On a mostly sunny June 13th, Alex Hernandez parked, a bit haphazardly, in the lot at Maywood High School. When she was in school, she would leave an extra five minutes early in the morning to be sure she would have time fix her crooked parking jobs. Yet today, there was no one she needed to fix it for. She didn’t even bother to lock the car. No one would steal a car at 10:09 AM on a Saturday, especially not if they knew who it belonged to.
The main door was open, as the janitorial staff was madly cleaning the layers of dust and grime left over from the school year in time for the reunions that would be taking place.
The captain of the tennis team always had one of the two keys to the trophy case in the gym. It was the captain who was responsible for placing the trophies in the case after every successful competition. After graduation, there was always a ceremony where the graduating captain would give the special key to next year’s captain. But Alex wasn’t there for graduation. Two days before, she didn’t come to school for the first time in 753 days. The principal received a note citing a vague Hernandez family emergency and asking that Alex’s diploma be sent to her home in the mail.
She didn’t want those trophies to clutter up the case, to fill up space they didn’t deserve. These trophies weren’t the manifestations of raw work, of breaking down barriers, of “creating a self identity based on proving everyone’s expectations false,” as her college essay stipulated. It was secret checks, always sent to her mother’s workplace but never known to her. Those secret checks, scribbled out of shame and deceit, made those trophies possible. It wasn’t her mother’s overtime hours or Alex’s job wiping down tables at Neptune’s Beer Garden until her fingers were pruny. It was guilt, a mask as fake as the gold plastic coating of her trophies.
She haphazardly loaded the trophies, stacked in a cardboard box, into the backseat of her car. She didn’t care if they scratched each other. Alex climbed back into the driver’s seat and reached into the glove box, pulling out a pen, an envelope, and a bright yellow Post-It note. Using the steering wheel as a hard surface, she wrote,

Catalina Morales
37B Paramount Road
Huntington Park, Los Angeles, CA 91733

Catty,

Here’s the key you earned. Sorry we couldn’t have a party for you as usual, but I know yellow is your favorite color. Have a good summer, and take the team to bigger and better places than I ever did. I know you’ll do great things.
-A.H.

P.S. If you’re worried about me, don’t be.

Alex started the car. She craved her favorite song, but could only sing it in her head because two weeks earlier, her mother had removed the radio from her daughter’s car, worried about what more she might hear about herself on the news.

It wasn’t enough. “Do you know what it’s like to hate the skin that holds you? To hate half the things that make you you?”

Before she could answer her own question, she had gotten out of the car to drop Catty’s key in a mail slot by the side of Sepulveda Boulevard.

Two weeks before Alex went to get her trophies, Jeff had his assistant scrawl the words, “Meeting in progress, do not interrupt!” onto a piece of paper and tape them on the door underneath the golden plate that read,“Jeffrey Blodgett,Campaign Manager.”

“Maybe we should just pull a Reynolds Pamphlet.”
“What?”
“In 1797, the then Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, had an affair with a woman named Mariah Reynolds, and paid her husband, James Reynolds, a large sum of money to keep him quiet. Two of Hamilton’s foes, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
confronted him with the check stubs proving he had paid off Mr. Reynolds and threatened to sabotage his political career. Hamilton got them to back down, but decided that it was better for the people to hear about the affair straight from him instead of letting it be used as a tool to humiliate him. And history still looks favorably upon him.” Jeff pulled a $10 bill out of his wallet to prove his point.
“So you’re saying we should publish a Hernandez Pamphlet?”
“Not a pamphlet, or an article. A news conference. Say you’re making a major campaign announcement, and then say tell the whole story.”
“But do we know the Sun will publish the bank records?”
“We don’t know for sure, but it’s better for us to deliberately go down with some sense of dignity than to be sabotaged by a borderline tabloid.” Senator Atkian looked up from the carpeted floor for the first time in the conversation.
“Okay. But I won’t mention her by name.”
“Fine. But the press will find her and her daughter one way or another.”
“Do you want to go warn them ahead of time?”
It would have been too jarring for the Senator to go himself. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Margarita Hernandez since her daughter was already a year old.
On that chilled spring morning she stood, calm and measured on the edge of the porch.
“Do you really think I’m going to let you hold her?”
She stared pointedly at him, with a practical softness, awaiting a response. He had none.

A week before Alex went to get her trophies, Jeff knocked at the same door. A sinking feeling caught in his chest, the same feeling he got when immediately after getting his driver’s license at was sixteen, he hit the car in front of him while parallel parking. He was so proud of himself, of his freedom, of the aura of independence he exuded, until he heard the crunch of the metal. His hands quivered as he glided perfectly into the spot.
He could feel that same cracking of metal and the scraping away of pristine white paint echo in his bones as he mounted the steps. He could feel himself taking nervous glances out the window of the café where he was meeting a girl, seeing if the car in front of him had left. To see if the owner would leave a nasty note, or slash his tires, or crack his windshield.

“Hi! Can I help--Jeff?”
“Ms. Hernandez--”
“Is your daughter home?”
“This has to do with what’s been in the news, right?”
“He’s going to tell the whole story to the world, to clear his name. He won’t reveal--”
“Thank you for telling me.” The door softly closed in his face.
The same uneasy, lukewarm relief of finding a car with unslashed tires and a noteless dashboard washed over him as Margarita shut the door.

After her first day of tennis camp the summer before third grade, Alejandra told her mother that she wanted to be called Alex.
“Why? That’s an ugly name.”
“Because when all the other girls saw my name tag, they pronounced it like “Allay-jan-dra” with a J.”
“Why didn’t you correct them?”
“They all have pretty names, like Caroline and Lucy and Ella. And pretty skirts. And clean white shoes.” Margarita was silent for a long time.
“You can be Alex anywhere you want, just not in my house.”

It was difficult for Margarita not to have newspapers. Her parents never learned English, and while going to an American elementary school helped a bit, she often still lagged behind her classmates. At the end of the day, a math teacher named Mr. Mella would bring her all the newspapers from the teacher’s lounge, and on the bus on her way home, she would read first the Los Angeles Times, then the Long Beach Press Telegram, then the Santa Monica Daily Press, circling words she didn’t understand. She did it every day for the next forty-one years until one day, the headline on the front page of the Times read, “Senator Robert Atkian Accused of Extramarital Affair While Mayor of Los Angeles; No Official Response from his Presidential Campaign.”
It wouldn’t have mattered anyways. Alejandra already knew everything important.

Los Angeles without traffic was a like vast stretch glowing embers left over from a wildfire. Something about it was soothing, almost hypnotizing. It made you lose track of time, and lulled you, but not to sleep.
Around 1:30 AM, she took off, for the first time in her life, in no particular direction. Usually, she would give a quick glance to her map to at least get a vague sense of where she wanted to go, but what use was there to having a direction now?

After a series of mindless left turns, she arrived in Bel Air. Alex rolled in circles invisibly past the Mediterranean houses, the pretty silver cars, the pristine lawns and pool houses she dedicated her life to defeating. She lived for the shocked, beautiful looks of Wait, did she beat me?, the balls that flew straight over the perfect blonde heads of her opponents as they reached for them but failed, for the words Alejandra Hernandez.
With every swing of her racket, she beat back presumption, she beat back the stench of assumed superiority, she beat back the tote bags resting on the sidelines.
Yet her blood was undeniably infused with that same presumption, the same superiority. Her existence was the result of a man, not unlike the ones who lived in these houses, taking advantage of superiority he hadn’t earned to be reckless, to follow wherever his desires led him. She was the result of half an hour of thoughtless behavior and everything that shaped her life was the result of the distant guilt and shame that followed. That superficial remorse paid for tennis camp, her rackets, all she treasured about herself. Everything she had achieved was only made possible by everything she hated most.

Around 4 AM, Alex found the house, a stately colonial on Stradella Road. The address was easily found through the public records at City Hall. Getting in was harder. Alex parked gingerly across the street, and carried her box of trophies up the walkway to the gate. After only a few steps, her presence triggered the motion sensors that turned on the outside lights. The sudden burst of light was dizzying, but she kept walking. The Secret Service agents on duty snapped out of their drowsiness.

“What are you doing?”
“Oh hello gentlemen, I’m just dropping off something for my dad.”
“Who’s your dad?”
“The Senator. Don’t worry, this will all make sense to you in a few days.”
“Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to put the box down and put your hands in the air.”
“Fine, but you can make sure he gets it?”
“You have thirty seconds to get off the property before we arrest you for trespassing.”
“Tell him it’s from his favorite daughter.”

After twenty-three seconds had passed, the light flickered off, and the intruder was gone. As Alex rolled through back into the darkness, missing her radio, she thought,

“I really did try to break in, didn’t I?”