Winner Takes All (6 page)

Celia smiled to herself. She didn’t know, exactly. It was a risky move on her part, but one she had scientifically calculated. Based on everything she’d seen so far—and on the fact that Laz thought he did the best impressions of the seventh grade teachers and launched into them
whenever someone gave him the opening—she thought the move would pay off. And it had. Mari delivered the speech almost flawlessly (she’d stumbled over one word,
emblematic
, but moved past the mistake quickly) and it had made Laz look like an irresponsible goofball who might be “fun to hang out with” but who was “just not ready to take on such a big responsibility.”

“I had a hunch he was going to do that,” Celia answered. “I mean, what else was he gonna say?”

It wasn’t a mean speech. It just pointed out a huge issue: Laz didn’t take the position seriously, and did they really want someone representing the whole seventh grade to the school’s administration who couldn’t take a simple speech seriously? “In a word: no,” Mari had read. She then went on to list what she would do if elected. Celia had packed that part of the speech with lots of fresh ideas—instituting an end-of-the-year field trip for the seventh grade class, moving the seventh grade awards assembly to the evening rather than during school so that more parents could attend, building class unity by creating a seventh grade newsletter that both students and teachers could contribute to, and of course, her ideas for spirit week—all of them stated concisely and clearly.

The speech ended with the slogan, “With Mari Cruz, you’ll never lose, so vote for Mari Cruz!” Mari had read it louder than the rest of the speech, and it sounded even catchier in her voice. Afterward, Ms. Perdomo complimented Mari on having written such a thoughtful and provocative speech. Celia had swallowed down the urge to say she’d “helped” write it: It was, after all, necessary to the plan that Mari take all the credit, a fact that was only just then fully sinking in.

Mari sang the slogan now in the hallway. “With Mari Cruz, you never lose, so vote for Mari Cruz!”

When Mari opened the door to her first-period class, the entire room erupted in cheers. Celia was stunned at how the noise bounced around in the hallway where she still stood. Luz Rojas, who’d been at Laz’s basketball tournament, yelled from her seat, “Oh my GOD, Mari, you SLAMMED him! That was crazy!”

Ricky Nuñez said from his desk at the front of the class, “Are you some kind of psychic?”

As she slid through the door, Mari answered, “No, I just had a hunch he was going to do that. I mean, what else was he gonna say?”

Mari turned back before shutting the classroom door behind her and winked at Celia.

Celia said, “Hey! That’s what I—” to the closing door before realizing she couldn’t say a thing about who
really
wrote the speech, about who the
real
psychic was. Mari getting all the credit—had Celia not realized that it might be hard for her to deal with that?
I guess now it’s my turn to feel like I’m getting slammed
, she thought.

As Celia dragged herself down the hall to her own first-period class, she grumbled out loud to no one, “And this is only the beginning.”

“Thanks! It was nothing. Just remember that with Mari Cruz, you never lose!” Mari said to yet another person complimenting her on Monday’s speech.

Celia leaned against her locker, a big paper shopping bag full of campaign materials hulking between her feet on the hallway floor, waiting for Mari to fend off this latest praise. It seemed to come from every direction in the school’s corridors these last two days. The stickers had been a huge hit, and almost every person passing them in the hallways was wearing one—Celia couldn’t make them fast enough. It was Wednesday morning now, and Celia had thought the sting of hearing
someone else take credit for her work would have worn off. But it hadn’t—not by a long shot.

The worst had come from Laz himself. He had stopped at her and Mari’s table on his way out from lunch on Monday. Laz had sat down on the empty bench across from where they were planted and said, “Mari, you really called me out this morning. It was pretty amazing.” Celia watched as both he and Mari turned red. Celia was shocked that neither of them could hide their nervousness—Laz was supposed to be cool, supersmooth, and Mari was supposed to be a great actress. But there they were, clearly liking each other. Celia thought she might throw up.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Laz went on, batting his long eyelashes. “I don’t like people calling me out on things, but seriously, it was kind of a genius move. I was impressed.” Right then, Raul raced over from the garbage cans, where he was busing his lunch tray. He shot a nervous glance at Celia and mumbled, “Hi, Celia. I mean, hey, guys.” His face reddened as he hooked Laz by the collar, swooping him away from the two girls. “What are you
doing
?“ Celia heard Raul hiss in Laz’s ear.

“Oh my God,” Mari had said once they were out of earshot. “He liked my speech!”

Your
speech?
Celia thought. She tried to say this with her eyes, but Mari evidently didn’t get it, because Mari then said, “He thinks I’m a genius!” A big grin slowly spread across her face.

“He thought the
speech
was genius,” Celia corrected. “If you’d been listening to—instead of drooling over—the competition, you’d have realized what he said. And he probably didn’t even mean it. It’s probably just a campaign tactic on his part, to make him look more gracious than he really is. And what’s up with Raul?” But Mari didn’t even blink. She was off in Laz Land, leaving Celia alone to stew in her frustration and bus both their trays.

Celia and Mari had spent all of Monday and Tuesday afternoons practicing for the next big campaign event, the last one before Friday’s debate: the homeroom visits. Each candidate had to visit all of the seventh grade homerooms over Wednesday and Thursday to pitch themselves and answer questions from students. They would hit the first half of the homerooms that day and the second half the next, alternating with Laz.

Celia was only a little nervous about how Mari’s performance in the classrooms would go: Their afternoon drill sessions had gone okay, but Mari had kept her script for the school play open
on her lap the whole time, trying to do two things at once.

“I can’t let that Sami girl steal my part. Not only was she off book today, but she’s actually
good.
Almost as good as me. I’m telling you, she’s making moves!” Mari was still way behind the other actors when it came to memorizing her lines—Mrs. Wanza had given her a two-day extension for having her part memorized before “considering other options,” as she’d put it—and after their big blowup on the sidewalk, Celia didn’t want to say anything about the script on Mari’s lap being a distraction from the campaign script they were working on. Besides, Celia reasoned, she’d be there in the homerooms with Mari should anything go wrong. She’d gotten permission from Ms. Perdomo to accompany Mari on the visits to help carry publicity brochures and posters from room to room.

Celia rustled Ms. Perdomo’s list of the assigned Wednesday homerooms out of her campaign manager folder. The first stop was Mr. Negreli’s, all the way on the other side of the school from their lockers.

Celia checked her watch: five minutes until the bell, which meant only ten minutes until their first official visit was supposed to begin. Ms. Perdomo
would make an announcement over the PA system that the visits were beginning, and then they would be off. Celia felt her stomach squirm. She tapped Mari’s shoulder to pull her away from the latest speech fan.

“Later, girl. I’ll see you in drama class. I really hope you win this election. Good luck today!” the girl said. Celia recognized her—it was Sami, Mari’s understudy for the play. Sami turned away gracefully, a long blondish ponytail swirling the air behind her, and rushed off, a cute purple book bag nestled between her thin shoulders.

“Thanks,” Mari said to Sami’s back. She turned to her locker and mumbled through gnashed teeth to Celia, “Of course she wants me to win. She knows Mrs. Wanza will give her my part if I do. She’s trying to destroy me!”

“What?” Celia said, worried. “How does Mrs. Wanza know you can’t handle both responsibilities at the same time? Especially when you won’t be doing anything as seventh grade rep—that’ll be
my
job.”

“And how is Mrs. Wanza supposed to know that, huh? As far as she can see, she just has one lead actress who’s about to be stretched too thin. That’s how she put it, anyway.”

Celia hadn’t considered this complication. She
thought Mari’s status as the star seventh grade actress would be enough to keep Mrs. Wanza on board, but it sounded like they were already pushing their luck. If Mari’s credibility as a drama star was damaged, that might hurt her chances in the election, too.

Thinking on her feet, Celia said, “If you can convince Mrs. Wanza to keep you in the part, then once you’re seventh grade rep, she’ll see that you aren’t distracted and that you can totally juggle both things. She doesn’t need to know
how
you’re doing it, just that you can.”

Mari rolled her eyes.

“Duh, Celia, that’s what I’m trying to do. But I’m already slipping in her eyes. I can’t keep my lines straight. I keep talking about my plans for reorganizing school dances in the middle of my monologue! And Sami is working so hard—she’s just looking for her big break; I guess I can’t really blame her—but Mrs. Wanza is starting to lose patience with me. She’s questioning my commitment.” Mari put her face in her hands and pulled down on her skin.

“God! I just want this campaign to be over already.”

That makes two of us
, Celia thought.

The homeroom bell rang, and the students still left in the halls scurried to their classrooms.

“Just try to stay focused,” Celia said.

“Focused? Ha!” Mari said as she slammed her locker shut. She seemed like she was starting to crack.

“We’ve got five minutes to get to Mr. Negreli’s class,” Celia said. “Just remember everything we practiced, and I’ll be right there next to you in case things head south.” She put her arm around Mari’s shoulders, halfway upset with herself for what she was about to say: “After Monday’s speech, everybody already thinks you’re the right person for the job. All you gotta do now is seal the deal. Got it?”

Mari let out a big sigh. Celia saw the worry in her friend’s face and realized that taking credit for all of this was just as tough for Mari to handle as it was for Celia to let her. Mari wrinkled her forehead even more, looking around the now-empty hallway. Celia said, “I promised you I’d be at your side through everything. Here’s another promise: I will not let you lose your part in the play.”

The lines on Mari’s forehead evaporated a little and she said, “And how are you going to do that?”

“I have no idea,” Celia admitted, but at least Mari laughed at her answer. “I have a feeling I’ll be able to come up with a real plan, though, once we get these homeroom visits out of the way.” She lifted the heavy paper bag full of campaign stuff with one hand and hooked Mari’s arm with the other.

“Shall we?” she asked.

Mari squeezed Celia’s arm and answered brightly in a fake British accent, “We shall.”

“So what kinds of dances would you plan if you were representative?” Harvey Valencia asked from his seat in the third row.

“See, that’s the thing,” Mari said, confident because Celia had anticipated this kind of question and had drilled it the day before. “It’s not up to
me
to decide that; it’s up to
you.
My job as representative is to communicate your ideas to the administration in an effective and convincing manner. So I would ask
you
what dances
you
want to plan, and then get a sense for how the rest of the seventh grade feels about that, then fight for those ideas on your behalf. Being a representative is about being selfless; it’s about being—it’s about being a…being a…um…”

“A vessel?” Celia chimed in from her spot by
the blackboard, where she stood holding a huge
VOTE
4
MARI CRUZ
! sign. This was their second-to-last homeroom visit for the day, and her arms were starting to feel heavy.

“Right! A vessel for your thoughts and ideas. So I ask you, Harvey, what kind of dances should we have this year?”

Okay, so Mari’s lines did make her sound a lot like Celia. But nobody had picked up on that so far. Aside from a few lapses throughout the morning, things had been going smoothly. Celia propped the poster down on the floor and pulled out a marker and a clean poster board from her brown bag. She wrote “Dance Ideas” at the top and stood poised to write.

“Um, I think…” Harvey said. People at the back of the room started to giggle, and someone else yelled, “Shut up!”

“I think,” Harvey said, “we should do, like, Under the Sea?”

Celia heard a couple more giggles as she printed “Under the Sea/Nautical theme” on the poster board, but Mari acted really, really excited about that idea, which was all part of what they’d practiced. “Excellent,” she said. “What are some other ideas people have?”

Other themes were shouted from the class: 60s Night, Beach Bash, A Walk in the Clouds, Around the World in 80 Days, Bulldozers.

“Bulldozers?” Celia said as she read the word she’d just scribbled on the poster board.

The whole class laughed. Luckily, Celia had anticipated this happening, too, and she and Mari had gone over the best way to defuse a brainstorming session that turned into a joke session. Except that Mari wasn’t talking; she was stumbling over her lines.

“Not every idea is going to—no, wait. Um…Although all ideas are valid, sometimes we’ll need to—no, that’s not right either.” Mari started chewing on her thumbnail. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, trying to remember what she was supposed to say. Celia recognized Mari’s panic—she’d seen it happen during a couple of the homeroom visits they’d already completed—and stepped up from the board in full-force Presentation Mode.

“What Mari means to say is, she obviously can’t go back to the principal with a thousand different ideas, so part of her job is to see what ideas most people can agree on, and then take those to him. So, yes, although ‘Bulldozers’ is a really funny idea here in this class, it’s probably not going to
fly with the administration. That’s what you’re trying to say, right, Mari?”

Just then, Mari’s head snapped up and she yelled to the class, “Fat swine! If you dare breathe one balmy zephyr more, I’ll fan your cheeks for you!”

The class sat, stunned, none of them recognizing the line from the play.

“That’s not it either, is it?” she said to her thumbnail.

“Uh, is she crazy?” Harvey asked seriously.

“No, no, no!” Celia said, laughing too hard. “Mari’s in the school play—she’s the lead, actually—and she’s just giving you guys a sneak preview of her big performance. Wasn’t she convincing? She’ll be just as convincing as your representative, taking your ideas to the top! Ha-ha-ha!”

The class sat uncomfortably for a second. The teacher cleared his throat and said, “Any other questions for these young ladies before they head out?”

Mari snapped out of her line-searching trance, smiling and poised again. Celia rushed over to the bag and pulled out the stack of MARI 4 REP quarter cards she’d made after school the day before, each one outlining Mari’s positions and platform.
She handed them to the first person in each row of seats and asked them to pass them back.

The Bulldozers jerk decided to get in one more joke before the ordeal was over. “Hey, Mariela,” he said, “if you’re the one running for seventh grade rep, then why does Celia seem to know more about your ideas than you do?”

“That’s a great question,” Mari said, her face turning very white. “Every good candidate has an even better team behind them, and Celia is on my team.”

This answer was from the script, but Celia had assured Mari during their run-through that it was solely in case of an emergency, that no one would ask that. As Celia scrambled to get the last of the quarter cards passed out, the teacher said, “Thank you, ladies,” as the rest of the class clapped.

Once they were safely outside the classroom, Mari grabbed Celia by the arms and said, “You see? People are figuring it out! I can’t keep doing this. I look like a fool!”

“Mari, you’re doing great. You handled that last question with a lot of grace.”

“Yeah, and two seconds before that I called them fat swine! My head is totally crammed with too many phrases!”

“Keep your voice down. Someone will hear you.”

Celia shot a look over Mari’s shoulder to indicate who that someone was: Laz, coming down the hall, heading to his last homeroom of the morning. Weirdly, he was also yelling something, but Raul, who walked next to him carrying a big bag of Life Savers candies in a bin that said LAZ IS THE MAN! shushed him before they could hear anything specific.

Laz gave Raul a nasty look and then started to march over to them. Celia heard Mari suck in air and say, “Oh my God,” just before standing up even straighter. She turned to Celia and whispered, “Do I look okay?”

Celia couldn’t speak. She just nodded. As always, Mari looked beautiful. Celia stood there with her big brown bag, lighter now that she’d given almost everything out, and watched the two of them talk.