Free Mafia Girl by Deborah Blumenthal

my feet. They schedule the debate for an assembly that is only forty-five minutes long and everyone is invited to submit questions, which a committee of teachers will then sort through to pick the best.
    Our next move is to prepare me, and Clive salivates at the thought. That afternoon instead of going home I get permission from my dad to go home with Clive who transforms himself into one of the more obnoxious kids in school and fires questions at me, pretending he’s holding a microphone:
    “Gia, tell us in a sentence or two why you think you’d make a better president than anyone else in this school?
    “What is the first thing you’d do if you became president?
    “What do you see as the biggest shortcomings in our school and how would you address them?
    “Our biggest strength?
    “What qualifications do you bring to the job?
    “Have you held office in other schools?
    “What would you do to stop bullying in our school?
    “How would you help make the school more diverse?”
    If all that isn’t exhaustive enough, he goes on YouTube and gets a video of the Kennedy-Nixon debates like I could definitely apply lessons from those to what I would say at Morgan.
    “Clive, you’re taking this pretty seriously.”
    He takes that as a compliment. “I’m just trying to think of everything I can to prepare you, Gia, because you know how those people can get.”
    “I don’t know, not really.”
    Aside from Christy and her garbage mouth group, I don’t know what to expect, and anyway, I really can’t concentrate because my attention keeps flipping back and forth between reality and my fantasies of Michael Cross, who, of course, has not reached out and touched me and probably never will because Mr. Hot Cop is probably totally chickenshit.
    But Clive isn’t thinking about Michael. He’s thinking about making me class president. So we drill and drill and drill until he thinks I’m ready.
    “I’m surprised you haven’t rented out a TV studio to stage a mock debate on camera,” I mutter when it’s nearly ten.
    “I should have thought of that,” he says.
    I finally pack up and leave his building at ten thirty and while I’m going down in the elevator I’m not thinking about the election anymore or the stupid people or the questions they will throw at me, because on my phone I see something I’ve never seen before.
    A text. From Michael.

THIRTEEN
    I get a cab on Fifth and as it goes south I look again to make sure that I really saw it.
    Off at 11. Meet?
    Cardiac arrest. Yes. Where?
    Simone Martini Bar. Know it?
    Yes. Actually no, I don’t. What was I thinking? I google it and find it in the East Village on First Avenue and St. Marks Place. Then the name Simone Martini sets off memory bells so I google that and realize why.
    Simone Martini was an Italian painter from Siena (1280–1344) who they talked about in art history. We saw a painting of his from this online tour of the Uffizi in Florence, which was cool. And then I remember that he painted a portrait of a woman named Laura something who the poet Petrarch was crazed over and sort of stalked.
    Instead of going home, I get out in the village and call my mom, mumbling something about meeting a friend to work on the campaign some more so I’ll be home later, but not really late. Who knows if she believes me, but my mom doesn’t have the strength to check out all the stories I dream up and my dad is out and I know she’s in the middle of a rerun of Golden Girls , her favorite TV show, because can you possibly mistake the voice of Bea Arthur?
    I get there way early, so I circle the block twelve times like a streetwalker and then stroll in finally at 11:15 like this is so no big deal. The place has soft lighting, zebra fabric on the seats, and a tin ceiling, and I love the vibe so I am in the zone.
    I spot him and go into overdrive. He’s sitting with a drink looking lost in thought, only he has this telepathic awareness of me because he looks up and the