I clutched the stage curtain to steady myself and poked my head out so I could scan the empty auditorium. I wasn’t prepared to take center stage just yet. I pulled back, telling myself that I wasn’t making the State of the Union address beamed by satellite to seventy-four countries including the Antarctic Research Station (annual budget $17.5 million to study the effects of global warming on penguin migratory patterns). Nor was I laying the equivalent of a diplomatic smackdown to a terrorist warlord. My speech before the Academy of the Potomac’s student body wouldn’t be enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution next to Lincoln’s top hat and Prince’s electric guitar. I’m not running for president of the United States. My mom already has that job.

But right now getting elected senior class president seemed a lot more difficult.

And Mom’s opponent had been the aw-shucks governor of Wyoming. She didn’t have to deal with running against Practically Perfect Brittany Whittaker.

Backstage lounging in a chair, “Brits,” as her fawning posse calls her, was coolly examining her Wetslicked lips in a jeweled Chanel compact. Snapping the mirror shut, she picked an invisible piece of lint from her designer suit, which was in a tasteful shade of charcoal, of course.

I really wished I’d listened to my best friend, Hannah, when she suggested shopping for a new outfit. But I was too busy stressing out over this speech and greeting the new Mongolian ambassador with Mom and Dad to shop.

Now I looked like my grandma dressed in a basic black suit that the White House’s social secretary picked up for me at Staid Fashions or something. It didn’t even fit. But I guess that’s why safety pins were invented.

I tucked my hair behind my ears. It looked boring, too. I’d let it return to its natural shade of mud brown instead of the magenta I’d been experimenting with. In politics, it’s important to look as neutral as possible. Someone might have a prejudice against magenta, after all.

Out front, I could hear chairs grumbling and students chatting as the herd entered the auditorium and took their seats. It sucks to have to make a speech to a group that’s basically being forced to hear it. It sucks even more when they’re waiting for you to screw it up, just to enliven another bleak afternoon at AOP. After three years, my classmates know they can count on me to provide regular entertainment value on the goober front.

Well, not this time. No, sir. Morgan Abbott has her game down today.

Be prepared
. It’s my mom’s favorite mantra, and for once I listened to her. I made a list of the things that could go wrong, and then came up with a Plan B. The secretary of state taught me that little trick.

Plan B Checklist

Gym shorts under my skirt (in case the safety pins keeping my skirt around my waist give out).
Spare notecards in pocket. (Who could forget the mishap in my sophomore year, when I’d forgotten my notecards and had to babble aimlessly for three minutes?)
Vocal cords limbered. (Those voice-projection exercises from drama class will pay off if the microphone goes on the fritz.)
Key points scribbled on hand (in case Plans A and B wash out and I go blank).

Yep. Nothing’s going wrong today
.

Mrs. Hsu, the principal, tapped me on the shoulder. “We’re ready to begin, Morgan.”

“Great. Fine. Let’s get this party started.”

Mrs. Hsu gave me a funny look. “You’re not going to be sick, are you?”

“Maybe later,” I told her.

“That’s the spirit, kiddo,” she answered absently as we walked over to Brittany. “Brittany? Ready, hon?”

“Of course.” Brittany eased out of her chair like a cat stretching in the sun. “You look really lovely today, Mrs. Hsu. That red is the perfect shade for you.”

“Oh? You think so?” Mrs. Hsu smoothed the front of her dress, the one she’d probably been teaching in since 1982, and gave Brittany a wide smile. “Would you like to go first? I’m sure Morgan wouldn’t mind.”

Mrs. Hsu looked at me.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Uh, no. Guess not,” I said, even though I was dying to get my speech over with.

Brittany’s pink-frosted smirk should have alerted me to the fact that her feral mind had kicked into action. But right then I was crazy-busy reviewing the points of the three-tiered platform my father had helped me develop. We took our cues from the presentations he used to give when he was the CEO of Abbott Technology. He’d made Abbott Technology number 312 among the Fortune 500 companies, so he must’ve been doing something right.

The bullet points on my notecards, which I’d rewritten last night after stupidly losing my originals, flashed through my mind:

Improved Academics
Lobby for more courses designed to improve SAT scores, which will carry more weight on college applications
Positive School Environment
A proposed World Cultures Celebration Day (Hannah and I could do our Bollywood dance routine in front of the school)
Diverse Social Opportunities
More community outreach projects. Recycling soda cans in the cafeteria isn’t the only way we can help right here in the nation’s capital—volunteering to read to kids at the D.C. library’s annual literacy drive is one of countless things we can do.

Brittany and I walked onto the stage, where we took our seats. The auditorium’s microphone squealed painfully over Mrs. Hsu’s request for everyone to get settled. I glanced over at Special Agent Denny Kublinski, standing in the corner of the auditorium, stage left. Even from here, I could tell that the Venti-sized macchiato he downed at lunch, his third of the day, was making him jittery. It seemed like his Starbucks addiction had increased proportionally with the time he spent assigned to me. As Denny scanned the crowd, his face held no emotion, but I knew he had to be bored out of his mind.

As I stared out at the sea of faces, a flash of electric blue caught my eye. Hannah, never the wallflower, wore her Anna Sui silk mini with boots dyed a matching neon shade. She tossed the Foxy Brown Afro she was sporting this week and gave me a thumbs-up. I wished she could give me some of her legendary self-confidence. Hannah takes crap from no one, not even the president’s daughter. I think that’s what I love most about her. That and her maniacal urges to make me over à la a
Fix This Hot Mess
reality show. It’s fun being her guinea pig.

We both know I need all the help I can get.

I searched the back of the auditorium where the jocks were known to hang. Sure enough, there was my boyfriend, Konner, doing a fist-bump with one of his basketball buds. He ran a hand through his mane of blond hair, and my stomach flip-flopped. Last week his hair was slicked back and he was all Mr. GQ. This week he was controlled mayhem. I’m fully aware Konner’s the hottest guy at AOP. His going out with me mystified the entire school, myself included.

Konner got his cell out and began speed texting. I willed him to look up—I needed a little moral support right now—but his eyes never left the phone’s screen.

“Testing, testing,” Mrs. Hsu said over the shriek of the AV system. “I want to remind everyone that voting takes place tomorrow morning in the cafeteria. Now we’ll hear from our two fine candidates for senior class president. Candidates, you each have five minutes to address your constituents. Brittany, you’re first.”

Adrenaline surged through me.
Here we go
.

Brittany glided to the podium and gracefully lowered the microphone to the level of her mouth.

Blah, blah, giggle, happy to be given this amazing opportunity, obligatory brownnosing…I tuned Brittany out as I feverishly went over my bullet points for the millionth time. Improved Academics. Positive School Environment. Diverse Social Opportunities.

“Here it is”—Brittany’s voice rose as if she were about to announce the winner of
American Idol
—“my platform, my Sweet Strategy for Success….”

A dozen of Brittany’s posse members, wearing hot-pink T-shirts, started handing out chocolate bars. Hannah took one and let it dangle between her finger and thumb as if it were radioactive plutonium. She held it up for me to see.

My eyes zeroed in on the acid-pink custom wrapper. Huge, black block lettering blared:

IMPROVED ACADEMICS
POSITIVE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT
DIVERSE SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES

The realization of what had happened ran me over like a Jeep Wrangler.

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