Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President

  “Like what kind of stuff?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “All kinds of stuff,” he said. “Like why you kept bragging that your campaign was so good. And what kind of posters I was drawing.”

  “And so you just told her, Earl? You just spilled your guts about our campaign? Just because she asked?”

  “No,” he said. “At first, I didn’t tell her anything at all. At first, I said we were keeping it a secret until the candidates’ meeting.”

  I folded my arms. “So then how did she find out?”

  Earl swallowed hard. “Well, we were just standing around in the grass. And then the one with the long black hair patted the ground. You know, for me to sit down.”

  “So?”

  “So I sat.”

  “And?”

  Earl lowered his voice again. “And then Summer asked me if I was ticklish. And even though I said no, she and her friend started tickling me anyway. And you know how much I hate that, Rosie. But they kept tickling and tickling. And they said they wouldn’t stop until I told them about your posters.”

  I couldn’t stand to listen to this. “Oh, Earl.”

  “I know, I know. But I couldn’t help it, Rosie. Tickling is torture, almost. Plus, rolling in the grass was making me wheezy. And my nose was getting all plugged up and I couldn’t breathe. I had to tell them, Rosie. I was suffocating, practically.”

  Now I was angry all over again.

  “No, you weren’t, Earl. You weren’t suffocating. And being tickled is no excuse. What kind of traitor spills his guts to the enemy and then runs back to the general and says, ‘Sorry, General. I was tickled’?”

  I pushed him. “Do you know what happened because of you, Earl? Summer Jones told Alan Allen all about my campaign. And Alan Allen stood right up in front of the entire fourth grade this morning and recited one of my poems. And now he’s going to campaign for better lunches. And Mr. Jolly is letting him!”

  Tears started to fill my eyes. “Darn it, Earl! Why did you have to tell?”

  Earl sat there for a second, just sort of staring off into space. Then all of a sudden, he got a funny look on his face.

  “No. Wait a second. That can’t be right. How could he have recited one of our poems? I didn’t tell Summer Lynne any of our poems.”

  “Yes, you did! You did, too, Earl! You told her the one about the fruit cup and the French fries, because that’s the poem he recited. If you didn’t tell her, then how else would Alan have known it?”

  Not saying a word, Maxie quietly turned and started walking toward the school.

  It took a second before it finally hit me.

  I ran after him and spun him around.

  As soon as I looked at his face, I knew.

  “It was you” I said in amazement. “You’re the one who told Alan my poem.”

  Maxie’s face changed.

  “So what? So what if it was me? I don’t care what you say. I’m sick of getting insulted by kids like Alan Allen. Sixth-graders are bad enough. But Alan’s only fourth-grader and he was pushing me around.”

  Maxie’s eyes narrowed. “He and his friends called me Poindexter! And a dweeb. And he said if I was such a brainiac, then how come I couldn’t figure out how to grow?”

  Maxie pointed to Earl. “And he made fun of Earl, too. He said Earl couldn’t draw worth spit. ‘Earl Wilber is a doofus,’ he says. ‘My posters are going to kill your posters. Kill ’em, Zuckerman,’ he says.

  “So I just try to be cool about it, you know? And I say, ‘Oh yeah? We’ll just see about that, Alan.’ And I start to walk away.

  “Except then, a couple of his friends grab me and start spinning me in a circle until I can’t walk straight. And then Alan puts his arm around my shoulders like suddenly we’re pals. And he walks me over to the corner of the parking lot.

  “ ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll make you a deal, Maxie. I’ll tell you a secret about me, and then you can tell me your campaign secret. That way we’ll be even.’

  “Then he whispers this stupid secret about how he stole a soccer ball from Mort’s Sports Store when he was in the first grade.

  “So I say, ‘Big deal, Alan. What good’s a stupid secret like that going to do us? I’m not telling you anything.’ And that’s when Alan really gets mad. And he grabs the front of my shirt with both of his fists and starts slinging me around a little bit. And he’s getting me totally wrinkled. And so I say, ‘Knock it off, Alan. My mother just ironed this shirt!’

  “And he looks at me like I was a lunatic or something. And he says, ‘God! How can such a skinny wimp be such a giant dork! Huh! I mean, how is that even scientifically possible?’

  “And then he hits himself in the head and says, ‘What the heck was I so worried about? There’s no way in the world that you and that fat tub of goo, Earl Wilber, will be able to get your geeky girlfriend elected president of the fourth grade. No way.’

  “After that, he let go of me and shoved me backward. And I was so mad I could spit. And so I took a giant step right into his face. And then I stood on my toes until our noses were almost touching and I said, ‘Oh yeah? Well, laugh about this, you snool. ’Cause this is what’s going to blow your campaign right out of the water!’ And then I blurted out the fruit cup poem.”

  Maxie stopped and took a breath. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have done it, okay? And I wish it never happened. But I was so sick and tired of being picked on that day, I just had to make them stop.”

  The bell rang. Maxie and Earl didn’t go in. Neither did I.

  Instead, I sat down in the grass and pulled my knees up to hide my face.

  Earl came over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, Rosie. We’ve gotta go.”

  I knocked his hand away.

  “So go,” I said.

  And they did.

  7 THE

  AMERICAN WAY

  I didn’t speak to Maxie or Earl for two days. I wanted to hold out longer, but not walking to school with them was driving me crazy. If I don’t walk with them, they never use the crosswalks.

  Friday morning, I finally showed up at Maxie’s house. It was kind of awkward at first. Mostly, we just stood around and looked at each other. We haven’t really been friends that long, so we’re still learning how to do it.

  Finally, Maxie waved stiffly and said hi.

  “Hi,” I said back.

  “Hi,” said Earl.

  After that, all of us stood there some more. Then, without any warning at all, Earl bent over and butted me with his head. I don’t know why he does stuff like that. It’s just the way his mind works. It did the trick, though. It made us laugh and loosen up a little.

  We didn’t have a big discussion about how they’d let me down or anything. Mostly, I just told them to forget about it. It was big of me to act like that, I thought. I told them that, too. “This is big of me,” I said.

  What I didn’t tell them is that way deep down inside, I knew that part of what had happened was my fault, too. I mean, if I hadn’t been so braggy at the drinking fountain that day, Alan and Summer wouldn’t have been so curious about my campaign.

  Anyhow, I was glad to finally have my friends back again. At school, things had been getting harder and harder to deal with. Like Alan’s posters were going up all over the place. And just as I thought, they were about cafeteria food.

  They weren’t as good as mine, though. Most of his posters were just boring old pictures of pizza cut out of magazines. His slogan was stupid, too:

  WANT PIZZA AND COKE?

  GIVE ALAN YOUR VOTE!

  I mean, come on. Coke and vote don’t even rhyme. And here’s another dumb thing. Alan’s campaign buttons were little pepperonis. If you pinned them to your shirt, they left an oil stain.

  Even Norman Beeman liked my stuff better. He plodded right up to me in the hall and said, “Your posters are way neater than his.”

  I looked down at his feet. “Thank you, Norman,” I said. “Love your boots.”

  Even Sum
mer Lynne Jones’s campaign buttons were better than Alan’s. And at least Summer hadn’t stolen my ideas. Actually, she told Earl that she thought my food poems were revolting.

  Instead, her posters were pictures of people at the beach doing “summery” things. At the top of every poster, there was a picture of the sun wearing sunglasses. It said:

  LOVE SUMMER THE BEST!

  Like a lot of girls I know, Summer dots her i’s with little hearts. Talk about revolting.

  Her campaign buttons were little paper-doll swimsuits made of different-colored construction paper. They even had tabs on them like real paper-doll clothes.

  The girls loved them, too. When Summer passed them out after the candidates’ meeting, I could actually hear girls squealing because they were so cute.

  Still, out of all the candidates, Louise the Disease’s campaign was the absolute stupidest. All her posters said the very same thing:

  LOUISE MARIE SMYTHE—

  SHE COMES WITH HER OWN CALCULATOR.

  It made her sound like a doll you’d get for Christmas. I’m surprised she didn’t add, “Batteries not included.”

  She didn’t stand a chance against Robert Moneypenny. His posters were cooler than anything. Each one had a snapshot of Robert leaning back in an easy chair, with his feet propped up on a big desk. And underneath each picture it said:

  MONEYPENNY FOR TREASURER

  THE NAME SAYS IT ALL …

  Except for Alan Allen, Karla something turned out to be the meanest person running for office.

  Her posters were sort of vicious, if you want to know the truth. They said stuff like:

  ROXANNE HANDLEMAN GOT A “D” IN PENMANSHIP.

  And:

  ASK ROXANNE HANDLEMAN ABOUT HER GRADE IN SPELLING.

  They didn’t stay up long, though. As soon as Mr. Jolly saw them, he called a short candidates’ meeting and told us that dirty campaigning and “mudslinging” were not allowed. He said that even though it happens in real campaigns, elementary schools should have higher standards than our nation’s leaders.

  Anyway, I never thought I’d say this, but making posters turned out to be one of the easiest parts of running for office. The hardest part was how I had to go around being nice to people all the time. And how I had to always keep smiling. I’m not kidding. I even had to smile at kids who make me sick.

  Maxie said it’s called “sucking up.” He said it’s the American way.

  Sometimes I smiled till my cheeks ached. Once I had to go into the girls’ room and massage my face muscles. But even after all that, it didn’t seem like it was making much of a difference.

  “I don’t think this cheery stuff is working,” I said to Maxie one afternoon. “Hardly anybody ever smiles back. And besides, when you go around grinning all the time, kids think you’re a sicko or something. Yesterday I was standing around smiling at a bunch of kids in the lunch line, and this boy I didn’t even know told me I was giving him the creeps.”

  Maxie wasn’t very sympathetic. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. You have to keep smiling. Smiling is one of the main rules of politics: one, smile; two, have a firm handshake; and three, never wear a bad toupee.”

  Judith Topper was the hardest person for me to smile at. Just in case you forgot, Judith is the jerky, creepy girl who sits right in front of me.

  Every day she came to school wearing one of Alan’s stupid pepperonis. I’m positive she only did it to annoy me. Sometimes she’d even point at it and say, “Alan says we’re gonna have pizza every single Friday. That’s why I’m voting for him and not you.”

  I tried not to let her see how much it bothered me. Mostly, I’d just keep my voice calm and say, “I know, Judith. But Alan would never even have thought of the pizza idea if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Would’ve, too,” she’d say back.

  After she turned around, I would make a gross face at the back of her head. The one where I pull down the bottoms of my eyes and stretch my mouth out with my thumbs.

  I never let her see me, though. ’Cause here’s the worst part of all. Even though I can’t stand Judith Topper’s guts, I still wanted her to vote for me.

  I’m not proud about it, but it’s true. That’s what happens in politics. Even if a disgusting green slimeball oozed under the classroom door, you’d still want it to vote for you.

  Stuff like that can make you very mixed-up inside. And sometimes when you’re very mixed-up inside, you do things you know you shouldn’t do.

  Like I’ve never told anybody this. Not even Maxie. But I wanted Judith Topper’s vote so bad I let her look at the answers on my state capitals test. I mean it. I actually let Judith cheat off me on purpose.

  I still think about it a lot. About how I pretended to drop my pencil on the floor that day. And how I leaned down to pick it up as slowly as I could. To give her time, you know? Time to see almost any answer she wanted.

  I even wrote I NEED YOUR VOTE in the margin of my paper, so she would understand that we were sort of helping each other out here.

  I’m still not exactly sure what happened. Maybe it’s just hard to read state capitals when they’re upside down. But Judith still didn’t pass the test. She put down that the capital of Delaware was Rover, instead of Dover. Like Delaware would actually name its capital after a dog. Also, she wrote that the capital of Idaho was Potato.

  But what made me the sickest was that the very next morning, she still came to school wearing one of Alan’s pepperonis.

  I put one of my little pink stomach buttons on her desk so she could switch. But instead of pinning it on, she picked it up by the very edge—like it was dirty or something—and she dropped it on the floor.

  “No offense,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “But these little stomachs are the most disgusting campaign buttons I’ve ever seen.”

  This time I didn’t even think about being nice. “Yeah, right, Judith. Like wearing a hunk of oily meat on your shirt is in good taste.”

  Judith smiled meanly. Then she started singing, “You’re gonna lose.” Only she sang it real loud and slow, like, “YOU’RE GONNA LUUUU-OOOOZE … YOU’RE GONNA LUUUU-OOOOZE.”

  Two rows over, Billie Ray Carver grabbed a pencil and hopped up on his chair. He pretended to be her conductor. You know, the orchestra guy with the stick.

  I hate Billie Ray Carver. Not quite as much as Judith Topper, but still a very, very lot.

  Sometimes when he walks past my desk, I hold my breath. He doesn’t smell bad or anything. I just don’t like to breathe in the air he’s stirred up. It’s filled with BRC’s—Billie Ray’s cooties. And I don’t want them getting into my nostrils.

  Anyway, the stupid thing was that the whole time Billie Ray Carver was pretending to be a conductor, he was wearing one of my campaign buttons. Not on his collar, though. He was wearing it on his stomach just to be gross.

  Billie Ray really loved my buttons. Maxie said he was the best advertisement we had. “Face it, Rosie. Jerks like that have a lot of friends,” he said. “You’ve got to suck up to Billie Ray Carver, even if it kills you.”

  And so that afternoon, when we went out to the playground for recess and I saw Billie Ray Carver put gum on one of the swings, I didn’t say a word.

  He knew I saw him, too. “Hey, Swanson,” he hollered. “Want to see something funny?”

  Then he called to this cute girl in our class named Anna Havana. “Hey, Anna. Come over here! I’ll push you!”

  And so Anna Havana went over and sat down right on the swing with the gum. And I didn’t even try to warn her. I just kept my mouth shut. And I watched.

  I told myself it was no big deal, you know? ’Cause Billie Ray was so important to my campaign and all. Plus, Anna’s mother could get the gum off her dress pretty easy, probably. Which doesn’t mean that I felt good about it or anything. I’m just telling you what I was thinking.

  After recess, Billie Ray Carver stopped by my desk. “Did you see that, Swanson?” he asked. “Man, girls are suc
h suckers.”

  I tried not to breathe in his air. “Yeah, well, if girls are such suckers, then how come you’re voting for one?” I asked.

  For a second, he looked really confused. Then he looked down at my campaign button on his stomach and started to laugh.

  “What? Are you crazy? Just because you have the grossest campaign buttons doesn’t mean I’d ever vote for you. News flash, Swanson. You’re a four-eyed, geeky girl. No boy in his right mind would vote for you. And anyway, in case you haven’t heard, Alan Allen is going to get us pizza and Coke on Fridays.”

  Then Billie Ray Carver leaned so close to me that billions of his cooties poured into my nostrils.

  “Allllan … Allllan … Allllan … Allllan … Allllan,” he said over and over.

  Judith Topper spun around in her chair and joined in.

  “Allllan … Allllan … Allllan … Allllan,” they said together. And they just kept it up and kept it up until I didn’t think I could stand it one more second.

  Where was Mr. Jolly? Why wasn’t he in the room yet?

  “Allllan … Allllan … Allllan …”

  They wanted me to cry. I know they did. I didn’t do it, though. The inside of my throat ached from trying to hold back the tears, but I still didn’t cry.

  And then all of a sudden, this really weird thing happened. One of my hands snuck into my desk and started feeling all around in there. And then—way in the back, under my geography workbook—it finally found what it was looking for. My fingers touched my yellow notepad.

  The one I write secret notes on when it’s necessary to tattle to the teacher.

  I smiled a little.

  I was getting an idea.

  8 MOON MEN

  It didn’t take long before I had come up with a plan. It was all so simple, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

  The voters had a job to do, but they just weren’t doing it. Mrs. Munson had told them to find out as much as they could about the candidates so they could choose the best person for the office. But instead of caring about our backgrounds, kids like Billie Ray Carver were going to vote for Alan Allen just because he was a boy. And—even worse—kids like Judith Topper were voting for him because of a pizza idea that he practically stole from me.