Checkmate

6| Overachiever

It takes a while for his words to sink in. After everything that's happened, Blake's new mission was an impossible feat – or at least, it should have been – but somehow, through legal or illegal means, I'm not sure, he found a way.

"How?" I ask. "I mean–" my sentence trails off as I'm left truly speechless. "How?"

Blake tilts his head. Despite the fact his face screams total disinterest, I could swear in his eyes is a glimmer of triumph. "With a lot of effort."

I'm ready to scream from the rooftops that I'm back, but my conscience gets the better of me. "Blake, if you forged these signatures–"

"I didn't forge them, all right?'

"Then how did you do it?" But he doesn't answer. I lean forward now, staring into the depths of his eyes like I'm trying to see through them. They're not just dark, I realize; they're the color of coal in the seconds it takes to ignite. "I know you think I'm willing to do anything to win, but I'm not. If you did something unethical to get those signatures–"

The corner of his mouth twitches. He lifts his vape and, through a cloud of smoke, says, "Believe it or not, I have friends – some of which owe me favors."

I feel my shoulders physically relax, but not by much. Fanning the smoke back, I say, "That's bad for your health."

"So is being around you."

I'm too excited to care about his insult, so instead, I pull my hair into an I-mean-business bun and grin. If I didn't hate him so much, I would hug him right now. "This is amazing," I say, "it means the first hurdle is over, and we can focus on my campaign. I have so many–"

"Easy," he says, putting a hand up. "You told me to get signatures, and I did. Campaign work is going to cost you extra."

"Extra? I'm already paying you two hundred dollars."

"Time is money."

For about a second, I contemplate grabbing the nearest pillow and smothering him with it. Teeth gritted, I say, "Fine," and pass over my presidential scrapbook, which I've worked on for three solid years.

He doesn't take it. "You are the poster child for an obsessive overachiever."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"It is."

My defenses go up like a barbed-wire forcefield. If this were pre-spring break, a comment like that would be forgotten in a second. I think it was the good things in life that protected me, the knowledge that I was – or at least close to – perfect: I had good friends, morals, good grades. I'd look at Blake, at the judgment in his eyes and his over-the-top hatred for all things pleasant, and I'd feel sorry for him. But now, as I sit here, those things of mine gone, so is the protection they gave me. "Someone like you would think that."

His eyebrow arches. "Someone like me?"

I hold up my fingers and start to tick off his list of undesirable qualities, of which I am certain there are many. "No dreams, no hopes, no ambition." I expect a sign that my insults have stung him, but nothing I say affects him.

"I have dreams," he says, "they're just a little more realistic than yours. People like you thrive in high school because it's safe. The rules are clear, you don't have to think; you just have to follow. The working world doesn't operate that way: it's messy and unfair, and those who get to the top in this bullshit capitalist society have usually had to sacrifice something in return."

This conversation is off the rails and not in a good way. "I think it's ironic that someone who claims to hate capitalism is constantly on their phone."