Winner Takes All (7 page)

“How are your visits going?” Laz said as he put his hands in his jeans pockets. He wore a longsleeved button-down shirt untucked, but with a tie. It was a cool, laid-back style. The tie was probably an effort to look more serious, something he’d need to do if he was going to refute Mari’s campaign’s biggest argument against him.

“Oh, you know. Great. Really great.”

Really great?
Celia thought. Did Laz actually think that Mari and her “really greats” could have written that speech from Monday? The real genius was standing right there in plain sight. He hadn’t even said hi to her.

Raul stomped over, the wrappers on the Life Savers squeaking against one another. When Celia glanced in the bin, she saw that it was nearly full.

“You haven’t been giving those out?” she blurted.

Laz finally looked at her. “No, we couldn’t. We started to, but Ms. Perdomo said that giving out candy constituted bribery and she made us stop. By the way, great idea, Raul.”

“Oh,
now
it’s my idea?”

Celia thought she saw a much bigger fight brewing between them, but they left it at that. There was an awkward silence.

“Hey,” Celia finally said, “did it occur to you guys that you could have put ‘Laz is a Life Saver’ on the bin instead of ‘Laz is the Man’? I mean, no offense, but it’s almost obvious.”

“Celia, come on, that’s just mean,” Mari said. Celia couldn’t believe it.

“That’s just how Celia talks,” Laz said. “You’re not used to her by now?”

The two of them laughed, leaning into each

other and being all chummy. Celia stood there, wanting to flip over the bin of Life Savers and bury Mari and Laz in her candy-coated wrath.

“Actually, I
did
think of that,” Raul said, stopping the laughs cold. He looked happy to have Celia on his side, even if it was only for a second. “Mr. Super-Fly over here feels that slogans are dorky. But he’s wrong.”

The smile suddenly gone, Laz turned to Raul with a fierce scowl on his face. Celia caught it and held a laugh in her throat.

“We should get going,” Laz said without breaking his stare at Raul.

“You’re the one who wanted to come over here and talk to the enemy,” Raul said back, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m just your lowly campaign manager.”

“Enough already, okay, Raul? Let’s get out of here.” Laz stomped away toward the last homeroom door for the morning, his neck and face burning red.

“You’re the boss,” Raul said, lugging the Life Savers bin down the hall. “Later, Mari. Bye, Celia—see you later, maybe?” he called over his shoulder.

“Okay, that was weird,” Mari said once the boys were gone from the hallway.

“Thanks for calling me mean. That really makes me feel good about myself,” Celia said in a deadpan voice.

“Oh, please, Celia. I was just standing up for Laz. I feel bad for him, kind of. And besides, doesn’t everything I’m doing for this campaign clearly show that my loyalty is to you?”

“I’m not so sure,” Celia joked, though she did mean it a little, especially after the way Mari blatantly flirted with Laz, who was, up until very recently, her crush. Though, of course, Mari didn’t know that. “Let’s see how this last homeroom visit goes and I’ll tell you then.” Celia smiled, hiding her doubts with a little acting of her own.

“Flash cards, check. Stopwatch, check.”

Celia paced around her room, making sure that she had everything she needed for the debate rehearsal she’d planned for Mari that afternoon. The real debate would be happening the next morning, and Celia admitted to herself that she was more than just a little worried about how Mari would do. The buzz around school was that Laz’s visits had actually cost him some votes. Celia had overheard Yvette and her crew at lunch laughing about how Mr. Negreli, during Laz’s visit to his homeroom, had asked him some basic questions about his reasons for running, and Laz had come off looking unprepared and not at all serious. “I mean, just ‘cause he’s cool doesn’t mean he
should win,” Celia heard Yvette say, and her followers nodded in agreement.

Yvette’s opinion was a good sign for Mari’s campaign, but still, the last round of Mari’s homeroom visits that morning had been worse than Wednesday’s. Mari kept forgetting her campaign platform or accidentally reciting lines from the play in almost every class they talked to. Then, at lunch, Mari reported that Mrs. Wanza had just plain yelled at her for making the same kinds of mistakes in rehearsal: During a sword fight scene, Mari had apparently challenged another character to “explore the broad range of fund-raising opportunities available and have potential outside vendors compete for our school’s business.” Like Mrs. Wanza, Celia had to face the facts: Mari was a mess. It was going to take a long night of drills and practice questions to get her where she needed to be to face Laz.

“Highlighter, check. Bag of M&M’s, check.”

The only thing missing was Mari.

She looked at the digital clock blinking on her desk. It was 5:24—Mari was almost half an hour late. The plan had been that the two girls would head home from school, check in with their moms, shower and eat something, then be at Celia’s
house by five to start the long night of prepping for Friday morning. Just as she was about to pick up the phone and call Mari’s house, Celia heard her brother, Carlos, yell from the front door, “Celia! It’s Mari! She’s here to play or whatever!”

“Shut up, Carlos,” she heard Mari say.

A few seconds later, Mari appeared in the doorway, her hair looking stringy and oily, her pretty skin unusually blotchy. There was even a smudge of ink on Mari’s left cheek. The worst sign, though, was that Mari was still in her school clothes—a cute T-shirt dress that now, at the end of the day, looked as wrinkled and tired as Mari herself.

Celia sat at her desk and started shuffling a stack of paper, pretending not to notice Mari’s frazzled appearance.

“I’m just guessing here, but you didn’t shower, did you?” She faced Mari and pinched her own nose shut. “Now I’m gonna have to smell you all through our practice. Thanks a lot.”

“Celia, I—”

“I know, I know. I’m being mean again. Sorry.” Celia let go of her nose and smiled from her chair, but Mari’s face stayed frozen. “I just thought we were gonna be ready to stay late working here if we needed to, but as long as you shower before
school tomorrow, we’ll be fine. You’ve got to look fresh and sharp in front of Laz and everyone at school.”

Mari still hadn’t come into Celia’s room. She lingered in the doorway, holding on to the edge of the door frame. At the mention of Laz’s name, Mari had looked away from Celia and stared instead at the ceiling. She now looked Celia straight in the eyes. “I need to talk to you,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” Celia asked, really starting to feel nervous—Mari still hadn’t stepped in the room. “Did Poochie harass you on the walk here?”

“I didn’t walk. My mom drove me. She’s still here, waiting for me. She’s talking to your mom outside.”

Celia didn’t really want to know the answer to her next question, but she had to ask: “Why is your mom waiting for you? Doesn’t she know we’re gonna be a while?”

Finally, Mari stepped into the room. She walked all the way in and sat down on the round purple rug, right in front of Celia. Celia thought back to the day she’d sat there herself and asked Mari to agree to this whole scheme. They were so close to winning, so close to being done. In the silence of that second, she heard Mari’s mom’s
car engine running in the driveway, and Celia suddenly felt the week come to a screeching halt.

“Remember how you promised yesterday that you wouldn’t let me lose my part in the play?”

Celia felt a little better; if this was about the play, then everything was okay. It was the debate she was worried about.

“Of course I remember,” Celia answered. “Not that I had any idea how I was gonna do that, but I did promise.”

“And you meant it?” Mari said. Her face looked strained. She looked too hurt to be acting—Celia knew this was real.

“Of course,” she said. “I know that the play is as important to you as being representative is to me.” Celia’s voice cracked as she said “me”—she wasn’t so sure anymore that if Mari won, she could handle everyone giving Mari credit for her work. She wouldn’t
really
be a representative, not in the way she wanted to be. But it was too late to do anything about that. “Mari, just tell me what’s going on. If you figured out a plan to keep your part, I want to hear it.”

Mari took a deep breath and sat up on her knees. She tucked her hair behind her ears. She closed her eyes and silently nodded to herself
after a second. When she opened her eyes again, they were wet with tears.

“I can’t go through with the debate tomorrow. I have to spend the rest of this afternoon drilling my lines for the play’s run-through. My mom’s gonna help me get them down.”

Celia tried to sound calm, but she couldn’t control the panic rising in her voice. “But you have to do the debate! It’s not
optional
for a candidate! If you don’t participate, you’re—”

“I’m dropping out of the race. It’s the only way Mrs. Wanza’s gonna let me keep the lead and not let Sami start in my place tomorrow at rehearsal.”

Mari closed her eyes again and added, “My mom already called the school and left a message for Mrs. Wanza with my decision.”

Celia realized she’d been holding her breath. She tried to breathe but the air wouldn’t come. She tried to think calming thoughts, but all she could do was sit like a statue at her desk.

“This was a really hard choice for me,” Mari went on. “I know how much being rep means to you—I only said yes to this whole thing for you. But my mom said that if we’re really friends, we’d help each other do the right things. And besides, being part of drama is just too important to me.”

Every thought and feeling imaginable raced through Celia’s head. She was so lost in her own whirlwind that she could barely register what Mari was saying now. Her thoughts poured out of her in a panicked rant, “But we’re so close to winning! We’ve done all this work! We can’t just let Laz win. Why didn’t you talk to me about this? What am I gonna do? You just admitted how much this means to me—Mari, I
need
you to do this!”

Mari pulled her hair over her shoulder and started tugging at it. She was clearly trying to stay calm in the hopes that it would keep Celia from freaking out more than she already was. “I know you’re probably gonna be mad at me for a while,” Mari said. “But I have to take that risk and just trust that you’ll eventually understand. At least, that’s what my mom says.”

Mari’s mom—who was talking to her own mom outside right now. Celia snapped out of her shocked trance and said the first words that finally found their way out of her mouth. “So then you told your mom
everything
!”

Mari looked past Celia and out the window. “Sort of. I’ve been feeling bad, keeping it from her. I was dying to talk to her about what’s really been going on. We’re like you and your mom, you know? You and my mom are my best friends.”

Celia suddenly felt like the worst person in the world. She felt so guilty for making Mari keep something this big from her mom. She’d been swallowing down her own guilt about not coming clean to her mom either, especially since her mom seemed to suspect something was going on. But she’d planned on telling her eventually—she’d just had no idea when or how.

“I’m sorry I’m letting you down,” Mari said after a long silence. “But you did make a promise, and this is the only way I can see that you can keep that promise. And if you can get past probably hating me right now and really think about it, I know you’ll agree.”

All Celia could think about, though, was the immediate future. “But it’s just one more day, Mari! Please, don’t do this.”

“It would have been a disaster, anyway. It’s not like you can stand behind me at that podium tomorrow and back me up like you did during the homeroom visits,” Mari said, getting up from the rug. “And what if I had won? How would we have kept this up for a whole year when we’re barely making it work for a week?”

Celia didn’t know what to say. She’d pushed this same worry out of her own head days before, focusing instead on just getting elected. She’d
told herself,
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it
, something she’d heard Ms. Perdomo say at least a dozen times. But the truth was, she had only a vague idea of how she and Mari would handle things down the road. She knew people would start to suspect things if Mari kept picking her to work on projects. She couldn’t promise Mari that things would get any easier after the election.

“Besides,” Mari added when Celia didn’t answer, “it’s already done. The call’s been made.”

Celia imagined Yvette and her groupies gossiping at the lunch table about this, whispering Mari’s name and spreading rumors. They were going to go nuts over this news—Celia had to do something. She jumped up from her chair and flailed her arms. “But don’t you care what people are gonna say? Aren’t you worried what everyone at school is going to think of you if you drop out?”

“Who cares?!” Mari snapped. “I can’t control what other people think. Right now, I only care what
I
think. And I feel like I’m doing the right thing for the first time in a while.”

She marched to the door. Just before she left the room completely, she stopped in the doorway and turned back to face Celia. Her face looked strong, but her eyes seemed tired and hurt.

“You’re the real candidate, anyway,” she said before closing the door behind her and disappearing down the hall.

A few seconds later, Celia heard the front door click shut. Eventually, she heard Mari’s mom drive away. She sat back at her desk, trying to think about what to do while waiting for her mom to knock on her door and let herself in—a lecture was inevitable now.

It wasn’t until after the sun went down and she was left waiting in the dark that Celia realized her mother wasn’t coming. Maybe Mari’s mom had told her mom everything and now she was mad, or worse, hurt and disappointed.

It was up to Celia alone to figure out what to do next. She thought about calling Mari and asking—maybe even begging—her to reconsider, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it: She
had
promised Mari that she’d help her keep her part. And the only conclusion Celia had come to while thinking things through by herself was that Mari was right—this was the only way to keep that promise. The next day’s debate took a backseat to the one Celia was not at all ready for: the debate in her head about what to do come Friday morning.