I, Claudia

by Mary McCoy

  “You like Peet’s?” I asked, cautiously optimistic we might have something to talk about after all.

  We kicked off our Homecoming dinner date with two large cups of Major Dickason’s Blend, followed by tacos at a restaurant that was squeezed between a laundromat and a massage parlor. When we were both on our third al pastor, we’d run out of small talk and curiosity finally got the better of me, so I just asked the thing I really wanted to know.

  “What happened to you?”

  I might have found a more graceful, tactful way to inquire, but Soren didn’t seem to mind. He took a big swig from his horchata, wiped the milk mustache with the back of his hand, and said, “I got tired of hating myself.”

  I studied Soren with a seriousness that probably looked like scowling to him. It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. Soren didn’t seem like a person who hated himself.

  “After Honor Week last year, I got that little taste of what it felt like to do good things, and I liked it. I liked having people look at me in a different way. No, that makes it sound like—I didn’t really care what other people thought. Like, I just wanted to be good some more. And instead of covering up my feelings by getting fucked up, I just felt them. And because I didn’t have drugs anymore, the people who stayed around were the people who really cared about me.”

  His eyes shone while he talked, and I looked down at my half-eaten rice and beans, embarrassed for him. Did they make you talk like that in AA?

  “Is this making you uncomfortable?” Soren asked, and I felt horrible. He’d had this conversation a few times, I guessed, and had probably gotten good at telling when people wanted to hit the eject button.

  A little voice in my head cleared its throat and said, Why did you ask if you didn’t want to know? He’s a person, not a sideshow attraction.

  “It’s not that,” I said quietly. “It’s just really real is all.”

  “I’d rather be honest. If people can’t handle it, that’s cool. I just like knowing up front whether we’re going to be happy chit-chat friends or what.”

  “I can handle it,” I said.

  “I’m glad,” Soren said. “Because, like, for example, I didn’t used to like you at all. I even thought you snitched me out to the Honor Council once.”

  My eyes got big. I’d almost forgotten about that day when I was hiding in the storage closet during Soren’s Honor Council hearing. At the time, I’d speculated that it was Cal or Lola Stephenson who’d reported him to the Honor Council, but now I knew that Soren had developed his own theories on the subject.

  “You thought I did that?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it now,” he explained. “But you can see how it might have looked at the time, right?”

  I nodded. As rats went, I certainly looked like a prime suspect. My sister had been on the Honor Council. I’d sat with half of them at lunch that year. If I’d been Soren, I certainly wouldn’t have invited me to the Little Shop of Horrors Naked Cast Party.

  “What changed your mind?” I asked.

  “Because why would you snitch to those people when you don’t give a fuck what they think of you?”

  A stupid half-grin blossomed on my face as I basked in Soren’s compliment. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to me since the note in my Valentine’s Day bouquet. I’d spent a year in the shadow of the Honor Council, of Livia, even of Maisie, but now I was out from under it. That was how it felt anyway, so it was a relief to learn that an objective, outside party thought so, too.

  “I have a question for you,” Soren said, piling the used napkins and straw wrappers on his paper plate. “Why did you ask me to Homecoming?”

  That stupid Valentine’s Day bouquet. Whenever I remembered it, all I could think about was how I’d almost laid those raw, naked feelings down at Hector’s feet and only just stopped in time. The memory made me cringe. I wanted to run away from it, but when I tried the thought of Hector giving Esme a pretty corsage, then taking her to dinner someplace with real silverware and plates, and as nice a time as I was having with Soren—and I was!—all I could think about was—

  “Because I’m in love with Hector Estrella,” I blurted out. “That’s why I asked you to Homecoming.”

  The words hung in the air between us. It was the first time I’d spoken them aloud to anyone, even Maisie. Afterwards, I couldn’t say anything else, but just sat there in a state of shock while Soren looked at me, a bemused smile on his face.

  “Does he know?”

  “No.”

  “Then you should tell him.”

  “He has a girlfriend.”

  “It’s high school,” Soren said, the first note of cynicism I’d heard from him all night. “Give it a month.”

  “I’m glad I asked you, though,” I said. “I’m glad we’re doing this.”

  “Me too.”

  Maybe tomorrow I would go back to acting like I didn’t have feelings, but in the spirit of the evening, I decided to embrace sincerity.

  Given what happened later that night, this would prove to be entirely the wrong frame of mind.

  XXXV

  The Kind of Face You Might Make at a Firing Squad

  Stuffed with coffee, al pastor tacos, and horchata, Soren and I made our way toward Imperial Day Academy. With the austere budget we’d been given, it was the only place we could afford to have the dance. Still, Hector and I had done a smashing job with what we had to work with. We moved the dance from the gym to the courtyard, which I couldn’t believe had never been suggested before. That alone made the whole affair exponentially less grim.

  We’d enlisted a group of volunteers to fish every last turtle out of the pond and put them in a tank in the main office for the night. I’d made the decision to move them, not wanting to see any of the little creatures accidentally trampled to death on my watch. I made sure everyone washed their hands before and afterwards, that the turtles were not over-handled, that no one threatened to swing them by the tail or put them down the back of anyone else’s shirt. I made sure that every last one of them was accounted for when we wheeled the tank down to the main office.

  We’d strung fairy lights up everywhere, convinced Chris Gibbons to DJ for free as his Honor Week tribute, and hired some food trucks to come out with tamales, grilled cheese, kogi tacos, and ice cream sandwiches: basically, the four LA food groups washed down with aguas frescas ladled out of big plastic containers.

  It looked amazing. When I saw Hector and Esme standing across the courtyard, I was so excited about what we’d done that I forgot about the confession I’d made to Soren and dragged him over to them.

  “Who plans the best motherfucking Homecoming dance?” I asked as I bounced up to Hector, half-singing and half-dancing, the best I could manage of either.

  “We plan the best motherfucking Homecoming dance,” Hector replied, fist-bumping me before looking sheepishly at Esme, who glared at him. I couldn’t tell if she disapproved of Hector swearing or of Hector talking to another girl, even if it happened to be me.

  She was wearing a hot-pink strapless mini-dress and strappy silver heels. Looking at those shoes, all I could think was that if she stepped in a sewer grate, her ankle would snap like a twig.

  “Hi, Esme. You look pretty,” Soren said, and the sour look on her face turned sweet.

  “Thanks, Soren,” she said.

  Hector put his arm around Esme’s waist, then asked, “Can you do a walkthrough of the food trucks, make sure the fire marshal isn’t going to shut us down?”

  “Want to come with?” I asked Soren.

  “I could eat,” he said.

  “You just ate half a dozen tacos,” I said. “I watched you do it.”

  “I’m just saying I could eat again is all.”

  As we set off to inspect the food trucks, I realized there had been something off about my conversation with Hector. Ordinarily, he would have done the walkthrough himself. He’d let you help with things if you asked, but Hector Estrella would never ask you to
do something he could do much better himself.

  Tonight was different. Tonight Senate President Hector Estrella was on a date.

  “You guys have fun,” Esme called after us, and maybe I imagined the extra emphasis she put on the word guys, but I do not think that I did. For a split second, I wondered if maybe I should have just sucked it up and worn a stupid strapless dress like everybody else.

  But then Soren slipped an arm over my shoulder in a way that was friendly, yet intimate, and whispered, “That girl does not like you.”

  I smiled and put my arm around his waist as we headed toward the food trucks. No one had ever viewed me as a threat before. For some reason, this pleased me.

  At the grilled cheese truck, we ran into Cal and Zelda Parsons, who was wearing a dress that made Esme Kovacs look like a nun. It was spangly and silver and backless, and I was not entirely sure what was keeping it affixed to her body. It was the first time I’d ever seen her without her horn-rimmed glasses. I waved at her. She squinted back.

  “That’s a nice suit you’re wearing, McCarthy,” Cal said, nodding to Soren. “Is this your beard?”

  “I’m her date,” Soren said, and this seemed to shut Cal up, about what I was wearing anyway.

  Cal surveyed the hallway, the decorations, the food trucks, the courtyard. I couldn’t help joining in, proud all over again of how good it looked.

  “So, this dance . . . ,” Cal said, his lip curled, “was clearly planned by a Mexican.”

  “Dude,” said Soren at the same time I said, “The fuck?”

  Zelda Parsons stared off into the middle distance like her body was present in our conversation but her mind was somewhere else entirely. With his proclivities toward the easily manipulated, I guess I wasn’t totally surprised Cal was drawn to her.

  “We rented a penthouse at the Standard afterwards, if you’d like something to eat that isn’t served in a cardboard boat. It’s fifty dollars a person. Zelda is collecting the money. Soren, perhaps you can bring a snack to share with the rest of the class?” Cal mimed smoking a joint, then threw an elbow into Soren’s ribs, just as Mrs. Lester walked past, making her rounds on chaperone duty. Ever since her failure to contain the P-P-P-PLEDGE incident during the election assembly my freshman year, I did tend to seek her out any time I needed faculty for an undesirable task, such as, say, chaperoning a Homecoming dance. To her credit, she always agreed and never quite had the nerve to look me in the eye, so I suppose being disappointed by her was not without its upsides.

  “Everything in order, Ms. McCarthy? Mr Hurt?” she asked.

  “Just kidding around, miss,” Cal said. “Everything’s perfect.”

  Then, as soon as Mrs. Lester had moved on, Cal turned to Zelda, reached up her dress and pinched her thigh.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re done here.”

  Robotically, Zelda turned and followed after him.

  “What’s got into him?” Soren asked, as they walked away.

  “That’s how he always is.”

  A slow smile spread over Soren’s face. Then he started to laugh, and once he got going, he couldn’t stop. He doubled over, clutching onto the back of a folding chair to keep from slumping over on the pavement.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I am no longer a person Cal has to be nice to.” When he caught his breath again, he added, “I mean, I always suspected he was a piece of shit, but he used to make far more of an effort to hide it around me.”

  I still had my eye on Zelda Parsons, tottering away on her high heels. If Livia could have seen her now, she would have found her to be beneath contempt. Was that what had caused this, I wondered? Was the disgrace of her former mentor so shattering that it had completely destroyed Zelda? Stranger things had happened, I supposed, and for less cause. What was she getting out of it, though? Being Livia’s flunkie was certainly less degrading than being Cal’s.

  Soren got a helping of kogi tacos and an ice cream sandwich while I checked in with the vendors. Then we circled back toward the courtyard, where attendance had almost doubled in our absence. What had looked like a perfectly pleasant gathering a few minutes before was now a legitimate party in full jubilant swing.

  The sophomore senators, Lucy Lin and Veronica Ollenbeck, started a conga line around the courtyard while Chris Gibbons spun records competently, even though he looked like a self-important prig while he did it. In the hallways, there were long lines for the photo booth, the caricature artist, the aguas frescas. The fact that we hadn’t had enough money to hire a security guard in addition to the four teachers who were chaperoning nagged at me, but everybody seemed to be in a good mood, having a good time. There was nothing to worry about, I told myself. People danced, they ate, they talked to their friends, and then they went out to dance again.

  Soren pointed toward the courtyard conga line and asked, “Want to?”

  “Sure,” I said, caught up in the moment enough to forget about my limp. Once around the courtyard wasn’t going to kill me. I grabbed Soren’s hips and fell in line. It was my victory lap.

  The song ended and the line dispersed as Chris Gibbons put on a slow song. People paired off, and gradually, the dance floor filled up with swaying couples. Soren held out his hand to me and I took it. Everyone around us mashed their bodies together like horny music-box toppers, but Soren put one hand around my waist and held the other and led me in a proper waltz, slow and simple enough for me to keep up without stumbling.

  I had to reach up to touch his shoulder. He was almost a foot taller than me, but I couldn’t help thinking that we looked good. I liked him, and we were having such a good time that when I saw Hector and Esme dancing with their fingers entwined, their foreheads pressed together, eyes closed, mouths mumbling unheard endearments, I almost felt happy for Hector. Almost.

  Then the music came to an end and while the next song faded in, one wall of the courtyard lit up. Sappy instrumental music began to play and a picture of Cal ladling soup at a homeless shelter appeared on the wall. For the next five minutes, Chris Gibbons played a slideshow of Honor Week. It had been carefully curated. Neither Hector nor I appeared in any of the pictures. No senator at all did, even though they’d done just as much as the Honor Council members and planned a whole dance on top of it. Cal was in at least half the pictures. At the end of the song, there was a smattering of polite applause from people who wanted to get back to dancing.

  “Is everyone having a good time?” Chris Gibbons asked. The crowd humored him with a murmur in the affirmative.

  “Okay, this next part is a little bit cheesy, but we’ve had a slideshow and Christmas lights and fruit punch, so I say let’s go with it. Embrace the cheese. Could I get Hector Estrella and Claudia McCarthy to come up here?”

  I went. What else could I do? Hector met me at the front and whispered, “What’s going on?” before we joined Chris at the microphone. I shrugged, and Hector frowned at me like I should be more concerned that we didn’t know what was happening at the dance we’d planned. In hindsight, he was right.

  “What’s this all about?” Hector asked into the microphone Chris handed him with a nervous chuckle.

  “Very funny,” Chris said, producing two envelopes. He handed one to Hector and one to me. “You can’t have Homecoming without a king and queen, right?”

  For one horrifying moment, I thought he meant to crown Hector and me king and queen right there, but then I realized whatever was about to happen would be much, much more humiliating than that.

  “I don’t remember voting,” Hector said into the mic, still friendly, still chuckling, but with just a hint of misgiving in his voice.

  “A panel of students, faculty, and staff did the voting. It was meant to be a surprise,” Chris said, adding with saccharine glee, “Surprise!”

  A murmur went through the crowd because at this point, they didn’t care about the legitimacy of the election. They just wanted to know whose names were in the envelopes.

  Chris Gibbons thr
ew an arm around each of us and said, “Let’s all give a big hand to everyone who made this great night possible. And while we’re at it, everyone who made this great week possible, this great school possible. It’s all of you. So give yourselves a big round of applause.”

  Hector and I exchanged a look, and I knew that I’d get an earful from Crabby Hector later that night. Like, would it have killed him to thank us by name? Or at least to thank the whole Senate for busting our asses for the past month? But then Chris Gibbons said, “Claudia, why don’t you do the honors?”

  Chris Gibbons was our DJ. We’d hired him, and absolutely none of this was in the plan we’d discussed. So, whose plan was it? I didn’t have to look very hard to find out. No further, in fact, than the name in the envelope Chris Gibbons had handed to me.

  “The Homecoming King of Imperial Day Academy is . . .”

  Chris Gibbons forced the mic into my hands and played a drumroll. My classmates stared at me expectantly at first, then with impatience. Hector watched to see what I was going to do because we knew that there had never been any vote taken to determine the names in these envelopes. But if I didn’t open mine, someone else would.

  I opened the envelope, looked at the slip of paper inside to confirm what I already knew, and stuttered into the mic, “C-C-Cal.”

  Applause tore through the courtyard, loud and raucous this time, as Cal ran from the back, high-fiving everyone in his path, and joined us in front of the DJ booth. He pumped both of his fists and let out a whoop, then jumped up in the air and clicked his heels together like a leprechaun because, sure, why not.

  Cal took the microphone from me and said, “Who’s my queen, Estrella? Don’t keep the people waiting.”

  Apparently he could remember Hector’s name if there were other people watching.

  Hector’s face went stony as he opened the envelope. Cal shoved the microphone in front of his face and hopped from one foot to the other, antsy for his next photo op to get underway.