Cast Your Ballot! (10 page)

Impartial Journalist Fired from Paper.

Oh boy.

Lunch on Monday with Michael was good. We were uneasy at first, but once we started talking about our articles, we found an easy rhythm and all the weirdness of the weekend evaporated, thank goodness.

We went over the drafts of our articles to see how we could best merge them, and we made notations all over the pages. Then he took the one on John Scott and I took the one on Anthony Wright, and we laid out our plans for the rewrites. They were due Thursday morning, so we still had a little time. The paper would come out Friday. The results of our Buddybook poll showed John Scott leading about 75 percent
to Anthony Wright's 25 percent. I was worried but working hard—maybe too hard—to keep my articles neutral.

The posters started appearing Tuesday:

JOHN SCOTT

the People's Choice

for

School President

SARA WELGAN

for

Vice President

Sara Welgan was a good choice on John's part. She was smart and pretty and was a math tutor after school. So she was well known among the student body.

And:

Vote for the WRIGHT Candidate!

Anthony Wright for School President

Hailey Jones for Vice President

They were everywhere, and people were really starting to buzz about them. Anthony had the brilliant idea to put a photo of himself and Hailey
on his poster, which gave them an identity boost immediately. I heard kids saying, “Oh,
that
's Anthony Wright,” as they looked at the posters in the hall. I was happy to see that they'd used my line in his poster too. Writing talent was certainly useful in a campaign, but more behind the scenes than in front, I guess.

Hailey was in her element too, as it turned out. It reminded me of the Dear Know-It-All letter from College Reject and my feelings about spending time doing what you love being good for your soul. Hailey was actually blossoming with all the campaigning. She was jazzed and talking a mile a minute about what she and Anthony could do to help the school. I was really impressed—and proud. She'd stand outside the cafeteria at lunch and hand out leaflets about their campaign platform and some of their ideas. Anthony had embraced all of Hailey's ideas and worked a few of them into his materials in a seamless way. They were an unlikely team, but they actually complemented each other really well. I was psyched for both of them.

But Tuesday afternoon, when Hailey came over to do homework with me, she was upset.

“What's wrong?” I said when I answered the door and saw the tears streaming down her face.

She wailed, “Everyone's teasing me about the centipede!”

“Whaaaat?”

She pulled away and nodded. “Everyone keeps saying, ‘Eek!' when they see me.” She sniffled dramatically.

I fought off a smile that was trying to bloom on my face. “Oh, Hails,” I said sympathetically.

“I'll never live it down!” she cried, and flopped on the couch.

I sat down next to her and thought hard. Then I said, “Hailey, I know what to do. Sit up. Listen.”

She sat up and rolled her eyes, but she listened.

“You need to embrace it. You need to style yourself a Centipede Warrior. You need to laugh when kids say ‘Eek!' to you. It's the only way. Otherwise you become a victim. Get it?”

Hailey was quiet for a minute. Then she sighed heavily. “Whatever. I'm such a loser. Anthony
Wright should get rid of me while he still can. I'll bring him down.”

“Hailey! Don't be a wimp; be a warrior! Come on! It's up to you how you handle it. Now, let's go get a snack and you'll feel better, okay?”

By the end of our homework session, I was pretty sure I'd convinced Hailey to be a Centipede Warrior, but you never know with her; she could change in an instant. At the door, when she was leaving, I made a fist, pumped it at her, and said, “Battle on, Warrior!” and she did kind of smile. I was trying to do a little campaign management of my own, but it wasn't clear if it was working. Maybe I'd made some progress. Maybe.

I got my own homework out of the way and then attacked the Anthony Wright article again. I was striving to be as objective as I could, with the new added complication that my best friend was Anthony's running mate. I struggled over the paragraph devoted to Hailey, trying to strike the right balance between selling her hard and staying neutral. I also worked hard to keep the
mugger story small (Anthony hadn't even wanted me to mention it) and concrete plans for the school front and center. I stopped for a quick dinner with my mom; Allie was out at a meeting with Anthony and wouldn't be home for dinner. I felt good about having put those two together, and I knew she'd really help. With the speeches only three days away, their work was cut out for them.

When I finally felt I'd done as much as I could on the Wright article, I printed it out and laid it on my bed to put in my messenger bag for my meeting with Michael; then I turned to my Dear Know-It-All letter response.

I felt I'd actually learned even more this week that I could put into the response, especially after confronting my choice of running for office versus staying on the paper, and listening to Anthony talk about how far his extracurriculars had taken him. As I sat at my desk in front of my computer, the letter lying beside me, I thought about how the choices we make at an early age actually matter. Maybe not in terms of the outcome, but in terms of learning how to make choices and learning that
it can be hard to choose—especially when friends are involved.

Naturally, as I held my fingers above the keyboard to start my reply, my door swung open and Allie was there with her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining. I moved to hide the Dear Know-It-All letter, but she was so excited, she didn't even notice this time.

“What's up?” I asked.

“I think he's going to win!” she cried, and she sat down happily on my bed.

“You do? Why? How?”

“We were at the Java Stop and lots of kids were coming up to Anthony and saying hi and stuff. I think people are figuring out who he is. It's kind of like a grassroots thing.”

“Cool! Did you get a sense of where they know him from?”

Allie thought for a second. “Well, one guy said he recognized Anthony from the posters. Another girl was in his homeroom but hadn't realized he was running. Three kids read about him on Buddybook and wanted to hear all about
the mugging and how he won the giant chess trophy they have at school. I put a picture of that on his Buddybook page,” she said with a proud smile.

“That's great, Al! I've got a really good article on him too. I can't wait for it to run.”

Allie clapped her hands together. “Awesome! Can I see it?”

I paused for a minute. “Um, it's not really done yet. I mean . . .” I happened to glance at the article lying next to her on the bed. Darn it! I was usually so cautious about her finding my Dear Know-It-All stuff that I'd never thought to bother hiding a regular news article.

Allie followed my glance with narrowed eyes and then pounced on the article next to her.

“Aha!” she said.

I sighed heavily and waited for her to finish. Watching her face, I saw her smile, nod, frown a little, bite her lip, and then, as she finished, she grew angry. She laid the article back on the bed with an icy coldness. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at me.

“What?” I said innocently.

“Is that really the best you can do, Sam?” she said in an angry voice.

“What are you talking about? I think it's very well written!”

“I don't care how it's written,” said Allie. “I care what it says, and it does not say enough about how great our candidate is!”

“Okay, hang on a second,” I said. “Anthony is not ‘our' candidate. He certainly has my vote, but I am not working on his campaign and I don't have any vested interest in whether or not he wins. I have a job to do, and that is to report the news fairly and accurately, with absolutely no bias! And that's what I've done! Do you want to get me fired from the paper?”

“I just think you should have made more of his heroics—the chess wins, the mugging incident . . .”

“Allie, Anthony asked me not to even write about that! He's embarrassed by it! He doesn't want to be a hero, and he also doesn't want people knowing he lives in a sketchy neighborhood where people can still get mugged!”

Allie looked at me with her eyes blazing. “I don't care what Anthony wants! I'm the one who knows how to promote him! I know how to get him elected!”

“Whoa! Listen to yourself. This is out of control! It's a school election. I know you love this stuff, but seriously, chillax!”

Allie was breathing fast, but I think I was getting through to her.

“Seriously!” I said again, shaking my head. I wondered if this is how real political journalists feel sometimes.

Politics Too Dirty, Journo Retires to Sports Pages
.

“Okay. Okay. Right.” Allie put her hands on her knees and pushed herself up and off my bed. “Fine. I get it.” She left my room in a daze, I guess trying to figure out what had happened to her to make her so nuts.

I shook my head and stood up to put the article in my messenger bag, as I should have right from the start. Then I sat back at my desk to draft my response to College Reject.

Dear College Applicant,

First of all, I refuse to refer to you as “College Reject Already,” since you aren't.

Second of all, you are right. But so are your parents.

You are right because you should be spending time on what you love and not doing activities or pursuing hobbies just because they'll get you into college one day. Colleges can smell a phony a mile away, and they can also spot someone who's really unhappy with how they spend their time. It's the people who are passionate they get excited about; it doesn't matter what the passion is for as much as how hard you work at it and how it feeds your soul. More important, no one in middle school should make themselves miserable spending time on stuff they don't enjoy. (Not counting homework, of course!)

Now, this is where your parents are right: It's a good idea to have something you love and work hard at. It will get you places in life, like into college or elected school president or something. Just work as hard as you can at the things you love most, whether it's sports, reading, or playing
chess. Don't worry so much about the payoff on the other end. If you are excited and try hard, things will fall into place for you. You'll just naturally pick up skills that will take you places in life. I'm sure of it.

Good luck with seventh grade, and don't forget to vote on Monday!

Signed,

Know-It-All

I read it and reread it and made a few small corrections, but mostly I was happy with it. I'd considered Anthony and Hailey, me and Michael as I'd written it. Maybe our passions—journalism, politics, sports—wouldn't lead to Ivy League colleges, but they'd given us lots of great experiences and good times so far. I knew that would pay off one way or another someday. I attached it to an e-mail and sent it off to Mr. Trigg. I hoped he'd like it.