Margot Mertz for the Win

by Carrie McCrossen, Ian McWethy

Genres: YA Contemporary

Synopsis

Veronica Mars meets Moxie in the hilarious and thought-provoking sequel to Margot Mertz Takes it Down.

It’s senior year. And Margot’s on a mission to be a better Margot. Which means saying goodbye to her old cleanup ways—and their inherent moral ambiguities.

To fill her time and round out her college application, Margot volunteers on a campaign for local election. It doesn’t hurt that the local candidate is Shep Green, Avery’s dad. It’s nice to see Avery's too perfect face from time to time.   

Meanwhile at Roosevelt High, Margot finds herself roped into a second election, this one for school president. But when a mysterious blackmail plot emerges, and a loathsome opponent rises in the class race, Margot might have to return to the cleanup job she thought she’d left behind. 

She’s tried to keep her hands clean. But politics is a dirty job.

Release date: November 15, 2022

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 384

Sample

Stanford admissions essay draft #36

What do you think is your greatest weakness? How has that weakness affected the trajectory of your life?

Hi, Stanford. Nice to meet you. Margot Mertz here. I love the Gates Building renovation you recently completed! Looks amazing!

So I know a lot of people try to answer this question by pretzel-ing it into a positive story about themselves. “My weakness is working really hard!” And “My problem is that I sacrifice too much to help those less fortunate!” But I’m not going to do that. I want to be honest with you, Stanford. I have wanted to go to you since I was in the third grade, and I feel like it’s important we get off on the right foot. So here it is. My weakness. My fatal flaw.

I am not a good person.

Yikes. Dark, right? What does that even mean? What did she do? Kick a puppy? (No.) Hit someone with her car? (Also no! I take the bus!) Apply to USC? (I would never.) My badness has more to do with some deeply ingrained character defects.

Yeah . . .

In fairness, I do have a stressful job. Or, I did have a stressful job. (I’m currently taking a hiatus.) For the past two years, I was the CEO of a company I created called Mertz Cleans Your Filth. If you had an embarrassing pic or regrettable tweet you wanted erased from the internet, you’d hire me. I’m sure you are familiar with this type of fare. It’s the kind of thing that would make you revoke a fraternity’s charter or kick someone off a lacrosse team.

And for a while, it was great. I was hired by students, adults, and one time a cat. (Okay. A ninety-year-old woman hired me to erase “embarrassing” pictures of her cat. But still, basically a cat.)

I was good at the job. People needed lots of filth cleaned. And I was banking that sweet, sweet tuition money to pay for you, Stanford. Let’s be honest, you’re not a cheap date. But then I took on a job so big and complex and shady that I ended up hurting everyone in my life who cared ab

out me. I bailed on my parents, I treated my best friend like an employee, and I deliberately used a boy who liked me, pretending to date him because it helped with the case. Which sucks, because, in a twist that everyone but me saw coming, I actually like him. Like, a lot.

See? Margot = bad.

There were others I took advantage of. People I went to school with. My former best friend, who now lives in Colorado. Basically, anyone who liked me and cared about me, I took them for granted and abused their trust.

But the good news is, I have a plan to course-correct! I came up with a set of rules that, if followed, should keep me on the narrow path of not being a terrible person!

Margot Mertz’s Ironclad Rules for Not Being a Shitty Person

1. Don’t lose friends over a job.

2. Don’t lie to parents about a job.

3. No more morally dubious clients (like Mrs. Blye, a cheater I represented last year. No more cheaters!). 

4. 1. Leave time for self-care. If a job gets in the way of grades, mental health, hygiene? Walk away.

   Ta-da.

   If I really stick to these rules, I’ll probably never work again as a cleaner. Because cleaning, it turns out, is a morally corrosive business. But I’m okay with walking away if it means I’ll be a better person. I don’t want my relationships to be transactional anymore. I want to value my friends and family. I want to be a whole person. I want to know who I am.

   Anyway. Thank you for your time.

   I love you,

   Margot

    

   CHAPTER 1Margot Mertz on the Campaign Trail

   Iwas in a small, nondescript room. The kind used for office storage or interrogating a murderer. I was told it might be a while, and that I should make myself comfortable. But I’d only just sat down when the door swung open and a woman in a blazer burst in.

   “Bah!” the blazer woman shouted. “I thought this room was empty.”

   “Uh. Sorry, I’m interviewing to be an intern, and I was told to wait here for Jim? Jim Bilwort?”

   “No,” she said.

   “No?” I asked.

   “I mean . . . sorry. He’s not going to interview you, because he just got fired.” She shook my hand. “Priya Deshmukh. I’m the new communications director, aka the asshole they saddled with Jim’s job.”

   She tried to play it cool, but I could see she was proud of her new title. She couldn’t have been more than a couple years older than me. But despite her youth, she radiated authority. She had light brown skin, big brown eyes, and the world’s tiniest nose ring. (I think? It could just have been a mole. Hard to tell in that lighting.)

   “I’m Margot Mertz,” I said.

   Priya squinted. “Follow me.” She led me out of the room and down a long, narrow hallway. “What made you want to volunteer for the campaign? College credit? Sense of duty? Boredom?”

   “All three? Sort of. But mostly Shep has some policies that I really like.”

   Priya raised her eyebrows. “Oh yeah? Are you, like, a policy wonk?”

   “Not really,” I told her. “But I’m interested in his proposed amendment to 245.”

   Now Priya really looked surprised. “Tha

   t’s very specific.”

   Shep Green, whose ownership of several area car dealerships made him something of a minor celebrity in North Webster, was running to be state senator for the 57th District of the State of New York. The district had been held by Republicans for years, but recent demographic shifts made it more of a toss-up this year. Shep was running mostly on expanding health care coverage, bringing jobs to Western NY, and pledging to finish construction on the North Webster “Transit Center.”[*] But his platform also included a host of smaller agenda items like the amendment to State Law § 245, which would make the dissemination of explicit images without consent a felony. That got my attention. A law that would essentially make all forms of revenge porn illegal? That was worth campaigning for. And yes, Shep Green also happens to be the father of Avery Green, who I may still have feelings for. But Avery is not the reason I’m working on the Green campaign. (He is the reason I started applying lip gloss between periods three and four. Ugh. I know.)

   “I’m surprised you even know about that. It doesn’t poll particularly well, so we won’t let Shep talk about it,” Priya said as she reached into a mini-fridge which was, for some reason, sitting in the middle of the hall. She grabbed a cold brew. I told her I’d stumbled across an interview Shep did on the local news

   where he talked about Roosevelt High’s revenge pornography scandal. He said he intended to bring a bill to the New York statehouse on the first day he took office.

   “He seemed genuinely enthusiastic. Which is more than I can say for the other lawmakers I tried to contact.”

   Priya smirked. She wasn’t sure what to make of me. She took a big swig of her cold brew before almost choking. “Ugh. This is sweetened. This was not what I meant to get.” All the same, she held her nose and chugged the entire thing before continuing down the hall.

   We were in what she and the team called “campaign headquarters.” Though the building itself didn’t seem like it was convinced. Three months ago it was a TAX-to-the-MAX, one of those cheesy local accounting firms that promises huge refunds. Now it was a pop-up campaign office with folding tables, cases of bottled water, and campaign signs littered everywhere. It all felt very temporary, like when a divorced dad tries to decorate his new two-bedroom condo. We passed by a makeshift conference room and a closet labeled every yard sign ever. As we walked, Priya tapped out an email into her phone, while seemingly everyone we passed had a question for her.

   “Priya, I just got a call from Wellmans,” a slim staffer with a ruffled shirt informed her. “They want to know if tomorrow’s press co

   nference will be held in the parking lot or in the store itself?”

   “Store itself. A parking lot makes us look like we’re squatting. And it’s tonight. Seven p.m. Not tomorrow.”

   “It is?” the frazzled staffer asked, then hurried off.

   Another staffer, this one a youngish, light-skinned Black man with locs down to his waist, said, “Pri! See the Chronicle poll?”

   “Don’t freak out. We’re trying to flip a Republican seat, which is really fucking hard. We knew it was going to get tight, and we planned for this,” she said without an ounce of panic in her voice.

   We then passed a very white, maybe-twentysomething dude with red hair, leaning against a wall, chatting up some attractive young phonebankers. “Alex! What are you doing here?” Priya demanded, adopting the tone of a toddler’s mom who had just counted all the way to three.

   “Shep said I could take a lunch break!” Alex said defensively, then rolled his eyes at the attractive phonebankers. (This isn’t important for the story, but the girls were not into him.)

   “Not when he has a radio interview in twenty minutes and you’re his body man!” she scolded. “Do you know what being a body m

   an means? It means you never leave his body.”

   “Yeah. Okay. Sorry,” Alex stammered before fleeing in the opposite direction. Priya then swung open an office door.

   “Interns. Here ya go. Welcome to the fold.”

   Inside the room were three dead-eyed twentysomethings of various ethnicities stuffing envelopes. One of them started to say, “Heyyyy . . .” but I turned to catch up to Priya.

   She had already made it halfway down the hall when I said, “Wait. Sorry. I was planning to tell Jim this in my interview, but I feel like I could be a lot more useful to the campaign if I was in a position with . . . some actual responsibility?”

   Priya was glued to her phone as she said, “Uh . . . okay. So what is it you want to do? You want to be campaign manager? Or maybe replace Shep and run for office yourself?”

   “Haha. No,” I said, not taking Priya’s bait. “But I heard you do fellowships?”

   “Fellowships?” Priya repeated. She seemed surprised that I had done research into the campaign. “Fellowships are paid and reserved for interns who are majoring in political science. What are you, a freshman in college?”

   “No. I’m a senior,” I said proudly, before adding, “in high school.”

   “Right,” Priya said, turning away from me. “Work your way up. In the meantime: mailers, phone- and textbanking, coffee runs

   ; believe it or not, they are a vital part of what we do—”

   “Just give me a chance!” I pleaded, running in front of her. “Look, I get that I’m young and that most people my age are useless. But you don’t exactly look like an elder statesman! What if I’m one of the good ones? Like you! What if I’m a high school Jen O’Malley Dillon?”

   Priya huffed. A little annoyed that I wouldn’t just shut up and phonebank already. But also maybe slightly impressed that I name-checked Joe Biden’s campaign manager.[*]

   “You want a task? Fine,” she said. “You know Wellmans?”

   “Everybody knows Wellmans,” I said.

   Wellmans is a chain of grocery stores in upstate New York. It’s where everyone in North Webster shops because it is so much more than a grocery store. Wellmans are big and well-stocked, with store-brand stuff that is often better than the name brand (i.e., Wellmans Toasted Oats™ are five thousand times better than Cheerios). Wellmans are destinations. Plus they give college scholarships to their employees. Plus they make chocolate moon cookies that are the best thing I’ve ever had. And yes, they’re soft. And yes, I once ate four for breakfast and I did not regret it. It’s kind of hard to explain Wellmans unless you live here, but people in North Webster treat it wit

   h a church-like reverence. It’s borderline cultish.

   “Here’s a task for you,” Priya said, interrupting my Wellmans reverie. “At seven o’clock, Shep is doing a press event at the Ridge Road Wellmans. And I want him to announce that Danny Wellman is endorsing him.”

   “Okay . . .” I said.

   “So I need you to call Danny and get him to do that.”

   My eyes went large. Danny Wellman, the founder and CEO of Wellmans, is a local celebrity. He’s the closest thing North Webster has to a LeBron James.[*] The odds of me (a nobody who has never met him) getting his endorsement were . . . not great.

   “That’s in, like, four hours?” I clarified.

   “That’s the deal. You get Danny, I’ll make you a fellow.”

   Whoa. Priya was not fucking around. “Okay,” I said. “Deal.” Then I forcefully shook her hand, as if that would impress her.

   “If you need anything, just ask Melvin,” Priya said. “He’s the intern coordinator.” Then she disappeared into a meeting room.

   I looked around for an open desk, ready to get to work, but it seemed like most were occupied. Maybe this Melvin person would 

   know where I could set up shop. By the main entrance sat a partially bearded white guy wearing a ratty Henley and surfing his phone. Seemed like a Melvin to me!

   “Melvin?” I asked.

   “Blah. No,” the guy said, his eyes glued to the article he was reading. “That guy sucks. I’m Nick.”

   “Oh. Sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t that sorry. I hate people who don’t bother to look up from their phones when you ask them a question. “Do you know if any of these desks are free?”

   “No idea.”

   I grimaced. What a charmer. “Well, Nick, how about a Wi-Fi password?”

   “That I can help you with.” He smiled and pointed to the wall where the Wi-Fi password was posted. “Enjoy! It’s very slow!”

   “Awesome!” I said. And parked myself on the floor.

   And then, with my back pushed against a decaying plaster wall and my butt on warped linoleum, I endeavored to track down the biggest celebrity in North Webster and convince him to endorse Shep Green for state senate.