I sighed. “I don’t blame him. How the hell did it get to this?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a farce. You holding up okay?”
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “I’m more worried about the kids. How do we explain to them that the people in charge let it get this far?”
“We’ll be honest,” he said. “Most of them won’t be old enough to vote in this election, so it’s going to be a little harder, but they deserve to hear the truth. It’s better to be informed, to know all the options, than it is to be in the dark.”
“We have a rad black guy in office,” I grumbled. “And this is how they repay us.”
He snorted. “He probably won’t win, but even if he does, we’ll just be louder than we’ve ever been. It’s easy for outrage to turn to complacency. We can’t let that happen.”
I shuddered at the thought. “Can you imagine him as president? It would be a nightmare.”
“Probably. But it won’t change what we do. It can’t.”
He was right, though I was feeling dark about the whole thing. “It will if Marina wants to meet about what I think she does.”
“Yeah. But we’re not out of options yet. I might have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
I laughed, feeling a little better. “You do? I can’t wait to see this.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “You doubt me? I feel like I should be offended.”
“Oh, you should be. I swear to god, if we have to turn my life into some sort of eighties movie where we have to save the youth center, I’m going to flip. I’ve already been trapped in a similar plot, and it was the most ridiculous thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not,” I said. “It involved Sandy thinking Jack It was going to close, and required us to go undercover for reasons I’m still not quite sure about. I looked amazing. Paul was Agnes Beaverton.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear as he bellowed out a laugh. “Paul was what? You have to tell me now.”
I sat down on my bed against the headboard, pulling the comforter over my legs. “Buckle up, my friend. I’m about to blow your mind, and you’ll probably reconsider ever wanting to hang out with us again.”
“Nah,” he said. Then, “I doubt anything you could do or say would drive me away.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to calm my racing heart. “You say that now. Just you wait. Okay, so it all started when Sandy wanted to fuck the Homo Jock King, but Darren was an asshole who only screwed twinks as a way to cope with the fact that he was a little dead on the inside, as most man whores are.”
“Wow,” he said faintly. “Just… going right for it, aren’t you? I take it back. I don’t want to know any more.”
“Too late! Anyway, Mike, the oily snake salesman slash owner of Jack It, told Sandy that the bar would close unless Sandy seduced Darren in order to get to his father….”
We talked late into the night. By the time we hung up, it was nearing one in the morning.
I slept better than I had in a long time.
THE KIDS were upset.
Of course they were.
We had reassured them we didn’t think Cheeto would get the nomination. That had been a mistake on our part, and one I was having a hard time forgiving myself for. And it made me angry that it had ever happened at all, that we would have to tell children we didn’t know what was going to happen next. That’s the shitty part about being an adult overseeing a group of minors: we’re supposed to have all the answers. We were supposed to explain to them the hows and the whys, all while we ourselves were still reeling.
Diego was the most worked up, and I didn’t blame him. Even Kai couldn’t seem to calm him down, though they tried. His eyes blazed as he paced, ranting and raving. He was getting the other kids upset, and I knew we needed to… not curb it, exactly, but try to get him to understand that the fight wasn’t over. It was just beginning.
“It’s part of the process,” I said slowly. “And people will most likely vote for him no matter what he says or does. But whoever gets the Democratic nomination will be going up against him. And think. They’ll have to debate in front of the entire country. Who knows what will happen then?”
“Right,” Diego scoffed. “Because that’ll make things better. Bring in the old white guy or the old white woman to face off against the devil. That’ll show him.”
He had a point, though I didn’t say it out loud. “It’s how things are.” I felt a little out of my depth. I had voted in the last election for the first time, but I hadn’t really paid attention. Not as much as I should have. I’d been barely older than these kids were now.