Angeline fumed, but Emmie continued, “I’m going to ensure that students have an avenue to share their daily concerns. And that those concerns make it to the appropriate channels. Because you are correct, Ms. Quinn, that the escalating antics at this school have not engendered sufficient outrage. I believe this is because students, especially female students, feel there is no point. While the ‘cupcake no more’ hashtag that began after that unfortunate stunt last year indicates a rise in students wanting change, I believe that will only happen if they feel they are being listened to.”
She clasped her hands in her lap, and her eyes drifted across each of them. “What’s interesting here is that there’s often a misunderstanding about where real power lies. It’s simply a numbers game. The jocks, the cheerleaders, the beautiful people . . .” She said it as if Leo and Angeline weren’t all of those things and weren’t sitting beside her. “They’re the elite in this school for one reason: because their ranks are small. An asset if one is looking to be exclusive, but if one is looking to garner votes . . .” Emmie spread her hands wide. “The masses are who you seek.”
Silence. And then . . .
“Damn,” Grady said, echoing the only thought in Angeline’s head.
Emmie might dress like someone three times her age, but she was wicked smart. She knew her stuff—this stuff. Stuff Angeline knew nothing about. She was outside of her comfort zone. If this wasn’t just going to be a vote for the most popular, if Emmie made it something more, could Angeline actually lose?
What if she did?
Was running enough?
Would her mom really listen to Cat? Would Angeline have time to find another “respectable” extracurricular?
The boot camp suddenly felt like it was slipping from Angeline’s grasp.
She hadn’t paid the deposit yet. She should do it now. Her mom would have to let her go then regardless, wouldn’t she?
Cat eyed Angeline warily, and Angeline plastered on a smile. She wouldn’t let her see that Emmie had gotten under her skin.
Leo raised a finger in the air. “Cat, can I add something?”
“Of course,” Cat said.
Leo shifted to address Emmie. “One hundred and seventy-five million straws. The five hundred million came from a nine-year-old who called three straw companies and made a guess that went viral. Fact-checking needs to make a comeback.”
Emmie bristled. “Even if that’s true, it’s still a huge number.”
“Admittedly. But the issue is much more nuanced. Do you know Chelsea Anders?”
“Not personally but—”
“She told me that straws provide a simpler, more accessible way for her to drink,” Leo said, hints of his mom infusing his words. “But the school didn’t think about that. Banned them outright without a replacement. Replacements, which have their own baggage, like the increased cost and pollution of manufacturing paper straws, temperature-regulation issues with stainless, allergic reactions with wheat-based. Not to mention compostable only work if there are facilities that accept them.”
Emmie cocked her head. “Is this really your main platform? I wasn’t aware you were an environmentalist?”
It wasn’t that Leo didn’t care, but his mom really did. He was only biking home from Maxine’s party because his mom was on a preelection green energy kick.
“My platform,” Leo said, “is choice. Ours, not the administration’s.”
“There’s a system,” Emmie said. “Understanding it and working within it is the only realistic way to effect change.”
Leo shrugged. “Maybe what we’ve been missing is a little imagination.”
“And that seems like a good ending point.” Cat set down her pencil. “I think I’ve got enough from Emmie and Jay.” She gestured to Grady. “Photos?”
Grady grabbed his phone, and Cat shook her head. “An actual camera. With a lens that’s bigger than my pinky.” She pointed to a clunky camera that looked too heavy for Grady to pick up. “Try outside. The lighting’s better than in here.”
“But I’ve got all these filters,” Grady whined.
Cat sighed and turned to Ravi. “Could you—”
“Sure thing. Two siblings got me well-trained in babysitting.” He grinned at Cat, who, Angeline noted, reflexively smoothed down her cowlicks.
The group clambered over chairs and out of the newsroom, but before she left, Emmie thanked Cat. “It’s nice to see someone else who cares.”
“About what?” Cat said.
Emmie flicked her eyes to Leo and to Angeline. “Anything.”
That’s it.
If Emmie thought Angeline wasn’t going to go on the offensive, she need just look at her track record.
Leo stood. “We done?”
Look at her collateral damage.
Angeline kept her mouth shut and let Emmie go.
“Just a sec,” Cat said. “I need quotes from both of you as to why you’re running.”
Angeline had had enough. “Are you entirely mental? You know why I’m running. Mom won’t let me go to Evelyn’s boot camp unless I have something geeky to put on my college applications.”
Leo’s head drew back. “You got in?”
She’d forgotten he didn’t know. He always knew everything about her.
Sharing secrets was one of the things she loved most about being in a relationship. Secrets like how she’d secured Maxine a last-minute lesson with a top surf instructor on her family’s trip to Hawaii thanks to a slight exaggeration of her engagement rate. Like how she’d feigned a back spasm to be able to replace the flyer atop the cheer pyramid. Like how she’d asked her mom to send her to the public school instead of the charter just so Angeline could have distance from Cat.
“But then we’d have never met,” Leo had said, nestled alongside her on the beach. They’d packed a picnic dinner and were babysitting Sammy, even though they weren’t supposed to call it that since he was twelve.
“Thank fate,” Angeline had said, burying her cold hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “And sibling rules. My number in the charter school lottery was higher than Cat’s. She wouldn’t have gotten in without me. Though we weren’t even sure either of us would sneak through.”
“Sneak? Why sneak?”
“Technically we weren’t in the region yet. Dad had just . . .” A lump had hardened in her throat, and just as quickly, Leo had wrapped his arms around her. “Left. And we hadn’t moved into the apartment yet. You know Mom though. She doesn’t let anything get in the way of what she thinks is best for us.” Except letting Dad go, Angeline remembered thinking. She’d then told Leo about the night she’d gone to her dad’s before he married Botox Wife, the night she really knew her dad was gone.
That was the night Leo had told her that he used to be so shy in elementary school that he’d pretend he didn’t know the answer rather than have to speak aloud in class. He fought his fears, became the outgoing, likable guy he was now partly because he didn’t need more reasons to be different in this town where his Latinx family was already different. With his dad constantly mixing up lemons and limes, since in Spanish “lime” is “limón” and “lemon” is “lima,” needing Leo and Sammy to remind him that limes were “the green ones.” With their tradition to eat twelve grapes in the last twelve seconds of the year, making wishes, on New Year’s Eve. With his parents insisting until sixth grade that he only speak Spanish at home—even in front of his friends. With the closeness of his extended family, who’d sleep on sofas and floors and triple up cousins in beds when they came to visit, as staying in a hotel instead of with family was unheard of. Differences he loved, craved, tired of, and, sometimes, was embarrassed by. And that embarrassed him even more. All of it, pulling at Angeline’s heart for the boy he was and the man he was becoming.
Secrets had brought them closer.
Were all of hers now ammunition?
But then a smile brightened his face upon hearing about the boot camp, the smile he reserved for her.
Angeline wanted to say so much, but she only managed a nod. He knew how important this was to her. He’d see now, wouldn’t he? That this was bigger than a little embarrassment at Maxine’s party? “And you . . . Are you really running because of straws?”
His shoulders slumped, and he flinched in pain, and it was like a sucker punch to Angeline’s gut.
“Mom,” he said. “Good optics for her campaign to have a son active on student council. So I run and win, I get out of photo ops until election week. Then she’ll trot me back out: the perfect son.”
“Sammy too? Is his freshman year off to a good start?”
Leo’s demeanor shifted. “Yeah, it’s all a ride at Disney World. Schwartz telling Sammy he can’t wear a shirt around his waist because it looks too much like a skirt, and the dress code doesn’t let dudes wear skirts, which is bullshit, anyway. They take away his security blanket just when he’s got so much crap to deal with at home what with Mom all over my ass because of what you pulled, and Sammy being Sammy, caught in the middle.”
Whatever spell Angeline thought they’d been under vanished.
Because of Leo’s mom. Again. She’d never liked Angeline, couching it under disapproval of Leo dating someone with what she dismissively called a “presence” on social media.
Course, Mrs. Torres had quickly turned any social media backlash after the live-streaming to her advantage; she’d never have gotten that TV interview—Leo and family at her side—discussing the difficulties all working mothers face had it not been for Angeline.
No one had thanked her.
Leo raked his hand through his hair. “Do this for me, okay? Don’t ask about my brother again—don’t ask me anything.” He shoved a chair out of his way. “Cat, we done here?”
Cat tapped her notebook with the end of her pencil. “I don’t really have a quote . . . unless you want me to use that.”
Leo shook his head. “You two are more alike than you think.” He addressed Cat. “All that was off the record, Katie Couric. But if you need a quote, here it is.” He pointed to Angeline. “I’m running to save the school from her.”
9
When Cat Enters a Maze
24 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
3 DAYS TO THE PRIMARY
The newsroom was so quiet, Cat swore she could hear the spiders spinning cobwebs in the corners. She welcomed the incoming text—even if it was from her sister.
Angeline: So . . . get what you need for the article?
Cat: Finishing now.
Angeline:
It really was an epidemic.
Angeline: Just a check on where we landed . . . you’re not printing why I’m really running, right?
Cat considered giving her sister’s text a swift, one-stroke like and shutting off her phone. Instead, she pushed it aside and read over what she’d written about Angeline wanting to “make a difference.” Nothing could have been more vanilla and predictable. Unlike Angeline’s true motivations for running for president, which would have made this story an actual story. Add in Leo’s, and the whole school, town, and then some would read her newspaper. Maybe even look forward to the next one.
Angeline: It’s just . . . I need this.
Cat sighed. Right. The Angeline show. With Cat and Gramps and Mom and even Leo as her backup dancers. It had been this way from the day they’d taken their first steps—Cat a late walker at seventeen months and Angeline an early one at eight. Two months. For two months, Cat had been ahead of her sister. She’d been playing catch-up ever since.
Angeline: Cat?
Printing the truth about Angeline might change that while simultaneously gaining Cat the readership she needed to secure new advertisers, keep her paper afloat, and give her a stellar submission for the Fit to Print award. But Cat only knew what she knew about Angeline because she was her sister. She couldn’t print such privileged information without her source’s consent. As for Leo . . . he’d said “off the record,” but only after he’d spilled the truth. Technically she could use it. Give Emmie, who’d probably be a great student council president, a better shot at winning.
Nothing stood in Angeline’s way: not rules, not morals, not anything—or anyone.
Cat: Don’t worry about it.
Angeline: I’m safe then?
Cat:
Angeline’s ambition had ruined her relationship with Leo. For the past three years, he’d been as regular a fixture at their dinner table as their mom’s garlicky mashed potatoes and—though Cat would never say it to her mom—a more welcome one. Cat liked him. And despite being sure he was better off without her sister, something inside Cat wouldn’t let her say that either.
Cat: Leo too.
Angeline: Beat me!
Angeline: That was my next text.
Sure it was.
* * *
An energy infused Cat’s step the following afternoon as she walked through the harbor to meet Ravi.
Her first issue as editor in chief was in the can. Now she just needed to ensure she could pay for the next. For which she’d go full-on Nellie Bly. One of the few female reporters in New York City in the late 1800s, Nellie grew tired of only receiving arts and theater assignments. Instead of waiting to be given access to the big stories, she took it. She got herself committed to an insane asylum, where she lived for ten days undercover, inventing a new style of investigative journalism. Her exposé on the poor conditions and questionable treatment prompted more oversight and funding. She became a superstar. Cat had read her biography in a history of female journalists over the summer.
Though she usually pulled from Gramps’s well-curated bookshelves, she looked forward to browsing Harbor Books, which sat at the opposite end of town from her apartment on a narrow street that led up from the main road. It was steeper than she remembered, proving just how long it’d been since she’d gone inside. Probably before the new owners bought it, and that was more than a couple of years ago.
The incline stole Cat’s breath, but she was rewarded with an expansive view of what made her town her town. The calendar’s gentle flip into September meant the harbor remained full of boats, lulled and spun by the tide that came in from beyond the rock jetties. The harbor answered to the Atlantic Ocean, the draw for summer tourists, the lifeblood of sea-hardened fishermen bringing in lobsters and striped bass, and the reminder of the power of Mother Nature for full-time residents.
At least up here Harbor Books wouldn’t have to toss down sandbags during nor’easter floods.
She pushed open the door, and a seagull squawked.
Cat jumped. She hated birds. All birds.
“Realistic, isn’t it?” Ravi appeared around the side of a bookshelf. “Owners grumble about it, but I think it’s important to be in harmony with one’s surroundings.”
Her pulse notched back down. “How Frank Lloyd Wright of you.”
“You know Frank Lloyd Wright?”
“Not personally.”
“Seeing as how if you did, that’d make you look damn good for your age.”
“My gramps . . . my grandfather once wrote a story about Fallingwater, the house he built that’s—”
“Sinking.” Ravi rested the box he’d been carrying on the antique desk with gargoyles carved into the legs that served as the register. “Which is why I’m not pursuing architecture. I want the freedom to draw without the paralyzing fear that my creations are going to collapse on people’s heads.” He spread his arms out to either side. “Down to business. Welcome to Harbor Books. If we don’t have it, you don’t need it. Actually, we’ll order it for you. Indie bookstores gotta pay the rent.”
Cat stepped deeper inside,
taking in the bookshelves that reached to the ceiling, crammed together in a Tetris-like pattern. She walked between them, following the maze of endless rows of spines, having a hard time believing the store didn’t have every book printed in the last ten years. Winding down one path, she faced a dead end and then a choice of left or right.
“Left,” Ravi whispered from behind her, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
She weaved left and could feel the space in the converted house narrowing and widening as she went. The bookstore didn’t only take advantage of every bit of real estate but fostered a mood that matched the contents of the shelves. Cozy and candlelit by the romance section, dark and claustrophobic for the horror books, bright and covered in trailing plants and succulents in the gardening how-tos.
“And now, right,” Ravi said.
His directions took her past a shelf with a Life board game perched on top. Clever, she thought as she scanned the titles in what was the biographies section, running her finger along the spines, lingering on one of female journalists of the modern era that Gramps didn’t have. Soon she entered a rectangular area with beanbag chairs on the floor and hand-drawn posters on the walls.
“Cartoons?” Cat eyed a band of colorfully decked-out superheroes.
Ravi slapped his chest. “How insulting.”
Cat turned away from grotesque zombies and what looked like a rabbit girl in a red cape. “Am I missing something?”
“Graphic novels?” Ravi pulled a book off the shelf. On the cover, a girl with the wings of a wasp hovered in midair.
Cat shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t read much fiction.”
Ravi placed his hand on his heart and feigned the twisting of a knife. “Killing me, Quinn, killing me. So, what do you read?”
“Biographies. History of journalism, that kind of thing.”
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