In the days leading up to Homecoming, the anonymous notes in the blocky all-caps handwriting started to appear in my locker again.
HELEN NORWOOD: SUSPENDED—3 DAYS
EDWIN STIRATT: BANNED FROM EXTRACURRICULARS—2 MONTHS
LETICIA PURCELL: CAFETERIA DUTY—1 WEEK
The Honor Council punished lots of people. None of these sentences was particularly tough, but it didn’t take a genius to see what Deep Throat was suggesting: that maybe the Honor Council was punishing people who hadn’t done anything wrong.
Deep Throat—that was what I’d started calling this person who left notes in my locker, in my head anyway. It was the nickname those Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave to their high-ranking, deep-cover informant when they were reporting on the Watergate scandal.
Because that was who my informant was, right? That was who it had to be, someone inside Cal’s twisted regime, just trying to make sure that someone on the outside knew what was going on.
Which one of them was it, though?
Rebecca Ibañez was no insider, having clawed her way back onto the Council after losing her seat the previous year. However, I wondered if that fact would make her less, rather than more, inclined to leak classified information. Esme would have taken the information to Hector, not me, and if it was Zelda Parsons, then her cover was even deeper than the real Deep Throat’s, who had worked for Nixon but stopped short of actually dating him. Kian Sarkosian actually seemed to be friends with Cal, so that left Maddie Urrea, she of the alleged quinceañera after-party that Cal had been threatening to crash, and two freshmen, about whom I knew nothing other than their names. And then there was the possibility that Cal himself was trying to mess with me.
Not only did I not know who Deep Throat was; I wasn’t sure what he or she wanted me to do with any of this information.
Not knowing what course to take, I did nothing, except worry about it. On top of that, I worried about all the last-minute details Hector and I had to take care of—the DJ who’d cancelled at the last minute, the impossibility of getting anybody who owned a food truck to reply to a text and let you know if they were going to show up.
On top of all of that, I worried about my date with Soren.
The only thing I knew about him was that he’d once been a drug dealer and addict, but now supposedly wasn’t. He probably found politics and history horribly boring, and I didn’t know anything about surfing or video games. There was an extremely good chance we would have nothing to talk about.
When I found him waiting for me outside of third period the day before the dance, I assumed he’d also had second thoughts and was going to back out. Instead, he asked if he could pick me up at six so we could go to dinner beforehand.
This seemed like overkill for a date I’d entered into on a dare, but I said sure.
“What color is your dress?”
“I’m not wearing a dress.”
“Then what color corsage should I get you?”
Was this what formal dances did to people? Was this how they acted? Was it normal? I still don’t exactly know, but I had to admit, it was strange and nice. No matter how nice, though, I wasn’t wearing a corsage.
“You should donate the money to science.”
“How about I buy you tacos instead?” Soren suggested, and I mentally congratulated myself on having had the good sense to ask him out in the first place. Since Soren was going full-on gentleman, I decided to make an effort, too. A dress and a corsage and a manicure were still out of the question, but so, too, was my JOHN MCCAIN IS MY HOMEBOY t-shirt.
Eventually, what I decided to wear was a pair of black satin cigarette pants with a sleeveless tuxedo shirt and a bowtie. I parted my hair and slicked it to the side, and in a nod to the festive spirit of the evening, I put on some silver eye shadow and body glitter. The result was a kind of androgynous quirk that most people probably wouldn’t have called “pretty,” but as I turned from side to side in the mirror, there was no denying that it worked on me.
My parents told me how nice I looked, then found reasons to hover around the front door, waiting for a glimpse of my Homecoming date. It made me nervous. For the first time in a while, I saw my parents as other people might see them. I was used to my father’s coffee-stained teeth and mad-scientist hair. I found my mother’s nasal Midwestern intonations to be somewhat endearing, but I was not sure what Soren would make of them.
When Soren arrived, though, I didn’t care what he thought about any of us. He was dressed in faded cargo shorts and a threadbare Fugazi t-shirt, carrying a giant plastic bag, and his eyes were bloodshot.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said when I opened the door.
“Are you, like, on something?” I asked, inspecting his pupils.
“Fuck no,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis. “It’s salt water. I was surfing all afternoon and my phone died and I totally lost track of time.”
He held up the plastic bag, which I realized was a dry cleaning bag with hangers sticking out of it. “Can I change clothes here?”
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” I said.
As Soren disappeared down the hall, I noticed my parents whispering to each other behind their hands.
“What?” I asked them.
My mother straightened up defensively. “Are you going to introduce us to your friend?”
“Once he’s dressed.”
A few minutes later, Soren emerged in a black pinstripe suit, purple shirt, and a purple and navy blue necktie that I seriously coveted for my own collection. He’d combed his hair and it looked like he’d applied eyedrops, too.
“Ta da,” he said, soft-shoeing down the hallway.
“Soren, these are my parents, Tessa and Jason McCarthy.”
As Soren shook their hands, I saw my father clear his throat and adjust his posture so that all present would notice and recognize that he was the Father of a Teenage Daughter.
“Young man, have you been drinking?” he asked, trying to sound stern and paternal.
“I’m eight months sober, so no,” Soren said, unrattled by my father’s somewhat rude, if reasonable, question. “There is nothing stronger than Peet’s coffee in my bloodstream.”
My parents did not have shit to say to that. I don’t think they felt much better about sending me out into the night with an 18-year-old who attended AA meetings, but at least they seemed to appreciate his sincerity.
“You like Peet’s?” I asked, cautiously optimistic we might have something to talk about after all.
We kicked off our Homecoming dinner date with two large cups of Major Dickason’s Blend, followed by tacos at a restaurant that was squeezed between a laundromat and a massage parlor. When we were both on our third al pastor, we’d run out of small talk and curiosity finally got the better of me, so I just asked the thing I really wanted to know.
“What happened to you?”
I might have found a more graceful, tactful way to inquire, but Soren didn’t seem to mind. He took a big swig from his horchata, wiped the milk mustache with the back of his hand, and said, “I got tired of hating myself.”
I studied Soren with a seriousness that probably looked like scowling to him. It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. Soren didn’t seem like a person who hated himself.
“After Honor Week last year, I got that little taste of what it felt like to do good things, and I liked it. I liked having people look at me in a different way. No, that makes it sound like—I didn’t really care what other people thought. Like, I just wanted to be good some more. And instead of covering up my feelings by getting fucked up, I just felt them. And because I didn’t have drugs anymore, the people who stayed around were the people who really cared about me.”
His eyes shone while he talked, and I looked down at my half-eaten rice and beans, embarrassed for him. Did they make you talk like that in AA?
“Is this making you uncomfortable?” Soren asked, and I felt horrible. He’d had this conversation a few times, I guessed, and had probably gotten good at telling when people wanted to hit the eject button.
A little voice in my head cleared its throat and said, Why did you ask if you didn’t want to know? He’s a person, not a sideshow attraction.
“It’s not that,” I said quietly. “It’s just really real is all.”
“I’d rather be honest. If people can’t handle it, that’s cool. I just like knowing up front whether we’re going to be happy chit-chat friends or what.”
“I can handle it,” I said.
“I’m glad,” Soren said. “Because, like, for example, I didn’t used to like you at all. I even thought you snitched me out to the Honor Council once.”
My eyes got big. I’d almost forgotten about that day when I was hiding in the storage closet during Soren’s Honor Council hearing. At the time, I’d speculated that it was Cal or Lola Stephenson who’d reported him to the Honor Council, but now I knew that Soren had developed his own theories on the subject.
“You thought I did that?” I asked.
“I don’t think it now,” he explained. “But you can see how it might have looked at the time, right?”
I nodded. As rats went, I certainly looked like a prime suspect. My sister had been on the Honor Council. I’d sat with half of them at lunch that year. If I’d been Soren, I certainly wouldn’t have invited me to the Little Shop of Horrors Naked Cast Party.
“What changed your mind?” I asked.
“Because why would you snitch to those people when you don’t give a fuck what they think of you?”
A stupid half-grin blossomed on my face as I basked in Soren’s compliment. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to me since the note in my Valentine’s Day bouquet. I’d spent a year in the shadow of the Honor Council, of Livia, even of Maisie, but now I was out from under it. That was how it felt anyway, so it was a relief to learn that an objective, outside party thought so, too.
“I have a question for you,” Soren said, piling the used napkins and straw wrappers on his paper plate. “Why did you ask me to Homecoming?”
That stupid Valentine’s Day bouquet. Whenever I remembered it, all I could think about was how I’d almost laid those raw, naked feelings down at Hector’s feet and only just stopped in time. The memory made me cringe. I wanted to run away from it, but when I tried the thought of Hector giving Esme a pretty corsage, then taking her to dinner someplace with real silverware and plates, and as nice a time as I was having with Soren—and I was!—all I could think about was—
“Because I’m in love with Hector Estrella,” I blurted out. “That’s why I asked you to Homecoming.”
The words hung in the air between us. It was the first time I’d spoken them aloud to anyone, even Maisie. Afterwards, I couldn’t say anything else, but just sat there in a state of shock while Soren looked at me, a bemused smile on his face.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Then you should tell him.”
“He has a girlfriend.”
“It’s high school,” Soren said, the first note of cynicism I’d heard from him all night. “Give it a month.”
“I’m glad I asked you, though,” I said. “I’m glad we’re doing this.”
“Me too.”
Maybe tomorrow I would go back to acting like I didn’t have feelings, but in the spirit of the evening, I decided to embrace sincerity.
Given what happened later that night, this would prove to be entirely the wrong frame of mind.