Like, Power
Tai sat down on one of he benches in front of the cafeteria. She looked down on her debate assignment, where Mr. Hall had written in small, neat handwriting: "'All power tends to corrupt. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.' Lord Acton." And below that, the awful word, "Discuss".
She groaned. Her grades had gone up a bit since she stopped smoking around Travis. Maybe she should quit the dope altogether. Her grades still weren't good enough for this. This was...
She tried splitting it into smaller pieces. "Power" she understood, and "absolutely." "Corrupt" -- well, she'd heard the word. Josh had told her once that she shouldn't let Cher corrupt her, and she had pretended to know what he was talking about. At least she knew it was something bad. Bad influence, something like that.
Power tends to have a bad influence?
Hang on. She actually got that. It was like when she was all popular and she was so really mean to Travis even though he'd done nothing to deserve it. The surprise of actually getting what Mr. Hall was talking about made her crack into a surprised grin. But she could hardly write about how she'd been mean to Travis. Mr. Hall would say it was off topic. Cher could get away with that sort of thing, but despite all the things Tai had learned from her, that was still a mystery.
"Hey, Tai, what's up?" That was Cher now, taking a seat opposite her. Before Tai could get a word in, she continued, "Dionne and Murray are having a fight again, and I'm so not staying around for that, and in any case, Josh is picking me up in, like, ten minutes, so it's not like I'm gonna be alone, but I'd still rather sit with you. You know?"
"Yeah, okay," Tai said, moving her books aside a bit. "Have you seen the debate assignment?"
Cher opened her eyes wide in horror. "It's awful, isn't it? It's like that Haitian thing all over again. Mr. Hall must have marital problems, if you ask me. Probably time to assist him further -- it worked so well last time. Anyway, I called Josh just now, and he has promised to help me out, so I'm not worried."
"Oh," Tai said, feeling a bit jealous. She hadn't done that in months -- she was way over Josh -- but sometimes it would be kind of nice to have a brainy boyfriend like that. "Do you think he'd help me too?"
"Sure!" Cher said, making a generous gesture. "Evil homework is, like, our common denominator, and we have to fight it together, you know what I'm saying?"
"...yes?" Tai offered, not entirely sure that she did, but she knew Cher was in a good mood, and that was a step in the right direction.
"Cool. Oh, there he is now!" Cher started waving cheerfully and half-ran towards the halting car. Tai followed with a bit less enthusiasm. Being around Josh and Cher when everyone was together was one thing, but the two of them plus her made her feel majorly weird. Not like the third wheel, exactly, more like she was doing something naughty. Like, dude, she'd had a crush on Josh once, and Cher was... Cher. And it was a lot easier to remember that the two of them were all couple-y when she was with Travis, and Murray and Dionne were there, so that they could all be all couple-y. Now, she felt a bit anxious as she stepped into the back seat.
Cher didn't seem to notice anything, though. "Hi," she said, giving Josh a quick kiss. "Can you help Tai with her homework too?"
"Sure," Josh said, smiling over his shoulder. "Hi, Tai. Do you guys have the same subject?"
"Yeah," she said nervously. "That whole power corrupts thing."
He nodded, pulling the car out. With his eyes on the road, he asked, "So what do you have so far?"
"Huh?"
"Any thoughts? Ideas?"
"Oh yeah," Cher said, throwing Tai a sympathetic grimace. "I forgot to tell you about that. Josh has this thing about everyone doing the essential parts of their homework on their own. It's a real drag."
"Well, otherwise it wouldn't be helping," he said, tugging her hair a little. "It would be cheating. And we can't have that, can we?"
"Of course not!" Cher said sunnily.
They kissed again. Tai looked out the window. There were all kinds of cool things by the roads in Beverly Hills that you could look at. Shops and stuff. She could look at them for a while.
"So," Josh said when he got his mouth to himself, "No thoughts at all?"
"No," she said. "Well, yes. But it's dumb."
"Hit me."
"Okay," she said, trying to put into words what she had thought before. "I figured it's like... well, a bit like... when I was so mean to Travis."
"You mean when you first became popular," Cher said, looking kind of interested.
Tai blushed. "Yeah." It disturbed her that Cher -- fabulous, but totally self-involved Cher -- had noticed. She must've been really bad.
"Okay," Josh said, sounding pretty doubtful. Tai shifted in her seat. "So what you're saying is... popularity is a sort of power?"
"I guess," she said. "Isn't it?"
"Oh, it is," he assured her. "So once you reached your position of power -- became popular -- you were mean to Travis. Why?"
"Uh... because he was a stoner?"
"No," Josh said, frowning, "Not what you were mean to him about, but the reason you were mean to him."
"I think she got that," Cher chimed in. "You've been to high school, right, Josh? You know the concept of in-crowds?"
Realization dawned on Josh's face. "And stoners aren't it."
"Yeah," Tai said in a very small voice.
"So, why would you..." Josh paused by a pedestrian crossing, letting two old women with 20-year-old faces walk by. "Let me rephrase that. If you hadn't been mean to him, what would have happened?"
She thought about that. She had changed it so many times in her head, said something nice to Travis so he wouldn't get that sad, confused puppy-dog look... and then what?
"They would have known I liked him," she said. "And maybe I wouldn't have been popular anymore."
She could see Cher glancing away in embarrassment. So she knew it was true. It just wasn't something you talked about.
"Okay, great!" Josh said, grinning so broadly Tai felt a treacherous flutter in her stomach. "You were afraid of losing power. So would you consider that a reason why power corrupts?"
"Yes?" she said, hoping that was the right answer.
"Okay. Make a note of it."
She dug through her bag, getting out a notebook, and after much more searching, a pen. While she was trying to fit the discussion down on words on a paper, Cher burst out, "Hey, there's Christian!"
Cher then proceeded to open the door while the car was still running and yell, "Christian!"
Josh flinched, which caused the car to swerve across the road, honking sounds coming from all around them.
"Jesus, Cher!" Tai said, catching her notebook from sliding down her lap. Her pen, however, rolled down and under the seat. "No wonder you never got your license."
That was another part of this whole popularity/power thing, she guessed. A couple of months ago, she could never have said shit like that to someone like Cher. Now she could, only she didn't really want to. Well, okay, so right now she wanted to, because Cher was acting like such a huge ass, but even now she felt ashamed of it.
And that was one thing she couldn't explain. They kept working together on the homework all through the night, and Josh was very helpful and it was totally cool that he took the time, seeing how he was in college and all, but she still couldn't get that question out: if popularity is power and power corrupts, how come you could have that power and not want to use it?
It was Christian she finally asked. He seemed like the safest person to turn to, seeing how she'd never been in love with him (thank God, falling for a gay guy would've been so humiliating, and she sure didn't envy Cher that experience).
"I'm not sure I follow," he said when she'd blurted out the question.
"Well, it's like... I could say stuff about people, and get away with it, but I don't. Why don't I?"
He took a soda can from the fridge and opened it, taking a swig before answering, "You might get a reputation of being a bitch."
That was true, but it didn't actually fly. She'd been along long enough to know that certain news would make it easy to forget the messenger. "Not if it was true stuff. Really secret true stuff."
"Like what?" he asked, jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter.
Like what Cher and Dionne do when they think no one is watching. She didn't say that. Maybe Christian knew, maybe it wasn't the big secret she thought it was, but she wasn't taking any chances. Instead, she rolled her eyes. "Like, I'm not telling you."
"Fair enough." He drank slowly from the soda can and then suggested, "Maybe you just want to be nice."
"I do want to be nice!" she said, tapping her fingers against the note book. "But if that whole power corrupts thing is true, wanting the power should matter more."
He shrugged. "Well, maybe it's not true, then."
She faltered at that. The idea of trying to prove the quote wrong seemed like an F waiting to happen. "You think?"
"Or," he amended, "it's because being nice is hard, and doing something hard is a kind of power in itself."
Whoa, now she had two options. She didn't want to have two options. "So which one is it?"
"How should I know?" he asked. "Both?"
Cher called his name from inside the living room, and he hopped off the counter, giving Tai an encouraging smile as he left. "You'll figure it out."
Trouble was, she wasn't so sure she would. She could just see Mr. Hall's expression if she tried to suggest that these two things were both right at once. And to make it all worse, she could think of a third option: if she told people about Dionne and Cher, then they wouldn't want to hang with her, and they'd never ever offer to let her join them.
That was probably the real reason she'd never tell on them -- but she couldn't write that in her paper.
She sat down on a chair and moaned. She should never have let Josh start asking her those questions in the car. It had made her think, and now she didn't know how to put a stop to it. Things would be so much easier if she could just smoke some weed and write whatever came to mind. But she had to be loyal to Travis's struggle, and in any case popular girls didn't do that.
She'd just have to figure this out somehow.
Tai's heart was pounding like crazy, and at first she dared hardly look at the paper Mr. Hall had put down in front of her. Then she slowly lowered her eyes -- and they widened at what they saw. She jerked her head up and stared at Travis across the room, trying to catch his eye. When he looked up, she mimed, B!
His forehead creased. What?
I got a B!
He shook his head, still not understanding.
"I got a B," she repeated out loud.
She could see the shock on his face as the penny dropped. "You got a B?"
"I got a B!" she confirmed, nodding enthusiastically.
"Holy shit!" Travis shouted, jumping up to stand on his chair. "She got a B!"
Mr. Hall stopped his tour around the room to deliver the papers. "Mr. Birkenstock, as happy as I am that you and Ms. Fraiser show such overwhelming appreciation for a good grade -- and Ms. Fraiser, may I say I hope there will be many more -- perhaps it would be best if you stepped off your chair."
Travis didn't just step off the chair, he practically leaped off it and into Tai's arms. "My girlfriend is a genius!"
She hugged him back. "Isn't it great?"
"I'm so proud of you!"
In the rush of happiness, she looked over his shoulder at Cher, who was giving her a wide grin. Oh, wow. She'd done more than make her boyfriend proud -- she'd made her mentor proud as well. Tai Fraiser had officially bought a clue.