Winner Takes All (5 page)

“I’m just keeping track of who’s here, how long they hang out for, how they seem to feel about Laz, and whether or not they take one of these.” Raul fished around in one of the coolers and brought up a nearly frozen bottle of water. Over the regular label, there was a sticker that read LAZ IS YOUR REP but the ink was smudged and the label was peeling off. In fact, most of the labels were close to being completely illegible.

Celia must have been making a face without realizing it, because Raul whined, “Oh, come on. It doesn’t look
that
bad. Maybe I didn’t think it through enough, but at least you get the message.”

“Another ten minutes in that water,” she said, pointing to the slush in the coolers, “and you won’t get any message at all.”

Raul glared at the label, which really did look more like LOZ OS YOON ROG, and said, “Who am I kidding? You’re right. What a disaster.” He slammed the bottle back in the cooler, sloshing the water around so that it lapped over the side and onto the concrete floor of the pavilion. He flung the clipboard onto a picnic table and sat down at its bench, putting his head in his hands. He said to the floor, “You have no idea how much printer ink I wasted making those things.”

Celia was surprised she hadn’t picked up on this before, but it all made sense to her now. Raul
must
be working as Laz’s campaign manager. That was why they were using his printer for the posters, that was why he was taking notes on the basketball stuff, and that was why he was so upset now. The whole event had been his idea, not Laz’s.

She sat down next to him on the bench, measuring the right words in her head. Inside, she was glad that the labels were smearing so badly, that his really great idea had been foiled somehow. But that still didn’t change the fact that it had been a great idea in the first place. She decided it wouldn’t hurt her own campaign to admit that to him.

“It’s a small part of the day. Look how much fun people are having. They probably won’t even notice the messed-up labels.”

“They’ll notice,” he said, still refusing to look at her. “I debated just using a permanent marker and writing out the labels by hand, but no, I wanted to get fancy and use the computer. I’m so stupid.”

Considering the small scale of the problem, he seemed almost
too
upset. Celia didn’t know what to say to make him not worry about it—she tended to be hard on herself, too. She looked out at the crowd and noticed that people had just
peeled off the labels, tossing them to the ground beneath the bleachers. A lot of the faces around now she didn’t recognize; there were people from other grades and other schools hanging out. Maybe the tournament idea wouldn’t boost Laz as much as she’d worried it would—especially once she made her rounds and convinced them all, one by one, to vote for Mari. This fact made Celia want to be even nicer to Raul.

“Check out Mari and Laz,” she said, trying to distract him from his gloom.

On the court, Laz was trying to block Mari from throwing, and he was definitely succeeding. Both of them were sweaty and red-cheeked. As Mari went to take a shot, Laz smacked the ball out of her hands, then caught it as it bounced away from her, running it back to the net for a slam dunk. Some of the people in the stands clapped; others booed. After his shot, he dribbled the ball over to her and placed it gently in her hands. Their smiles were just a little too big, their grins just a little too sweet to be between two real competitors.

Raul, who’d watched the whole exchange along with Celia, suddenly said, “I think he likes her. I don’t know for sure. If he does, it’s going to be a serious problem for our campaign.”

Our
campaign?
—she had to stop herself from saying it out loud. Then her next thought:
So it’s true. They like each other and I have no chance with Laz—not that I ever did—but now it’s totally out of the question.

Raul turned quickly to face her and said, “Don’t say anything, okay? It’s just a feeling I have. Promise you won’t tell Mariela?”

His brown-green eyes were pleading, and she recognized herself in them, a sense of something lost, a crush crushed. Could he like Mari, too? Why was everyone suddenly in love with her best friend? She understood him at that moment, and only because she sympathized with his frustration—the frustration of having your heart squashed—did she say, “Okay. I promise.”

“I just thought it was better for you to quit while you were ahead,” Celia said to Mari as they walked back home. Mari had wanted to keep playing, but they’d been at the courts for more than an hour and Celia had chatted up every seventh grader there. She’d promised to find each of them on Monday and get them a VOTE FOR MARI sticker and they’d all agreed to wear it. But the bigger reason Celia wanted to get out of there was that she was
tired of watching her best friend and her crush flirt with each other via basketball, and she felt even worse about it now that she knew Raul was feeling just as miserable. “Besides, I was getting a weird vibe from Raul,” Celia added as they crossed the street.

“Really?” Mari said. “Raul? Weird?” Her cheeks were still red from the game, or maybe from blushing. She seemed way too happy for someone who had so much memorizing to do over the next few days.

Remembering her promise, Celia quickly covered her tracks, saying, “Not weird, it’s just he confessed that the day wasn’t as big a hit as he thought it would be, and I agreed. Most people thought the basketball thing was both candidates’ idea, anyway. So no reason for us to stick around for longer, especially when we have work to do.”

“That’s too bad about the tournament. It
was
a good idea. Maybe more people will show up later.” Mari turned and looked back over her shoulder at the park. “Maybe we should go back.”

Celia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. On the way there, she’d felt guilty for taking up Mari’s time, and now here was Mari, willing to
give Laz that time without a fight. But she held it in and just kept walking, refusing to look back as Mari had.

“He’s pretty cool,” Mari went on. “He even wished me luck on writing the speech for Monday’s announcements. I thought that was sweet, no?”

“Really sweet,” Celia said, rolling her eyes.
Too bad he didn’t wish
me
luck
, she thought,
since it’s
me
who’s writing the speech.
That was what she’d be spending the afternoon doing, pretending to ask Mari for feedback and suggestions when really she already knew what needed to be said—she just needed the time to figure out how to say it best.

“You know, this basketball thing, it’s really made me rethink Laz. I mean, this was a fun event that could bring a lot of people together. Don’t you think that’s the kind of idea you’d want from a grade rep?”

Was Mari seriously betraying her like this? If Celia could overcome her crush for the sake of something bigger, why couldn’t Mari? She was so angry and walking so fast that they were almost back to her house now. Celia could already see Poochie waiting with his bark attack raring to go, and she felt like attacking, too.

“You think Laz is so great?” Celia said. “That wasn’t even his idea! It was Raul’s. So you should just admit that Laz is a dud. He doesn’t have any ideas. He’s just a stupid guy.”

“Oh, so when someone comes up with ideas for you, you’re stupid? Is that what you’re saying?” Mari came to a halt right in front of the neighbor’s yard. Poochie pounced over to them, shoved his muzzle though the chain-link fence, and started growling and snapping.

“That’s what you think of me, too, then?” Mari demanded.

“Well, I mean, it’s not like you’ve been a fountain of great ideas for the campaign so far,” Celia said without thinking.

“Like you’d even listen to any of my ideas! You don’t listen to anyone!”

“That is
not
true!” Celia protested, now more hurt than angry.

“Oh, really?” Mari said. “If you listened to me, you’d be running for rep yourself instead of forcing me into this messed-up scheme of yours!”

“Forcing you? Remember when you
agreed
to do this? Huh? And you didn’t seem to mind Laz wishing you luck on the campaign trail, right? You don’t seem to mind taking credit for my ideas around
him.
”

Mari stood there with her mouth hanging open. The only sound for miles seemed to be stupid Poochie, announcing their fight to the world with every bark.

“That’s what you
wanted
me to do!” Mari yelled.

“Yeah, but my ideas aren’t meant to help you flirt with the enemy. Or were you just
acting
like you liked him?”

Poochie stared growling so fiercely now that Celia thought he’d somehow caught rabies in the last twenty minutes.

“So that’s how you’re gonna be, then?” Mari asked. “You’re gonna be all weird and jealous because I’m doing what you
told me to do
? Fine. We’ll see how you do without me on Monday, when it’s time for me to read
your
stupid speech and I’m not there. We’ll see how you explain yourself to Ms. Perdomo then. Or will she even get angry? Since you kiss up to her so much, she’ll probably let you off the hook.”

Now Celia’s mouth was hanging open, but Mari’s flair for the dramatic gave her insult a perfect ending: She spun on her heel, her long black hair almost slapping Celia in the face as she turned away, and marched back toward her own house. Poochie followed her as she stomped past the
fence, growling with so much might that he trembled. He snapped at her ankles, but unlike every other time Mari had had to cross Poochie’s path, Mari was so furious she barely noticed the runty dog trying to scare her off.

Poochie stood at the corner of his yard and barked long after Mari walked away, and when he finally understood that she wasn’t coming back, he ran back to where Celia stood and started yapping at her.

“Arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf arf—”

“SHUT UP!” Celia finally yelled. The dog squeaked and tucked his tail between his legs, scooting away from her as fast as he could. In the quiet that followed, she heard her voice and the last of Poochie’s barks echo off the concrete balconies of the apartment building across the street. As the dog ran into his owner’s house, the shock of the whole argument started to settle on her. At that moment, Poochie was a genius: Running home seemed like the best idea in the whole world.

“I really think it’s meningitis, Mami,” Celia said from under the covers Monday morning when her mom came to drag her out of bed. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.” She let out a little cough, but her mother pulled the sheets off of her, anyway.

“This is the third time you’ve had meningitis this year,” her mom said. “I wanna know what’s going on. Just tell me what happened with you and Mari already. You know you’re going to school no matter what.”

Celia coughed harder and said, “I would tell you, but this meningitis is really—”

“You don’t have meningitis. I don’t know why I let you watch those PBS specials. The things you
pick up!” Celia’s mom sat down on the bed. “Now, tell me what happened between you and Mari before I attack you with kisses. I know you want to spill it.”

This was true. Celia had spent most of Saturday and all of Sunday almost telling her mom about the fight out on the sidewalk. What had kept her from coming clean was the fact that every time she went through the story in her head, there was no way to make Mari look like the only bad one—and there was no way to get around confessing the truth about who was
really
running for seventh grade rep. She knew she’d eventually come clean about that to her mom, but she wanted to wait, especially now that Mari’s whole involvement in the plan might be over.

“Why did you write that speech for Mari?” her mom asked, gesturing with her head over to Celia’s desk, which had a cup full of pens and several clean pads of paper on it. On the very top pad, Celia had neatly written out the final version of Mari’s speech, which she’d worked on all day Sunday between meals and the half conversations with her mom. The garbage can on the floor under the desk was packed with balled-up yellow sheets—her early attempts at hammering out the right words for Mari to read over the PA system
come Monday morning. And now it was that day, and Celia was trying to do everything she could to keep from going to school and facing the prospect of explaining why Mari wasn’t there to read the speech herself.

Celia was almost positive Mari was in her own house, trying to get out of going to school, too, but she was the better actress and therefore usually more successful at getting out of things. But Celia secretly worried that Mari
would
go to school, head straight for Ms. Perdomo’s office, and confess everything. The risk of that happening was enough to make Celia sit up in bed and swing her legs over the edge, ready to stand. Celia had to get there first to keep Mari from selling her out.

“You’re cured!” Mami clapped.

“Yeah, sort of,” Celia moaned. She scratched her curly head and said, “I wrote the speech to help her. That’s all. I didn’t really do it
for
her. I was just trying to…help.”

“To help, huh? Well, that’s good. Helping is good. As long as that’s all that’s going on—just helping.”

“Just helping,” Celia said. There was no doubt in Celia’s mind that her mom was an actual and honest-to-God mind reader. She always knew what
was really going on without Celia ever having to say anything. It was part of why they were so close, and just one of many reasons why she loved her mom so much. Still, Celia couldn’t come clean just yet, so she told her, “I promise to talk to you about all this soon. Right now, though, we better hurry if I’m going to make it to school early enough to—um—help Mari practice.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Celia’s mom said as she stood up from the bed. “Just remember you can tell me anything, Celia, and I’ll always hear you out. You don’t need to resort to meningitis.”

“I know, Mami. I’m sorry. I’ll be ready soon,” Celia said. She got up and went to her closet.

“And not that I claim to know what happened between you two girls, but maybe you should wear the red shirt with the glittery stripe down the side that Mari gave you for your birthday last year,” Mami said. “Might be a nice thing to do, you know? Let her know you’re sorry?”

Just as Celia thought,
You’re so right
, she turned to the door and smiled, but her mom had already slipped out from the room, leaving Celia to get dressed and to think about her next move.

“Hooray! You’re here!” Ms. Perdomo shouted as Celia entered her office ten minutes before the
first homeroom bell rang. The counselor was putting on eyeliner while holding a little mirror in her hand. The eyeliner was purple, but it didn’t look too purple once it surrounded Ms. Perdomo’s eyes—it only made her large brown eyes pop even more. She kept outlining her lids as Celia entered the mango-scented room, her hand steady on the pencil. Her pins today read
READ
‘
EM
&
WEEP
! and
YOWZA
.

“You were expecting me?” Celia said, worried that Mari had somehow gotten to Ms. Perdomo first.

Ms. Perdomo snapped the mirror case shut and clicked the eyeliner back into its skinny tube. She shoved both in a desk drawer and then said, “Well, no. I wasn’t. Not really. I mean, I know it’s your friend Mariela who’s running, but I figured—I mean, I was hoping—you’d come along for moral support. You kids and your moral support. Lazaro has his moral support here this morning, so I figured you’d show up with Mari. Except that Mari isn’t here yet…” Ms. Perdomo bent forward and looked out her door into the main office.

Celia noticed two book bags on the floor and knew instantly who they must belong to—Laz and Raul. So Raul had come along to watch
Laz give his speech? Or maybe he just wanted to get a close glimpse of Mari to start his morning?

“They’re practicing in the boys’ bathroom. Isn’t that cute? I guess they’ve got some ‘surprises’ planned.” The famous air quotes. Celia guessed by their energetic appearance that Ms. Perdomo was already on her third cup of coffee that morning. “We’re just waiting on Mariela, but don’t worry. There’s plenty of time before the homeroom bell. I guess Mari’s feeling more confident in her speech than Laz is in his.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” Celia said, swallowing hard.

“Makes you wonder why she needs you for ‘moral support,’ though, if she’s feeling ‘confident.’ Excuse me, I need a ‘warm-up’ big-time.” Ms. Perdomo grabbed her coffee cup and dashed out of the room, taking her air quotes with her.

Celia tried to think. What was she going to do? Should she make up an excuse for Mari and then hope that she could convince her later to stay in the race? Should she come clean to Ms. Perdomo and risk losing her status as one of the school’s most trustworthy students? Should she leave before Ms. Perdomo came back? She couldn’t just bail and leave Mari to get in trouble for not
showing up; she’d already gotten Mari into enough of a mess, and until they decided otherwise, they were still best friends.

“You’re here.”

Celia felt her heart jump. She turned to see Mari standing in the doorway. Mari wore the big silver hoop earrings that Celia had given her last Christmas. She almost never wore them to school because they were too nice—Mari’s mom didn’t let her wear her nicest jewelry to school. Her mom must have made an exception. Celia stood up from the chair and rushed to the door.

“Mari, I’m so sorry I said—”

“Celia, I feel so bad for saying—”

The two girls crashed into a hug, each of them smothering her apology in the other girl’s shoulder. They separated quickly, realizing that Ms. Perdomo could be watching—or worse, Laz and Raul.

“I couldn’t let you get in trouble,” Mari whispered after looking around the office. “We’re already in too deep, huh?”

“Probably,” Celia said. “But at least we’re prepared.” She went into her bag and dug out the legal pad with the speech neatly written out in her crisp handwriting. She handed over the pad along
with a pencil. In printing the speech, she’d skipped every other line to make it easier for Mari to read on the fly.

“I can’t believe you still wrote it,” Mari said.

“I couldn’t let you get into trouble either. Besides, you needed to spend Sunday working on your lines for the play.”

Mari nodded, grateful for a quality speech. She’d decided to be short and brief in whatever she’d say, but even with only six minutes to go now, she still hadn’t written anything out.

Celia tapped the pencil and added, “This is for anything you want to add or change. You’re the one who has to read it, so you should have a say in it.”

Mari gave Celia her toothiest smile and said, “Thank you so much for that. But you know what? I totally trust you, and I know I can’t improve on your masterpiece.”

“That’s probably true,” Celia joked.

The girls laughed together just as Ms. Perdomo charged into the room, a steaming cup of coffee in her hands.

“Mariela! Yes! So we’re ready to go. That is, as soon as the bell rings, of course. And where are those two ‘cool’ guys? They better be getting
back here soon, ‘cause this show don’t stop for no one.”

Mari looked at Celia and rolled her eyes, but Celia laughed.

Crazy
, Mari mouthed silently. Celia shook her head no, smiling. Mari started to smile back, but suddenly, the smile turned on itself and her cheeks turned bright red. Celia almost asked her what was wrong, but then she heard someone clear his throat behind her and when she turned around, there was Laz, equally red, with Raul behind him, arms crossed against his chest. Celia noticed then that Raul’s smile was brighter than Laz’s, and more real, and that he seemed to be smiling only at her. Had she accidentally bonded with him over his failure at the basketball tournament? She wasn’t sure, but if he was working with Laz, he, too, was the enemy, and she had to think of him as such.

“Good morning, ladies,” Raul said from just behind Laz.

“Such manners!” Ms. Perdomo said. “I love it! Let’s go warm up the PA system, shall we?”

“Let’s shall,” Laz said awkwardly. Raul elbowed him hard in the ribs. Celia wanted to laugh but held it in, thinking she was already lucky to have
her friend back—and with that friend about to give a speech she’d never read before, Celia saw no need to tempt fate.

After the regular morning announcements, including another exceptionally boring installment of Principal’s Proclamations, Ms. Perdomo clicked the buttons on the PA board that meant the speeches were only getting piped into the seventh grade homerooms and took the microphone in her hands.

“My darling seventh graders,” she began. “It is with great pride and enormous excitement that I present to you the candidates for YOUR grade-level representative!”

At this point, Ms. Perdomo imitated the sound of a huge crowd cheering by holding the mike close to her mouth and making a noise that sounded to Celia like when you hold a conch shell up to your ear. Celia laughed even though no one else did.

“Calm down, my eager peoples, calm down. Today you’ll hear from the candidates themselves. All two of them.”

She raised her eyebrows at them and again, Celia laughed. She was a little upset that none of
the other three really “got” Ms. Perdomo the way she did. She figured that it was their loss.

“Up first, thanks to alphabetical order—but only by a slim margin—is Mr. Lazaro Crespi.”

Ms. Perdomo held the mike out for Laz as he approached the PA system. He held a sheet with his speech typed out on it. As he began reading, Celia saw that his hands shook ever so slightly.

“Yo yo yo, Coral Grove! This is Lazaro—better known as Laz—Crespi coming to you LIVE from the main office. Now, I KNOW you’re gonna vote for me for seventh grade rep, but just in case you STILL have doubts, here are some of my biggest supporters to tell you why I’m the MAN!”

At this point, Laz did an impression of Mr. Negreli, the seventh grade science teacher, emphasizing the teacher’s nerdier tendencies. There was a whole riff about misplacing his pocket protector that had nothing to do with the election, but it was really funny. Laz then did a surprisingly good impression of the principal, ripping into the Proclamations. Celia could hear the laughter coming from classrooms closest to the main office—even Ms. Perdomo covered her mouth, presumably hiding a smile. But then Laz turned on her, and did a very inaccurate impression of her,
mostly just using a high-pitched too-girly voice. Each impression ended by saying they thought Laz was the greatest and they “approved this message,” just like in real political advertisements.

“Thank you for your endorsements!” Laz’s real voice chimed. “And so, Coral Grove, do like they say and vote for ME. Just remember my slogan: Laz is the MAN! Vote Laz!”

That’s his slogan?
Celia thought. She looked at Mari and knew she was thinking the same thing. Even better: She looked at Ms. Perdomo and saw the same idea running through her head.

Laz walked back to Raul and the two of them high-fived. Celia couldn’t believe how predictable they were—the speech, the lack of any real content, the reliance on jokes instead of an actual campaign platform. They’d played right into her plan—a plan that was about to unfold right in front of them. She held her breath and waited.

Ms. Perdomo said into the mike, “Thank you, Lazaro, for that moderately entertaining and somewhat misguided speech.” She winked at him and he smiled, not registering that she was actually making fun of him. Now it was Celia who covered her smile. “Just for the record, everyone,” Ms. Perdomo went on, “and not that I need to tell you this, but all those voices were fake. No staff
member has endorsed—or will endorse—any candidate. With that said, I’d like to present Ms. Mariela Cruz, your second and final candidate.”

Mari cleared her throat and stepped up to the mike. She held the pad with the speech Celia prepared for her in her hands. Her fingers were so still and poised that Celia thought,
Man, she really is talented.

“My fellow students,” she began in a rich, smooth voice, “as you just heard, it’s clear that my opponent sees this election as a big joke.”

Celia looked over at Laz and Raul just as their jaws dropped.
Just wait
, she thought to herself, her own cheeks feeling warm,
this is only the beginning.

“That was amazing!” Mari whispered excitedly as the girls hurried out of the main office and headed to first period. “How did you know Laz was going to do impressions? I mean, your speech
killed
him!”