BEAUPARLANT: [leans forward with hand under chin] Those party-issued credit cards. You can say unequivocally that following the money will lead us to nothing...untoward?
VENEGAS: Not a thing.
BEAUPARLANT: Then why the delay in releasing the records? We have our FOIAs out all over the place, waiting.
VENEGAS: Celeste. Celeste. I assure you, I’m just following protocol. My constituents know of the liberal media bias that has been against me since I set foot in DC—
[cross talk]
BEAUPARLANT: ...sir, it was your constituents that raised the issue. We report what we find and what concerns the public.
VENEGAS: Nothing personal, right?
[pause]
BEAUPARLANT: Exactly. So, when the public hears rumors of expensive dinners at Zuma and courtside Miami Heat seats on their dime, let alone claims of foreign vacations to Singapore...it leads me to wonder what you’ll do to regain their trust. Your profile only continues to rise, and the scrutiny of a potential pres—
[cross talk]
VENEGAS: I’ve been blessed with a vision since I was a kid, Celeste. I was the youngest elected member to my state’s House of Representatives and served there diligently before I felt my work would be best continued in Washington. My time in Congress only cemented my dream of representing all of Florida in the Senate—
[cross talk]
BEAUPARLANT: Your accomplishments are very impressive, Senator, and we mentioned them in our segment intro, but with the growing calls for your receipts or resignation, where do you realistically go from here?
VENEGAS: [reaches toward Beauparlant, places hand on her forearm] Well, Celeste, here’s what I can promise you and the American people—I’m not going anywhere.
BEAUPARLANT: LET ME GO RIGHT NOW!
VENEGAS: What? What’d I do?
BEAUPARLANT: [shrugs off Venegas, leaps from seat] STOP IT! [smacks Venegas across the face and pushes him off chair]
VENEGAS: WHAT THE F—[feedback from microphone]
[unintelligible cross talk]
[show cuts to commercial]
THIS JUST IN:
SELECT TOPICS TRENDING ON TWITTER
THE DAY OF SLAP-GATE
United States Trends
#SlapGate
@nytimes, @ABCNews, and 10,000 more are Tweeting about this
#CelesteBeauparlant
35.2K Tweets
Andres Venegas
12.5K Tweets
#DamnGina
Just started trending
Monday, December 7
The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant
The concluding years of adolescence mark the heightening of your maturity. As time progresses, you’ll learn more and more about yourself along the way. High school in particular is a time of exploration, self-growth, and—
What a load of crap.
I folded the pamphlet that my dad had snuck into my lunch bag in half as Tatiana settled into the seat beside me in the cafeteria. He was notorious for giving me developmental handouts whenever he needed more time to get his thoughts together around a certain topic before discussing it with me. My dad thought he did a good job of masking it, but he cared about my mother. A lot more than he would ever admit to me (or her, for that matter). And with Mom now hiding in Haiti to wait out the media sharks, he was focusing all of his attention on me. I knew there was a larger conversation just looming around the corner. I could already hear him clearing his throat before looking deeply into my eyes and asking about my feelings on Slap-Gate.
It was now over twenty-four hours since Mom’s on-air outburst and all Dad had done was ask me 856 times if I was doing okay and wanted to talk. Clips from what some were calling the “anchor altercation of the century” were inescapable. The evening news. The morning news. Late night shows. My classmates’ cell phones. With each news alert, my dad would send another “just checking in” text, and it was driving me as Mad as the Hatter.
But I will say, the good side of Dad’s incessant need to deliver a dose of optimistic self-help in the form of paper booklets commonly reserved for grief counseling and Jehovah’s Witness evangelizing was that they always came with a side of freshly baked goods. Whenever feelings of worry threatened to overwhelm my father, he kneaded them into dough, where they could rise safely away from him. And while this was a delicious way for him to cope, I automatically associated those yummy carbs with heavy conversations about emotions and feeling shrinked by my own parent.
Middle school had been the worst. Dad clearly couldn’t deal with being a single father to someone developing boobs, and he’d spent a lot of his free time in the kitchen. Once, Peter Logan grabbed my bag of raisin bread in that playful way immature boys who like someone do (at least that’s what I told myself)...and out tumbled a bright red fact sheet: Puberty is a monumental time period of physical development and discovery and it doesn’t end with just periods! He avoided eye contact for the rest of sixth grade.
As soon as a custodian wheeled by where Tatiana and I sat in the cafeteria, I tossed the pamphlet into the trash can. I debated getting rid of the bread maker when I got home. Maybe that would put a stop to Dad’s well-intentioned but slightly irritating ways. It would mean no more tasty peanut butter banana kaiser rolls made from the roasted peanuts Tati Estelle regularly sent us from Haiti, but sometimes you have to make a sacrifice. Dad could have the bread maker back when I graduated.
Besides, I didn’t need flaky, buttery pastries or a psych booklet to tell me what I already knew. With or without Mom slapping Senator Venegas, high school would always be a time of major angst and uncertainty. Some of my peers just happened to be able to navigate this dreadfully uncomfortable time better than others. In fact, quite a few of them had the I’m-going-to-act-like-I’m-much-cooler-than-I-really-am thing down to a science. But I was particularly terrible at this, because I couldn’t help but fill awkward silences with any thought that sprouted in my mind. And now that my mom had lost it on air, the tiny amount of “think before you speak” that I possessed was officially depleted. Seriously, anything that anyone said only served to remind me of her outburst.
DIRECT QUOTE #1
ALAINE BEAUPARLANT WITH FELLOW CLASSMATE AT
ST. CATHERINE DE’ RICCI ACADEMY
Kid #1 at Locker:
Ugh, I hate this jacket.
Me:
You know what I hate? When my mom assaults a government official on live TV.
DIRECT QUOTE #2
ALAINE BEAUPARLANT WITH FELLOW CLASSMATE AT
ST. CATHERINE DE’ RICCI ACADEMY
Kid #2 in AP English:
This class is the worst.
Me:
You know what’s worse? When your mom asks your class to tune in to her going bat-shit wild on live TV.
DIRECT QUOTE #3
ALAINE BEAUPARLANT WITH A VALUED STAFF MEMBER OF ST. CATHERINE DE’ RICCI ACADEMY
Lunch Lady at Lunchtime:
Rice and chicken or spaghetti?
Me:
Just juice, please. I brought my lunch. Just like my mom brought those hands. On live TV!
The Life and Times of Alaine Beauparlant
If St. Catherine de’ Ricci was the setting of a cult hit teen movie, I would be the cub reporter always snooping around for a scoop. I’d take myself way too seriously and wear tortoiseshell glasses and compete with a young Jeff Goldblum for the editor-in-chief position until we would ultimately decide to share the responsibilities. (Which is actually what happened with me and my coeditor, George Finchley, who unfortunately doesn’t have any of Jeff’s droll magnetism. SAT vocab prep strikes again.)
Tatiana—whom I love and admire very deeply—would be the girl on lockdown who is always making excuses to her parents for why she has to stay late at the library. Each morning she’d walk out the d
oor and drop the Deferential Daughter schtick as soon as she kissed her parents (and aunts and uncles and grandparents) goodbye. Just in time for homeroom.
She’d have impressive grades but also a massive yearning to be a part of the Popular Group, or the It Crowd, or, as I liked to call them, the Peaked in High School Posse. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even will myself to be interested in who Nina Voltaire was no longer friends with or what college guy Kaylee Johnson was currently seeing. Not because I’m so above it all like everyone seems to think... I just have my priorities in order. How else am I supposed to follow in my mom’s footsteps? She didn’t get to where she was by sitting around talking about high school nonsense, so neither will I. That’s part of the reason that I want to go to Columbia in the first place—to find my tribe. It’s a fancy-pants school for sure, but how great would it be to make a name for myself at the great Celeste Beauparlant’s alma mater? And the fact that it’s in New York is amazing all on its own. I try to keep the fantasizing to a minimum, but there’s no denying the allure of the Big Apple—four actual seasons, nonstop electrifying atmosphere, some of the most driven individuals in the world who are hungry and want to show everyone what they’re made of. I know, I know. How woefully banal of me.
But alas, I am not in New York. I am at lunch in Miami and groaning inwardly as I watch Nina and Kaylee, respectively the undisputed queen and lady-in-waiting of the royal social court, make a beeline to our table because St. Catherine is the type of school that gives its students rotating assigned lunch seats “in order to foster a sense of Christlike community and camaraderie.”
Tatiana lived for these days. I...did not. She took full advantage of the screen time and had her aforementioned I’m-going-to-act-like-I’m-much-cooler-than-I-really-am skills on full display. Nina and Kaylee had barely sat down before they were sucked into listening skeptically as Tatiana explained why her nonexistent relationship with some jock would never work out.
“He’s on his way to being a double senior,” Tatiana said as she took a delicate sip of her coconut water. “That’s just way more baggage than I want to take on right now. Flings are supposed to be light and carefree, you know? I can’t spend all my time thinking about how I’m going to move on to college and he’s still going to be here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That and the fact that he doesn’t know who you are.”
Tatiana gave me a death glare and went back to her story.
Honestly, what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t tease her just a little? She made it so easy whenever Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber Nina and Kaylee were around. Besides, it was part of the trade-off for being her alibi whenever her parents demanded to know where she was or where she was going. That’s kind of the reason that Tatiana and I became friends in the first place. It was a few days after the release of first quarter report cards during freshman year. Tatiana’s mom (Madam Hippolyte, as I call her) had barged into AP World History, the last class of the day, to demand in very broken English why Tatiana had been marked tardy for nine classes. The look on Madam Hippolyte’s face after Mr. Berger explained that Tatiana had been marked tardy because she was indeed late for each of those classes was enough to make me want to run out of the class screaming. Without a doubt, Tatiana was about to be in a world galaxy of trouble. Tatiana’s mom continued on, asking if this would cause Tatiana to be held back, and I could hear the kids in class snickering at Madam Hippolyte’s pronunciation of flunk—or “floonk,” as it sounded. Maybe it was because I couldn’t bear to watch Madam Hippolyte struggle to find her next words, or because Tatiana looked so utterly embarrassed, but I walked right up to the front of the class and explained in Creole to Madam Hippolyte that Tatiana had been late because she was helping me study during our lunch period. I promised not to make Tatiana miss the start of class again and reassured Madam Hippolyte that Tatiana wouldn’t be held back for cutting class. It was a lie of course, but it worked. Tatiana’s mom nodded her thanks and turned to Tatiana.
“Papa ou ap tande tout sa.” I didn’t want to know what Tatiana’s dad would do to her, but Tatiana nodded and quickly ran to her desk to gather up her belongings. On the way out, Tatiana gave me a small smile and I knew in that moment that we would be besties. That and the fact that she’d feel indebted to me for the rest of eternity. I smiled back.
Tatiana coughed exaggeratedly and elbowed me lightly in the ribs, pulling me out of my thoughts. Peter Logan had joined our table and was looking at me expectantly.
“Uh...yes?” I said sheepishly.
“I said thanks for helping me study for that calculus exam. I got a B... I couldn’t have done it without your help.”
“Oh,” I answered, feeling my face grow hot. “You’re welcome.”
Peter looked at me for a bit longer than he should and smiled. Even I couldn’t figure out what to do to talk my way out of this. Unrequited crushing makes me nervous and everyone knows that nerves are the kryptonite of wit. Nina, Kaylee, and Tatiana looked back and forth between the both of us like they were watching a tennis match, which didn’t help either. If only I had Serena Williams’s skills.
“So...uh...high five,” I said and immediately regretted it. Kaylee snorted. Issa Rae in all her awkward black girl glory would be proud (or mortified). To my surprise, he held my gaze and slapped my hand. Then he frowned.
“What were you guys eating over here?” he asked, sniffing the air.
“Me?” I said quickly. “A peanut butter kaiser roll. Homemade. It was really—”
“Oh no. I have to wash my hands,” Peter interrupted. “I’m super allergic to peanuts. I’ll talk to you later, Alaine. Ladies.”
Peter backed off from our table, but as soon as he was a few feet away, he made a beeline for his book bag. He quickly gobbled up what looked like his allergy pill and raced to the bathroom. I turned back to the girls, trying unsuccessfully to conceal my mortification.
“I hope he’s okay,” I said as I turned to stare after him again.
“He’ll be all right,” Tatiana reassured me. “I bet he just breaks out in hives or something.”
“But hives are painful!” I replied, my horror growing. “And some people stop breathing!”
“He’s allergic to everything. It’s not his first rodeo. He’ll be fine,” Nina cut in. “So on to more important things. There’s nothing going on between you and Penicillin Pete?”
“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” Kaylee said, imitating Peter’s earlier statement in a low voice.
“Yeah, girl. You’re the Netflix to my chill,” Nina quipped.
Tatiana looked between the two of them and tried not to smile.
“What? Me and Peter? No way! Besides, peanut butter is legit a staple at my house. If he’s allergic, there’s no way we would ever work out. And I’m pretty sure you take an antihistamine or epinephrine for an allergy and not penicillin.”
“Could you imagine their kids?” Nina went on, ignoring me. “They’d either be allergic to everything or think they know it all.”
“Ugh. What if they’re both?” Kaylee said with an eye roll. “Tragic!”
Tatiana looked like a fish out of water as she listened to Nina and Kaylee go back and forth. I could tell that she was torn between keeping up her cool factor and standing up for me as her friend. Lucky for her, I didn’t particularly care about what those girls thought. And I didn’t want to watch my best friend short-circuit as she struggled through what I’m sure she thought was a major crisis of conscience.
“Number one, we’re, like, seventeen and this conversation is irrelevant. None of what we’re doing now matters,” I said as I stood up and quickly gathered my belongings. “And number two, would it really be the end of the world if our imaginary kid was a highly allergic know-it-all? Much better than being a dumb—”
“Alaine!” Tatiana interjected, saving me from what some would consider social suicide.
“I’ll see you later, Tatiana.”
“Don’t leave now!” Kaylee shouted as I walked away. “We wanted to see how long it would take before you snapped like your mother!”
I didn’t even bother to turn around as I gave her the finger. I may not know how to act cooler than I really am, but I have get-out-of-my-way-you’re-getting-on-my-nerves down to a science.
Friday, December 11
ST. CATHERINE DE’ RICCI ACADEMY:
UPDATED SENIOR CAREER DAY AGENDA
Welcome, parents and guardians, to one of our most cherished annual traditions: Career Day! This is an opportunity for you to shine and share your passions and career wisdom with our beloved students before they head off to winter break and, soon, college. Career Day wouldn’t be possible without you and we are particularly appreciative of your flexibility in light of recent updates to the schedule. Please find the complete agenda for today’s activities below. We are eternally grateful for your participation.
8:30 A.M.–9:30 A.M.
Breakfast
Continental breakfast provided for all attendees
9:30 A.M.–9:45 A.M.
Welcome
Sister Gayle Pollack, Principal
9:45 A.M.–10:00 A.M.
Mindfulness Moment: What is Success?
A special virtual message of contemplation for our students from the Bishop of Rome
10:00 A.M.–10:30 A.M.
Presentation by the Honorable Constantine Logan, Chief Judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida
The role of law and order and unbiased sentencing in the Florida judicial system
10:30 A.M.–11:00 A.M.
Presentation by Luciana Martinez, Latin Grammy Award-Winning International Pop Star
So you want to be famous? Do you even lift? Because dancing on stage is a workout
11:00 A.M.–11:30 A.M.
Presentation by Brenda Johnson, Head Coach and Lead Recruiter of the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine Page 4