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sympathetic, to a point, but she was still under the illusion I was some kind of freedom fighter.
“You did what you felt you had to do, but I think it’s never wrong to speak truth to power. That’s why I’m a journalist. Well, a photographer. I’m trying to write for the paper. It’s such a boy’s club. I have a shot if I come up with a great scoop.”
“I didn’t mean to say whatever I said at the rally.”
She didn’t hear me. “Even more than promoting safer sex and drug use, you took on the establishment. A progressive leader does change lives by bucking the status quo.”
I wanted to say that it was a stretch to call me a progressive leader, since I didn’t have a real platform aside from restroom privacy, which was not so much a platform as a simple right. But I couldn’t get in a word. It was astounding how Rachel could say so much without taking a breath.
“People who run for office give the most boring speeches. Or they’re jocks and they just smirk and sway. But you have something special. Most candidates would say ‘don’t do heroin’ if they even mention it at all. But encouraging needle exchanges, that’s bold.”
“I did that?”
“Yes! And STD testing. A girl wrote an anonymous letter to the paper and said your speech made her think about getting tested. She said if it weren’t for you, she would have gone around spreading Chlamydia.”
Rachel had an even bigger agenda than praising me. She wanted to do a feature story on me. She would need three interviews, minimum. “This way you can do an end run around the administration. You can say what you want. Tell everyone the principal made you take back those things. And I think everyone wants to learn more about your life. At the risk of sounding selfish, this could be a career-making story for me. By career I mean my high school journalism career. If I do a great job they’ll have to make me a regular reporter.”
I said I wouldn’t make a good subject because I wouldn’t be SGA vice president, because Principal Nicks called off the election.
“That’s one more reason to do the story. Vindication. I promise I won’t write anything deleterious about you.”
“But you wouldn’t be writing a hagiography.”
She leaned in as if murmuring to a hidden microphone in my vest pocket. “You’re probably the only person in this school who knows the word hagiography.”
I agreed to meet her for one interview, with the option to do more if it didn’t go badly. Assuming she was truthful about wanting to write something semi-positive about me, I could use it in my application materials for Caltech.
Plus, she was likely one of a precious few at Firebird High who would use the word deleterious, let alone use it correctly.
The plan was to meet at lunch in the outdoor courtyard. Rachel insisted the interview would only take half the period. I expected her to show up during the first part of the period, but this didn’t happen. While I waited for her on my shady bench, I heard some guy shout, “Where’s our stall doors?” I knew it was directed at me. I raised my head and squinted at a group of students lounging in the sun at the next table. A girl in a halter top smiled—flirtingly?—at me. “Can we recall him if he doesn’t deliver?”
I informed her I was not in SGA, and, therefore, I could not be recalled.
A guy with spiked black hair talked with his mouth full. “Who beat you out?”
“He was the only one running.” This was from a girl who was draped over a muscular guy’s shoulder like a slutty squid.
“There was no election,” I said. I don’t think they heard me.
“Can you still distribute condoms and pot?” the muscle guy said.
 “The administration won’t allow it,” I said. “But they are open to distributing sex toys and heroin.”
Three seconds passed. Then they laughed. It was like I had given the secret password to their club. The halter-top girl waved me over. I scooted to the end of my table, close enough to