Your Own Worst Enemy

by Gordon Jack

  “I’ve never been physically attracted to anyone,” Brian began. “I mean, I knew if a person was good-looking or not, but I never lusted after them the way I’ve heard guys are supposed to lust after someone. I never wanted to jump anyone’s bones or get in anyone’s pants or anything.”

  The group laughed at this, nodding to one another in a way that made Brian think he wasn’t alone in this feeling.

  “Recently though, I met someone who I do feel this way about,” Brian said. “It wasn’t a conscious thing. One day, I’m sitting next to them in class and . . .” Brian made a gesture to his lap and hoped the group would understand his nonverbal cue. Judging from their laughter, they all did.

  “It felt like my body suddenly woke up. Now it’s doing things it’s never done before, in ways I can’t control. The problem is, this person I like, I can’t like them. If I follow what my body wants me to do, it would ruin everything. So now I’m in this perpetual conflict between what my mind wants and what my body wants. You guys ever feel this way?”

  “Every day,” Justin said quietly. The others, including James, all nodded their heads solemnly.

  “Thank you for sharing,” James said. For the first time since their ill-fated kiss, Brian heard the voice of his old friend. The one who used to disentangle the knots Brian so carefully constructed.

  “That story clearly has universal appeal,” James went on, “but if the object of your affection isn’t another boy, it doesn’t belong on our site.”

  “I understand,” Brian said. “It helped to share it. Justin, maybe it will help you too.”

  Justin smiled shyly and went back to his sandwich.

  Maybe after the election, Brian could tell his story. But only if Stacey won. It wouldn’t seem like much of a betrayal if she were president. If she lost, it would only serve to kick her when she was down.

  17

  TWO WINGS DOWN, Julia sat in a crowded room with a group of Latino students who had taken her on as their cause célèbre. Julia checked herself. She couldn’t speak French at this meeting, and unfortunately, she didn’t know any Spanish. The best she could do was put a Spanish accent on her Quebec French and claim it was Basque.

  But so far, the members of the Latino Student Union weren’t interested in hearing her speak. They were too upset over what happened to her poster to pay much attention to her. All she had to do was sit quietly, martyr-like, and let the group treat her as a symbol for the dormant racism that pervaded Lincoln High.

  “We need to either sit in or walk out,” Maria Cervantes said. She was the president of the LSU; a girl who was heading off to Stanford next year on a full scholarship. Julia heard that she single-handedly saved the language of an indigenous people in a remote region of Ecuador.

  The room erupted in conversation, which was the pattern of the meeting so far. Maria would say something, people would react, and then Maria would tell them to shut up and then call on individuals for comment. The freewheeling meeting style seemed less influenced by culture than it was by space. There were fifty-plus people crammed into a room that had seats for only thirty-five.

  Julia watched the proceedings with a mixture of awe and disbelief. She couldn’t believe that in her sixteen years, she had never been in a room with this many brown people. Sure, there were variations of color. Julia fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, between the girl with the dark Afro-Caribbean features and the boy who was white enough to be cast on Friends. What tied these people together? Julia wondered. It certainly wasn’t their melanin production. They all came from different places with different customs. They all spoke varying degrees of Spanish, based on, Julia assumed, how long their family had lived in the country. The fact that this diverse group of people could be categorized as a single entity seemed vaguely insulting to Julia, but she wasn’t going to voice this opinion aloud. She was probably the least qualified person to be sitting in this room, having been raised by a white mother in a white community. So why did she feel such a strong need to belong to this club? Was it some instinct buried deep within her DNA? Or some narcissistic need to see her face reflected back at her?

  Maria slapped the desk and brought people to order. A girl in the back raised her hand, and Maria called on her.

  “My mom will kill me if I miss any more school,” the girl said. There was some murmur of agreement, although Julia couldn’t tell if the reaction was to the girl’s point or the green highlights in her hair.

  “Your mom won’t kill you when you tell her what happened to Julia,” Maria said, placing a hand on Julia’s shoulder. “They told her to go back to Mexico.”

  “Actually, they wrote ‘Build That Wall,’” someone in the back corrected.

  “Same thing,” Jenny chimed in. She was sitting next to Julia, providing moral support.

  “We have to take a stand against these white supremacists,” Maria said.

  The audience grumbled loudly. Julia heard quite a few people say things in Spanish she assumed translated to “those small dick motherfuckers.”

  “You don’t know it’s a ‘they,’” a tall, gangly boy in a well-worn David Bowie T-shirt said. “It could be a he or a she.”

  “It’s definitely a ‘they,’” Lance said. Julia heard Jenny groan softly at her side. Lance had been waiting outside the class and walked them in, as if he were their escort. “The administration wants to pretend we live in a postracial society, but we don’t. Bigots are everywhere, and they’re getting bolder.”

  There was some grumbling in response to this. Julia wondered if Lance’s readership fluctuated depending on the population’s outrage. If so, he had a vested interest in keeping people angry.

  “It’s not a ‘they,’” a cute girl with delicate, doll-like features and long black hair said. She was so short, she had to stand on her chair to be heard. “Before this happened, when did any of you feel attacked for your race at school? I get more hassles from the Salvis on my street.”

  Julia wanted to ask who or what a Salvi was, but she worried this might make her seem like an outsider. She was desperate to be a part of this group, and not just as a political candidate or the girl who needed defending.

  “Those guys are the worst,” another girl said. “But they’re sexist, not racist.” A couple of boys, who Julia assumed were Salvis, high-fived in agreement with the girl’s assessment.

  “People!” Maria said, trying to get control of the crowd. “We need to stay focused here. What happened to Julia was wrong. I don’t want it intimidating other Latinos from running for office. How many of us are in student government?”

  This was the first time the crowd went quiet. Jenny raised her hand, suddenly uncomfortable with all the attention.

  “Jenny is the ASB secretary,” Maria pointed out. “That’s it. We’re the biggest group on campus, yet we don’t have any representation. It’s all the white and Asian kids. We need someone like Julia to speak for us.”

  Julia smiled, but inside she had started to panic. Speak for them? How could she do that when she didn’t even know their language? This might have been a horrible mistake, she realized. What if someone asked her about her heritage? How would she answer that question? Lying by omission is one thing; she didn’t think she could lie to people’s faces. This characteristic should probably disqualify her from holding public office now that she thought about it.

  “What does the ASB do anyway?” someone in the back asked.

  Everyone looked at Jenny for the answer. Julia turned and saw Jenny staring at the crowd like a cat that’s just fallen from a tree into a dog park.

  “We plan rallies and stuff,” she fumbled. “Every month we recognize a student for whatever.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We do more,” Jenny whined. “I’m just blanking out right now.”

  “Ask Julia,” someone said. “She’s the one who wants to be president.”

  Julia felt the room’s attention suddenly shift toward her. This was it, she thought, cle
aring her throat and standing up. You should come clean, a voice in her head said. Tell everyone the truth. If you’re truly one of them, they will forgive you.

  “Uh, to be honest,” she began. “I don’t know what the ASB does. I’m new to this school and country and still trying to figure out some of your customs and traditions.” Julia paused. This was as far as she could go with her confession. She would tell the whole truth eventually, but she’d rather it come out as a trickle instead of a flood.

  “As a recent immigrant,” she went on, “I see things a little differently. What I see from the outside looking in is that the school is divided between the Haves and the Have-Nots.”

  “That’s right,” someone in the back said.

  “The Haves are able to devote their whole lives to school. They take the hardest classes, participate in after-school sports, and hold practically every leadership position on campus. The Have-Nots don’t have this luxury. They live farther away and have to take two or three buses to get here. They have family or work responsibilities in addition to all their schoolwork. They’re surviving day to day, and because of this, they can’t plan for the future like the Haves can. It’s an uneven playing field that just results in the Haves getting more and the Have-Nots getting less.”

  Jenny clapped her hands and encouraged others in the audience to follow suit.

  “Here’s a question I have for the ASB: What are you doing to get more kids involved in school activities? How many of you guys would participate in student government or sports or whatever if you had more time?”

  Every hand in the room went up. Well, almost every hand. The boy in the David Bowie T-shirt was either not interested or too busy pouring a bag of Skittles into his mouth.

  “That’s what I thought,” Julia said. “It’s not lack of interest that keeps us from getting involved. It’s lack of time. Our lives are too busy.”

  “Amen,” someone shouted. Or Julia imagined someone shouted. She was kind of lost in her own biopic at this point. This was the scene when she makes the inspirational speech to her squad, just before sending them back on the court to wipe out their opponents’ fifty-point lead.

  “We can’t do anything about our family commitments,” Julia went on. “So we need to change things at school.” Julia paused for effect here. She hoped no one would fart or burp and ruin the moment. The only sound in the crowded room was the Bowie kid chewing his candy.

  “Here’s what I’d like to change. I’d like to stop doing one hundred problem sets in trig just to demonstrate I understand the material.”

  The people who had survived Mr. Hopper’s trigonometry class all nodded their heads in agreement.

  “I’d like to stop covering a decade a week in US History and maybe learn something about how minorities contributed to this country.”

  Julia saw more heads nodding across the room.

  “I’d like my classwork to inspire me, not just keep me busy. I’d like for the ASB to demand more from our teachers and administrators. If student government isn’t the place to talk about these issues, where can we go to demand change?”

  The whole room started clapping. Some even broke into chanting Julia’s name. Jenny stood up, grabbed Julia’s hand, and squeezed it tight.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Maria said. “Instead of a sit-in or walkout, we hold a campaign rally for Julia.”

  More cheers and applause.

  “We can’t do that,” Jenny said, waving her hands high in the air to get people’s attention. “The school doesn’t allow campaign events for people running for public office. They don’t want this turning into a popularity contest.”

  “We don’t have to call it a campaign event,” a pudgy boy said. “It could just be a party.”

  “But the election is almost two weeks away,” someone said. “How can we organize a party in time?”

  “Besides, everyone’s going to Isabel’s quince on Saturday,” someone said.

  “What’s a quince?” Julia asked.

  The second she said it, she knew it was a mistake. She cursed herself for voicing her question out loud, but she had been swept away with the enthusiasm of the room. That enthusiasm evaporated the moment the words left her mouth. Everyone looked at Julia as if she had mixed up the punch line of one joke with another.

  “Sorry, what?” Maria asked.

  “I . . . I . . .” Julia struggled to come up with some way to save face. “I never had a quince,” she choked. A quince was something you had, right? Like a party? That’s what Jenny had been talking about, right? Please let that be the thing Jenny had been talking about!

  The room stayed silent, but somehow the mood shifted from “Wha?!” to “Aww!” As if Julia were a pit bull puppy who lunged at a small child, only to lick its face.

  “You never had your quinceañera?” Maria said.

  “Nope,” Julia said.

  The consensus of the room, both verbalized and communicated through wide eyes and slack jaws was that this was a terrible thing.

  “We have to throw you a quince,” Jenny said, hugging Julia tight.

  “That’s not necessary,” Julia protested.

  “It’s perfect!” Maria said. “We’ll throw a quinceañera protest party, like they did in Texas.”

  “What are you talking about?” someone yelled.

  “Texas passed some hella strict immigration law that gave the police permission to ask for papers if you were brown or spoke with an accent,” Maria said. “So, a bunch of girls protested by showing up at the state capitol in their quinceañera dresses.”

  “Did they get the law changed?”

  “Hell no,” Maria said. “But they got attention and called out the governor for his racist attack against our community.”

  “Can we choreograph a dance?” Jenny said. “Please!” Julia tried to match the enthusiasm on Jenny’s face, but it was hard to do when she was about to vomit. Things had suddenly spiraled out of control. It was like getting caught in a summer storm. One moment you’re biking along in shorts and a tank top, the next you’re looking for shelter and wondering why you didn’t wear a bra.

  “How many of you still have your quince dresses?” Maria asked the crowd.

  All the upperclassman girls raised their hands. There were nearly twenty of them.

  “You can borrow my sister’s dress if you don’t have one,” Jenny offered.

  “Thanks,” Julia said.

  “It’s settled, then,” Maria said, addressing the crowd. “Next week, we learn Jenny’s quince dance. Then on voting day, we come to school in our quince dresses, with a few signs expressing how we feel about what happened to Julia. We won’t let this asshole attack our community and get away with it.”

  Maria and Jenny each grabbed one of Julia’s hands and lifted them in a show of solidarity. Julia felt a little vulnerable in this position, almost like she was a criminal caught in the act. Hands where I can see them, the police say in situations like this, just before they cuff the offender and haul her off to prison.

  The bell rang, and the club participants dispersed to their fifth-period classes. Some came up and high-fived Julia before they left. When the room emptied out, Julia grabbed Jenny by the wrist and pulled her in close.

  “I need to talk to you,” Julia said.

  “Sure, let’s walk to class. What do you have fifth period?”

  “English,” Julia said.

  “Me too!” Jenny said. “You in AP?”

  Julia nodded.

  “Thought so. I thought about taking AP.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Time. Just like you said. The homework in that class is insane, isn’t it?”

  Julia nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard. Between ASB, field hockey, and babysitting, I don’t have time to do all the reading. And I love reading.”

  “See, that’s just wrong,” Julia said.

  The two girls joined the crowds filling the hallways. Julia couldn’t think
of the right way to make her confession, especially with these people bumping into them on all sides. Jenny was friends with everyone and didn’t miss an opportunity to wave or say hello to anyone close by. Why isn’t she running for ASB president? Julia wondered. She’d surely win the popular vote if this meet and greet was any indication.

  When they finally reached Jenny’s classroom, Julia pulled her aside and sat her on the bench on the other side of the open hallway. Julia stared up at the blue sky, hoping for some inspirational skywriter to provide the words she needed to say next.

  “Girl, you’re going to make me late for class,” Jenny said.

  “I’m not Latina,” Julia blurted out. She figured it would be easier to rip off the Band-Aid.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ms. Ramirez?” a young, bookish man with a neatly trimmed beard said from the doorway.

  “Just a sec, Mr. Baxter,” Jenny said.

  Julia couldn’t look Jenny in the eye. She waited for her to either spit in her face or walk away, but instead, she grabbed her hand and waited for Julia to continue.

  “My mom’s family is from Italy,” Julia began. “That’s where Romero comes from. I never knew my dad.”

  “Didn’t your mom tell you anything about him?” Jenny asked.

  “Ms. Ramirez?” Mr. Baxter said again from the doorway.

  “Girl, I need you to start crying right now,” Jenny whispered. “Otherwise, I’m going to have to go to class.”

  Julia had no trouble producing tears. She had been keeping so many secrets from people, the two biggest being the one about her ethnicity and the one about the crime that brought her to California. Telling Jenny the truth about the first had pricked a hole in a balloon that was filled to bursting with water. Her eyes flooded with relief and sorrow, and before she knew it, she was bawling.