Valerie and I were sitting in the auditorium at school. And I was thinking that she was stupid.

I often think Valerie is stupid.

I know she isn't. She never seems to study for any test, and yet always manages to score exactly one point higher than anybody else. Of course, she doesn't like for people to know she's as smart as she is. When our lunch table was comparing our class ranks at the beginning of our second semester in freshman year (back when the ranking system was new and interesting to us), she was vague as to what her actual number was.

"I dunno," she had puffed out her wide lips as if the conversation bored her beyond belief, "thirty-something?"

Out of the then-almost-nine-hundred kids in our class, that was an impressive enough rank, but still somewhat within the realms of 'normalish.' Everyone at the table nodded and shifted their attention to the next person. Later that week, at one of our usual sleep-overs, I was fishing around Valerie's desk for the One Direction authorized biography I lent her and saw her report card, crumpled up underneath her laptop. She was first. She still is.

And I had been so proud of ninth place.

What makes me think Val is stupid is that she has no idea of the effect she has on other people. They love her. It drives me nuts. Don't get me wrong, I love her too. There's a lot to love. She's talented, but never too talented. She wears high heels and oversized military jackets and animal print mini-skirts and looks comfortable, as if those are the most normal clothes in the world. She's got an even, olive complexion and the thickest head of straight, glossy black hair I've seen. She's the sort of average pretty that people instinctively like. It's not ice queen or blonde queen bee. She gets things easy.

Me? Not so much.

I didn't want to sign the pact she came up with yesterday. I still don't know how she got it out of me. I was bamboozled. I already know how this is going to end. Valerie will do something that would put most everybody else into a cringe-induced coma, and somehow come out of the experience looking even cooler and having more friends than she did beforehand. I will do something, probably less cringe-worthy than even what Valerie did, and everyone around me will become very uncomfortable. Their discomfort will make me even more uncomfortable than them, because I will be the one causing all the discomfort in the first place. In fact, the initial thought of all the discomfort I'll cause will make me uncomfortable from the start, which will probably, in turn, magnify all potential discomfort. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, except instead of turning on a lightbulb or blowing up a balloon, the ultimate result is to alienate as many people as possible. Valerie should have anticipated this. But she didn't. Because she has no idea that life is different for people like me.

All through AP Chemistry this morning, I was thinking of ways to get out of the pact. I wished Valerie had given me a copy, so I could have reread it for loopholes. Valerie's more the lawyer of the two of us (the silver-tongued devil), but even she's not infallible. There ought to be a loophole in there somewhere. It's not the most carefully crafted thing she's ever written. In lieu of scouring the actual document, I decided it would be safest to avoid assigning her a "feat of courage" until she forgot about the whole stupid thing altogether in a few weeks. If she never completes any, she can't expect me to.

But since this is me, and I am Stevie O'Shaughnessy, plans just don't come together. Instead of third period, all the seniors had an assembly. Valerie and I normally have AP Calculus third period. So we ended up going down to the auditorium in the commons building together, and sitting next to each other. We wouldn't have been able to do this, if the assembly had been called say during second period, when I have AP Chemistry and she has AP British Lit. Or first period, when, on non-band days I have a study hall and she has Yearbook in the library (yes, I know. The valedictorian takes Yearbook. Really. She's been doing this since freshman year). Now this detail about our schedules is actually very important. You'll soon see why.

"You're gonna love what I found in Yearbook." Valerie grinned. We had a few minutes to talk before the assembly began, as the rest of the seven hundred or so members of our class filed into the auditorium and sat down (yes, I know I said there was nine hundred in our freshman class. Linden Valley, Pennsylvania is a mid-sized, Rustbelt city, which, as the local PBS station likes to claim, is on the brink of a new economic renaissance. That just means that we have a lot of rich New Yorkers moving in. The rest of us, the actual townies, are still poor. Linden Valley Central High has more than three thousand students altogether. Two hundred of our townie classmates had, by senior year, dropped out. Yes. I know. I'm embarrassed on behalf of Linden Valley, you don't have to tell me anything.).

"Which teacher's old, ridiculous photo is it this time?" I asked.

"How predictable do you think I am?" Valerie unzipped the black Jansport backpack on the floor by her feet, and pulled out a yellowed Seventeen magazine. "It was in the periodical section." She handed it to me.

"I didn't know you could check periodicals out." I flipped the magazine onto its back and looked for a bar code.

"You can't," Valerie snatched the magazine out of my hands. "I convinced Ms. Muller to let me have it."

"Why do you even want a magazine from-" I eyed the scrunchie-clad model on the front cover, "whenever that was published?"

  "1989," Valerie theatrically licked her fingertips and paged to the middle of the magazine, "and it's got some truly excellent 'conversation starters and flirting pointers.'"

She showed me a pictorial with two lists of "conversation starts and flirting pointers" printed in wacky, angular font. "Read conversation starter number four!" she insisted. "It's tremendous!"

I read the second to last conversation starter in the list. "'You know what I wish they taught us more about? Mesopotamia.'"

Valerie tossed back her head and giggled. If I ever tried to laugh like that, I'd throw out my neck. It looks carefree and Daisy Buchanan-esque when she does it. I envy her Aquarius sun. Of all the signs to be born, I get Cancer. It's about as terrible as the same-named disease.

"You understand why I had to seize it, now, right?" Valerie took the magazine and slid it back into her backpack.

"I don't get it," I said, still thinking about the conversation starter, "who's the 'they' in that sentence? History teachers? The American public school system in general?"

"Why Mesopotamia?" Valerie shrugged. "There's so many questions."

The microphone squeaked and interrupted our conversation. Ms. More, our class's assistant principal, stood on stage with three of the biggest try-hards in the grade. As soon as I saw the flashcards in Cleo Alexopoulos's pale, clammy hands, I knew what was happening.

"Student election speeches," I moaned. "I should have stayed home today."

"Stevie," Valerie played righteous indignation. "Voter apathy like that is the reason why the American political system is broken."

"Okay, okay," Mrs. More's somewhat masculine voice echoed from the microphone. "It's senior year. Let's get this Punch and Judy show over with. Running for class secretary this year, unopposed, is Cleo Alexopoulos," she waved her muscular arm behind her at Cleo. "Unopposed means you don't have to give a speech, Cleo."

Cleo mumbled something inaudible from where we sat and shook her sweaty flashcards.

  "No, you don't get a speech," Mrs. More blew up the bangs of her brown mullet. "Everybody has to vote for you. Vote for Cleo, everyone. In fact, write her name on your ballots now." Mrs. More noticed somebody in the front row. She opened her mouth to speak, stopped herself, and took the microphone out of its stand. "Do you guys have your ballots? No?" She glanced back at Cleo. "Ay Cleo, why don't you go hand out the ballots?"

Mrs. More directed Cleo off stage. The kid looked like she had just bitten into a factory-defective, peanut-butter-less Reese's cup.

"Unless anybody else wants to announce their campaign," Mrs. More continued, "your presidential candidates this year are the same two jokers that ran last year, Darrell Robinson and Cecelia Figueroa." Mrs. More paused for applause.

There wasn't any.

"And since no one is running for vice president again this year," Mrs. More sat down at the edge of the stage, "that position will be given to whichever of those two clowns gets the fewer votes." Her gaze fell onto a spot in the orchestra pit. "Last chance for somebody, anybody, else to announce their campaign."

"It'd be comical if somebody would rush the stage right now," I whispered to Valerie, "and make a mockery of the whole thing."

I expected her to respond with some clever banter, but she didn't. I looked over my shoulder at her to see if she heard me. She must have, because she had a terrible grin on.

"Do you dare me?"

"Do I dare you?" I dumbly repeated.

"Yeah, do you dare me?" Valerie asked me again. "I'll do it if you dare me."

"Sure, ya fruitcase-"

I don't know why I agreed to this. It just came out of me. I guess the prospect of some random chaos disrupting Darrell Robinson and Cecelia Figueroa's campaign speeches (in all likelihood, the same speeches we've heard for three years now) was too much for me to decline.

https://youtu.be/Cf2gvvAcpmQ

I should have declined. If I had any forethought, I would have declined. Not for Valerie's sake, but for my own. As soon as I had mumbled the word "sure," Valerie was to her feet. Mrs. More's eyes doubled in size. Someone in the back row started a slow clap that quickly spread across the auditorium. When Valerie took the stage, a pothead-looking kid I barely recognized from last year's gym class got his friends to start chanting "Valerie D!" ad nauseam. I'm not sure how he even knew Val's first name, let alone the last initial. I only have a vague memory of Valerie playing hacky-sack with him outside the locker rooms one April morning. Valerie shot a finger gun at a now-downright-beaming Mrs. More, who eagerly handed her the microphone.

It was like the physical laws of the universe had been commuted. Gravity could very well have been reversed. We could have all been flung up from our seats. That's about as much sense as any of the applause made. We were awash in high entropy. But instead of enjoying the chaos I had just unleashed, all I could do was wonder who was Valerie DiPaolo, actually? And why she chose to be my best friend, and why the clockmaker God of our physically immovable universe decided to intervene for her and Jesus Christ alone?

"I, Valerie Marie DiPaolo," Valerie held the microphone to her lips with her left hand, and, with her right arm and hand extended, pointed at the somehow-still-cheering-crowd, her index finger slowly scanning the auditorium from left to right, "would like to announce my candidacy for Senior Class President."

After she said this, she turned her head to the right, lifted the microphone just above her black ponytail, closed her eyes, and soaked in the applause as if she were Mariah or Beyoncé or heck, even Taylor Swift. I would have laughed if I weren't already in a state of shock.

"Simmer down," she murmured into the microphone. Our class did not simmer down.

Valerie smiled at me with an open-mouthed smile, so that only her upper row of straight, symmetrical teeth and the back of her tongue were visible. I knew this expression well. It meant she had surprised even herself. She nodded, and I instinctively shook my head no. She nodded again. When the applause finally subsided, she began to speak.

"Sweet mercy," Valerie said, and somehow those words sounded cool. "There comes a time in all of our lives when we have got to be brave."

She held my gaze.

"There comes a time when we can no longer take the cynicism, the apathy, the boredom," she smirked. "We have got to be brave. Do what makes us uncomfortable."

And right then, I knew exactly what she was talking about. It wasn't our class elections, or the broken American political system at large. I realized all at once that this was, in Valerie's twisted mind, the first of the "feats of courage" of our pact. I would now have to perform whatever task she decided for me. There would be no getting out of it. I had been bamboozled again. I sank low in my seat.

"And that's why, as your class president, my babies," Valerie stalked across the stage, her neon green patent-leather pumps clacking with each step, "I will not be afraid to do what makes me uncomfortable, if it means I do what is right. I will fight every day for you. I will not allow this office to be besmirched by cynicism, by apathy, or by boredom!"

I looked around the auditorium. The morons were lapping this bullshit up. Even Darrell Robinson looked moved, and student council was his life. He should be devastated to lose an election- especially his senior year election.

"So I will say, Senior Class of Linden Valley Central High, yes we can bring hope and change to the student council. Yes we can make Linden Valley Central great again. Yes we can!"' Valerie lifted the microphone into the air in a dramatic fist pump.

Janey Mac. I pressed my hand against my temple, as visual evidence of my disapproval.

Mrs. More (supposedly the neutral party in this) let out an exuberant whoop. Cecelia Figueroa looked so angry she might have cried. Valerie walked back to center stage to return the microphone to Mrs. More, who attacked her with a bear hug. Before Valerie set the microphone back in its stand, she held it to her lips one last time and shouted, "FOUR MORE YEARS!", as if  that made any quantity of sense.

Then she charged down the stage steps to a standing ovation.

As Valerie high-fived the potheads, hipsters, and edgelords in the rows in front of me, I tried to come to terms with the stunning reality that she was going to be our senior class president.

***

A/N: This section was kind of long, and the next one is kind of short, so I'm going to upload the next section in a few minutes.