I, Claudia: Part III

This situation was untenable. I could not go around love-stricken and sweaty-palmed, threatening to make a fool out of myself every time Hector talked to me.

He assigned a team of Imperial Day students to each teacher, and for the duration of Honor Week, each team was required to get the teacher’s lunch, clean up the classroom, run multiple-choice tests through the Scantron machines, carry bags out to their cars. Cal said he did this to engender goodwill between educators and students, and also because he thought it might encourage the teachers to participate.

Of course, my Honor Week activities—or lack thereof—were also the subject of his scrutiny.

“I do not tear myself down. I would be a lovely Homecoming date,” I told Hector, my chin raised haughtily.

“I dare you,” he said. As coercion techniques went, I was a sucker for this one every time.

"Sorry," I said. In my nervousness, I might have been a little brusque.

I found my mother's nasal Midwestern intonations to be somewhat endearing, but I was not sure what Soren would make of them.

Afterwards, I couldn’t say anything else, but just sat there in a state of shock while Soren looked at me, a bemused smile on his face.

With the austere budget we’d been given, it was the only place we could afford to have the dance.

With his proclivities toward the easily manipulated, I guess I wasn’t totally surprised Cal was drawn to her.

At the end of the song, there was a smattering of polite applause from people who wanted to get back to dancing.

“I don’t remember voting,” Hector said into the mic, still friendly, still chuckling, but with just a hint of misgiving in his voice.

“A panel of students, faculty, and staff did the voting. It was meant to be a surprise,” Chris said, adding with saccharine glee, “Surprise!”

When Hector drew the embossed notecard out of the envelope, his face crumpled, though he recovered so quickly I’m not sure if anyone spotted it besides me and Cal, who was expecting it.

Nothing they said made any sense, though eventually we ascertained that they’d snuck past the barricades into the hallway by the main office.

He had deep-set eyes, querulous eyebrows, and wiry white hair that grew over his ears and curled at the back of his neck.

If you stood in the third-floor hallway after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when the Honor Council heard testimony, you would see a nonstop stream of sycophants, cowards, liars, rats, and reprobates going in and out the door.

Everyone was on edge. Hector wasn’t the only one with insomnia—it became endemic.

Around the time of Ms. Yee’s disciplinary hearing, Rebecca Ibañez finally had enough and quit the seat she’d fought to win back, and Cal had the gall to bring Chris Gibbons in to replace her.

Every idea we mentioned, whether it was something innovative like planting a community garden, or something mundane like buying a senior class gift to the school, Cal would make a big show of announcing the idea as his own in his new weekly newspaper column.

They’d offered Maisie the run of their Gramercy Park apartment in exchange for the care and feeding of two geriatric cats and some light plant watering.

“You can quit, you know. It won’t ruin your life,” Maisie said, her eyes serious in a big-sister-wisdom- imparting kind of way.

Soren’s mother was bird-thin, but wore layers and layers of flowing, gauzy clothes that enveloped her.

Within days, he’d appointed Astrid Murray and some sycophant freshman to fill their seats, and the only person left who’d actually been elected was Kian Sarkosian, whom I was beginning to suspect had Stockholm syndrome.

Ms. Yee was gone, the Honor Council was a sham, Soren was dead, and Cal larked around the school doing whatever he felt like.

Mr. Prettinger sighed the sigh of a man who had watched his profession, tenuous though his connection to it may have been, turn to dust.

God, what an insipid person. Has anyone ever listened to anything Jesse Nichols has ever said?

“What are you even trying to prove?” Astrid asked as I turned away, repulsed by her bug eyes and mottled jowls.

“These girls are here today as impartial observers of the court,” Cal said.

In addition to her newspaper-editing gig, Ruby hung out with Imperial Day’s art scenesters and literary types and was always doing countercultural, subversive things, but only if she thought they would get her into RISD.

“What if we told her to pay to have the mural removed?” Macro posited.

Fights were rare at Imperial Day. They were considered gauche and simply not done, so things went on for a few moments before someone had the presence of mind to get an adult.

People theorized that factions were emerging; that having run out of civilians to prosecute, the Honor Council was finally turning on itself.

“The last person I went out with died,” I said.
“I know,” Kian said, and immediately, I wished I could take it back and say what I actually felt instead of these tossed-off, callous things.

“I don’t like using my clothes as a shortcut way of telling people what kind of person I am. I like things simple. No affectations.”
“Isn’t the absence of affectation an affectation?” I asked, smirking to let him know I was just messing with him a little bit.

It was there at the kitchen table, sluggish and content with the dual pleasures of eating junk food and fooling around, that Kian decided we needed to talk and basically inject a dose of horrible reality into what had been an otherwise unimpeachable week.

They were sending him to Imperial Day so he wouldn’t have to spend holiday weekends rolling canapés at a Nick Jr. star’s house party.

I stared at the Whole Foods receipt, imagining the frivolous things on the other side of it: sea salt, rice crisps, and infused olive oils that no one in my house would ever use.

I wondered how often the nurse’s office was used by legitimately ill people and how often it was just people like me who needed a rest from the bleakness and misery of the world.

When I saw Kian’s handwriting, I knew he’d accepted that what had happened between us over spring break had only been a brief respite from the way our lives were going to look.