Slacker

  But this was no grade-level election. This was for student body president.

  I drew a deep breath. “Okay. What do I have to do?”

  She began to tap on the laptop she used for official campaign business. “Kelly is a presidential scholar, so there’s no way you’re going to compete with her smarts-wise. She’s also the captain of the girls’ softball team, and let’s face it, you couldn’t catch a cold.”

  I was sarcastic. “Try not to build me up too much. You wouldn’t want me to get a swelled head.”

  She took my arm and led me to one of my posters, taped to the wall.

  There was a picture of me wearing a suit and tie—looking very presidential, if I do say so myself.

  Felicia was all business. “What do you see? Or, more important, what don’t you see?”

  “You think we should put that Jordana Cohen isn’t the same person as me and Kelly Hannity should be kicked out of the election for confusing voters?”

  She regarded me pityingly. “Nobody votes for a crybaby.”

  “Not even if your opponent is being totally unfair?” I pleaded.

  “Never use the phrase ‘totally unfair.’ It makes you sound like a crybaby. You can’t turn this thing around by complaining about Kelly. You’ve got to build yourself up, focus on your own accomplishments.”

  I brightened. “Like student senate.”

  “That was last year. We have to show everybody who you are now. You need to get knee-deep in school activities.”

  I was mystified. “What could be more knee-deep than running for president?”

  She pulled a paper from her pocket and unfolded it. It was the Vote Kelly Hannity flier that had been stuffed in every locker in the school. With a sinking heart, I took in the long list under Extracurricular: National Honor Society, Art Club, Athletic Leadership, Student Orientation Volunteers, Golf Team, Blood Drive Coordinator, Parents’ Night Hostess …

  It went on and on until I could barely stand it. This girl didn’t have time to run for president. She didn’t even have time to sleep. How could anybody ever compete with that?

  “Looks like she’s done it all,” I mourned. “She hasn’t left anything for anybody else.”

  “Not quite,” Felicia countered. “I know one school organization she doesn’t belong to.”

  “Yeah, right. If the undead formed a club, she’d find a way to get in to dominate the zombie vote.”

  “I’m serious,” Felicia persisted. “It’s called the Positive Action Group, and it’s going to be huge.”

  I was unimpressed. “I never heard of it.”

  “It’s new,” she admitted. “That’s probably why Kelly missed it. But I checked around. The faculty adviser is Fanshaw himself, so you know there’s a lot of juice behind it. And you’re going to be a founding member.”

  I was intrigued. “What do they do?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know, but the web page talks a lot about helping people. The main thing is you’re in and Kelly isn’t. And if she tries to join later, we can spread it around that she’s copying you. It’s a win-win.”

  For the first time, I saw a little light at the end of the tunnel. Politics went this way sometimes. You lose your lead because they bring in a seventh grader with the same name as you. But then you find a way to scratch and claw back to the top.

  Okay, Felicia finds a way.

  “So, did you sign me up?”

  “I tried,” she replied. “I think my computer’s glitchy, because I kept getting sent to the wrong website. Anyway, this will be better. You’ll join in person and make a public splash. The big mover and shaker is this guy Cameron Boxer. I know where his locker is.”

  A sour note sounded in my head. “Cameron Boxer? Are you sure? I know that kid. He’s kind of a nobody. How important can this club be if he’s in charge of it?”

  “Big things start in small places,” she lectured. “Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin. Apple grew out of a garage. One day they’ll say Jordan Toleffsen got his big break in the Positive Action Group.”

  Cam Boxer—I just couldn’t imagine him being the founder of anything. Not if founding meant he had to get up off the couch.

  We’d been neighbors our whole lives, but the only real interaction with him I could remember was the time we bought our dining room table from his family’s store. He used to hang out on the big sectional sofas, playing on a handheld.

  His locker was on the second floor—number 248B. Cam wasn’t there, but Daphne Leibowitz was. She was taping a note to the metal door. I couldn’t read what it said, but it had a lot of exclamation points.

  As usual, Felicia broke the ice. “Have you seen Cameron Boxer?”

  “Ha!” Daphne practically spat.

  My campaign manager frowned. She had her phone out, ready to get a picture of my official entry into the Positive Action Group. This would be on the school’s website by lunchtime and on the front page of the school paper tomorrow.

  Daphne explained her comment. “Nobody sees Cameron Boxer. It’s like seeing the wind. It can’t be done.”

  I spoke up. “I’m joining the Positive Action Group.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” Daphne said bitterly. “I’ve been trying to join for the past week and a half. Even Mr. Fanshaw’s been stonewalled, and he’s the faculty adviser. We need to schedule a meeting so we can get our first project going. Elvis has been eating out of the Dumpster by the train tracks. They found beaver droppings dangerously close to the electrified third rail. We have to create a habitat for him before he gets killed!”

  Daphne talked really fast when she was angry. It was one of those tricky moments in politics. I had to have an opinion about this, but I really couldn’t picture what the Positive Action Group or a dead singer had to do with beaver poop.

  I said, “If I’m elected, I’ll take care of that.”

  “What Jordan means,” Felicia put in hurriedly, “is that he needs your vote for student body president. He wants to work with people like you and Cameron Boxer through the P.A.G. to make sure Elvis gets a fair deal.”

  “The only problem with that plan,” Daphne complained, “is it has Cam in it. And nothing good can ever have him in it, even if it’s something fantastic like the P.A.G.”

  I frowned. “So are you a member or not?”

  Daphne shrugged helplessly. “Who knows? Mr. Fanshaw says I am, but how can I be? I can’t pin down Cam, there’s no sign-up sheet, and every time I go on the website, I end up in the rain forest.”

  “Well,” Felicia persisted, “String’s a member.”

  Daphne seemed surprised. “String McBean? How did he get in? Athletes always end up with special treatment.”

  “If he’s in, you’re in,” Felicia concluded. She tapped her phone into camera mode. “Stand next to Jordan and I’ll get a picture of you for the Sycamore Middleman.”

  While we were posing, an immense shadow loomed over us. “Where’s Boxer?” rumbled a deep voice.

  I looked up into the broad, leather-jacketed shoulders of Xavier Meggett. By sheer instinct, I backed away a step. I wasn’t afraid of him—well, maybe just a little. Xavier was a tough piece of work, and two years older than the rest of us. He’d been held back a couple of times because his family sent him on these long “trips,” which everybody knew meant he was doing another stretch in juvie. When you were running for president, you couldn’t really hang around a kid like that; his bad reputation might rub off on you.

  Felicia had the same idea. “Cam’s not here.” She was as anxious as I was to get rid of Xavier.

  But he wasn’t going anywhere. “So who’s going to sign my sheet?”

  I scanned the piece of paper he held out. It was a letter from Mr. Fanshaw addressed to someone whose position was identified as Juvenile Probation Officer. It explained that Xavier Pinkston Meggett would be completing his forty hours of court-mandated community service with the Positive Action Group. Attached was a time sheet, which had to be fi
lled out and signed by a representative of the P.A.G.

  “I guess you need Cam,” I replied apologetically. “He’s a little tricky to nail down.”

  I regretted those words as soon as they were out of my mouth. I hoped he wouldn’t take the “nail down” part too literally and carry it out with real nails. This was Xavier, after all.

  He heaved a sigh. “I was hoping to do this the easy way.” Like there was also a hard way, and we really didn’t want to know about it.

  “Sorry,” I told him. “But I can’t put my name where it says Cam Boxer.”

  “It doesn’t say Cam Boxer,” Xavier observed mildly. “It says ‘Authorized P.A.G. Representative.’ ”

  Suddenly, Felicia snatched the paper from Xavier and shoved it under my nose. “Sign it!”

  I was horrified. “But—”

  “Now!” She took Xavier’s pen and stuck it in my hand.

  So I signed, and Felicia took a picture of me doing it, standing there beside this hulk who could cost me the election.

  When we were on our way back downstairs, I turned on her. “Why did you make me do that? Now I’m forever going to be associated with that guy!”

  “Don’t you see?” she asked excitedly. “Not only are you a member of the P.A.G., you’re an authorized representative! Second only to Cam himself !” She patted her phone smugly. “And I’ve got it all on camera.”

  The next day, when the Middleman came out, there was a picture of me right on the front page. I was signing the time sheet, but the photograph had been cropped so you couldn’t even see Xavier.

  The caption read: Student government candidate and P.A.G. number-two man Jordan Toleffsen approves important court document for new group.

  I looked very presidential.

  If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn that Cameron Boxer was trying to dynamite his own club. The P.A.G. had been in existence for more than two weeks, and still there had been zero activity.

  I needed to talk to Cameron face-to-face. I sent an email to his school account. No response. I paged him over the PA system. He didn’t come. Next time, I had the principal page him for me. No one ignored the principal.

  No one except Cameron Boxer.

  I tried to grab him after school, staking out his locker at the stroke of three. He never showed.

  Freeland McBean noticed me there, waiting. “You’re wasting your time, Mr. F. He’s long gone.”

  I consulted my watch in dismay. “It isn’t even three-oh-one yet! Not even the Flash could leave school so fast!”

  I tried to catch up with him before school, but everyone assured me he wasn’t a morning person. I was starting to think he had a black-market locker somewhere on the other side of the building. I had some detective work ahead of me.

  I started dogging his classes. Considering I had his schedule and knew exactly where he was going to be, he was still hard to find. That boy spent more time in the bathroom than any fifteen students combined. He didn’t need a guidance counselor; a doctor would be more to the point.

  “Why is it so impossible to get in touch with Cameron Boxer!” I exclaimed in the faculty lounge.

  It got a sympathetic laugh. As an eighth grader, he’d passed through most of the teachers’ classrooms at some point.

  “Stop by my room in seventh period,” Barbara Lederer suggested kindly. “He’s sure to be there.”

  I made a face. “The kid has a sixth sense. When he feels my aura approaching, he runs out to the bathroom.”

  “We’re having our geometry unit test,” she explained. “He has to be there or he flunks the course.”

  It worked. I waited patiently as Cameron finished his exam. Working away at his desk, he looked like everybody else, a normal young man. Was something wrong with me that I’d attributed Houdini-like powers to this ordinary boy? Had a trunk-load of unsold raffle tickets distorted my view of reality?

  “All right, Cameron. I need to speak with you in my office.”

  “Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I just need to hit the bathroom on the way.”

  “You can hit the bathroom after we talk.” I wasn’t born yesterday. “This won’t take long.”

  Once in the office, I laid down the law. My philosophy had always been to let students take the lead, but you couldn’t do that with Cameron Boxer. Actually, you couldn’t do anything with Cameron Boxer, but especially not that.

  I told him that the first meeting of the P.A.G. would be on Thursday in the music room, no ifs, ands, or buts. Sign-up sheets were going on all bulletin boards. It was a done deal, and the days of “we’re so new” and “we’re still getting our act together” were a thing of the past. Our act was officially together, and the P.A.G. was under way.

  He seemed agreeable. Pleased, even. We shook on it.

  By the next morning, all the sign-up sheets were gone, and so were the posters announcing the meeting.

  “It has to be Cameron,” I told Barbara. “The only things missing from the bulletin boards are the materials about the P.A.G. It was bad enough when he was ignoring his own club. Now he’s actually working against it. The kid is driving me crazy!”

  “Calm down,” she soothed. “The boy started this group, and now he’s obviously having second thoughts. Shouldn’t you find out why?”

  She was right. I was a counselor. This kind of thing should have been up my alley.

  So the next time I managed to corner Cameron, I put it to him just like that: “I think I understand what’s bothering you. You’re worried that if the P.A.G. isn’t a success, everyone will blame you.”

  He just looked at me like I was speaking an ancient language that had been lost for six thousand years.

  I took another stab at it. “Or maybe failure isn’t the problem. Your concern is the extra responsibility of being president of such a high-profile organization.”

  He kept staring. It was honestly starting to freak me out a little.

  So I said, “I promise you, Cameron, I’ve got your back on this. If you need a little leeway from your teachers, I’ll speak to them. If you have trouble with any kids, you only have to come to me. I won’t let anything go wrong.”

  What else could I do? Lie down and beg him to wipe his feet on me? I made myself his safety net. Whatever his reservations about the Positive Action Group, surely I had everything covered. I felt a rush of deep professional satisfaction. It was a shining moment for any guidance counselor, a rare chance to take a troubled student and insulate him from all the factors that were making him so conflicted.

  He said, “Okay,” and left the office.

  I sat there, exhausted and not at all certain that Cameron Boxer would even show up for his own meeting on Thursday.

  It was perfect—until it wasn’t perfect anymore.

  “What are you going to do, Cam?” asked Pavel. “It’s already Wednesday. That P.A.G. meeting is tomorrow after school.”

  “I guess I have to go,” I said with resignation.

  “And do what?” Chuck prompted.

  I shrugged helplessly. “There is no P.A.G.”

  Pavel frowned. “I’m not so sure about that anymore. I mean, yeah, there used to be no P.A.G. But when there are posters all over the school, and the Middleman is writing about it, and Mr. Fanshaw’s all gung ho, and people like Jordan and Xavier and String think they’re members, it means there is a P.A.G. And you’re the president of it.”

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around that.

  I wasn’t even sure who to blame—Mr. Fantail, or Daphne, or String, or Jordan, or Xavier. Okay, not Xavier. It was never good for your health to blame Xavier for anything.

  When the bell rang on meeting day, I marched through the halls like a prisoner on the way to his own execution. Without Pavel and Chuck at my side, I doubt I would have had the courage to put one foot in front of the other. We may have been the Awesome Threesome, but there was nothing awesome about what we were on our way to do.

  Pavel and I hung back, but Chuck kept dri
fting ahead.

  “What are you so enthused about?” Pavel asked him.

  He flushed bright red. “I don’t know. I’ve never joined anything before. I’m kind of excited to see what it’s all about.”

  “You know what it’s all about,” I growled. “Nothing.”

  “Yeah, before,” he conceded. “But now it looks like it’s going to be about something. I’m anxious to find out what.”

  Chuck made more sense when he had a mouth full of gummy worms.

  The door to the music room was open. Outside stood an easel with another one of Mr. Fanzine’s signs:

  That last part was a stab through the heart. All Welcome wasn’t exactly the message I had in mind. Danger: Toxic Waste would have been more like it.

  Inside, it was even worse than I thought it would be. Besides the guidance counselor and Daphne, String, Jordan, Felicia, and Xavier, there were other people, too—kids who must have seen the posters and thought that All Welcome meant they could go. Some people would join anything just so they could add it to their résumé. And—my eyes must have bulged in horror—on the back row of risers sat Melody with her friend Katrina, both of them grinning at me. No way was this a show of sisterly support. Melody was here to drink in my misery—and enjoy every minute of it. She knew. You bet she knew.

  Pavel and Chuck took seats in the far corner of the room, and I tried to make myself small between the two of them. No such luck. Mr. Fanblade hauled me up to the front of the room, his face glowing with purpose.

  “Our president has arrived,” he announced enthusiastically. “Let’s get started. Take it away, Cameron.”

  So there I was, standing in front of everybody, with less than nothing to say and my sister in the back, taking notes. If I could do with myself what Pavel could do with websites, where he redirected people to other countries, I would have been in Iceland in a heartbeat.

  The guidance counselor got sick of my dead silence and announced, “Why don’t you tell us a little about what we have to look forward to in the Positive Action Group.”