone. At least she didn’t follow me over here. Except…the more I look at her, the more I wonder if I should’ve just agreed to let her help me. I can’t miss that calc test, but she is really cute. Cuter than any of the girls at my school. And she’s maybe the most intense stranger I’ve ever met, but it’s kind of dope that she cares so much about something when she doesn’t even know how it’s going to turn out.

  I shake my head, looking at the clock. I gotta go if I’m going to get us to school on time. I put the key in the ignition and turn. The car stutters like it did this morning and yesterday and the day before that. I’ve been meaning to get it to the shop, but usually, it starts.

  Not this time.

  I turn that key over and over again, but the car just chokes and stutters until Ida looks at me and says, “I don’t think the sixteenth time is the charm.”

  I try once more. Sending up a prayer to anyone who’ll listen. And…nothing.

  Shit.

  STILL NO TEXTS FROM ALEC.

  I look at the last one he sent, as if it will magically turn into something else. Something like Of course I’m voting, Marv. Just messing with you. Or Give me one more reason why I should support this two-party system and I promise I’ll get to the polls.

  But I’m starting to wonder if it would even matter if he texted. He hasn’t been himself lately. He’s still the same Alec, sweet and attentive, but something is off. We used to spend all night discussing things like the policies that most resonated with us, and the best way to get the word out about our candidates. Now he changes the subject almost every time I bring up the election. My stomach twists into a knot when I think about the disagreement we had a couple of months ago. I couldn’t believe I was talking to my boyfriend of nearly two and a half years. I still can’t.

  “Hey.”

  I jump and turn around, almost dropping my phone. It’s the guy who’s probably not going to vote either.

  I didn’t even hear anyone come up behind me, which is so not like me. Mom says I have superpowers when it comes to sound. I can hear the trash trucks when they’re blocks away and we forgot to drag the bins out to the curb, and Selma when she’s in a playful mood, slinking around the house so she can pounce on one of us when we walk around a corner. I can even hear my parents murmuring about me in the kitchen when I’m doing homework all the way down the hall in my room. Nothing bad, really. They just think I’m too serious for my age and that I should be “having fun” instead of focusing so much on college applications and raising awareness for the election. I want to tell them this is fun for me, but I don’t want to face that look in their eyes—the one that says they’re way cooler than their own daughter.

  I stare at him, clutching my phone by my side. “Hi.”

  “Duke,” he reminds me.

  “I know,” I say, rolling my eyes. It was only, like, five minutes ago that he walked away from me like I was trying to get him to join a cult instead of helping him find the proper polling place.

  “So, uh, do you have a car here?”

  I narrow my eyes. “Why?”

  He sighs. “Mine won’t start. Was thinking maybe you could give me a jump? I gotta get my little sister to school, and I—”

  “I know, I know.” I drop my voice to mimic his: “Killer test in Calculus.”

  He frowns. “You don’t go to school or something?”

  “Of course I go to school.”

  “Exactly. You seem like someone who’d take it pretty seriously, so I don’t know why you’re giving me shit about needing to be there.”

  I look down at the blank screen on my phone and shove it in my bag. I don’t look at him as I take a sip of coffee. “I’m just…Today is really important, okay? And sometimes it seems like I’m the only person who actually cares about the future of our country.”

  He laughs, but it’s not like the one from before. Not exactly. This one is gentler. Less mocking. “Are you kidding? You saw how many people were in line back there. Look at it now—wrapped around the building. And the parking lot is full.”

  My eyes skate over the church and all the cars baking in the sun. He’s right. But I don’t want to give in that easily.

  “Well, sometimes I feel like I’m the only person our age who cares.”

  “I was in that line, too.”

  I chew on the inside of my lip for a moment. “I have a car, but I don’t have jumper cables. Do you?”

  “Nah.” His big shoulders sag. “All right. Thanks anyway. I’ll call a car or something. You think the church will tow me if I leave mine here for the day?”

  I glance at my phone again, checking the time. I do take school seriously, but I don’t have any tests or quizzes today. I could probably miss two weeks straight and still graduate at the top of my class. Which I’d never do, even if all the hard work I’ve put in over the years gives me some cushion. So it feels as if someone else has taken over my voice box when the next sentence comes out of my mouth.

  “I’ll drive you.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t even know where I go.”

  “Flores Hills isn’t that big.” If he doesn’t go to my school, he must go to one of the other two private schools in the area. I’m surprised I haven’t seen him around before, but I’m so busy with academics that I don’t have time to go to games or anywhere else I’d interact with people from other schools. “Laguna Academy?”

 
“Nope. Good ol’ Flores Hills High.”

  “Oh.” He laughs again, and it makes my cheeks warm. “What?”

  “The look on your face is like I said I went to school in the gutter.”

  “It is not.” But I don’t say it so much as huff it, and then I’m even more embarrassed.

  “We’re not all hooligans and hoodlums at FHH,” he says, and I swear his grin gets bigger the hotter my face burns. “Just some of us.”

  Ugh. Who even says hooligans? “Do you want a ride or not?”

  “Yeah, but Ida has to come, too.”

  “Who’s Ida?”

  “Me,” says a cheerful voice over my shoulder.

  I jump, completely startled again. I might need to get my hearing checked.

  MARVA DRIVES LIKE A MANIAC.

  From the minute we merge onto the freeway, people start honking. She’s not a bad driver, just the most aggressive one I’ve seen in a long time. You can only be so chill on the freeway, but she jerks the car around like literally everyone is in her way. I grab the oh-shit bar on the passenger side as she cuts off a silver BMW by inches.

  “You know, it’s cool if we’re a few minutes late,” Ida says from the backseat. She’s finally detached her nose from her phone, so even she must be worried about the fate of our lives.

  Marva glances at her in the rearview mirror. “What?”

  “You seem like you’re in a hurry, so…you know. We can get a late pass or whatever. You don’t have to drive so fast.”

  Marva laughs. “You think this is fast?”

  Ida stares at me with wide eyes when I look back at her between the seats.

  “So, where do you go to school?” I ask Marva, hoping she might slow down if I distract her a bit. But not too much. Just enough to get us to FHH in one piece.

  “Salinas Prep,” she says, laying on the horn when someone cuts her off for once.

  “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just…fancy.”

  She shrugs. “It’s really not.”

  But everyone in this car knows she’s lying. Salinas Prep has some ridiculous statistic, like 70 percent of their students go to the Ivy Leagues. I don’t even have to ask to know that she’s applying early acceptance, and probably every single school is out of state.

  Nothing against Ivies, but I don’t get the big deal. I just don’t understand why anyone would pay all that money to go to a place where people think they’re better than you because they were born into rich families. I like school, but I don’t think I need to apply someplace where secret societies and legacy admissions count more than what you actually bring to the table as a person.

  “A girl in my class is going out with someone from Salinas Prep,” Ida pipes up. “Do you know Aileen Mayer?”

  “The name sounds familiar,” Marva says. I can’t tell if she’s pretending not to know her or if she really has no idea who she is.

  “I met her at a protest I went to recently,” Ida says.

  I can feel my sister’s eyes on me without even turning around. But she swore me to secrecy, so I know not to say a word about that protest. Even in front of Marva, who’d probably respect her for what she did.

  “She’s pretty badass. And involved in, like, a million things. Orchestra, cheerleading, an officer in the GSA.” When Marva doesn’t respond, Ida adds, “The gay-straight alliance?”

  Marva sighs. “I know what the GSA is. Her name doesn’t sound familiar, but my boyfriend’s best friend runs the meetings. Maybe he knows her.”

  My jaw tenses. Hard. It comes out of nowhere, and I’m glad Ida is in the backseat and not sitting next to me. My little sister notices everything. Even when she’s on her phone.

  “Who’s your boyfriend’s best friend? And your boyfriend? I bet Aileen knows them, too.”

  “He’s nobody,” Marva snaps, pushing down hard on the brakes behind a slow-moving pickup truck.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ida shrink down in her seat. And she gets on my nerves worse than just about anybody I know, but that doesn’t mean I want total strangers being an ass to her.

  “You seem pretty stressed,” I say to Marva, trying not to let my voice get too annoyed. It gets deeper when I’m annoyed, and it’s so deep it kind of booms, and it makes people nervous when a Black dude my size starts talking in a booming voice. “You can take the next exit and drop us off at a gas station or something. We’ll call a car the rest of the way.”

  Marva takes a couple of deep breaths, staring straight ahead at the stalled traffic. Then she looks in the mirror at Ida. “It’s been a day.”

  “It’s not even eight o’clock,” Ida shoots back.

  “It feels like midnight,” Marva mumbles. She pauses, then says, “I’m sorry, okay? His name is Alec Buckman. And…it’s cool that you go to protests. I tried, but I get too angry at the counterprotesters, so my parents figured it was best if I used my voice in other ways.”

  Ida shrugs, traffic starts again, and the car is silent as Marva shuttles us to school. It might be my imagination, but I think she drives a little slower, too.

  She swings the car into the circle drive at 8:05, five minutes before the late bell. Ida grabs her bag, calls out a hurried thanks to our chauffeur, and slams the door, running up to the building without waiting for me.

  “Good luck,” Marva says, her eyes fixed on the dashboard.

  “With my test?”

  “Oh, yeah. That too.”

  But I know she was talking about getting to my polling place. I’m pretty sure voting is the only thing that’s been on her mind all week…maybe months.

  I grip my bag and look at the school. The first time Ma dropped me off here, FHH looked like a monster. It’s so much bigger than my old school, and Ma kept calling it a campus, which made me think of college, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I’d shot up four inches over the summer to six three, and I didn’t know what I was more afraid of—people knowing I was just a scared punk of a sophomore or them thinking I was a senior who knew a lot more than I did. I guess I shouldn’t have been so nervous, knowing Kendall went here…but that was stressing me out, too.

  I glance at Marva again. “Thanks.”

  “Uh-huh.” She puts her hand on the gearshift like she’s going to throw this thing into drive and gun it as soon as I get out. From what I’ve seen, she probably will.

  But for some reason, I can’t make myself open the door. “Where you off to now?”

  She gives me massive side-eye. “My fancy school. Where else?”

  “You have a test?”

  “What’s up with all the questions?”

  I clear my throat. “I, uh, was wondering if the offer still stands?”

  She finally looks at me, her eyes narrowed but curious. “What offer?”

  “To help me find my polling place.” What the hell am I doing? I’ve already seen how she drives. Yeah, she’s kind of cute, but what if she’s a serial killer? I have a test today. And she’s got a boyfriend. I wouldn’t want my girl running around with some strange dude…if I had a girl.

  But for the first time all morning, there’s something almost like a smile on her face. “Really?” Then she goes serious again, quick. “What about Calculus?”

  I raise my shoulders and drop them. “I’ll figure it out.”

  I’m eighteen, so I don’t need my parents to sign off on my absences. I’ll pretend I got food poisoning from breakfast (sorry, Ma) and beg Ms. McDonagh to let me retake it. She likes me, so I shouldn’t have to beg too hard. I hope.

  “Oh.” Marva sits up straight, pulls on that pink braid, and gives me a real smile. “Okay, then. Let’s roll.”

  I shake my head, laughing at how unnatural that sounds out of her mouth. “Yeah. Let’s roll.”

  I SHOULD FEEL WEIRDER ABOUT SITTING WITH A strange guy at Drip Drop Coffeehouse on a Tuesday morning.

  I try not to think about what Alec would say if he saw us. He’s been acting strange about the election lately,
but he’s still very much my boyfriend. I wouldn’t want him thinking that I was doing anything to sabotage us. What we have is too good.

  “What do you want?” Duke asks, staring at the giant chalkboard menu as he stands.

  “Oh, I can get my own.” I unzip my bag to find my wallet.

  “I got it. Least I can do since you’re helping me.”

  “No, really—”

  He gives me a long look. “Marva? I got it. What do you want?”

  “An Americano with two shots,” I mumble.

  “That what you had this morning?”

  I nod. It feels like I stopped at Drip Drop a million years ago instead of two hours.

  “Damn,” he says, shaking his head as he goes over to wait in line.

  I sigh as I pull out my phone. He’s not the first person to judge my coffee consumption, and he won’t be the last. But I don’t drink, or smoke cigarettes or weed. I have to have something.

  I look at Duke standing at the counter. He seems to be getting taller each time I look at him. What is it like to be that tall? I wonder if he plays basketball.

  While he’s waiting, I pull up the new photos of Selma. I try to snap all her pictures in natural light, but it was too dark this morning, so she’s lit by the lamp of my bedroom. I had to take them first thing to commemorate Election Day. I’ll shoot more later with her wearing my voting sticker.

  Keeping one eye on Duke as he approaches the counter and starts to order, I log into Selma’s social media and upload the most adorable photo. She’s sitting in the floofy folds of my duvet before I made the bed, looking absolutely angelic. I set a filter to make it sharper and brighter, caption it Happy Election Day!, and post it just as Duke puts his wallet back in his pocket and steps off to the side to wait for our drinks.

  By the time he comes back to the table a few minutes later, the photo already has 336 likes. I used to worry about getting too political on her account. Selma is the only one I ever feature in the photos; people are 100 percent there for cute cat content. But one day, on a high from phone-banking, I came home with a campaign poster, posed her in front of it, and uploaded the photo before I could think too much about what I was doing. People loved it. Their comments were similar to what they’re posting today: