35
The Buck Stops Here
“What drives me bananas,” Muriel said, swishing her scarves, “isthat every teacher I’ve talked to thinks Sonny and Kai endorsed Governor Mane because he promised better reform than Logan.”
“And they’re not going to know the truth until after they help Mane get elected.” I sighed, not bothering to pick my head up off the table. Now that my status as the Teacher’s Champion was revoked—Governor Mane, not Logan, was in vogue at Barton Springs—Muriel, Gia, and I had been relegated back to the grossest table in the teacher’s lounge, the one closest to the microwave. Someone had reheated eggs for lunch, but I was too despondent to do anything but waste away in microwaved-egg air. New Alexis might be a strong, independent person who didn’t wallow, but exceptions had to be made for certified romantic disasters, such as enduring the emotional equivalent of two breakups in one night. Luckily, I had enough professional disasters to distract Muriel and Gia from asking me about the romantic ones.
“I just think if we told people the truth, they’d want to fight back,” Gia said. “The union’s supposed to represent all of us. And look at them, going about their lives. They’re clueless.”
Dutifully, Muriel and I looked around the lounge at the other teachers. They did look rather blissfully obtuse, eating their antibiotic yogurts and doing crossword puzzles, unaware they were about to get betrayed by Sonny and Kai and run over by a speeding train of budget cuts.
“Even if we did manage to spread the word,” I said, “what makes you think people would believe me over the president and secretary of the TEA?”
“Honey.” Muriel rested a warm hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been showing up nonstop for educators. I think you should trust they would show up for you.”
In my experience, you couldn’t trust other people to reciprocate your feelings: not your devotion, your care, or even your loyalty. But I sat up in my chair, the wheels in my mind turning. “Let’s say we did manage to spread the word and people actually believed me that Sonny and Kai made a shady deal. How do we...change anything?” We couldn’t hold another rally because I didn’t have the expertise to plan one—you needed permits and manpower and all sorts of things real activists knew that I didn’t. Besides, time was running out.
“Hmm,” said Gia. Silence fell as we thought. What had I learned in my time with the campaign? I had to have picked up some useful lessons. I tried to remember things I’d heard Nora say. “You have to hit them where it hurts.” I tapped my foot, thinking harder. “You get people’s attention by dialing up the pressure. You should always look for leverage.”
“What kind of leverage do we have?” Muriel mused.
I looked around the lounge at the other teachers. Eating their brown bag lunches because no one could afford to go out. Dutifully making crafts for their classrooms during their lunch hour. And it hit me. “We’rethe leverage. No matter how hard we get dicked over by lawmakers—”
Half a dozen heads turned to give me censorious looks.
“Sorry. No matter how hard we getjerked overby lawmakers, we keep showing up. The day after they told us they were cutting our retirement savings, what did we do?”
“We came to work like always,” Muriel said.
Gia’s eyes lit up. “You want to stage a walkout.”
“Think about it.” My mind was whirring a mile a minute. “No one has to get event permits or T-shirt cannons. All we have to do is...stay home. And we make a statement reporters can’t ignore.”
“It’s genius,” Muriel said. She thumbed through her phone. “I’ll start calling my contacts from the Library Council.”
“I’ll call my friends from the TEA who won’t leak it to Sonny and Kai,” Gia said. “The TEA has a massive contact list. We can use Sonny and Kai’s own resources against them.”
“Perfect,” I said. “And call your families, too. We’ll need to get a phone bank running if we’re going to reach a ton of people fast.” I picked up my own phone and thought, for a fleeting moment, of calling Logan. Then I remembered his disappointed face in the lamplight. No matter what, though, I wanted to do this. Not just for my fellow educators, but for him. Even if he never talked to me again, I wanted to help Logan win more than anything.
So I’d call Nora to inform the campaign. But first, I would call my secret weapon. The queen of making a scene, my own one-woman political tornado, the lady whose antics never failed to go viral: my dear sister, Lee. It was time to put both the Stone sisters into action.
36
A Moment of Vision
“Get ready,” Nora said, beaming. I barely had time to take a breathbefore she swung open the conference room door and the entire campaign team leaped to their feet and clapped. “Say hello,” Nora called, “to the woman who saved our asses.”
They cheered even louder. Cary wolf whistled and led a chant of“Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.”I covered my face with my hands, completely overwhelmed. Thanks to the walkout, I’d barely gotten any sleep for the last four days, and now I was bone-tired, which meant I was wearing my heart on my sleeve. Nora only laughed and pushed me into the room.
“Thank you,” I said, as staffers hugged me and clapped me on the back. “Thank you so much.”
“Shh,” someone hissed. “It’s about to start.”
Everyone’s eyes turned to the giant TV that had been wheeled into the corner. Cary grabbed the remote and dialed the volume up as Trisha Smith’s face filled the screen. With everyone’s attention off me, I did a quick scan for Logan. My heart lurched.
“He’s hammering out the details with union reps,” Nora whispered. “Otherwise, he would’ve been here.”
I nodded, forcing my spine to straighten. I’d accomplished the single greatest feat of my career, and nothing would diminish that.
