I Swear

5. JILLIAN

I was pulling into the back parking lot when I saw Brad sprinting toward me; his long, lean frame didn’t pause until he was sitting in my passenger seat.

“Drive,” he said.

“What?”

“Starbucks. Now.”

“Brad, we have like eight minutes until first period starts.”

“No first period today—Jenkins is calling an assembly as soon as the reporters clear out.”

I stepped on the gas.

I had seen the satellite dishes on the cluster of vans when I’d arrived this morning, and even though I was a thousand feet away on the next corner, I knew that Macie was standing in the epicenter, holding court. The only thing more spot-on than her fashion sense is her acumen for media relations.

She comes by it honestly.

When we were in kindergarten, her dad ran for city council. In fourth grade he was elected mayor. In eighth grade the good people of Seattle sent him to the state legislature. He was gunning for D.C. next, and if his movie star looks and silver tongue were any indication, he’d be there before we finished college. It’s weird—he’s got this magnetic pull. When he talks to you, you feel like you’re the only person in the room, even though you’re never the only person in the room. It’s always a mob scene when he’s around—even when it’s just his family.

Macie has four brothers—two older, two younger. Mikey, Matty, Manny, and Marty. (Yeah, I know. Who does that to their kids?) They’re not Mormons or anything. I don’t even think Macie’s mom and dad even particularly wanted a big family. Truth be told, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They still can’t.

Macie is definitely Daddy’s girl.

“She’s our rose among the thorns,” her dad always says, beaming, when he’s introducing the family on election night, after he declares victory. Her brothers look like a boy band—Mikey is the jock, Matty is the adorkable nerd, Manny is the skinny emo boy with the long bangs, and Marty is . . . well, the disaster. He’s been smoking pot since he was ten, and the rumors about his drug use almost took down Mr. Merrick’s campaign for state senate.

Watching him pull that one out of the fire was surreal. There was an ad that ran almost every commercial break during the local and national newscasts on the Big Three networks. It was a steady shot that had Mr. Merrick staring directly into the camera, eyes welling up but not shedding a single tear. This was righteous rage. This was the iron hand of justified anger. Macie and I stood right behind the camera and watched him in take after take as he leveled his gaze and squared his jaw and said, “The slander must stop. I’ll stand up for you, like I stand up for my son. Let’s circle the wagons and clean up Olympia.”

It was after our first day of eighth grade—I’ll never forget it: We were standing behind the camera guy while we watched the director and the campaign manager fight it out. Even though we were off to one side and in the corner, Macie was right in the middle of it. Her eyes were almost as bright as her father’s are when a key light hits them. She couldn’t get enough. She was quiet as her dad drove us home from the set. Everybody was quiet. No one was sure if the commercial would work, and if he didn’t win this race, it’d be at least two years before Mr. Merrick could run for anything again.

We were pulling into her driveway when Macie broke the silence.

“Jillian and I are running for student council at Westport next year.”

It was so matter-of-fact, so confident—but more than confident. It was shrewd, like she had a secret. I looked at her, then glanced up at her dad’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

A movie star smiled back with eyes that welled up but didn’t shed a single tear.

Everybody thinks it was that commercial that saved his race for state senate, but they forget that after our first day of eighth grade, Mr. Merrick went after it like he’d never campaigned before. He stood on cars at dealerships, cut ribbons at grocery stores, served food to the homeless, and attended four fund-raising dinners one Friday night and was up at five a.m. cooking pancakes at a Catholic church the next morning.

He was everywhere.

No one remembers that Marty disappeared to “stay with relatives” in Nevada somewhere for the whole month of October. They remember only that Mike Merrick was on every newscast for a month straight. They sort of cock their collective head to one side and barely remember the commercial if you mention it, but I know that the fire behind Mr. Merrick’s fight that fall wasn’t the ad at all.

It was that moment in the driveway when Macie went into the family business.

• • •

The Starbucks across the street from the school was almost empty when we pulled up. I parked way back on the side so nobody would see us. Brad ordered while I sat slumped in a leather club chair, staring out the front door and across the street at the ring of news vans. Piano jazz tinkled into my ears and the rhythm matched the syncopated sickness in my stomach. I jumped when my phone did—a text from Jake: Where are you?

This was ridiculous. I couldn’t avoid him forever.

I swallowed as I tapped a finger onto the screen so that I could reply, but then Brad set down my Venti skinny vanilla latte and started pouring raw-sugar packs into his Grande drip.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

I held the phone out so he could see the text from my brother.

“I can’t run from him all day, Brad. He sleeps down the hall.”

“But you don’t have to see him before I do.”

Brad and Jake have been best friends since kindergarten. Since the summer they started playing football together in the park down the street. Since girls had cooties.

“Lemme take this one, Jills.”

I put down the phone and picked up my latte. It was sweet, and warm on my lips. As I sipped it, I stared into Brad’s brown eyes. He was always so sure that nothing was really wrong, so confident that it could be “handled.” He was the cool, collected pragmatist to Jake’s headstrong hothead.

Katherine had summed it up best one night last summer: “That boy don’t care if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”

I smiled as I thought of it. Brad caught me and grinned back. “Atta girl,” he said, wiping some foam off my upper lip with his fingertip. He popped it into his mouth and raised his eyebrows at me when he licked it off.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

He grabbed my hand and helped me up.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he said.