Serious.
My dad has guilt-tripped me like no one else can with his honor code and expectations. So after barely sleeping, I walk down the corridor at school and see the signs about the upcoming student council election and a light bulb goes off in my foggy brain. Even though the idea of running for president of this place is definitely something I should run from, I’m immediately jazzed by the thought of jumping in where I don’t belong and stirring things up.
At the very least, I could have fun buying art supplies and making posters and calling it schoolwork. But more importantly, I could get over on skanky people at Morgan who hate me, because most of them are. Spoiled. Stuck-up. Bitches.
Who dress in paisley or what have you and wear things like Belgian Shoes and have moms with names like Muffy who carry those stupid Nantucket straw baskets with scrimshaw medallions and talk interminably about going riding in Connecticut on the weekends or watching horse jumping or entering their purebreds at Westminster or playing golf, while the non-Wasp world, not in Litchfield or Greenwich, Connecticut, who are stuck in places like the fucking Bronx and Queens and lower Manhattan, except for Soho, are mostly out of work and panhandling, fencing crap on eBay, lining up for chump change from unemployment, and jumping turnstiles because they can’t even afford stupid MetroCards. I would love to drop-kick most of them so that they would open their recessive-gene eyes and get over that rarefied bullshit way of existing.
You probably think I’m being paranoid, that no one really has it in for me.
Wrong.
I’ve just locked the bathroom stall door behind me when Christy Collins and Georgina Richards, the two-faced Brit twit, walk into the bathroom. They obviously know I’m there because I’m sure they toe peeped, and who else wears purple or green Louboutins with four-inch heels and nail heads, even when it snows? At first whiff I know it’s Christy because she wears massive amounts of musk oil or something else that she must think smells hot but actually smells like pond scum.
“This school has really gone downhill since they let that Mafia bitch in,” she says.
“Really,” says Georgina.
“I mean look at who her dad is,” Christy says. “How can they do that? She and that other one are total mafioso trash.”
I sit coiled up like a rattlesnake poised to strike. The plural is mafiosi, I’m tempted to call out, but never mind that. How could they let Christy into the school when her dad works on Wall Street and who ever thought we should bail out those people?
Pins and needles make my legs tingle.
The door slams finally and it’s quiet again. I go out and wash my hands, scrubbing too hard. I strut down the corridor almost passing the school election table, but I stop when the kid behind the desk smiles at me.
“Thinking of running, Gia?”
He’s actually serious. I smile and shrug, stifling a laugh. Me? Run for president?
On the desk are applications and white pencils with The Morgan School in magenta. I reach for one and slip it between my teeth. Then I move on.
President. How would that go over? A total goof? Or not? Maybe I could actually wake this place up and bring it into this century.
I put the thought aside.
But when I’m in the library after school with Ro and Clive, I poll them. “What do you guys think about me running for class president— truthfully?”
“Gia, you would be the absolute best,” Clive says. “Yes, yes, definitely, and I’ll be your campaign manager and your front man or whatever.”
“I’ll be your assistant campaign manager,” Ro says. “And we can put posters all over the school and you can make speeches about how the students need more power and—Gia, you have to do it, you have to.”
I think about it for a total of about eleven seconds, then slap my hand on the desk. “I’m running.”
Clive and Ro applaud and the librarian shoots us a dirty look. “SSSSSHHHHH,” she says, putting her finger to her lips.
We give her a dirty look back because how stupid is that ssssshushing crap when you’re in the library?
“Pizza anyone?” Clive says, looking back pointedly at the librarian.
We go out for thin crust whole wheat pizza and spinach calzones and talk more about what we’ll do to get me elected. We only have one month to make me the best candidate.
When you’re seriously running for office, you do it not only because if you win you can lord your power over everyone, but also because you supposedly believe you can help the school. So you have to come up with campaign pledges and convince people that you’re the one to end some of the bullshit school rules like no flip-flops or ripped jeans or texting in the stairwell and maybe promise that if you’re elected, the food in the dining hall will improve because Daniel Boulud will be hired as a catering consultant, and so on.
So Clive and Ro and I and a new girl named Candy who just moved to New York from LA decide to brainstorm to come up with my platform.
Unlike everyone else at Morgan, Candy didn’t know my name when she first heard it. Or said she didn’t. What she immediately glommed onto was my shoe and bag collection, which instantly put me on her A list. Not to mention that Morgan kids don’t exactly open their arms to outsiders, so until she met me, she used to sit alone.
“OMIGOD!” she yelled one day and blocked my path as I walked down the corridor. “I’d kill for those shoes.”
I looked back at her straight-faced, then cracked up.
So now we all sit around talking about my campaign platform and as usual Candy starts out by using her hometown as her default point.
“In LA my school had a screening night and we would show these incredible new movies before they opened, so maybe you could set up screenings here like that to bring people together.”
“That would be totally cool,” Clive says.
I look at Ro and she looks back at me, raising an eyebrow. Dante gets bootleg versions of new movies that we watch before he eBays them.
“Done,” I say. “Next.”
“You’re running against Jordan Hassel, that jock a-hole,” Ro says. “So you have to beat him at his own game. What if we set up a monthly fund-raiser for kids with cancer and give the highest bidder front row Knicks tickets that I’m sure we could get for free?”
“How do you get those?” Candy asks.
“Done. Next.”
“I’m for raising money for more scholarships,” I say. “That way this place can reflect the real world.”
“Amen,” Clive says.
By the end of the hour we have my platform. We are going to blow Jordan Hassel and Christy’s best friend, Brandy Tewl—I swear that is her last name—out of the water. The only thing Brandy has going for her is that her dad runs a chain of restaurants so she has her pick of places for parties. Brandy’s campaign slogan is “stop the bullying,” which is fairly amusing since she and Christy and Georgina are the biggest bullies going.
“You need a one-sentence campaign slogan,” Clive says. “It has to be catchy, like nine-nine-nine or whatever.”
I look at Ro and Ro looks at me. Clive looks at me and I look at Clive. Clive looks at Candy and Candy looks at Clive. I look at Candy and Candy looks at me.
“I have no idea,” I say. “But it will come to me.”
“Well, think it up fast,” Ro says, “because we have to get started on the posters.”
I go home and check online. Most of the slogans are vacuous garbage: A New Beginning, A New Voice, Hope for Tomorrow.
I don’t know how, but I know that by the time I come back to school in the morning, it will come to me.