As President Oberlin St. James called to order the first session of the 116th Imperial Day Senate, ingloriously gathered in Mr. Samson’s chemistry classroom, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my fellow senators were surprised to see me there. Like they didn’t think I’d go through with it, like my victory was such an obvious sham that I should have done the decent thing and resigned like Maisie had.
“Our first order of business is to welcome our new senators, Hector Estrella and Claudia McCarthy.” Oberlin St. James nodded in our direction as we lifted our hands to wave to our new colleagues.
“Okay, then. Moving on to the next thing: special elections to fill the freshman seats.”
Between Ty and Oberlin St. James, Imperial Day had not elected especially personable leadership. Ty wouldn’t talk to you at all, whereas Oberlin St. James wouldn’t talk to you until he’d decided that you weren’t an idiot, and Oberlin St. James thought almost everyone was an idiot.
“Claudia and Hector, we expect you to attend the orientation for all freshmen wishing to run for Senate, but you are not to speak to any of the candidates or answer their questions or breathe a word of advice to them. Please leave that to those of us who know what we’re doing.”
Oberlin St. James gave a cloying smile to his vice president, Jasmine Park, and to the other upperclassman senators, but there were no smiles for Hector and me. We were still on probation.
I noticed that Hector was writing down everything Oberlin St. James said as he laid out the itinerary for the freshman election orientation.
Shit, I thought, I should be taking this more seriously, and I reached into my bag for a notebook. When I leaned over, though, my eyes fell on Hector’s paper and I saw that he’d written in blocky, draftsman letters along the margin:
THANK YOU TO OBERLIN ST. JAMES FOR THAT WARM WELCOME
and beneath that:
WHAT SHOULD WE TELL THE FRESHMEN IF THEY ASK US WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A SENATOR?
He hadn’t nudged me or made a thing of it. He’d just been sitting there waiting for me to notice.
I opened my notebook and pretended to write down the date and time of the assembly, but what I really wrote was:
LET’S TELL THEM IT’S A CULT.
“Moving on to Homecoming,” Oberlin St. James said, and without meaning to, I let out a small sigh. It was a reflex, a momentary forgetfulness on my part. After all, it was only a year ago that I’d been the kind of person who studiously avoided all Homecoming-related activities, and now I had been put in charge of them. But momentary lapse or not, Oberlin St. James was not amused.
“Is this beneath you, Claudia?”
I’d assumed it was a rhetorical question, but after an excruciating silence, it became clear that Oberlin St. James was waiting for a response.
“No,” I said at last.
“Because this is what we do. We hear student grievances. We intercede on their behalf. And we plan and we organize and we raise money for the events that make life here at Imperial Day something other than a desolate wasteland of interminable sameness, punctuated by nothing but tests and lunch. Do you understand, Claudia?”
“Yes,” I said, more quickly this time.
But what I was thinking as Oberlin St. James glared at me, probably wondering if I was another Chris Gibbons, and as Jasmine Park rolled her eyes at the junior class senators, Morgan Peterson and Ernest Collingswood, was, Can’t we do better than that? Can’t we do more?
Having put me in my place, Oberlin St. James carried on with the Homecoming plans.
“The feedback we got last year indicated that people preferred to have the dance off-site rather than in the gym. Jasmine and I have been going over possible venues, and so far the frontrunners are the Queen Mary, the Getty, and the Skirball. I’m going to turn things over to Jasmine to discuss what we need to do for any of this to come close to happening. It won’t be easy, but I think Jasmine has figured out a few elegant solutions to our fundraising situation.”
My eyes darted over to Hector’s paper, and I saw that he’d written:
OH MY GOD HE LOVES HER.
Happily, I hadn’t alienated all of my Senate colleagues. I snuffled out a laugh in the back of my hand and jotted back:
ELEGANT FUNDRAISING SKILLS = VERY HOT
Jasmine flipped her highlighted hair over one shoulder and ran us through the price for each venue, what people were willing to pay for tickets, and how we’d make up the difference. She explained the kinds of fundraising that Imperial Day students were resistant to and those they could often be tricked into doing. She showed us her spreadsheets. I’d joked about it, but I had to admit that the whole thing was, in fact, sort of hot.
For Homecoming, the most lucrative fundraiser was the teacher car wash. Senate members sweet-talked ten teachers into volunteering, and then people would pay obscene amounts of money to have Mr. Woolf or Mrs. DiVincenzo or whoever scrub their cars.
It struck me as a little tone-deaf and possibly cruel in the extreme when you considered the financial situation of most Imperial Day teachers compared with that of the typical student. Asking them to take a rag to the wheel well of Lexus after student-owned Lexus seemed a little too close to saying outright the thing that was silently implied in our dealings: You serve at our pleasure.
Jasmine Park licked her lips and reported that the Senate had $5000 in the account set aside for Homecoming expenses, and I saw Oberlin St. James’s prodigious eyebrows knit together.
“Are you sure that’s all we have?” he asked. “I could have sworn there was $10,000 in that account.”
Jasmine looked down at her papers, then shook her head. “According to the bank statement, it’s $5000.”
“Huh, remind me to look into that,” said Oberlin St. James in a distracted way that made me fairly sure he was never going to look into it. “Anyhow, Claudia and Hector, for your first assignment as senators, I put it to you to find ten teachers for the car wash. And don’t come back without Yee.”
I felt immediately defensive of my brilliant history teacher. “Why do you want Ms. Yee?”
“She gives more Cs than anyone at Imperial Day. Our constituents will find it most gratifying to see her washing our cars.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. A C at Imperial Day was like an F anywhere else.
“At our next meeting, we’ll open up for public comment from the student body. Brace yourselves. The first one is always long. Until then, Claudia and Hector will organize the car wash. Jasmine will book the Homecoming venue. Get the Queen Mary if you can, Jasmine, and I want everyone to come up with at least three ideas for Homecoming week activities. See you Thursday.”
I looked at the clock. With the nine-hour time difference, I’d missed my chance to Skype with Maisie. I sent her a quick text apologizing and asking if she was free the next night instead.
Everyone else left the second Oberlin St. James dismissed us, but Hector waited for me to finish my text before getting up to go.
“Are there ten teachers we can persuade to do the car wash?”
He kept his tone light, but I could tell the ethical implications had occurred to him as well, and he was troubled, torn between offending our teachers by asking or invoking the wrath of Oberlin St. James by failing.
“Oh, there are ten teachers. That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
Hector had transferred in last year. He only had four and a half months of Imperial Day under his belt. I had a full year, plus an older sister, which translated to fairly reliable intel on who would be flattered to be asked, who would agree under duress, and who should not be approached under any circumstances. But it wasn’t that easy.
“They’re all going to want something,” I said.
We were walking toward the journalism classroom where my old newspaper advisor, Mr. Prettinger, sat at his desk eating a Cobb salad and reading the sports section of the Los Angeles Times.
“Hi, Mr. Prettinger,” I said, sticking my head through the door.
“Claudia,” he said, raising his hand in greeting and folding up the paper, “you are just the person I wanted to see. There’s a Board of Commissioners meeting tonight and nobody can cover it. Can you go?”
“What’s on the agenda?”
“Donations. New hires.” He mimed a yawn. “But you know how it is. Gotta keep an eye on the bastards.”
“Sure, I’ll do it,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too eager. Maybe Jasmine Park could have found an elegant way to maneuver the conversation toward my next point, but Mr. Prettinger was a journalism teacher. I figured a man who worked on deadlines would appreciate bluntness. “Mr. Prettinger, are you familiar with the Senate car wash fundraiser for Homecoming?”
“I am,” he said cagily.
“Is there any chance I might prevail upon you to volunteer two hours of your time washing the cars of ungrateful children for a good cause?”
“Since when is Homecoming a good cause?” he asked, though before I could answer, he scrunched up his face in disbelief and said, “Wait, you’re a senator now?”
“I thought you knew,” I said, then sensing his disapproving tone, I added, “It’s not like I’m selling heroin or something.”
“It’s just that once a person crosses the line from journalism to politics, they rarely cross back,” he said, regarding his Cobb salad as though it had disappointed him, instead of me.
“You haven’t totally lost me, Mr. Prettinger. I could be persuaded to cover the next three school board meetings for the Weekly Praetor.”
“If I wash cars,” Mr. Prettinger said.
“If you wash cars.”
Mr. Prettinger weighed the unpleasantness of this prospect with trying to wrangle unwilling student journalists into dull meetings for the next three months, then nodded when he’d made up his mind.
“You might actually make a very good politician, Claudia,” he said, then looked over my shoulder at Hector, who was pretending to read Mr. Prettinger’s bulletin board on AP Style, a faraway look in his eyes. “Who’s your friend? I don’t suppose you’re a writer, are you?”
The moment he found himself on Mr. Prettinger’s radar, I saw Hector snap to attention and turn into himself. Or rather, turn into the version of himself that did so well at Imperial Day. The warm eyes and easy smile, the confidence tempered by respectful deference, whether he was talking to a teacher or a student.
“Hector Estrella,” he said, stepping forward to shake Mr. Prettinger’s hand. “Nice to meet you, though I’m afraid I’m not much of a writer.”
Mr. Prettinger persisted. “Photography?”
“A little.”
“Cover three board meetings, your friend shoots the field hockey match on Friday, and you’ve got yourself a deal, Claudia.”
I turned to Hector before accepting his offer, wanting to make sure that I hadn’t roped him into anything too onerous—but then I thought about all those smooth, strong field hockey player legs, and judging by the smile on Hector’s face, he was thinking about the same thing.
“Done,” he said.
Mr. Prettinger saluted me before turning back to his dinner and baseball scores and said, “Pleasure doing business with you, McCarthy.”
“Likewise, sir.”
As Hector and I walked down the hall, I said, “Now we just have to do that nine more times.”
“Next time we split up,” Hector said. “No more of this two favors for the price of one nonsense.”
I had four and a half months of Imperial Day experience on Hector, and an older sister, but he was catching on fast.