Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President (8 page)

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:

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:

And:

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 such
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.

Alan was a thief. And I was honest. How much clearer could it be?
I
was the better choice for president, not
him
. And if the voters weren’t going to find out the truth about Alan
for themselves, I would just have to help them out a little.

As soon as the coast was clear, I pulled out my notepad and wrote four short notes. They were all exactly the same:

I folded each one separately and stuffed it deep into my skirt pocket. Knowing what I was about to do made me scared and excited at the same time. After school, I would secretly deliver one note to each fourth-grade classroom. After that, the gossip would spread like wildfire. And—as
long as I was careful—no one would ever know that it was me who started it all.

Suddenly, a brilliant idea popped into my head.
Disguise the notes, Rosie
.

Yes!
I thought.
Of course!
If I disguised the notes, no one would be able to tell they were from me.

I pulled them out of my pocket and hid them on my lap. Then carefully, I opened each one up and I dotted all the
i
’s with the little hearts. I
told
you it was brilliant. I’m the only girl I know who would never, ever do that.

I was just stuffing the last note back into my pocket when the dismissal bell rang. I didn’t leave, though. Instead, I stayed in my seat and waited for everyone to clear out of the room.

It took forever, too. This kid named William Washington kept following Mr. Jolly around the room, telling him some stupid story about how his grandmother has a potato chip that looks like Abraham Lincoln.

It took almost ten minutes before William wrapped up his potato chip story. The whole time he was blabbing, I pretended to be cleaning out my
desk. Finally, Mr. Jolly walked William into the hall.

That’s when I made my move.

In a flash, I pulled one of the notes out of my pocket and put it on Neil McNulty’s chair. Neil McNulty has the biggest mouth in the entire fourth grade. He’s definitely the “go to” guy if you want to spread a rumor.

After that, I grabbed my jacket and hurried out of the room. Then—on my way down the hall—I quietly ducked into each of the other fourth-grade classrooms and stuck a note on the seat of the closest chair.

This might sound risky, but it wasn’t at all. Two of the teachers weren’t even there, and the other one was standing at the sink in the back of the room. It looked like she was trying to get glue out of her hair or something. She never even turned around.