Mafia Girl (3 page)

You probably think I’m being paranoid, that no one really has it in for me.

Wrong.

I’ve just locked the bathroom stall door behind me when Christy Collins and Georgina Richards, the two-faced Brit twit, walk into the bathroom. They obviously know I’m there because I’m sure they toe peeped, and who else wears purple or green Louboutins with four-inch heels and nail heads, even when it snows? At first whiff I know it’s Christy because she wears massive amounts of musk oil or something else that she must think smells hot but actually smells like pond scum.

“This school has really gone downhill since they let that Mafia bitch in,” she says.

“Really,” says Georgina.

“I mean look at who her dad is,” Christy says. “How can they do that? She and that other one are total mafioso trash.”

I sit coiled up like a rattlesnake poised to strike. The plural is mafiosi, I’m tempted to call out, but never mind that. How could they let Christy into the school when her dad works on Wall Street and who ever thought we should bail out
those
people?

Pins and needles make my legs tingle.

The door slams finally and it’s quiet again. I go out and wash my hands, scrubbing too hard. I strut down the corridor almost passing the school election table, but I stop when the kid behind the desk smiles at me.

“Thinking of running, Gia?”

He’s actually serious
. I smile and shrug, stifling a laugh.
Me? Run for president?

On the desk are applications and white pencils with
The Morgan School
in magenta. I reach for one and slip it between my teeth. Then I move on.

President. How would that go over? A total goof? Or not? Maybe I could actually wake this place up and bring it into this century.

I put the thought aside.

But when I’m in the library after school with Ro and Clive, I poll them. “What do you guys think about me running for class president— truthfully?”

“Gia, you would be the absolute best,” Clive says. “Yes, yes, definitely, and I’ll be your campaign manager and your front man or whatever.”

“I’ll be your assistant campaign manager,” Ro says. “And we can put posters all over the school and you can make speeches about how the students need more power and—Gia, you have to do it, you have to.”

I think about it for a total of about eleven seconds, then slap my hand on the desk. “I’m running.”

Clive and Ro applaud and the librarian shoots us a dirty look. “SSSSSHHHHH,” she says, putting her finger to her lips.

We give her a dirty look back because how stupid is that ssssshushing crap when you’re in the library?

“Pizza anyone?” Clive says, looking back pointedly at the librarian.

We go out for thin crust whole wheat pizza and spinach calzones and talk more about what we’ll do to get me elected. We only have one month to make me the best candidate.

When you’re seriously running for office, you do it not only because if you win you can lord your power over everyone, but also because you supposedly believe you can help the school. So you have to come up with campaign pledges and convince people that you’re the one to end some of the bullshit school rules like no flip-flops or ripped jeans or texting in the stairwell and maybe promise that if you’re elected, the food in the dining hall will improve because Daniel Boulud will be hired as a catering consultant, and so on.

So Clive and Ro and I and a new girl named Candy who just moved to New York from LA decide to brainstorm to come up with my platform.

Unlike everyone else at Morgan, Candy didn’t know my name when she first heard it. Or said she didn’t. What she immediately glommed onto was my shoe and bag collection, which instantly put me on her A list. Not to mention that Morgan kids don’t exactly open their arms to outsiders, so until she met me, she used to sit alone.

“OMIGOD!” she yelled one day and blocked my path as I walked down the corridor. “I’d kill for those shoes.”

I looked back at her straight-faced, then cracked up.

So now we all sit around talking about my campaign platform and as usual Candy starts out by using her hometown as her default point.

“In LA my school had a screening night and we would show these incredible new movies before they opened, so maybe you could set up screenings here like that to bring people together.”

“That would be totally cool,” Clive says.

I look at Ro and she looks back at me, raising an eyebrow. Dante gets bootleg versions of new movies that we watch before he eBays them.

“Done,” I say. “Next.”

 “You’re running against Jordan Hassel, that jock a-hole,” Ro says. “So you have to beat him at his own game. What if we set up a monthly fund-raiser for kids with cancer and give the highest bidder front row Knicks tickets that I’m sure we could get for free?”

“How do you get those?” Candy asks.

“Done. Next.”

“I’m for raising money for more scholarships,” I say. “That way this place can reflect the real world.”

“Amen,” Clive says.

By the end of the hour we have my platform. We are going to blow Jordan Hassel and Christy’s best friend, Brandy Tewl—I swear that is her last name—out of the water. The only thing Brandy has going for her is that her dad runs a chain of restaurants so she has her pick of places for parties. Brandy’s campaign slogan is “stop the bullying,” which is fairly amusing since she and Christy and Georgina are the biggest bullies going.

“You need a one-sentence campaign slogan,” Clive says. “It has to be catchy, like nine-nine-nine or whatever.”

I look at Ro and Ro looks at me. Clive looks at me and I look at Clive. Clive looks at Candy and Candy looks at Clive. I look at Candy and Candy looks at me.

“I have no idea,” I say. “But it will come to me.”

“Well, think it up fast,” Ro says, “because we have to get started on the posters.”

I go home and check online. Most of the slogans are vacuous garbage:
A New Beginning, A New Voice, Hope for Tomorrow
.

I don’t know how, but I know that by the time I come back to school in the morning, it will come to me.

Interspersed with thoughts
about becoming president of Morgan are my obsessive musings about Officer Hottie, whose face now appears in my head 24/7.

Only how do you track down a cop? He’s not on Facebook. No mentions on Google. He’s not in the phone book because on a cop’s salary he probably can’t afford a landline. I don’t have the nerve to call the precinct because they’d ask who I am and what it’s about, and what am I supposed to say, I’m chasing the guy who hauled us in for DUI, resisting arrest, and whatever the hell else the charges were?

“Maybe we could go speeding up the Henry Hudson again,” I say to Ro, only half kidding.

“Gia. Someone like you does not fall for a cop. He wants to fry your tail. He wants your whole family to fry. He’s probably up nights fantasizing about locking up your dad, so wake the fuck up.”

“You’re right, Ro.”

“And you are full of it, Gia.”

I am sitting in the white canopied bed that I got for my ninth birthday when I was convinced that sleeping in a princess bed was all it took to turn me into one.

And now like a third grader I am on top of the world because I have a brand-new jumbo pack of sixty-four magic markers—orange, red, blue, green, purple, yellow, brown, black, maroon, and what have you—along with calligraphy pens and rulers and fifty sheets of oak tag for my campaign posters fanned out around me.

The marketing possibilities are empowering and I’m getting that amped-up first-day-of-school high before reality hits. I’m trying to dream up smart pledges and promises and ways to get people to vote for me because I would definitely enjoy winning, but more importantly, I would rejoice at seeing Christy and Georgina and their tool friend crash-land and burn in loserdom even though on some level I could care less whether or not people agree with me, especially the kind that go to Morgan.

That said, I still do not yet have a campaign slogan. And if I don’t stop writing Michael Cross in thirteen different fonts in every color and size, I am going to blow my chances of competing in this so-called election, which would not help me on the road to my secret plan for the future.

The phone rings. Clive.

“How are you doing?” he asks in his sweet, innocent, almost musical voice. “Have you come up with anything?”

“Uh…not yet,” I say, filling in the
a
,
e
, and
o
in Michael Cross’s name with my hottest pink marker.

Clive doesn’t know about Michael and what happened, so I tell him.

“Oh my God, Gia,” he says. “Did they drop the charges?”

“Super Mario is on it. But my bigger problem is the cop.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s my latest and greatest crush.”

“Do you know what I think, Gia? I think you should forget him.”

“You sound like Ro.”

“Well, she’s right. It won’t end well. I mean a—”

“I’m not worrying about how it will end, Clive, I’m worrying about how and when it will begin because I can’t even find him.”

“What’s his name?”

I hear keys clicking and he’s spelling out M-i-c-h-a-e-l C-r-o-s-s. “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” he sighs, “but I’m doing it. I am. I’m hacking into my dad’s system…terrific…so give me five minutes and we’ll see.”

I end the call and begin pacing my room. How can Clive find him? Does his dad have some spy network he plugs into? Connections with the police? All I know is if anyone can figure it out…

I jump when the phone rings.

“Gia,” he says. “This is your lucky day. Your guy is a rookie cop who works out of a precinct in Washington Heights, and FYI his dad was a cop too. There’s more stuff, only there’s this security block and I have to find a way to get the password…and I will…eventually. But anyway, Michael Sean Cross lives two blocks from the precinct and I checked Google Earth and there’s a bar called Uptown Lounge half a block away that’s described as a hangout for off-duty cops. So it’s not a stretch to imagine him hanging out there because—”

“How did you
do
that? ”

“My dad has this resource.”

“Resource?”

“Sometimes he needs information fast,” he says, which doesn’t explain anything.

“I owe you.
Any
thing. Tell me…a Fendi weekender?”

“Just the slogan,” Clive says. “And it has to be good. We have to blow them out of the water. I can’t face being on the losing ticket.”

“It will be, I swear.”

“Off to Clive’s,” I tell my mom. “School stuff.”

“What? At this hour?”

“I’ll be back soon. We can’t do this on the phone.”

“Why not?”

“Maaa, it’s
math
. Do you want me to fail? It’s complicated.”

“Frankie will drive you,” she says

“Clive’s driver is on his way. Don’t worry.”

My dad is out and my mom buys it because even though I’m grounded, this is schoolwork. I hail a cab a block from my street. It’s raining lightly and the pavement glistens under all the red and green traffic lights giving the world a fresh Christmassy glow. And yes, okay, this feels right and special and positive and maybe there is some kind of magic in the air and this will work out because it’s preordained, if you believe things like that. And when I’m feeling out-there and directionless, which is most of the time although I try not to admit it, I do start to think there has to be a bigger plan that I can’t exactly see, because how else can you explain the way things work?

Anyway, even if it’s all a crapshoot, I guess I’ll survive. I check my watch because I don’t have much time for fairy-tale magic, especially on a school night when I could definitely get caught by my dad who sometimes has me tailed, and that makes me nervous and I don’t want to be, and shit, if I at least had a beer.

And then there’s the bar. A grunge bar? Who would be there? Old guys? Ex cops? Off-duty cops? Drug dealers? Junkies? Would the assholes hit on me? Would the bartender see my fake ID and toss my sorry ass onto the street or worse call the cops, which would be a laugh, then again, crap, Super Mario has enough on his plate and he does
not
need more from me. Washington Heights isn’t exactly Park Avenue and, Gia, I remind myself, you are a candidate for school president and you don’t need something
else
for them to throw at you because half the kids are already convinced that you’re a lowlife.

Then for some reason the idea of once again being driven back to that derelict precinct—like hello, instant replay, rewind, do over—cracks me up, and if you are out by yourself laughing so hard you’re in pain, you definitely look like a psycho.

“What’s so funny?” asks the cab driver.

“Inside joke.”

“Inside joke, what’s ‘inside joke?’” he says with an accent from someplace not on my got-to-go-to itinerary.

“Uh…well…” Then my phone rings.

“Where are you?” Ro asks.

“Going up to the bar to meet Officer Hottie,” I say, laughing harder at that than the fact that I’m running for president.

“Gia, what are you on?”

I look out the window. “Dyckman Street.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“We’re here, lady,” the driver says.

“Gotta go, Ro.”

“Be careful,” she whispers.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” I hang up before she can answer and use the backseat as a dressing room, peeling off my flannel shirt, spraying it with cologne because it stinks, and stuffing it in my bag, and then changing into heels while the driver is repeating, “What’s inside joke? What’s inside joke?”

“Something funny…to only you and your friends…like my sorry life.”

I slam the door, inhale, and stare at the sky. It’s dark and hazy and I can’t find even one teensy star to wish upon and this is all so…out of the box.

Then it hits me. I have my campaign slogan.

Mick Jagger is singing
as I walk in.
I can’t get no…no no no…no SAT-IS-FAC-TION
, which makes me think that maybe God has my direct line after all. I hold up my head and push past the crowd along the bar.