I, Claudia: Part II

It was, overall, not an environment that was conducive to friendship, and when school was over, I noticed that Maisie never seemed to return any of their texts, seeming instead to prefer my company.

Oberlin St. James gave a cloying smile to his vice president, Jasmine Park, and to the other upperclassman senators, but there were no smiles for Hector and me.

We hear student grievances. We intercede on their behalf.

And we plan and we organize and we raise money for the events that make life here at Imperial Day something other than a desolate wasteland of interminable sameness, punctuated by nothing but tests and lunch.

The feedback we got last year indicated that people preferred to have the dance off-site rather than in the gym. Jasmine and I have been going over possible venues, and so far the frontrunners are the Queen Mary, the Getty, and the Skirball.

For Homecoming, the most lucrative fundraiser was the teacher car wash.

Jasmine Park licked her lips and reported that the Senate had $5000 in the account set aside for Homecoming expenses, and I saw Oberlin St. James’s prodigious eyebrows knit together.

I had a full year, plus an older sister, which translated to fairly reliable intel on who would be flattered to be asked, who would agree under duress, and who should not be approached under any circumstances.

“Is there any chance I might prevail upon you to volunteer two hours of your time washing the cars of ungrateful children for a good cause?”

“Cover three board meetings, your friend shoots the field hockey match on Friday, and you’ve got yourself a deal, Claudia.”
I turned to Hector before accepting his offer, wanting to make sure that I hadn’t roped him into anything too onerous...

Hector and I took pity on them and even tried to include them in our surreptitious note-passing, but they were too terrified to respond.

I wanted to prove that I deserved to be part of the Senate, that even though I was a mistake and a fluke and a person who should not have been elected, I was not without my uses.

“Hector, no one would do something like this, something that involved this many people, unless they thought they could get away with it. Inviting a few Honor Council representatives to a party seems like a decent way to give the whole thing a veneer of legitimacy. They wouldn’t even have to know the party had been paid for with stolen money.”

“She was the only person I could think of who would really understand the nuances of the situation.”

Under the reign of Sulla and the purges of the Roman ruling class that followed, one senator begged the bloodthirsty dictator, “We are not asking you to pardon those you have decided to kill; all we ask is that you free from suspense those you have decided not to kill.”

I changed clothes and got an Uber, thinking only a little bit wistfully about my comfy bed and sweatpants and television.

The place Hector wanted to meet was called The Last Bookstore, and it was in a building that looked like it must have been a haberdashery or a bank a hundred years ago.

Maybe once upon a time, the collection was carefully curated, but eventually fatigue set in and the place was overrun, one dog-eared copy of Cold Sassy Tree at a time.

I could see his sordid little imagination trying to work out what we were talking about, what a guy who looked like Hector was doing with a girl who looked like me.

Now I felt my hackles go up. It wasn’t like I was the one who’d stolen the money.

If Kian Sarkosian was the most suitable representative they could elect, it did not bode well for the current freshman class at Imperial Day, especially if Cal had already managed to recruit him as a disciple.

The look on Cal’s face reminded me of that night at the Venice Pier when Julia insinuated he couldn’t actually use the skateboard he was carrying around.

“You sure?”
I gave Hector a smile that I hoped had at least a little verisimilitude in it.

The first thing I did was text Hector, but after a fitful night of sleep, a miserable shower, and an anxious commute, I still hadn’t heard from him.

“I found out that some people embezzled $5000 and were going to use it to throw themselves a party.”

I understood the purpose of this room. It kept witnesses confidential. It protected the accused and the accusers from one another, but I understood its implicit purpose as well. When you were in this room, you were on trial, no matter who you were or why you were there.

“Sorry, Ty,” Livia said, demure in her pink cap-sleeve dress.

“What kind of president is he?” Ty asked petulantly.

His skin was wan, there were dark circles under his eyes, and a whiff of stale sweat mingled with his usual sandalwood smell.

I looked nervously at Hector, who absorbed it all stoically.

“Homecoming’s supposed to be next week!” another voice called out plaintively, as though he thought that perhaps we’d all forgotten.

A murmur went up in the room. I couldn’t make out what anyone said specifically, but the general gist seemed to be, Look at the sophomore, having opinions.

Five minutes ago, I hadn’t known anything about Hector’s plan, but even with minimal preparation, I could see that it had its more venal charms as well.

I was a meddling, foul-mouthed, duplicitous white girl, and which one of us had the Honor Council tapped for the job first?

I was effusive in my praise of freshman senators Lucy Lin and Veronica Ollenbeck, who managed to capture fifteen feral cats, transport them to the local veterinary clinic, and have them spayed or neutered.

The financial reform we enacted made all student organization spending public and transparent so that nothing like the Queen Mary debacle would ever happen again.

An art columnist for the New York Times called it a dorm room poster. If you are a jaded sort of person, I suppose that this painting does not have much to offer you.

To my consternation, I found myself rolling my eyes in solidarity with Livia Drusus.

“You know who Cal really is, Livia. If anyone knows how to destroy him, it’s you.” Whether or not you agreed with it or had moral qualms about it, there was no question that when it came to that kind of politics, Livia was a master.

A semi-circle of bodies four deep stood in front of every copy of the poster, reading and snapping pictures for posterity.