sliding scale on most things), always with the eye that one day her record, her history might come to light.
This didn’t mean she didn’t have regrets. She did. MaryAnne Newman knew that too. She was just wrong about this one.
Cleo reached for Lucas’s phone and tried not to think of Nobells. She hoped she didn’t look as shell-shocked as she felt, with the memories of the affair now reawakened. Fuck you, MaryAnne Newman.
“MaryAnne was my best friend until my senior year in high school,” she said, and her voice did not shake even though for most people, in light of such a public takedown, it would. But she had years of debate team triumphs and of speaking on the Senate floor (she had been elected at thirty-one, among the youngest senators in history) behind her. Her voice would not quake, even in her kitchen with her son handing her such a grenade. “And she shouldn’t have written such lies, much less from an anonymous ‘reliable source.’ And they should have fact-checked it, and I have no idea why they didn’t.”
She did know actually—because in today’s environment, lurid half-truths garnered eyeballs, and no one really cared to differentiate between fact and fiction when they hit Retweet. Cleo made a mental note to have Gaby call the editors at this “paper” and go absolutely batshit on them. “But you know how it is these days, especially when you’re a public figure. People say anything about you, and half the world takes it as truth.” She looked Lucas right in the eye. “But, buddy, we know our truth. And this isn’t it.”
Lucas shoved the Eggo in his mouth, held it in his teeth. Cleo wished that he took better care of himself, but any time she suggested it, it morphed into a fight. He was so handsome, with dark eyes and near-black hair, neither of which he got from Cleo, who burned at the first sign of sun and whose hair wasn’t quite blond but wasn’t quite brown either. She was tiny, which caused everyone—mostly men—to underestimate her, while Lucas was shooting up like a wild plant that wouldn’t stop sprouting. Cleo knew he got all that from his dad. Still, Lucas always looked a little bit unkempt, a little . . . dirty. Maybe that’s what fourteen-year-olds liked these days. She wasn’t too old to know . . . but really she was.
Lucas brushed back his bangs, which hung about half an inch too low for good vision; bit down on the waffle; chewed; swallowed; gave it some thought. “She really seems to dislike you. For a former best friend.”
Maybe this should have bothered Cleo, but she was long past seeking the approval of anyone other than her constituents. And Gaby. And Lucas.
“A lot of people dislike me. That’s part of the deal of holding office. It’s only going to get worse if I run for president.”
“If?” Lucas said. This had been an ever-present discussion between the two of them as of late. Cleo wouldn’t do anything without Lucas’s green light, but she very much wanted him to give her the green light. As a senator, Cleo’s life was mostly undisturbed outside the Capitol. All that would change in the White House. Lucas seemed to think it would be “all right, I guess” if he were the First Son, which Cleo took to be a near go-ahead, and from there she had dropped it.
Cleo grabbed the phone, reread the story, which was less like an op-ed and more like a thinly veiled personal vendetta. Talk of her presidential run had grown louder lately: The Today Show had done a walk and talk with her to introduce her to a national audience; she’d done Meet the Press last month and fared well. She needed some big endorsements and she needed some bigger checks, but Gaby thought they had momentum, and Cleo had always been one to use momentum in her favor.
“So then, what’d you do to her?” Lucas asked. “Besides, I guess, cheating on the debate team and whatever?”
This was a longer conversation than they’d had over breakfast for at least two years, since puberty had kicked in, and though the subject was dire, Cleo was also delighted. Parents of teenagers took what they could get.
“I didn’t do that stuff either,” Cleo said. “It wasn’t like that—she and I did the same activities. I was just better at them.” This was an unkind