Kristy for President

  Claudia nodded. “Well, we could use them both …”

  “Whichever we choose, we can’t do that right away,” said Stacey, being practical. “To make buttons we need dozens and dozens of the same design.”

  “You’re right, Stace. I need to make a whole sheet of designs, and then we can do color Xeroxes of the sheet and cut the designs out. That’ll save time.”

  “And meanwhile we can start on the posters. And if we don’t finish them this afternoon, I can ask David Michael to help me finish them at home.”

  Claudia started pulling out newspapers to spread around on the floor, and paint and Magic Markers, and soon we were making posters while Claud concentrated on the sheet of button designs.

  We worked for awhile, and just as I was beginning to think seriously about pizza, there was a knock on the door. Claudia opened it to find her sister, Janine.

  Standing next to each other, Claudia and Janine couldn’t have looked more different, even though that day Claudia was dressed fairly conservatively: white jeans, red shoes with big bows, a tropical jungle shirt with each button shaped like a piece of fruit, and her hair pulled to one side over her shoulder with a banana barrette. But Janine, with her short hair and bangs, her pullover sweater, and plain skirt and loafers, made Claudia look extremely exotic.

  “I believe you would be glad to know that a pizza delivery has just been effected,” said Janine. She talks like that all the time. It’s part of being a genius.

  “Right,” said Claudia. I got up, pulling the money out of my pocket, and ran downstairs with her.

  When we got back upstairs, carrying the pizza and balancing napkins and plates and Diet Cokes, Janine had stepped into the room and was studying the posters we’d finished and propped against one wall to dry.

  “You’ve chosen a logo, I see.” She peered over her glasses more closely at one of them. “It’s quite a good one. Simple, but striking. That’s extremely important in product identification. The consumer has to be able to make the association readily between the identifying symbol and what it represents.”

  Normally, Janine’s encyclopedia act, even though she doesn’t mean to sound so formal, can be a little trying. But this time I just stopped and stared. “You know what, Janine? That’s exactly, or almost exactly what Claudia said!”

  Claudia and Janine looked at each other, and then we all burst out laughing.

  “Well,” said Janine, turning to go, “I can see your campaign is in excellent hands, Kristy. I wish you the best of luck.”

  “You said it!” I gave Janine the two thumbs-up sign.

  “Thanks, Janine,” said Claudia, sounding a little surprised. It’s hard to admit, because older siblings can be a pain sometimes, but getting a compliment from them is extra special. And Janine is not someone to just throw compliments around.

  Which made me more sure than ever that I had the best possible campaign manager. And team. But would that mean I would win the election?

  Chewing on a slice of pepperoni pizza, I looked around. Stacey, as cool as ever, eating a slice of double cheese, pepperoni, onion, and mushroom pizza; Claudia, who was absently picking the mushrooms off her slice and studying her art notebook; Dawn, laughing and trying to catch the strings of cheese with her fingers; and Mary Anne, carefully taking small bites of her pizza and grinning at Dawn. I grinned myself. With the Baby-sitters Club behind me, how could I lose?

  But then I remembered Grace the Snob, who probably thought a good class president was the one who was the leader of a very select group of total snobs; and Alan, the Pest of All the World (whose principle qualification for leadership, as far as I could tell, had been leading half the school off into the distance during the fire drill); and That Nerd Pete, and I stopped grinning. I had to win, I had to. I was not being arrogant. I simply knew how important it was for me to be elected. Because if I wasn’t, look at the remaining choices.

  I had to run, and I had to win, and I had to do it to save the eighth grade.

  When Mary Anne arrived at Jamie’s that afternoon, Jamie, Mrs. Newton, and Lucy met her.

  “Terrific,” said Mrs. Newton. “Right on time, as always.”

  Mary Anne thought that was a good beginning, even though Jamie shot past Mary Anne without even saying hello.

  “Hi, Mrs. Newton. Hi, Lucy. Hi, Jamie,” Mary Anne replied politely.

  Mrs. Newton picked up her purse and Lucy’s baby supplies tote, and headed toward her car. Mary Anne put down the Kid-Kit she’d brought along (not that she was going to get to use it!), and followed Mrs. Newton and Lucy. “Lucy’s doctor is very good about not keeping her patients waiting, so we shouldn’t be gone more than an hour and a half. Jamie can have a snack in an hour, but not any later than that. I don’t want him to spoil his dinner.”

  “Good luck,” said Mary Anne.

  “Come on!” That was Jamie, shouting from the driveway, where he’d wheeled his bicycle out of the garage.

  “It’s just a routine checkup,” Mrs. Newton reassured Mary Anne, putting Lucy into her car seat. After they’d backed out of the driveway and driven away, Mary Anne trotted over to Jamie, who was still holding on to the handlebars of his bicycle.

  “It’s a beautiful bicycle, Jamie. Did you choose the color yourself?”

  “Yes,” said Jamie. Mary Anne could tell how preoccupied he was, because normally he would have told her all about why he’d chosen red with white racing stripes and at least a dozen other wonderful things about whatever it was that interested him — which in this case, of course, was his bike.

  But he wasn’t interested in talking about his bike that day. He was interested in riding it.

  “Hold on,” he commanded.

  “Hold on, please,” said Mary Anne.

  “Please,” repeated Jamie shortly, and he began climbing onto the bike as Mary Anne held onto the handlebars.

  “Are you going to show me how you ride?” she asked.

  “No!” said Jamie. “I just got my bicycle. I don’t know how to ride yet.”

  “Of course. Let’s practice, then, okay?”

  Since that was exactly what Jamie wanted, he didn’t wait for an answer. He just started pedaling determinedly. When they reached the foot of the driveway, he slowed down almost to a stop. Mary Anne looked at him and saw that his face was red and he was biting his lower lip.

  “You’re doing a great job, Jamie,” she said, half worried he was going to bite a hole in his lip.

  They inched around the corner of the driveway and onto the sidewalk and Jamie didn’t answer.

  “Jamie?” said Mary Anne.

  “Uh,” grunted Jamie, but at least he stopped biting his lip. Mary Anne was surprised. She’d never seen Jamie quite like this. He’s stubborn, but he’s not obsessive or anything.

  She was in for a bigger surprise when Jamie pedaled onto the sidewalk. He slowed down almost to a standstill for every crack. And when they reached the corner and had to turn around, Jamie slid off the bike.

  “Are you tired?” asked Mary Anne.

  “I’m turning around,” replied Jamie, as if that should be obvious to anyone.

  So Mary Anne helped Jamie turn the bike around and waited for him to climb back on, and they started down the sidewalk. They inched along in front of his house toward the corner at the other end of the block. Suddenly, Jamie came to a dead stop.

  Mary Anne didn’t ask if he was tired this time. She was learning. “What is it, Jamie?”

  He pointed and shook his head violently. “That stick!”

  Mary Anne looked and almost asked, “What stick?” but, fortunately, she saw the skinny little stick lying on the sidewalk just in time.

  “Do you want it?” she asked, and then realized the answer just as Jamie said, “It has to move!” If the cracks in the sidewalk scared him, then the stick probably seemed like a major obstacle.

  But when Mary Anne let go of the bicycle to get the stick, Jamie howled, “DON’T!”

  She waited for a mom
ent for him to calm down, and then she said, “But, Jamie, how am I going to get the stick?”

  He shook his head again without answering.

  “Listen, Jamie,” said Mary Anne patiently. “If you don’t pedal and you don’t move, you’ll be perfectly fine. And I’ll move the stick really fast. It’ll only take a second. I promise.”

  Jamie hesitated, then said, “You promise promise?”

  “Promise, promise, promise with a capital P,” answered Mary Anne.

  So Jamie made himself very rigid and straight and said, “Okay.” Mary Anne grabbed the stick, threw it on the grass, and went back to Jamie.

  He relaxed as she took hold of the bicycle again.

  “See,” said Mary Anne. “You did great. Wasn’t that easy?” They started forward again and she said, “You know, you have made progress, Jamie. Didn’t you need both Kristy and Claudia to help you ride the first day you got your bicycle?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Jamie. They came to the corner and he got off and turned the bike around and got back on.

  Cheerfully, Mary Anne kept up a flow of encouraging conversation. “You know, everything gets easier with practice. You learned that from playing for the Krushers. Remember how hard it was for you when you started playing? Now Kristy and the Krushers wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

  “Yeah,” said Jamie, and he didn’t sound quite so fearful. But he continued to slow down at every crack.

  Encouraged, Mary Anne went on. “You know, it’s like they say. If you’re riding a horse and you fall off, the important thing is to get right back on.”

  Big mistake. Jamie’s face turned bright red, and he practically screamed, “I’m not going to fall!”

  By the time Mary Anne had calmed him down, they’d reached the foot of the driveway. “This is a lot of practice,” she said. “Sometimes you can practice better if you take a break. Why don’t we go get the Kid-Kit, and —”

  “No.”

  “No, thank you,” said Mary Anne, suppressing a sigh. The Kid-Kits are something all the kids love, because what kid doesn’t like reading books that aren’t his own, and playing with toys that aren’t the same old ones? So we take our Kid-Kits to some of our jobs (not to all of them, because then they’d be ordinary, and not a treat) and replenish them with new toys and books and coloring books out of our dues from time to time.

  Anyway, when Jamie said no to the Kid-Kit Mary Anne knew she was in for a really long afternoon with the bicycle.

  “No, thank you,” repeated Jamie, and then he stopped so abruptly that Mary Anne almost fell herself.

  “You’re good with the brakes,” she said, but Jamie didn’t hear her. He was staring at the sidewalk.

  Mary Anne looked. All she saw was a leaf.

  “The leaf?” she asked.

  Jamie nodded.

  She moved the leaf and they crept forward.

  Every time she suggested they stop, Jamie refused. He didn’t even want his snack. At least after they’d been up and down the sidewalk half a dozen times it was clean — not a twig or a leaf or a pebble in sight.

  However, it didn’t help that the other kids in the neighborhood kept riding by. They weren’t teasing Jamie or anything. A lot of them waved and said “Hi!” and “Nice bike.” But they were zipping along, riding with just one hand, or even (well, maybe those guys were showing off a little) with no hands at all, and there was Jamie, red-faced and poking along.

  Finally, Mary Anne convinced Jamie to stop — by convincing him that she needed to rest. And she did.

  She fixed iced tea for both of them (it was too late for Jamie’s snack by then) and she and Jamie sat on the front stoop, with the bicycle propped carefully next to it.

  The neighborhood kids kept whizzing by on their bikes. Jamie’s face, watching them, was sad and mad all at the same time.

  Mary Anne racked her brain, trying to think of something to say to make Jamie feel better. Finally, she remembered the campaign for class president.

  “Listen, Jamie,” she said. “Kristy’s running for president of our class at school. Do you want to help her?”

  “How?” he asked.

  “We can think up campaign slogans. You know, good things about Kristy and why people should vote for her, like they do on commercials when they want you to remember to buy what they’re advertising.”

  Jamie perked up a little at that. “Kristy for pres, she’s the bes,” he said right away. He is a smart kid. (Which may be why he’s having so much trouble learning to ride his bicycle. He hasn’t fallen yet — but he can imagine falling. And because he’s smart, he can imagine it vividly and clearly.)

  Laughing, Mary Anne said, “Wait a minute. I’ll get pencils and paper and we’ll write these down.”

  She and Jamie came up with some silly slogans, some funny ones, and some good ones, too: “Choose Kristy or else” (that was Jamie’s). “You can’t miss with Kristy” (Mary Anne). And a terrific one: “Kristy for president of the class — make some changes and make them last” (both of them together).

  It was fun, and Jamie seemed to forget about his bicycle woes for awhile. But Mary Anne didn’t. Even after Mrs. Newton came back (Lucy’s doctor said she was just perfect, which we all knew, of course) and Mary Anne was heading home, she was trying to think of a way for Jamie to overcome his fear of falling off his bicycle.

  It wasn’t going to be easy.

  When the campaign for class president started, everything seemed to move into high gear. Suddenly the halls were full of posters. Lots of SMS students started wearing buttons and ribbons.

  Stacey had had a really good idea. Instead of making only posters, we’d also made lots and lots of photocopies of our “Kristy for president” slogan with the big K + symbol beneath it. Claudia also designed a flier showing only the symbol, and we photocopied that and plastered dozens and dozens of them everywhere around the school, like on fences by vacant lots and things. According to Stacey, that was the way people in New York advertise things, especially rock concerts.

  Of course, before we K-plussed everything, we asked permission. At SMS we had rules (naturally) about where you could put campaign stuff, but out of school, you couldn’t be sure. Some people said no to the fliers and some said yes, and some seemed sort of surprised that we asked at all and just shrugged. As every baby-sitter and little kid knows, a shrug is like a maybe — it means yes. We wound up with more yeses than nos, so it hadn’t hurt to ask.

  And we used recycled paper and wrote at the bottom: “recycled paper/please recycle.” That was Dawn’s idea.

  Mary Anne suggested that we keep moving posters around, and putting up new ones (we made all the posters reversible, too) so the campaign would stay interesting, and kids wouldn’t see the same posters over and over again. We took turns going to school early to do that, but I tried to go early every morning, since I was the candidate.

  When I couldn’t help in the mornings, I’d do the poster switch after school, which is what I was doing when I realized I was going to be late for a meeting.

  The meeting was for the candidates. As I dashed downstairs I wondered what on earth we could possibily have left to discuss. The candidates had already attended several meetings. The door was closed when I got to the room, but the meeting hadn’t started yet. Mallory had saved me a seat, and I slid into it in my best Krusher team style.

  “Safe,” I muttered.

  Mal grinned. “You didn’t miss anything,” she whispered.

  “Tell me about it,” I whispered back.

  Mr. Kingbridge, the vice-principal, went over the rules of the campaign again, and I tried to use the time (subtly, of course) to look over some class notes. I have very good concentration, so it took Mal’s elbow against my ribs to tell me that Mr. Kingbridge was saying something new about the school elections.

  “As you know,” he was going on when I looked up, “we want the candidates and the students to have every chance to interact in a meaningful way prior to the elect
ions. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that in addition to a Campaign Day next week before the election, when candidates will be setting up booths in the school cafeteria and spending two hours in the morning campaigning …”

  Including shaking hands, I thought. But not kissing babies!

  “… in addition to that,” Mr. Kingbridge repeated, “we are going to give the candidates the opportunity to debate and to make two speeches.”

  Several hands shot up then, but Pete’s was first. He stood up. “Excuse me, but when you say opportunity, do you mean it is a requirement?”

  “It is, yes, going to be part of the campaign experience,” said Mr. Kingbridge.

  I groaned. I wasn’t the only one.

  From somewhere in the chorus of groans behind me I heard the phrase “dress to wear” (Grace, I thought, who else?) and that jerk Alan intoning, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, your eyes, your noses …”

  Beside me, Mallory wasn’t groaning, though. She was absolutely frozen, her eyes enormous behind her glasses.

  “Mal?” I said.

  She turned to look at me and blurted out, in a panic, “A debate? Me? I’ve never done that before. This is awful!”

  “You can do it, Mal,” I said. “Don’t worry.” However, I was worried. Not because I had never debated anyone before. (I hadn’t.) I just didn’t know how I was going to find the time to do it.

  Mr. Kingbridge answered a few more questions and then dismissed us.

  “Oh, Kristy. A debate!”

  Poor Mal. I tried to say something that would comfort her.

  “Just think of this as reasoning with a much larger, older group of baby-sitting charges,” I suggested.

  “Somehow,” said Mal, “that doesn’t help.”

  I gave a strangled cry and Mal jumped.

  Of course, it was Alan the Pest. He’d knuckled me in the arm.

  “You do that again, Alan, and you’ll be sorry!” I glared at him, but it didn’t do any good. He just turned around and walked backward in front of us.

  “You and I are going to debate, Kristy. What do you think?”