Winner Takes All

by Jenny Santana

  “Next month. October nineteenth.”

  “Why doesn’t your dad know that?”

  Laz sucked his teeth and smiled. “I guess I walked right into that one.”

  “Ya sure did, buddy!” she said. Buddy? Why was she such a dork? And why was she encouraging him to think of her as a friend rather than as the love of his life, which she was sure was the case? She slow-motion punched him in the arm, another dork-move.

  Then there was a very awkward, very uncomfortable pause. Celia searched her mind for something—anything—to say, just to keep Laz talking to her. She pulled on the straps of her book bag, remembering the form inside the folder—her whole point for coming down to the school’s office. Laz blinked and she stared at his dark eyebrows, by far her favorite part of his face.

  “So then you’re gonna be thirteen, huh?” she finally said, the best and nicest-sounding thing she could come up with.

  “Yup,” Laz said, looking over her shoulder and down the hall.

  Think, she told herself. Too bad you still look like a fifth grader. No, that was mean, and it wasn’t true either. Is it hard for you to be an age that you can’t count on your fingers? Also mean, and he might not get it. Are you gonna have a birthday party or something? There, that was perfect! Casual and nice, and it was a question! Boys loved when you asked them questions, right? Hadn’t she read that in one of Mari’s fashion magazines? And if he was having a party, it would give him a chance to invite her—

  “I better get back to homeroom,” Laz said.

  She’d missed her chance. Once again, her nerdy brain was thinking too much, and now Laz was walking away.

  “See ya,” she yelled when he was a few feet away from her.

  He turned around, lifted an eyebrow at her, and waved good-bye.

  Celia stepped toward the double doors of the main office, trying to get her mind off Laz and his eyebrows and remember what she was there to do. Then she felt the weight of her book bag on her shoulders and remembered: Mariela and the election. She braced herself for the super-cold airconditioning that would hit her the second she walked into the maze of the school’s administrative brain. She pushed through the doors.

  “Well, if it isn’t my favorite little chica, Ms. Celia Martinez! Please, come in!” Ms. Perdomo said from behind her big metal desk. She had her hair slicked back and parted in a zigzag pattern and she wore her funky glasses—thick dark green frames that, though ugly on their own, somehow made her face look really pretty.

  Ms. Perdomo’s office was along the back wall of the main office. The room was small but bright, and it always smelled like mangos. She had an unlit mango candle on her desk and a bowl of mango-scented potpourri perched on the bookshelf behind her. Sometimes when Ms. Perdomo visited a classroom or even just walked by in the hallway, the mango smell trailed behind her like a fruity phantom. Whenever Celia and her mom shopped for groceries, the overflowing bin of mangos in the store’s produce section made Celia think of her favorite counselor.

  Ms. Perdomo was the most active administrator. She had been in charge of organizing the science fair last year when Celia won, she was the student council advisor, and she’d been the school’s election coordinator ever since she joined Coral Grove’s staff. She was the youngest of all the counselors, and Celia’s mom once said that that was why Ms. Perdomo was so active, because she hadn’t “burned out” yet.

  “So are you here to make my day and tell me you’re running for seventh grade representative?” Ms. Perdomo said as she rubbed her hands together and swiveled in her desk chair.

  Celia swung her book bag off her shoulder and planted it in the visitor’s chair. She unzipped it and said, “Urn, not exactly.”

  Once she found the form, which was kept crisp and pristine in a brand-new folder that Celia had labeled Marie la’s Campaign Papers, she handed it to Ms. Perdomo. The counselor kept the smile on her face, but as she scanned the name on the form, Celia thought she saw it droop just a little bit.

  “Oh. Ms. Mariela Cruz! Excellent, excellent.” She placed the form on her desk. “Looks like everything’s in order, then—for Mariela. You have a minute to sit with me, Celia?”

  This was what Celia had been dreading. Because of the science fair, Ms. Perdomo knew Celia pretty well. She knew about Celia’s tendency to slip into Presentation Mode and about Celia’s failed attempts to join the drama clique. Ms. Perdomo even knew Celia’s family. Celia’s brother, Carlos, had gone to Coral Grove, and Ms. Perdomo always asked Celia about how he was doing over at Hialeah High.

  “Sure,” Celia said. She lifted her book bag off the chair and sat in it, hugging the bag to her chest.

  Ms. Perdomo leaned forward in her desk and smiled. She said, “I want to know why you aren’t running.”

  This was one of the things Celia liked about her counselor. Ms. Perdomo just said things; she spoke her mind and was very direct with people. There was no banter, no back-and-forth conversation to warm up to things, as with the other counselors. Celia loved when adults just spoke to her like they’d speak to one another. It reminded her of the way the Dog Whisperer just told people why their dog was so bad: No, no, no—this is your fault.

  Celia started spilling out the list of reasons she’d practiced in her head on the car ride to school that morning. “I have a million reasons, Ms. Perdomo. First of all, I’m too busy with other school activities to run. Second, Mariela is my friend and I wouldn’t want to run against a friend. Third, I wouldn’t want my position as representative interfering with my schoolwork. Fourth, politics has always struck me as corrupt—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” Ms. Perdomo said, holding her hands up in surrender. “Once you’re in ‘Presentation Mode,’ there’s no stopping you.”

  Ms. Perdomo crossed her arms over her chest, disturbing a bunch of cool buttons pinned to her blazer. She wore different ones every day. The buttons always said weird, random things, like “Area Woman” or “Fancy Pants.” Today’s button read BUTTON, and the one underneath it said IRONY. She wore a third one that just had the face of a very old dog on it—one of Celia’s longtime favorites.

  “So if you’re turning in this form for her,” Ms. Perdomo said, “does that mean you’ll be helping Mariela with her campaign as her ‘campaign manager’?”

  Ms. Perdomo held her arms out and made air quotes with her fingers around the words “campaign manager.” If Celia hadn’t been so suddenly worried about what Ms. Perdomo might really be asking, she would have laughed. Ms. Perdomo did air quotes way too much, and it was the only thing that seemed lame and teacher-ish about her.

  “It would be safe for you to assume that, yes, but it’s not what you think—”

  Ms. Perdomo covered her ears with her hands and sang, “La la la, I can’t hear you! I can’t hear your excuses for why you aren’t running! La la la.”

  Celia stopped talking and tried to smile. Sometimes she thought Ms. Perdomo could use a counselor herself, but that was why she loved her. Ms. Perdomo’s hands came down.

  “I accept this form, which officially makes Mariela a candidate for seventh grade representative to the student council. There. You happy?”

  “Very,” Celia said. She almost breathed a sigh of relief. Almost.

  “Well, I’m not,” Ms. Perdomo said.

  Here it comes, Celia thought, glad she hadn’t taken that breath. Now Ms. Perdomo was going to admit she was onto Celia’s plan and forbid her from following through on it. Here came the long talk about self-confidence, about being true to yourself. Here came Ms. Perdomo’s crazy claim that a nerdy girl with a semi-Afro and crooked teeth could actually win a popularity contest. It was all the stuff counselors were supposed to say, but that Celia was sure they couldn’t possibly believe.

  But to Celia’s surprise, Ms. Perdomo wasn’t onto her plan—she didn’t even mention that stuff. She said something much worse.

  “I’m not happy,” she said, “because including Mariela, there are only two people running for sev
enth grade rep. And two people isn’t going to be any fun, for me, anyway. I barely know this other student—he’s not one of my advisees.”

  Ms. Perdomo sat on her side of the desk and frowned.

  “I wish I could help you,” Celia said. And she meant it.

  “Maybe you can,” she answered. “I’m not too familiar with this person. Maybe you are?”

  Ms. Perdomo slid the filled-out form of the other candidate across her desk and turned it so that Celia could read it. Celia stood up from the chair to see the name on it. As she read it, she felt her knees get wobbly and her heart thud in her chest. She sensed her eyes widening and checked herself, not wanting Ms. Perdomo to register the shock.

  The counselor asked, “I know the seventh grade class is huge, but what do you know about Mariela’s only opponent so far, Mr. Lazaro ‘Laz’ Crespi?”

  Chapter Three

  “Oh no. Please no,” Celia whispered under her breath the next morning as the principal’s voice boomed through the loudspeaker. He was wrapping up his daily contribution to the morning announcements, a segment he called the “Principal’s Proclamations.” Celia sat in homeroom, the shock of the disastrous news still buzzing in her ears: According to that Tuesday’s Proclamations, the election for seventh grade student council rep was officially between only two people: Mari and Laz.

  “This can’t be happening,” Celia mumbled as she let her head fall to her desk. The principal’s voice droned on. “And so, I expect all seventh graders to follow the example of the recently concluded eighth grade campaign and take this election seriously and vote based on the issues. Know that the sixth graders are watching you and that you need to be a good example for them, as their campaigns will begin in the next weeks. And, Coral Grovers, be sure to ask the candidates questions when they visit your homerooms next week. And of course, dear students, the campaign will conclude with the Representative Debate next Friday, where I expect all in attendance to behave in a respectful manner. And students, for those of you who don’t know what I mean by that, I define respectful as follows—”

  It was hard enough to listen to the Principal’s Proclamations on a regular day (largely thanks to his habit of reminding himself who he was talking to at the beginning of every sentence), but to hear him spell out the next week and a half of the campaign—a campaign between Celia’s best friend (and, in reality, Celia herself) and The Love of Her Life Since Fifth Grade—made her stomach knot in a way that caused her to wonder if she should ask for a bathroom pass. Maybe she would run into an equally upset Mariela on her way there—she was in a different homeroom, and though they had most of their classes together, they wouldn’t really get a chance to talk about this latest campaign development until their lunch period. Celia thought about raising her hand to get a pass out of there, but the principal was still talking, going on and on about what would and would not be tolerated at any school function. Celia figured it was a list the principal was fond of reciting, since he mentioned it during the Principal’s Proclamations at least once a week.

  “…no talking to your neighbor for any reason, no leaving your seat for any reason, no throwing of any objects for any reason…”

  Celia once asked her mom during the ride home from school why the principal was so focused on discipline and order, hoping to hear some crazy story: Maybe he had once been in charge of a jail! Maybe he’d been kicked out of the military and was now taking out his revenge on the Coral Grove population! Maybe his own kids had ended up in juvie! But Mami had kept her hands on the steering wheel and answered, “I’d be that tough if I was responsible for fifteen hundred middle school kids. Tougher, probably.”

  The principal finally finished his Proclamations, and the classroom felt oddly quiet in the seconds after he stopped speaking. But then the hum of other students talking started to rise up around her, crowding her thoughts. Celia had never told Mari about her crush on Laz. She kept it a secret, even from her best friend, because she knew there was no way a cool guy like Laz would ever go for a certified nerd like her, and she was bound to get over her crush, anyway, so why embarrass herself in front of her also-cool best friend by confessing she liked him? This was the kind of logic that won her first place in the science fair, which was why she planned on sticking with it.

  But the fact that Laz was her crush wasn’t the only problem. Because he was one of the funniest and best-looking kids in seventh grade, Laz was really cool and had a lot of friends. In fact, Celia couldn’t think of anyone who didn’t know Laz except, apparently, Ms. Perdomo. He had a place in almost every clique: He got small parts in the plays, time on the basketball court, and even an honorable mention in the science fair (not for the project itself, but for the art design of his board). Every boy gave him a head nod when he walked through the hallways. Yvette and the rest of the cooler girls said hi to him every morning before the bell rang for homeroom, and made sure to come over and give him a hug on the way to their lockers. And he was just as sweet to the less-cool girls, hence his joking around with Celia and any other nerd. He never seemed fake or insincere either—he was always so…so…nice. To pretty much everyone. It was part of what made Celia fall for him, and the main reason why he was going to be so hard to beat in the election.

  Celia still thought—no, she knew—that Laz’s coolness would actually hurt him when it came to doing a good job as seventh grade representative. She knew him well enough to guess that he would be too laid-back to take the job seriously. She also knew that he was really indecisive, and—she had to admit this to herself—not exactly the brightest crayon in the box. She’d counted a few misspelled words when she glanced through the report accompanying his science fair board, and the project itself was not actually an experiment—it was called “Mold!” and was just a collection of different things with mold on them glued on the board in an artistic pattern. But that was Laz’s magic: He could make mold look attractive. Even Celia had to agree with the judges awarding him honorable mention for art design.

  The reason Celia saw Laz as a threat was not because he’d make a better representative, but because he had a better chance of winning the election. Sitting there in homeroom, Celia finally felt like she’d done the right thing by getting Mari to run as the face of the campaign. Celia knew there was no way she could beat someone like Laz, but because Mari was almost in the same class of popularity as him, Celia thought they still had a solid chance. The hard part now was going to be convincing Mari of that.

  As they sat down with their lunch trays at the table assigned to their language arts class, Mari said, “This is terrible! He’s one of the most-liked boys at Coral Grove!”

  You’re telling me, Celia thought. She shoveled the corn kernels piled into one compartment of her lunch tray into her mouth, chewing thoroughly. Their table was near Yvette and her band of loyal cool-clique followers, a group of five girls that, along with Yvette, called themselves the Six-Pack. The Six-Pack all had dance together just before lunch period, and they’d sat closer to the end of their assigned table than usual, so Celia was extra careful to avoid getting corn stuck between her teeth. Not that those girls would notice anything Celia did, anyway; they had barely looked her way when she and Mari had first sat down. A couple of them had smiled at Mari, but that was it.

  “And not to freak you out or anything,” Mari said while opening her chocolate milk carton, “but I think I have to back out for a totally unrelated reason.”

  Celia shot up in her seat and blurted out, way too loudly, “WHAT?!!!” She knocked over her own still-unopened carton of milk.

  From out of the corner of her eye, Celia saw Yvette and her crew all snap their heads in her direction. She kept herself from looking over at them, resisting the urge to cover her outburst with some lame joke or excuse, and instead pretended to cough. Once the girls went back to their food and started giggling about something else, Celia swallowed hard, trying not to choke on the pieces of corn moving down her throat. She righted her milk carton and coughed
a little more. Then she said, quieter this time, “What are you talking about?”

  “Okay, so this morning in drama class, Mrs. Wanza finally announced who from second period got parts in the fall play.”

  Celia remembered that Mari had been worried about this for days, ever since Mrs. Wanza made each student who wanted a part try out by reading the same years-old audition material, a stupid monologue from Grease. But with all the campaign plans floating around in her head, she’d completely forgotten.

  “And?” Celia said when Mari paused for dramatic effect. Mari gnawed on her pizza. Since when does corn go with pizza? Celia suddenly thought.

  “I got it.” She ducked down under the table, dug around in her bag, and pulled out a huge, thick script. She patted it lovingly. “I got the main part in the play! And it’s, like, a lot of lines. Way more than any part I got last year.”

  “That’s awesome,” Celia said. She really was excited for Mari, but she knew what was coming next and had to plan her rebuttal—fast.

  Mari thumbed through the script’s pages and said, “Which brings me back to my point about quitting…”

  “Are you kidding me?” Celia said. “This news only proves my point even more—you gotta run. You’re about to be the most famous girl in the school. Once people find out you’re the lead in the play, they’ll want to vote for you even more. How could you even think about quitting?”

  She picked up her own rectangle of pizza and nibbled its edges, waiting for Mari’s reaction. She was impressed with herself—with her quick thinking and her ability to come up with an excuse that convinced even herself. She swallowed sauce and cheese and saw Mari do the same.

  “But, Celia, how will I have time to memorize my lines, practice at rehearsals, and do all the campaign stuff? I have to basically memorize lines for my part as seventh grade rep, too. It’s like being in two plays, and there’s only so much information that can fit in my brain at once!”