Echo Chamber Page 2

  I don't often plan conversations in advance, but I want to keep Peter from getting the upper hand. I don't want to be too accusatory when he walks in. At the same time, I have no interest in small talk or pleasantries. Not in general and certainly not with Peter. I settle on a question about Benjamin because it gets at something I want Peter to answer without coming right out and accusing him of deception.

  My eyes are locked on the open doorway when Peter pokes his head in. "Mia?"

  Before I can say anything, he's in the room. He closes the door and smiles a familiar smile. Quizzical, slightly ironic, and somewhat arrogant. When I met him, I thought it was the smile of a man who knew something I didn't. As I got to know him, I recognized it as the smile of a man who knows one thing for sure: nobody can hurt him, so he's got nothing to worry about. It's the smile of a man who knows he has the world by the balls, and knows you know it, too.

  Now, in the blue suit and red tie he wears regularly since joining Ameritocracy, I read his smile as slightly apologetic. That's the secret of his smile. It can be read a hundred different ways in a hundred different situations.

  He takes a cautious step toward the desk. "Is it safe?"

  Despite an effort to remain stoic, I crack an awkward smile.

  He seizes the opening. Taking two large steps across the room, he sits opposite me.

  It's pleasantly incongruous—billionaire playboy Peter Colton sitting in a sad plastic chair that looks like it was designed for a seven-year-old.

  "Nice digs," he says. Then, with more emotion, or feigned emotion, "It's good to see you."

  I clasp my hands together, resting them on the desk. "Let's skip the bullshit. What did you want to talk about?"

  He studies my face, then reaches for my hands.

  I pull away. "Look, Peter, candidates are arriving as we speak. I've got work to do. Either tell me what you want to talk about or we're done here."

  He raises an eyebrow, then leans back in his chair. Apparently he's accepted the fact that I'm not here for small talk. "I'm sorry, Mia. I thought we should meet. I want to clear the air. I know you must have questions. I'll answer anything."

  My mind loads the prepared question about Benjamin, but the annoying smirk on Peter's face has me livid. I come right out with it. "Did you plan to enter Ameritocracy the whole time?"

  He looks at the floor silently.

  I glare at him, trying to make him look up with the strength of my eyes. "The night of the Project X presentation, when you offered me the five million dollars, did you already know you were going to enter?" My voice is louder now, stronger. I'm determined to get an answer to the question that has burned in me since the moment he entered.

  When he looks up at last, his face is ashen, his eyes moist. I don't see tears—I've never seen Peter cry, not even when his friend DB took his own life—but he appears stricken.

  "Absolutely not." His voice is hollow. "I offered the five million dollars because I believed in you, in your ideas. I still do."

  I want to believe him, but I don't. "That's a lie."

  He looks imploringly into my eyes. "I swear, Mia."

  It's not often that someone lies to my face about something important. It doesn't leave a lot of options. Instead of calling him out again, I humor him. "Then why did you enter?"

  "I know you may not believe this, but I was inspired. I've always been interested in politics. The more I watched Ameritocracy unfold, the more I felt like the winner would have a true shot at the presidency. More than that, though, I saw the difference you were making in American politics, and I wanted to be part of it. That's why I wanted to go to the debate with you in Iowa."

  "You said you had other business to do in Iowa."

  "I always have business to do everywhere, Mia. I wanted to be near the candidates, though. Near the issues. Near the ideas. As exciting as business is, as exciting as creating companies and products can be, the ideas at the heart of politics have a piece of me and they won't let go."

  "Yeah, you can get real close to candidates from the shower in our room. That guy...was he your secret boyfriend?"

  Peter looks confused, as though he doesn't even know which guy I'm talking about. Then recognition dawns across his face. "Him? He had nothing to do with…I met him on Piper. It was…a mistake."

  We're into territory I'd planned to avoid, but I can't help myself. "I assume that's a hookup app, like Grindr?"

  "Yes, but for a more...exclusive group of users."

  I shake my head, half surprised, half totally unsurprised that such an app exists. When we dated, I never got used to Peter's wealth. Never got used to the secret world in which men like him do pretty much whatever they want. "There are secret hookup apps for billionaires?"

  "Yes," Peter says, without a trace of irony. "Enough about that, though. You have to believe I didn't intend to enter at the beginning."

  I don't believe him, but it doesn't really matter whether he planned to enter from the beginning. He's here now, and he's not going anywhere. I don't want to say any of this, so I go to another question I prepared in advance. "Wasn't DB's suicide enough to make you think twice?"

  "Are you kidding? DB is a big part of why I joined. Obviously, his candidacy ended badly, but did you see how he lit up talking about Ameritocracy? He was at the top of his field, the biggest actor in America. And yet the chance to help people—to 'get into the game,' as he put it—changed him. When he died, I thought it was what he'd want me to do."

  "C'mon, Peter. Playing the dead friend card is low, even for you."

  A pained look crosses Peter's face. "I wish I could make you believe me, but…"

  He stands abruptly and pulls off his jacket, then untucks his crisp white button down.

  I look away. "Peter, what the hell are you doing?"

  "No, it's not that. Look."

  When I turn back, his shirt is fully unbuttoned, revealing an undershirt printed with a picture of a young DB in a baseball uniform, grinning broadly. He's got a bat slung over his shoulder and, though the shirt is faded, his famous smile still pops.

  Peter smiles. "I bought it on eBay. There are four of them on earth."

  Despite my efforts to remain angry, seeing DB's face softens me. As flawed as he was, the way it ended still causes me to tear up at least once a week. "What's that from?"

  "Remember Bases Loaded? Cheesy baseball flick he was in before he got famous. They printed shirts for all the actors in the movie. You know, for promotion."

  "Why are you showing it to me?"

  Peter closes his eyes and runs a hand over the front of the t-shirt, almost ceremonially, then buttons up his dress shirt slowly. "To show you that I'm for real." Like an actor himself, he pauses before opening his eyes. "I'm doing this for DB."

  "If your motives are so pure, why didn't you tell me you planned to run? Why enter at the last minute?"

  "You'd just broken up with me, Mia. I wasn't proud of how it happened, either. I felt terrible—still feel terrible—about what happened between us. About what I did. What was I supposed to do, call you and say, 'Sorry I cheated on you but now I need to tell you that I'm joining Ameritocracy'?"

  "Yes, that would have been the grown-up thing to do."

  He walks to a brown folding table in the corner that's covered by trays of apples, oranges, and bananas, along with two steaming coffee pots. Apparently this is the "gourmet snack buffet" we paid for along with the debate hall rental.

  He turns with a bright green apple in his hand, then bites with a loud crunch, which irritates me for no good reason.

  "I skipped lunch," he says.

  I stare at him stone-faced, seething.

  When I studied political science at the University of Washington, I learned that reporters often cover politics as though they're writing a novel. My professor believed it was because political reporters all want to be novelists.

  Newspapers and cable news channels tend to focus on characters and storylines, twists and turns, who's up
and who's down, good versus evil, and betrayal. They create narratives full of heroes, villains, and satisfying resolutions.

  They rarely focus on the issues, and, with a few notable exceptions, they ignore what campaigns obsess about, the thing that decides most elections: demographics and turnout. The district-by-district, state-by-state, on-the-ground political realities that matter in our voting system.

  If I invited a political reporter into the room at this moment, Peter's apple chewing would become a key detail illustrating Peter's character. Peter bit into the apple with a cool elegance that spoke to his nonchalance in the face of difficulty, his unshakable personal confidence. Something like that.

  To me it comes across as stalling. "Moving past the last-minute nature of your entry," I say, "there's something else I want to ask you."

  Peter tosses the half-eaten apple into a small garbage can and wipes his hands on a napkin. "Shoot."

  "Did Benjamin know?"

  "Know what?"

  "Know you would enter."

  "How could Benjamin know? I told you, I didn't know."

  I hold his gaze as he walks toward the desk and sits across from me.

  He crosses his right leg over his left. "Okay. If I did have an inkling that I might want to join at some point, which I don't think I did, I certainly didn't share it with anyone. Ask Benjamin. Ask Malcolm. Ask anyone who knew me. Who knows me."

  "What about the negative stories coming out?"

  "What negative stories?"

  "The Gottlieb thing? Cecelia Mason and her chefs. You behind any of those?"

  It's a suspicion I've had for weeks. Peter knows enough people in the media to squash stories about himself, or to start them about someone else.

  "Absolutely not."

  On the desk, my phone chirps with a text.

  Steph: Producer from CBS affiliate wants to do a quick hit with you before the debate. Almost done?

  I tap out a quick reply, telling her I'll be right out.

  "You know, Peter, people think we might still be together, that I'm skewing the vote totals to help you. Your entry—besides pissing me off—has made the whole competition look shady. It would help if you made some public statements on this."

  "My campaign manager wants to focus on social media and electronic communications for now."

  "I get that. Easier to control the message. But even though I still don't believe you about, well, anything, it would help if you'd get on TV and tell the story you just pitched me. That you never planned to enter, the whole DB thing. You could even try the t-shirt stunt on The View or Good Morning America or something. They'd eat that up."

  "It wasn't a stunt."

  "Whatever. I'm saying, you and I need to get along for the next two months. It would go a long way if you'd make a few appearances and convince people I'm not helping you. End the speculation."

  His eyes are full of what I interpret as fake tenderness. "I will."

  I stand, shoving my phone in my pants pocket.

  "Wait, Mia. There's one thing I want to ask, in return. A favor."

  I look down at him, and for the first time I see what I think is real vulnerability. I know what he's going to ask, and I know my answer, too.

  "When we split up," he begins, "I said I knew I could trust your integrity. Then I saw the story about our breakup on Page Six, and I assume the quotes came from you, or Steph, or maybe your mom?"

  "They came from me."

  "I wanted to say, I appreciate that you didn't tell them the real reason we broke up."

  "You mean you appreciate the fact that I didn't out you?"

  "Yes."

  "The reporter was fishing for it. It's gonna come out, Peter. If I were your political consultant, I'd get it out now, get it out myself. It's 2020. Most people won't have any issue with you being bisexual."

  "Maybe," Peter says quietly. "Maybe they'd accept it. You won't be the one to put it out, though?"

  "I won't. I'd never do that."

  Peter looks as though he's about to speak.

  Before he can, my phone chirps with another text from Steph and I walk out, leaving Peter alone in the room.

  3

  Before I can make it to the stage, I run into Justine Hall, our sixth-ranked candidate. She's the mayor of Denver and has been Steph's favorite candidate since the moment she entered.

  In Hall's day job running Denver, most days are ponytail days. Today is no different. She wears jeans and a simple white blouse and I've come to understand that being too busy to focus on her appearance is part of her brand. Of course, that's easier when you look like she does. Tall and lean, shiny black hair. A classic beauty, but not flaunted.

  She puts a hand on my arm. "Mia, can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "It's about Peter Colton entering the race."

  I glance back at the door to the breakout room, which I expect Peter to walk through at any moment. "Sure. But let's walk and talk. Steph needs me for something."

  As we pass through a large dressing area, Hall says, "I'll get right to it: how is it fair that the guy who funded the site gets to enter the competition?"

  "No one ever accused you of beating around the bush, huh?"

  The corners of Hall's lips turn up in a tiny smile, but, as usual, she's all business. Though I'd never heard of her before she joined Ameritocracy, I've come to respect her intelligence and ability to get stuff done. She leans further left than I do on many national issues, but on the local level she's proven to be a pragmatist above all else. That's a quality I greatly admire.

  "I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to talk with you about that," I say. "Did you read our public statement?"

  "I did, but I'm asking you anyway. The statement was a PR release papering over a potential scandal. That's fine, it's part of the job, but I need to know the truth."

  I go quiet as we pass a pair of interns who seem to be arguing about the stage lighting.

  Steph and I released a statement soon after Peter entered the race. It took two days to write and reflected the policy toward Peter's candidacy we planned to stick to throughout the spring and summer. I've fielded many complaints about it since, but a critique from Justine Hall stings.

  When we reach the debate hall, I stop to lean on the corner of the stage. In the back of the room, Steph chats with a few staff members. I lift myself up to sit on the stage and take in Hall, who watches me closely. "First of all, I didn't know Mr. Colton would enter, and I don't know whether he intended to enter when he funded the site last summer. It's possible that, like you, he was inspired by the platform and the opportunity to make a difference. But the most important thing for you to know is that his funding, which was paid in full before he entered, will have no effect on the site or the competition. Ameritocracy is not legally connected to Colton Industries. We are an independent non-profit. Mr. Colton is a candidate like any other."

  One of Hall's eyes narrows as she leans away from me and tucks her chin. "Right, that's pretty much what the statement said."

  "And, legally, we must treat him like any other candidate."

  I hope the word "legally" communicates to Hall that, deep down, I wish I could kick his lying ass out of the competition.

  She scans my face like she's trying to read my thoughts. "Mia, you dated him. Publicly."

  "And?"

  "You're telling me it's just a coincidence?" Her dark eyes lock on mine. Her gaze burns, and makes me feel I've done something wrong.

  "I swear I knew nothing about anything. I was more surprised than anyone when he entered."

  "You're still using his office space!"

  "Up until he entered the competition, Mr. Colton loaned us office space in Santa Clarissa. Not on the Colton Industries campus. When he entered, we immediately began paying rent at fair market value. We also barred Mr. Colton from making any more donations to Ameritocracy."

  "And the voting system is one hundred percent fair at this point?"

  "We released tw
o independent reports verifying that."

  She studies me, then her smile is back. "I read them, and I believe you, Mia."

  I let out a long breath. I feel like I do when a police car that's been driving behind me for a few minutes turns onto another road.

  She grins at my visible relief, and I'm once again glad I don't play poker. "Mia, settle down. I believe you. I imagine you'll be getting this question from others as well."

  "Already have."

  "I had to ask. With the rumors swirling out there—"

  "I get it. It's fine."

  "I've talked with a few other candidates about this, and we trust you."

  Now I'm skeptical. "Which candidates?"

  "Marlon Dixon and, well, I ran into Tanner Futch backstage—ranting and raving as usual. I'll go back and deal with him."

  Unsurprisingly, Futch was more upset than anyone when Peter entered, calling it, "A coup against the American people," among other things.

  "What will you say?" I ask.

  "I'll tell him you're working your butt off for a measly salary. That you wouldn't do that unless you truly held the values the site is founded on."

  My laugh is weak. "I do, but how do you think he'll respond to that? He's come right to the edge of calling me a conspirator on his radio show."

  "Oh, sure, he'd love to say you've been co-opted by the global elite or the lizard people or whatever, but he's still a top candidate. Even he can't run on your platform and denounce it at the same time."

  "If he finds a way to do it, he will. Then I'll be another pawn of the deep state elites, right? Then again that's kinda what he says about everyone."

  "Right, so don't take it personally." She squeezes my shoulder slightly. Justine Hall exudes competence and class, but not warmth, so this comes as a surprise. "And Mia, you got this. Two months to go."