Chapter Eight
Everyone holds secrets that no one else knows.
Everyone’s done something that no one else knows.
We all have things we hope never see the light of day, sometimes small, sometimes big.
Whether it’s stealing a candy bar, or peeing in your work enemy’s iced tea, or sabotaging another student’s science project because they dry-humped your boyfriend.
Me? What’d Ido?
Oh, none of those examples.
All I did was keep a promise.
And I’m pretty sure if I believed in a hereafter it would mean my soul is damned for it.
As I settle into my role, it’s impossible for me to shake the quiet, ever-present clicks deep in my brain that won’t let me forget. When I can get a full night’s sleep not interrupted by nightmares, these clicks sometimes keep me awake and wonderingif tomorrow will betheday someone finally points a finger at me and rightfully accuses me.
Leaving me unable to believe I made it through another day without being discovered.
I wish that I could honestly say being President is the most difficult thing I’ve ever undertaken in my life. My first couple of months, the “hundred days” that are a fixation of every news anchor, aren’t any bumpierthan average. I don’t have to start any wars—military or trade—and I have one minor natural disaster to deal with when a blizzard hits the Northeast the second week of February and shuts down the New York City area and all surrounding airports for three days with record-breaking amounts of snow and ice.
I throw myself into my role because there is no other option. My first year is spent verballyjousting with outliers on both extremes of the political spectrum who try to hijack their parties’ respective attempts to find middle-ground with me to get along. A hurricane hits Texas and causes widespread flooding, and FEMA responds. Is it a perfect response? No, but no response ever is. We do the best we can, we learn from it, and we implement changes.
We don’t have any domestic terror attacksby foreign-inspired agents despite an uptick of them on the African continent, so yay.
We do have two mass shootings, however.
White Christian men.
It leads to yet another serious discussion about gun safety and universal background checks—and loonies insisting I’m going to ban guns although no, I’m not, even if Ihadthat power—and while I’m on the phone calling survivors and the familiesof victims, there’s a lot of hand-wringing on both sides of the political aisle for different reasons.
I only half-joke about getting the NRA declared a terrorist organization, and Kev reminds me not to joke about that anywhere else, because it’s a horrible optic even if it is a pretty good idea. We’ve worked too hard to court GOP voters who are tired of the bullshit their party’s extremiststry to shove down everyone’s throats, and we’re not interested in courting the extreme leftist members of the Democrats, because some of their talking points are just as toxic to our country as the far right.
We work our asses off to revamp the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Rights Amendment—the second of which covers nonbinary and transfolks, and includes protections based on orientation—andget new and improved versions of them passed with a heavy bipartisan vote.
We do a lot of good.
As I give my first State of the Union Address, I look out on the assembled lawmakers and realize this year has gone by damned fast.
Almost too fast.
I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of our agenda. I know presidents are supposed to pick a couple of key issues and focus on those orrisk getting nothing done, but it’s hard not to reach for everything.
To want to do it all.
I grew up with an unstoppable mother as my role model. I always envied and felt desperate to emulate her passion, her drive. She never made me feel like I was a disappointment, or that I wasn’t good enough.
I’ve done a pretty good job of that myself, though. I’ve noticed with age and wisdom and experiencealso come my self-doubts and recriminations. The farther I am from the point the woman who was my mother finally left this planet long before her actual body followed, the more garbage I pile on myself.
Have I lived up to expectations?
Have I made her proud?
Have I redeemed myself, even though all I did was keep a promise?
My mother was, in every way, the polar opposite of Kevin’s father.
