Winner Takes All (4 page)

“You have the most perfect handwriting, Celia,” Mari said.

Although the compliment wasn’t coming from Laz, as she’d daydreamed on their walk to the library two afternoons ago, it was still good to hear. Celia had kept the events of that afternoon a secret from Mari. She didn’t need to make her extra worried about the campaign and Laz’s plans, and she definitely didn’t want to explain how she’d thrown Laz off the scent of the truth—by implying that Mari, and not Celia herself, had a crush on him.

It was Thursday afternoon, still early in the campaign, and both girls were sprawled out on Celia’s living room floor, working on a big batch of
campaign posters. Surrounded by stacks of poster board, buckets of crayons and markers, and piles of regular-size paper, the two girls were getting a jump on Mari’s ads. Celia had heard a rumor that Laz was going to be using Raul’s computer over the weekend to make posters (Raul seemed to have been helping Laz a lot since she’d turned him down), so her plan was to get Mari’s posters up before the week was out. Therefore they’d get a few days of uncontested advertisement. Plus, candidates were not allowed to cover each other’s ads with posters of their own, which meant that the more posters they put up, the bigger the claim they could stake on the real estate of the school’s walls.

Mari was finishing up coloring in the
M
of her name with a neon yellow highlighter—to make the name “pop,” Celia had said when she’d suggested using it.

“This looks good!” Mari said, standing up and stepping back from the poster to get a better look at it.

“The neon yellow looks okay, I guess,” Celia said. She glanced toward the kitchen and whispered, “Would have looked better with the gold glitter, though.”

Celia had used her status as a favorite among the school’s teachers to finagle the art instructor into loaning her a big canister of gold glitter from the supply closet. After a persuasive speech about the role of art in politics and a small digression into the use of glitter throughout mankind’s history, she promised him she wouldn’t use it all—just enough to add a “wow” factor. The instructor had handed it over to her at the end of the school day, saying, “Good luck and Godspeed, you little glitter goddess.”

But when Celia’s mom rolled up to the library and saw how the tiny flecks of gold had already managed to escape the canister and migrate to Celia’s hands and face (and book bag and jeans and shirt and sneakers and hair), she said to her daughter, “Don’t even think you’re using that stuff in my house so that I get to vacuum up glitter for the rest of my life. And put on your seat belt.” Celia then tried to use the same speech on her mom, but from behind the wheel her mom had held up her palm and said, “No, I will not be convinced. No glitter.
Punto y ya.
” And Celia knew that meant the matter was not open for debate.

Mari shrugged and whispered back to Celia, “It’s okay, we’ll deal. Besides, glitter
is
crazy hard
to get rid of.” She looked at her palms, then held them up for Celia, who saw a couple of specks glinting back despite the fact that Mari hadn’t even handled the glitter canister.

“I can’t believe Laz is making his posters on a computer,” Celia said after a few seconds. She felt herself pushing the marker a little too hard and eased up before she accidentally poked a hole through the paper.

“What, like you wouldn’t do these on a computer if we could?”

Mari’s family owned a computer, but no printer—her oldest sister had just started college and her parents had given her their printer and were saving for a new one. Celia used the computers in the library, but printing that many pages was out of the question, no matter how much the librarians liked her. She and her brother, Carlos, had already banded together to ask for a computer for Christmas, and since their dad’s roofing business was going well so far, it was looking like that would happen. When she thought about how slick and professional Laz’s posters would look compared to her own, Celia couldn’t help wishing it were December already.

“We don’t need technology. People will appreciate the effort that went into these posters. They
will know that you care and see you in every poster. It means a lot more to do these by hand than to just click ‘Print 100 copies’ or whatever.”

“We have to make a hundred of these?” Mari whined. She looked around at the dozen or so they’d already done and made a face like she wanted to cry. “I gotta go home soon!”

“For what? I thought your mom said you could eat here tonight.”

“She did, but I gotta get home and memorize my lines for the play. We’re supposed to have it all in our heads by Monday, and there’s no way that’s going to happen at the rate I’m going.” She started looking around for her bag, peeking underneath a big MARI 4 REP! sign.

“But you have the whole weekend,” Celia said, capping a blue marker.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, but we ran the first few scenes today and a couple of people are already barely needing to read from the script. Plus my understudy, Sami, was bragging to Mrs. Wanza that she already has all the lines memorized—all
my
lines, that is.” She crossed her arms and cocked her head. “How did she manage to do that in, what, two, almost three days? I’m telling you, that Sami girl is making moves to steal my part. She’s got Mrs. Wanza worrying
that all this campaign stuff is going to affect my concentration.”

“But you know that’s not gonna happen. Stop freaking out.” Celia stood up to meet Mari and put her hands on Mari’s shoulders, excitement glinting in her eyes. “Besides, I’ve got to talk to you about my most recent campaign idea: labels.”

“Labels? Like, tags on clothes?”

They both sat back down among the poster paraphernalia.

“Sort of, but I meant more like the labels you put on file folders or envelopes.”

“I’m not following,” Mari said, pulling a wayward marker out from under her leg.

“We take blank labels, decorate them, and turn them into stickers, basically,” Celia said. “I saw a sticker kit at a paper supply store, but using labels would be cheaper, and we can keep whole sheets of them in our notebooks to give out whenever. And when we hand them to people, we can say, ‘Stick with Mari Cruz’ or ‘I’m stuck on Mari.’”

“So now we gotta make sticker labels? In addition to making a hundred posters? Are you serious?”

Celia barely heard her. “I was also thinking,” she continued, “about the homeroom visits next week, and that we should really have some kind of
presentation board outlining our ideas that I can carry around. People tend to listen more when they have a visual to focus on. And the board will be an excuse to have me go around to homerooms with you.”

“Oh boy.” Mari rolled her eyes.

“And if not a presentation board, then maybe some pamphlets, or maybe some flyers—oh!—or maybe just quarter cards to save paper, and then we can market you as the eco-friendly candidate.” Celia scrambled around for a blank piece of paper so that she could scribble all her ideas on it before she forgot. Sheets of paper seemed to be dancing in the air as she tossed them over her shoulder in search of an empty one. “Maybe we can plan some kind of skit as an intro to each visit, or maybe we can do some improv theater-type stuff to happen during lunch period—”

“This is getting to be too much. Can’t we just keep things simple?” Mari said with a sigh.

“Relax! I’ll do most of the designing and make most of this stuff on my own. You just need to know what you’re going to say to everyone.”

“But I
don’t
know what to say!”

Celia found a clean sheet and held it up in front of her. “You will,” she said. “I’m writing you a script.”

“Okay. That’s it,” Mari said, standing back up. She dusted off her hands and knees and said, “Two scripts over the same weekend? Who do you think I am, Natalie Portman? You’re the one destined for Harvard, not me.”

“There’s your problem—you’re thinking too far ahead. Take it one line at a time. You can
so
do this, Mari. And remind me, who’s Natalie Portman again?”

“How do you
not
remember who that is? The actress who played Queen Amidala in the Star Wars movies.
Hello?
Those are only, like, some of the highest-grossing films of all time? And Queen Amidala ended up going to Harvard ‘cause she’s also some sort of super-genius on top of being a famous actress.” Mari flipped her hair over her shoulder and put her hands on her hips.

Celia continued jotting down notes and mumbled to the sheet in front of her, “Harvard is
way
overrated, anyway. I’m not even going to apply there.”

Mari sucked her teeth and said, “Look who’s thinking too far ahead
now.
”

“And
script
is the wrong word,” Celia said, looking up into Mari’s face. “I’m writing up some
talking points
for you. Let’s put it that way.”

“Talking points. Fine. Either way, I probably should get going.” Mari slung her bag on her back, tucked her long hair behind her ears, and folded her arms across her chest. Her dark eyes darted back and forth from Celia to the front door.

Celia felt a wave of panic rise up from her stomach. Mari was clearly starting to doubt her ability to follow through on the plan in the face of play rehearsals, and Celia felt sick at the thought of Mari abandoning the scheme altogether.

“Look, we have the whole weekend to practice,” Celia reminded Mari. “And I’m going to be by your side during the homeroom visits to answer any questions you can’t handle on your own.”

Mari still looked worried. She slowly inched toward the door, looking to escape.

Celia remembered her walk to the library with Laz and how she’d gotten out of that uncomfortable spot by bringing up Mari out of nowhere. In a flash, she jumped up from the floor and blurted out, “But I haven’t even told you the latest gossip about Laz yet!” She held her notes in her hand, ink from the marker smudging her thumb and pointer finger, waiting for Mari’s reaction—for a sign she could get Mari to stay.

When she said Laz’s name, Celia saw something
change—just for a second—in Mari’s face. Something in her eyes, or maybe a slight twitch of her lips. But then it was gone, and Celia wondered if she’d even really seen it in the first place. Then again, Mari
was
a great actress.

“Laz?” Mari said. “What about Laz?”

Celia watched for the something again but it was definitely gone. “Nothing specific,” she said. “Just about his campaign so far, what our strategy to undermine him is going to be.”

“Why do we have to
undermine
him?” Mari wrinkled her thin eyebrows.

“He’s your competition,” Celia said. “He’s the enemy. We’ve got to be tough on him and his whole campaign—not play dirty, of course, but we need to be tough, for sure.”

Mari shifted her weight and pulled her backpack off her shoulders. She let it drop with a thud back on the floor, and Celia was ready to let out a sigh of relief. But before she could, Mari said, “But he’s nice. And you know what? I think he’s cool. I’ve always thought that.”

Now it was Celia’s turn to feel like running from the room. She gripped her notes even more tightly and worried that her white knuckles would give away her own crush. But as she stood there, with Mari staring her in the eyes, she had a new
worry: What if her lie to Laz had somehow come true? What if Mari actually
did
have a crush on Laz? What did that mean to the campaign—and what would that mean to them as friends? Celia felt like she was having an out-of-body experience: In her mind, she saw Mari and Laz holding hands and walking home together, Mari and Laz dancing together at Mari’s
quince
party, Mari and Laz throwing their high school graduation caps up in the air together, Mari and Laz going to the same college, getting married, opening up some sort of business together—a restaurant, a car wash, a dog hotel.
Oh my God
, she thought,
I will lose them both.

Mari’s voice brought Celia out of her over-the-top
telenovela
daydream, but snippets of it lingered in her head as she listened to Mari explain away her worries.

“I’m not trying to say anything,” Mari said, “So don’t start your crazy worrying. All I’m saying is he’s nice. And kind of cute. I mean, he’s okay. And really, we don’t need to destroy the guy to win this.”

Mari lowered herself onto the floor again and searched around for the yellow highlighter she’d been using. When she found it, she took off the cap and started coloring in the
A
of her name.
After a few squeaks from the marker pushing on paper, she turned to Celia and said, “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time before your mom yells that dinner’s ready.”

Celia sat back down, the carpet underneath her suddenly making her legs itch. She tried to shake the feeling that Mari was starting to like Laz. For a long time, the only sound either of them made was the enthusiastic squeaking of moving markers. For now, it seemed that Mari was still her candidate and that Laz was still her crush; for now, there was nothing too bad to worry about.

In the early days of their friendship, Celia and Mari had bonded over their shared Saturday habit: sleeping in as late as humanly possible. As kids, they’d never really been into Saturday morning cartoons, preferring instead to spend those bright morning hours curled under their plush comforters, basking in the cool darkness they created, the voices of their siblings melting in with those of the animated entertainment. They’d learned they had this habit in common and had both laughed that their moms reacted in the same way—by waltzing into their rooms at noon and yanking the covers off the bed completely, thereby forcing them to start the day.

But this Saturday was not like that at all, because Celia had declared that they were on a mission. During lunch period on Friday, Laz had surprised them both by announcing that he and his campaign were holding an all-day basketball tournament at the neighborhood courts. He and Raul passed out business cards advertising the tournament. One side read COME MEET YOUR CANDIDATE ON THE COURT and listed the details of the daylong event, and the other side, in bigger letters, said LAZ FOR REP. Celia had gotten her card from Laz himself, and as he slipped the little rectangle into her hands, he’d winked and whispered to her, “Cool idea, right?”

Too cool
, she thought, trying to ignore how cute he looked in his oversize T-shirt and jeans. Playing up Laz’s sports abilities was a great way to show him off as capable and in control—while also distracting voters from the real issues. How could you really discuss your plans for the seventh grade class when you were busy dribbling a ball across burning-hot asphalt? And why hadn’t she thought of business cards first? The cards were professional, impressive, and very easy to give out. In a word, they were brilliant.

“I hope you’ll come out tomorrow. See you there?” Laz had said when Celia didn’t answer him.

She folded the card in her hand and tucked it into her pocket, saying, “Oh yeah, I’ll be there.”

Which was why they were up so early—early for them, at least—that Saturday morning instead of still under the covers in their beds, waiting for their moms to blast them with sunlight.

“Now, remember, this is a reconnaissance mission,” Celia said as they walked down the long block from her house toward the park, where the courts—and Laz—would be waiting.

“A
what
? Is that French?” Mari said. She wore her hair long and loose down her back, a weird choice in Celia’s mind, since it was superhot out and a ponytail was definitely the way to go—unless there was someone you wanted to impress. Before walking over with Mari, Celia had stood in front of her mirror and toyed with the idea of letting her full curls hang out. She finally realized that her wild hair would only get in her way and that Laz would only notice her for the wrong reasons, so she pulled her hair back and shellacked the sides of her head with gel to keep her curls under control out on the court.

“You know I don’t speak French,” Celia quipped. “Not yet, anyway.
Reconnaissance
, you know, recon. Investigating the enemy. We’re only going
so that we can see how many
other
people show up, and gauge how effective this move actually is for Laz’s campaign. That’s all.”

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you hate Laz and ‘cause you stink at basketball,” Mari said. A quiet smile crept across her face, and Celia noticed for the first time that morning that Mari seemed to be wearing extra-shimmery lip gloss. Celia looked down and saw that Mari hadn’t reapplied her nail polish—it was still the same chipped orange that always dotted her nails—so she guessed Mari hadn’t gone completely crazy.

“I actually plan to play a little,” Mari went on, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her board shorts. “Maybe challenge him to a free throw contest.” She flipped her long dark tresses over her shoulder.

“With your hair like that? All down and flapping in the wind?” Celia said. “You wouldn’t have a chance.”

Celia felt Mari’s steps stumble a little as she walked next to her. So she
was
trying to impress someone? And Celia had just called her out on it?

“What are you talking about? Stop being so weird. I couldn’t find my favorite hair clip this morning. That’s all. And stop calling Laz ‘the
enemy’ already. I’m only talking about a little friendly competition.”

Celia let the word “friendly” echo in her head for a few seconds before saying anything. Then it came to her: Laz’s campaign event could actually make
Mari
look good.

“Wait, you’re right—that’s a great idea. You
should
play him. It’ll show anyone who’s there that you’re a team player and that you’re willing to work with people. And while you distract him on the court, I can talk up the spectators and tell them why they should vote for
you
!”

Mari smiled. “Now,
that’s
a plan.”

A car drove by in the opposite direction. Celia recognized Mrs. Nuñez at the wheel of her trademark banana yellow Cadillac. The car honked hello to the girls as it passed. Mrs. Nuñez was mom to a set of twins—Ricky and Claudia—who were both in the seventh grade at Coral Grove. Celia realized that Mrs. Nuñez had probably just dropped the twins off at the court.

“Just don’t let Laz…distract you. On the court, I mean.” She knew Mari’s role in this new plan had her spending a whole afternoon close to Laz, but it was what had to happen if they were going to use Laz’s campaign event to their own advantage.

“I’m distracted enough already,” Mari said. “I’ve been so stressed—this election is all I’ve been able to think about lately. And it’s seriously messing up my performance in the play.”

Mari dragged her hand through her hair, then lingered over the ends, tugging on them. “I haven’t got a single scene down completely yet.” She let out a big yawn. After rubbing her eyes to wake herself up a bit more, Mari said, “And being up this early on a Saturday isn’t going to help me get any memorization done later today. I have to get ready for next week.”

“That’s the spirit,” Celia said. “As far as the big debate on Friday goes, I think we can have you totally prepped and ready to roll by Thursday night for sure.”

Mari stopped dead in her tracks, her feet suddenly cemented to the gum-stained sidewalk. “The debate? It’s on Friday? As in
this
coming Friday?” She grabbed at her stomach and said, “Oh, Celia, no.”

Celia had to take six or seven steps backward to return to Mari’s side. “Of course it’s on Friday,” she said. “Friday morning, right before everybody votes. Don’t you remember from last year? The debate’s the last big thing before the voting. It’ll make or break us.”

Mari stuck her thumbnail in between her top and bottom teeth and began to chew. From across the street and a little ways down the next block came the laughs and shouts of kids—way too many kids—from the park’s basketball courts. Between the trunks of the palm trees surrounding the park and the courts, Celia thought she saw a lot of people her own age.

“This is bad,” Mari said. She hadn’t taken a single step forward.

“I know, it sounds like there are a lot of people there already.”

“No, I mean about the debate on Friday.” Mari put her hands in her hair again and started tugging at her roots, her thick hair cascading through her fingers. Mari was usually able to keep herself calm—it was normally Mari convincing Celia to chill—but it was starting to look like she was on the brink of some kind of panic attack.

“Don’t freak out,” Celia said, placing her hand on Mari’s shoulder over the straps of the light purple tank top she wore. “Like I said, I’ll totally have you ready. I promised you, didn’t I?”

Mari pushed her hand off—a very un-Mari-like move—and said, “No, Celia, you’re not getting it. The play—our first official run-through is a week from yesterday, meaning
this Friday.
”

Celia swallowed hard, finally getting it. Two big performances on the same day, all those lines, jumping off one kind of stage, only to hop onto another; no wonder Mari was being so not herself. How could Celia put her best friend through all of this? Celia stopped thinking about the election and about her own dreams of winning and said what she was really feeling at that moment: “Okay, first off, I’m really sorry everything is happening at once. I really am.”

Something about the sincerity in Celia’s voice made Mari come out of panic-attack mode. Her hands unclenched themselves from her hair and fell to her sides. Celia put her hand on Mari’s shoulder again, and this time, Mari put her own hand over it and gave Celia a weak smile. They heard squeaks and the repetitive thuds of a basketball bouncing against the ground. They both turned in the direction of the courts.

“Laz or no Laz, I really don’t have time for this,” Mari said, sounding far away.

Laz. Was it him that Mari was coming for all along? Celia was worried, but kept her hand under Mari’s.

“We’re already here,” Celia said with a shrug.

Mari turned and looked back at the row of
houses they’d just passed. Far off they heard Poochie, Celia’s neighbor’s Chihuahua, barking his brains out. How such a little dog made that much noise, Celia could never figure out. She sensed Mari’s wavering and said, “Man, that dog is almost as annoying as Laz.”

Mari let out a nervous giggle and said, “You’re so mean. He’s not that bad.” Celia glanced at her and saw Mari’s cheeks turning red.

“Are you blushing?!” Celia asked, shocked.

“No, it’s just hot out here. Let’s get to the courts already.”

Celia bit down on her tongue to keep from betraying her own true feelings about Laz. She’d convinced Mari that she saw Laz as nothing but the competition, but if Mari liked Laz, then she knew she had no chance with him. And their potential falling for each other had been all her own fault! She pulled her hand away from Mari and faced the courts, beginning to walk, then jog, then flat-out run from where Mari stood. When Celia was far enough away that she knew Mari couldn’t see the tears welling up in her eyes, she turned back around, a huge smile bravely plastered on her face, and yelled back, “Let’s go! Game on!” By the time Mari caught up to her, Celia’s
eyes were dry and ready to focus on the only thing that mattered to her now: winning the election.

Laz looked even cuter on the court than he did in school—something about the way the asphalt brought out his dark eyes—but Celia told herself she didn’t notice. Mari, however, let out a little gasp when they first turned into the courts and saw him there, standing under the hoop with a basketball tucked under his arm. Laz waved at them both, and Mari hustled over, suddenly calm and poised. No wonder she was always getting the big parts in the school plays, Celia thought.

Determined to keep her focus on the game as a campaign tactic (and not as an opportunity to swoon over a boy she was suddenly trying really hard not to like anymore), Celia wandered into the crowd, away from where Mari had just swooped in on Laz and the game. As the basketball thumped against the pavement once again, Celia searched the bleachers for influential seventh graders. She’d been right about the twins being there: Ricky and Claudia sat next to each other, sipping from plastic water bottles and eating plantain chips from a bag perched between them on the bench. But maybe they’d planned on coming to the park before Laz’s lunch announcement the
day before. They were both sort of considered jocks in school—not at all part of the nerd clique: She only knew them because their mom was a childhood friend of her own mom.

Celia recognized a few other seventh graders: Luz Rojas, a girl from the soccer team was there, also drinking from a water bottle and decked out in full soccer gear. Maybe she was just taking a break from her own game, possibly happening on one of the park’s other fields. Mike and Henry, two boys with popularity similar to Laz’s, sat on the very top bench, looking like they thought they ruled the crowd. Henry elbowed Mike and Mike elbowed him back. Then Henry shoved Mike away and then Mike shoved Henry back. Celia didn’t even bother trying to decipher their cool-guy communication.

Though she didn’t know everyone by name, she recognized a lot of faces. There was no Yvette and the Six-Pack, and there was no one from drama there either, which didn’t surprise her since they tended to be scared of sports in general. Celia couldn’t spot a single nerd—she was almost sad to realize she was the only one there. But she knew an opportunity when she saw one: These were not voters she could normally reach—and Laz’s event had put them right in her hands.
As Celia surveyed the crowd, she made a mental note to sit next to each of them at some point that afternoon and talk up Mari.

One face that Celia expected to see was missing: Raul’s. Celia scanned the bleachers three times before almost deciding he wasn’t there. But then she spotted him back by the weathered gray picnic benches underneath the park’s barbecue pavilion, just off to the side of the courts. He was standing guard by two big blue coolers, with a clipboard and pen in his hands. It was time for some real reconnaissance, she decided, so she wandered his way as casually as she could.

“Hey, Raul,” she said with too much enthusiasm. “Whatcha doing way over here? Not a basketball fan?”

“I like it fine,” he said as he scribbled. “I’m just busy is all.”

She slid toward him, trying to catch a peek at the papers on the clipboard, and said, “Busy doing what?”

He pulled the clipboard to his chest and tucked the pen he’d been writing with behind his ear. Celia noticed that he had the same kind of kinky curly hair as she did, but since he kept it shaved short, she hadn’t ever realized that they had this in common. His hair was much
darker, though—almost black—and his eyes were lighter than hers, a shade of brown so clear and bright that she wanted to call it hazel, maybe even green.

“It’s none of your business,” he said. “But seeing as you were this close to being Laz’s campaign manager, I guess I can tell you.”

So Raul knew that Laz had asked her and that she’d said no.
Interesting
, Celia thought. But the fact that Raul was filling her in on what might be a campaign secret meant that he and Laz didn’t see her as part of the competition. Perhaps Laz had been more distracted by the news of Mari’s hypothetical crush than she thought. Maybe making Laz think Mari liked him (and vice versa) would end up working out, diverting attention away from Celia. So what if it meant the end of her crush? Hadn’t her mom told her a million stories about all the crushes she’d had when she was a girl, and how none of them had ever panned out? Celia’s mom didn’t even like Celia’s dad when they met—she’d thought he was stuck-up because he refused to dance with anyone at the party where she first saw him—and hadn’t they been happily married for more than a dozen years now? Celia tried to focus on Raul’s words, making herself ignore the sinking feeling around her heart.