La Presidente

“Well, dear, that’s not completely true,” says Carol. “Wasn’t your cousin John vice-president of his high school?”

The phone rings in the kitchen, and Christy jumps up to answer it. After a few minutes she returns, looking glum. “That was Terri,” she says. “Cindy and her are going to a movie. But I have to stay here and wait for a call from the head of my transition team.”

This brings up the subject of the effect that Christy’s ambitions have had on her life outside of the political arena. What has been the reaction of the other students at Santa Monica High to her election?

“Well, my friends all think it’s pretty neat,” says Christy. “But a lot of people that don’t really know me think that I just did it to get into college.” She laughs. “Of course, some of them never paid attention in the first place—a couple of people congratulated me on being elected President of Peru!” Her commitment to her dreams has also kept her from being as social as she might be otherwise—for instance, she’s never  had a serious boyfriend. She has a lot of male friends, she says, “but I  think they get kind of intimidated. I mean, I try to explain that Guatemala isn’t that geopolitically important, but guys my age just don’t like going out with heads of state.”

One area that Christy has refused to compromise, however, has been academics. She has been going to a private tutor for the last year and a half to make up for the time she has had to spend out of school, either traveling in Central America, or raising money for her campaign, and she has no plans to stop after her inauguration. “I know an education is really important,” she says. “I mean, I’m not going to be President of Guatemala my whole life. I have to have something to fall back on—I don’t want to end up endorsing products, like General Megia.” After her five year term is over, she plans to major in economics at an American university and then hopefully get a job in the banking industry. Of course, many teenagers in her position would say much the same thing, but Christy’s commitment to her education is genuine; the day before the elections, for instance, she flew home to take a test in algebra. She charmingly makes light of this, however, saying “I just couldn’t miss it—Mr. Davidson’s make-ups are killers.” Christie obviously looks back happily on her two years of high school, and says that she only has one regret: “I kind of wish now that I hadn’t stopped taking Spanish. But I guess that’s water under the bridge.”