Your Own Worst Enemy

by Gordon Jack

  “Have you determined the exact whereabouts of Stacey Wynn on the evening in question?” I asked.

  “Mr. Haber,” Buckley said. “I know you see yourself as a journalist in a crusade for truth and justice, but what you’re doing is treading very close to the school’s definition of cyberbullying.”

  So there you have it: a clear warning from officials—shut down this investigation, or we will trump up charges against you. That’s the kind of democracy we’re living in today, people.

  Clearly, my work has hit a nerve with the powers that be. Am I getting too close to the truth? Is there a larger cover-up happening here? What does the administration have to gain by placing someone like Stacey Wynn in one of the most powerful student positions in the school?

  Stacey has never tried to challenge the status quo in the ways that Julia has. Julia wants to see greater inclusion of underrepresented minorities across our curriculum. What does Stacey Wynn want? More compost bins—a clear payback to the powerful custodial lobby that has been helping her cover up her crimes from the start. More composting means less trash. Less trash means less work for the custodians. You do the math.

  What has Stacey promised the administration in return for their help in the cover-up? We can only guess. But don’t be surprised if we start to see more “volunteer opportunities” for students to participate in litter patrols throughout campus.

  Bad Publicity

  22

  8 DAYS TILL ELECTION DAY

  STACEY STARED AT the Tupperware trays of cupcakes in her back seat, a chocolate-frosted reminder of the time she would never get back. She and Brian had spent hours baking, frosting, and decorating these spongy flyers, thinking there would be lines of people clamoring to get their hands on them. Who doesn’t like a cupcake after a long day at school? Apparently, a lot of people, judging from the amount of leftovers she and Brian were taking to the rec center downtown. The center’s after-school programs were popular with kids, and hopefully, those kids would want their dessert before dinner.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said, grabbing one of her cupcakes off the tray and sampling it. “These are delicious. Why didn’t people gobble them up?”

  Brian shrugged and shoved a whole cupcake into his mouth. “Mmmm,” he groaned, chewing the moist cake and throwing the used paper liner on the ground.

  “Brian, we can compost those,” Stacey said, bending down and picking it up. They were parked in the school’s parking lot, having just broken down Stacey’s cupcake stand that she had set up across the street. She had gotten as close to campus as the state’s education code allowed and made a giant banner saying Free Cupcakes! to lure exiting students to her campaign headquarters. Priya had advertised the giveaway on all her feeds, posting photos of Stacey’s cupcakes with the hashtag #letthemeatcake, which Stacey thought was a clever, albeit not entirely complimentary, historical allusion.

  “Maybe my new slogan needs work?” Stacey said, rolling up her banner. Under the block lettering announcing free cupcakes, she had written “Protecting Your Digital Rights!” and decorated it with tiny cell phones. “What do you think?”

  Brian, still chewing, just shrugged his shoulders.

  A group of sweaty girls, fresh from a field hockey game, approached in their shorts and tank tops. They walked with exhausted limps, holding their sticks across their shoulders.

  “You guys destroy Jefferson?” Stacey asked enthusiastically. While not their rival, the Jefferson Grizzlies had narrowly beaten the girls earlier in the season. Stacey knew this, just as she knew all the stats for Lincoln’s teams. It was one of the ways she stayed connected to the athletes, despite her lack of participation in group sports.

  The girls shook their heads, which sent their ponytails in motion like sad flags waving.

  “Oh, that sucks,” Stacey said. “You want a consolation cupcake?” Stacey reached into the back seat of her car and plucked a few out of their plastic container.

  The girls all begged off, holding their hands in front of their flat stomachs.

  “I couldn’t,” Jenny said. “I shouldn’t have eaten that concha at brunch.”

  “Oh my God, those were so good,” the other girl said.

  “What’s a concha?” Stacey asked.

  “A Mexican sweet bun,” Jenny said. “Julia made them. You didn’t see her passing them out in the quad?”

  Stacey wanted to object and say that wasn’t allowed. California education codes prohibited anything with that much sugar and fat to be sold or distributed on campus. But she said nothing. Instead, she focused on keeping the smile glued to her face.

  “I was at the Environmental Club meeting,” Stacey said. “Brian, did you get a concha?”

  Brian stuck another one of Stacey’s cupcakes into his mouth, shook his head, and chewed vigorously.

  “They were a big hit,” Jenny said. “A nice way to share a bit of Julia’s culture, too.”

  Stacey fought the urge to shove the cupcake she was holding into Jenny’s face. How satisfying it would be to see the frosting splatter against her perspiring skin. How’d you like a taste of my culture, bitch? But she restrained herself. “That’s great,” she said.

  The girls wandered off to their cars, leaving Stacey alone with her culturally inappropriate cupcakes. Once the girls were a safe distance away, Stacey’s anger surged, and she crushed the cakes in her hands, smearing her fingers with the blood of their chocolate frosting. Brian grabbed a stack of napkins from Stacey’s car and rushed over to hand them to her.

  “Did you hear that?” Stacey said. “Julia passed out sweet rolls at lunch.”

  Brian nodded.

  “That’s why no one wanted my cupcakes,” she said. “I should tell Principal Buckley. That’s completely illegal. It could get her disqualified.”

  Brian grabbed the wad of chocolate-stained napkins from Stacey’s smeared hands and handed her a clean batch. “That’s just going to anger her constituency,” he said.

  “Who cares?” Stacey said. “I don’t need their votes.”

  “They could vote for Tony just to get even,” Brian pointed out. “Better to take the high road.”

  “No one’s on the high road, Brian,” Stacey said. “It’s just me zigzagging on a street filled with potholes. Everyone else is on the highway, speeding to the finish line. I hear Tony’s passing out chocolate milk to freshmen, despite the school banning it from the cafeteria.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And did you see that latest post from Lance? He’s crucifying me on that stupid blog of his.”

  Brian reached for another cupcake, but Stacey prevented him from taking a bite. “Ease up on those things. You don’t have to keep eating them to make me feel better.”

  Brian placed the cupcake back on the tray. “Maybe Julia’s concha giveaway was just a coincidence?” he suggested. “We’re in the last week of the campaign. Everyone rolls out some promotion now. Ryan Fujika passed out origami cranes in the library at brunch as part of his campaign for junior class treasurer.”

  “Origami cranes?”

  “I guess if you make a thousand, your wish comes true.”

  “He made a thousand origami cranes?”

  “I don’t think so, but his campaign slogan was ‘I’ll Make Your Dreams Come True.’”

  “That’s what sucks about being a white candidate. All I’ve got are crappy cupcakes.”

  “First off, they’re not crappy, they’re delicious,” Brian said. “And second, there’s a lot in your Swedish heritage you could share.”

  “I’m pretty sure passing out pickled herring would cost me the election,” Stacey grumbled.

  “Your dad’s family is from England, right?”

  “Yes, the great colonizers. Unfortunately, I don’t have great-grandma’s meat-pie recipe.”

  “Now you’re just being difficult.”

  “Come on,” Stacey said, slamming her trunk closed. “Let’s get these to the kids at the rec center. If they don�
�t want them, I’m going to fill a lot of trash cans.”

  When Stacey got home that evening, she was in a foul mood. The rec center wouldn’t let her pass out the cupcakes to the children in their after-school program. (Apparently, you need a parental consent form to feed kids anything that might contain sugar, milk, or nuts in the state of California), so she ended up tossing the leftovers into some nearby garbage bins. Brian tried to make her feel better about the waste by saying she would be making some raccoons very happy. Stacey didn’t like the idea of contributing to wildlife obesity, but it was better than leaving the remains on a landfill somewhere. Next time, she would make her promotion cultural and biodegradable, like English tea bags with the slogan “Steeped in Experience!” written on the front.

  Opening the front door, she listened for sounds of life inside. The house was quiet, but the lights were on in the living room. Stacey gently called out, “Dad?” but got no response. She found him asleep on the couch, his laptop resting on his chest. She shut the screen, trying not to look at what her dad had been viewing. She would have been fine if it was a dating site, but she knew it was probably something to do with real estate. In their divorce agreement, her mother had demanded Dad sell the house after Stacey graduated high school and split the profits with her. Her mom tried to play this off as her being generous, but it was just another cruel trick. All her mom had done was plant a ticking time bomb in their basement that both Stacey and her dad could listen to every fucking day.

  Stacey walked quietly upstairs, dreading her bridesmaid dress shopping date this weekend. She would love to boycott the upcoming nuptials, but she knew that her mom would take revenge on her dad in some way. Maybe force Dad to sell the house immediately, or worse, demand custody. So Stacey was forced to be complicit in her mom’s new marriage and stand beside her along with an aging sorority sister and Mr. Park’s twenty-four-year old daughter.

  As soon as she reached her room, she collapsed onto her bed in a faint. Why was she losing at everything! She’d never experienced failure on this scale before, and it was . . . paralyzing. She should follow her dad’s strategy and just give up. There must be some relief in quitting, right? People wouldn’t do it if it didn’t make them feel good on some level.

  She thought of her dad, asleep on the couch at six o’clock. He was ten pounds heavier since the divorce, mostly because the only appliance he knew how to operate was the microwave. Stacey should do more to help him, but she barely had enough time in her day to do her homework and run this election. Part of her feared that if she took over the cooking and cleaning her mom had done, she would come to resent her dad, just as her mom had. Instead, her strategy was to give him projects and pep talks. But so far, those didn’t seem to be working.

  Well, she wasn’t going to end up like him, she thought, pushing herself off her bed. She needed to be more like her mom. She had created a whole new life for herself with a new husband, a new job, and new condominium. If she weren’t such a bitch, Stacey would really admire her. What Stacey needed was her mom’s ambition and her dad’s kindness. In a perfect world, those were the qualities she would have inherited. Instead, she feared she got Mom’s indifference and Dad’s inertia.

  What advice had her mother given her? “Know your enemy.” Clearly, Julia had read The Art of War. Somehow she knew Stacey was going to bring cupcakes to school today and had concha-blocked her with her Mexican sweet rolls. It was a smart move, something that would have made Stacey’s mom proud.

  Stacey grabbed her phone and dialed Priya’s number. Priya never answered her phone, preferring to communicate through texts or posts, but Stacey wasn’t comfortable putting her request in writing. “Hi, Priya,” Stacey said after Priya’s outgoing message finished. “I was hoping you could help me find information about our competitors.” She stressed the word “our” in that sentence. “Can you dig around their social feeds and send me any photos or posts you think might be useful?” She was sure Julia and Tony had some skeletons they wanted to keep in their digital closets. If Stacey could find out what they were, it might just help her tip the balance in her favor.

  23

  AFTER HELPING STACEY dump the cupcakes in the rec-center garbage bin, Brian drove home feeling sick to his stomach. He shouldn’t have eaten so many of those things, but he felt so guilty. It was his fault Stacey’s promotion was such an epic fail. If he hadn’t sold her out for a little library lip action, she might have generated more enthusiasm for her campaign and not wasted so much Pillsbury Funfetti Premium Cake & Cupcake Mix.

  Brian pulled over near the library and threw up the eight or nine cupcakes he had eaten as penance for his crime. When the last of them was out of his stomach, he wiped his lips and thought, You know, as barfing experiences go, that wasn’t so bad. Turned out, partially digested cupcakes slide up the throat as easy as they slide down it.

  He closed his door and continued driving.

  Julia had betrayed him, plain and simple. He had told her about Stacey’s promotion in a moment of weakness, and Julia used that information to her advantage. Brian couldn’t believe it when he saw a group of senior guys on the baseball team swarming her and Jenny at brunch, trying to get their hands on Julia’s sugar-frosted buns. Pedro Ruiz lingered much longer than necessary, talking to Julia in a way that looked borderline creepy to Brian. Julia didn’t seem to mind though. She smiled and flirted with him, slapping a Julia for President! sticker on his broad chest.

  When she texted Brian at lunch saying she was waiting for him in the darkroom, it took superhuman effort to ignore her and go to the library instead. Then he ditched sixth-period biology to avoid seeing her and drove to the Tea House to drown his sorrows in Earl Grey. Julia kept texting, and Brian kept ignoring her texts. Her last message to him was I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. He ignored that one too.

  Now he was stopped at a light and getting a text from a number he didn’t recognize.

  Hey, Brian, it’s James. Can we talk?

  Now?

  I’m at the Tea House if you have a sec.

  On my way.

  Brian pulled a U-turn and headed back downtown. If James was contacting him, it must be important. Maybe he had some information that could be helpful. But helpful for whom? Brian was beginning to realize that supporting both players in a competition made the game less fun to watch or participate in. It just made it exhausting.

  Brian pulled into the parking lot ten minutes later. He walked in and saw James waiting for him at a round table near the register. A metal teapot sat on a doily next to a plate of bite-size sugar cookies. James waved Brian over and then blew on his steaming porcelain cup. Not exactly a scene out of a John le Carré spy novel, Brian thought. He wished the room was a bit seedy—with fog, cigarettes, and trench coats—but this wasn’t East Berlin at the height of the Cold War; it was the suburbs just before the summer blockbuster movie season.

  Brian ordered his usual and sat down with James.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” James said.

  “No, problem,” Brian said.

  “You want a breath mint?” James said, pulling a tin out of his messenger bag.

  Oh right. The barf. It couldn’t smell good. “Thanks,” Brian said, grabbing a handful and popping them into his mouth.

  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you, you know, for coming to the GSA meeting,” James continued. “I know you were there for Stacey, but you really seemed to care about our plans.”

  “I do,” Brian said. “I want to come to the next meeting, if that’s okay.”

  “You really like to play both sides of the fence, don’t you?” James said, smiling.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I know the girl you told us about is Julia,” James said. “I saw her in the darkroom today at lunch. She was pretty upset.”

  “What were you doing in the darkroom?” Brian asked.

  “Unlike Julia, I actually take photography. My portfolio’s due in a few weeks, an
d I was developing some pictures.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Enough for me to connect the dots. She told me how she betrayed her boyfriend’s trust by scheduling a campaign event on the same day as Stacey’s. I don’t think she knows I’m going to be vice president next year.”

  “She said ‘boyfriend’?” Brian said, feeling good for the first time today.

  “She did. That’s when I knew the person you were talking about at the GSA meeting was Julia.”

  “Please don’t tell Stacey,” Brian said. “It would kill her.”

  “Yes. It would,” James said.

  Brian wondered if this was why James wanted this clandestine meeting. Was he threatening to blackmail him? Was he going to force him into ironing his shirts in exchange for his silence?

  “You and I used to be friends,” James said, “back in the day.”

  “Until you stopped talking to me.”

  “Do you know why I stopped talking to you?” James said.

  Brian shook his head.

  “It’s because I hated you,” James said.

  “Okay,” Brian said, standing up to leave. “Glad we cleared that up.”

  James grabbed Brian by the wrist and pulled him back down. “That night we kissed. You remember that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Brian said, looking around the room. “It was no big deal.”

  “It was to me. It’s what confirmed what I long suspected about myself. I hated you for making me confront something I didn’t want to confront. And the fact that it was so easy for you to laugh the whole thing off made it even worse.”

  “You could have talked to me,” Brian said. “You could have said something instead of just making me think I’d done something unforgivable.” It suddenly struck Brian that this was exactly what he was doing to Julia. She deserved a hearing, especially if she thought of Brian as her boyfriend.

  “I couldn’t talk to you about it,” James said. “At the time, it was too painful. Once I had accepted myself, it was too late. When you came to the GSA meeting, I wanted to tell you that you’re my coming out story, Brian. I don’t mention you by name, but you’re the one who helped me figure out who I am, and for that I have to thank you.”