My Perfect Life (8 page)

“Makes you wish you had a slingshot, doesn’t it?” said Sam. He was staring through the door of our headquarters at the room across the hall where the Santini forces were stuffing their faces with free cookies and soda. There were enough balloons outside it to lift a heavy clown.

“David and Goliath,” said Lola.

“More like Goliath and Humpty Dumpty,” muttered Sam. “Since we don’t have a slingshot.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong! We do have a slingshot.” Lola pulled a sheet of paper from her bag and held it high. “Behold! Here is our primary weapon of destruction and doom.”

“It doesn’t look like a slingshot to me,” grumbled Sam. “It looks like a poster.”

It was a poster. It was straightforward and unassuming, like Sam and me. The background was purple and the lettering was black:

GERARD AND CREEK – MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT.

“What’s wrong with it?” I thought it was pretty good, myself. Better than our first six ideas.

“It’s meaningless,” said Sam. “If the poster’s our slingshot, that slogan’s a piece of gravel. What we need is a really big rock.”

Carla Santini’s laughter rippled down the hallway like marbles.

“What happened to our issues?” asked Sam. “What happened to ‘It’s Time to Give as Well as Receive’?”

Lola tore her eyes from the door. “That’s all right for speeches and stuff,” she explained. “But we need something catchier for the posters.”

This wasn’t the total reason. The total reason was that Mrs Turo, who ran the computer room, said it sounded more like a threat than a campaign promise.

Sam stabbed at the poster. “Well, that’s not it.” Sam has zero tolerance for playing games – which probably isn’t a really useful quality in politics – but this time it had worked to our advantage. He was so angry at Carla for starting the rumours about him that every trace of negativity was gone. He wouldn’t stop now until Carla was stopped. “It’s too vague. Carla’s doing everything she can to make this campaign as personal as possible, and I think we should do the same.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t think the fact that Carla’s making it a personal fight means it’s OK for us, too.”

I wasn’t even sure if either of them had heard me. Lola already had that look in her eyes.

“You mean roll up our sleeves and get down in the mud?” cried Lola, responding to Sam and not to me. “Pull out her hair? Gouge out her eyes?”

“Smack down!” cried Sam gleefully. “Straight to the mat.”

Lola started pacing. “You’re right, of course, Sam. We have to fight fire with fire. We have to make an attack.”

I didn’t like the idea of attack, either. In my opinion, you don’t fight fire with fire, you fight it with water. I raised my voice. “I don’t see what’s wrong with ‘Make Your Vote Count’. I think it’s catchy. And true. And I’m not really comfortable with attacking Carla personally. I mean, two wrongs don’t make a right, do they?”

Lola’s voice was louder. “We have to hit her where it hurts. We have to crack through that ginormous ego and make the worm within squirm and beg for mercy.”

A blue balloon drifted down the hallway. “Kill it before it multiplies!” shouted someone in Morty’s room next door. There was a gratifying pop.

“But what about rules, and principles, and stuff like that?” I asked.

Sam put a hand on the back of my chair and leaned towards me. “What is it with you, Ella?” He sounded genuinely curious. “What does Carla have to do to get you mad enough to fight her? She uses your mother, she threatens your life, she takes down our posters –
and
she besmirches my good name – and you don’t want to hit her back. Are you a saint, or are you just stupid?”

“Ella’s shy and retiring,” answered Lola. “She doesn’t like too much confrontation. It’s not the way she was raised.”

Sam shook his head. He looked more baffled than curious now. “How the hell did you wind up with Lola as your best friend if you’re so shy and retiring and don’t like confrontation?”

I assumed he was making a joke. I laughed. “Don’t think it’s a question I haven’t asked myself.”

“You’re being unreasonable, Ella,” said Lola. “We’re not going to do anything despicable and underhand like Carla would. We’re just going to show a little spirit.” She climbed on a chair and shook her fist in the air. “We’re going to make issues an issue, that’s what we’re going to do.” She grinned at Sam. “After we pull out her hair.”

“Issues not image,” said Sam.

For a minute there, I almost thought Lola was going to kiss him. I think Sam did, too, because he actually blushed.

“Sam, you’re a genius!” Lola was jubilant; triumphant. “Issues not image! That’s our slogan! That’s what we’ll do!”

I could tell that she was a few steps ahead of me again. “What’s what we’ll do?”

Lola didn’t even look over at me. “This is so incredibly perfect… I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of this before.” She jumped down from her chair, crackling with excitement. “We’re totally changing our tactics. We’re going to contrast our issues with Carla Santini herself.

I said, “Oh, Lola … I don’t think Sam meant—”

Sam said, “You what?”

Lola was practically glowing. “For instance…” She ran her hand over an imaginary sign. “We say something like: ‘What Have You Done for the World Today?’ – and under it we have a photo of Carla putting on make-up.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “It’s good,” he decided. “It’s clever, and it’s funny. It could work.”

“Of course it’ll work,” declared Lola. “It’s perfect.”

But now Sam was shaking his head. “Back up the truck just a second,” said Sam. “How are we going to get a photo of Carla putting on her war paint?”

But there is no problem too great or too small for Lola Cep.

“You’ve got a camera, haven’t you?” she asked.

Sam gave her a wary look. “Yeah…”

“And you do your own developing, right? So you could print them out the same night.”

“Yeah, but…”

“And your dad’s got a photocopier at the garage, right? So you could run off the posters there.”

Sam held up his hand. “Take your foot off the gas, Lola. If you think I’m hiding in the girls’ toilets to catch Carla gluing her eyelashes together you’d better think again.”

“Oh, no, not you,” said Lola. “You can get the outdoor shots, since you have a car. Ella will get her putting on her make-up.”

“What do you mean Ella will do it?” Lola really is too much sometimes. “I’m the Presidential candidate, remember? Presidential candidates do not do things like that.”

“Oh, really?” said Lola. “What about Watergate? What about Irangate? What about—”

“What about just saying yes, Ella, so we get out of here today,” said Sam.

Sam
spent Tuesday afternoon following Carla and the coven around Dellwood while Lola and I finished putting up some temporary Gerard–Creek posters.

Instead of using his ancient Karmann Ghia, which was something of a local legend and easily spotted a mile away, Sam borrowed Mr Colombo’s van from his dad’s garage, where it was in for a service (presumably without asking either Mr Colombo or Mr Creek first). The van was most of Sam’s disguise – the rest was to wear a jacket borrowed from Lola’s mother (had she but known) and a knitted hat to hide his hair. The van was white with the legend
Colombo’s Fine Meats
on the sides in blue and a painting of a smiling pig underneath it. Sam figured that the driver’s seat of a butcher’s van was the last place anyone would expect to find a fanatical vegan.

Sam said that although following Carla was a lot less interesting that watching an engine leak, it couldn’t have been easier. With no trouble at all, he got several photographs of Carla shopping; several more of her walking down the street, talking on her cell phone; and one of Carla talking on her cell phone while she watched the attendant at the gas station fill her tank.

We needed only one more photograph to complete our set: Carla Santini putting on her make-up.

“I don’t understand why you can’t do this,” I complained as Lola and I left Sam to plaster the first of the new posters all over campus on Wednesday morning. Going along with Lola’s crazy ideas was one thing; actually carrying one out on my own was something else. Something nerve-wracking and unpleasant. “You’re much better at this kind of thing than I am.”

Lola swung her book bag over her shoulder with a sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you? Carla expects me to be active and combatant, but she doesn’t expect that of you. Even if she sees you lurking in the girls’ toilets she isn’t going to get suspicious.”

“She will if she sees me hanging over the door trying to take her picture.”

“Well, don’t let her see you,” said Lola. “Be clever. Be subtle. Be spontaneous.”

I’m not any of those things. I’m smart enough at schoolwork, but that’s not the same as being clever like James Bond. I’m quiet and passive, but that’s not the same as subtle either – it’s sort of the same as not being there at all. And you can totally forget spontaneous. My mother is a woman who worries about everything from crumbs to a nuclear holocaust; caution is in my blood.

Lola flapped her shawl, and clanked her bracelets, and steamed on towards the west wing. “Of course you are.” She looked over at me, trotting beside her in my lemon A-line. “Anyone with such a fixation on pastels has got to have hidden depths of subtlety.”

The entrance to the west wing loomed. Every morning, as soon as she parks the BMW, Carla goes to the girls’ toilets in the west wing to touch up her make-up and fix her hair. It’s a Dellwood High tradition.

“Shhh!” Lola held up one hand in warning and gently opened the west wing door with the other. “Let me check that the coast is clear.”

If you asked me, the coast could only have been clearer if we were in Alaska. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. The only person on campus besides Sam and us was the janitor.

Lola poked her head through the doorway. She looked left. She looked right. Then she reached back and pulled me after her.

When we got to the girls’ toilets, she did the same thing. Door open, head in, look left, look right, yank Ella in against her will.

“Take the end cubicle,” ordered Lola. “That way she won’t see you in the mirror.”

I took the end cubicle.

“You’ll have to stand on the bowl,” instructed Lola. “So your feet don’t show.”

I used some toilet paper to lift the seat and stood on the bowl while Lola taped a sign to the door that said OUT OF ORDER. Talk about Watergate. All I could think about was the fact that if my mother were to see me she’d drop dead on the spot.

Lola stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Perfect.” She looked at me. “You’ve got the camera ready?”

I nodded. Sam’s Pentax was in my pocket. Sam set the aperture opening using the light in one of the boys’ toilets as a guide so I wouldn’t need a flash.

“And you know what to do?”

“I guess so.” I eyed the door with a certain amount of misgiving.

“It’s easy,” said Lola. “You brace one leg in the corner, you hang on to the coat hook with your free hand, and you just pop up and take the picture. Got it?”

I nodded.

She took my book bag and slung it over her shoulder. “That’s it, then. I’ll see you in homeroom. Don’t forget to lock the door.”

I’d forget my own name sooner.

It felt as if I were in that cubicle for days before anyone came into the toilets. They were long, unpleasant days. There was nothing to do but listen to the leaky tap on one of the sinks and – once my feet had gone numb – try not to fall off the bowl. And worry. There was plenty to worry about. I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing.

What if…? What if…? What if…?

Lola, of course, is never ever bothered by the what-if question. It never occurs to her that something could go wrong with her plans – which is pretty amazing in itself, since something almost always does go wrong with them. But as I crouched on the ceramic rim, the camera in my hand and a cramp beginning in my leg,
What if…? What if…? What if…?
marched through my mind like an invading army.

What if I dropped the camera? What if I did fall off the bowl? What if someone told the janitor about the broken toilet and she came to fix it? What if I coughed just as I was about to press the button? What if my mother found out?

But what worried me most was Carla. The sense of empowerment I’d felt when I hung the phone up on her had faded by then. I was back to being normal Ella Gerard, the one who didn’t like to make any waves or rock any boats. I knew that taking a picture of Carla putting on lipstick wasn’t exactly a major invasion of privacy or anything like that. (There couldn’t be many people in Dellwood who had never seen Carla Santini putting her face in place – in the carpark, on the train, in the supermarket, on the beach, even that time we visited her grandmother in hospital.) But I knew that Carla would act like it was the biggest invasion of privacy since the white man arrived in the Americas, and the simple truth is that I didn’t like people being mad at me – even people I don’t like. Carla being mad at me wouldn’t depress me the way my parents being mad at me did, but it would make me feel guilty. I was really good at guilt.

What if…? What if…? What if…?

I was just asking myself the question:
What if there’s a fire and the whole school’s been evacuated except me?
when the door to the toilets finally opened and a group of girls burst in, all of them talking at once. I didn’t recognize their voices.

And then, a few minutes later, the door opened again.

This time I had no trouble recognizing the voices. Or voice. I could tell that at least three more people had come in, but only one was talking.

“I don’t believe it!” The room rippled with rage. Carla Santini was mad. “I don’t effing believe it.” I could practically hear her curls shaking, and see the way her lower lip trembles when she’s ready to roll a few heads. “Of all the nerve! Of all the gall! If they think they can treat me like this, they better think again.”

Sam had obviously put the new posters up all right.