The Campaign

by Leila Sales

  Maybe I was crazy. Crazy for believing that Janet could win. It was time to face the facts. My classmates’ initial excitement about the campaign had waned and been replaced by Halloween, sports practice, play rehearsals, homework, and tests. People were sick of knocking on strangers’ doors and making phone calls and getting no replies. Despite all of our best efforts, Janet was still polling ten points behind Lucinda, and I didn’t know where we were going to find the votes we needed to make up the difference. I will win no matter what you do, Lucinda had told me yesterday. And I had the horrible suspicion that she might be right.

  In which case, wouldn’t it be far more strategic to give up now and make sure we got to keep art class?

  “Fine,” I said sarcastically. “Go trick-or-treat. Have fun.”

  “Ugh, Maddie, why do you always act like you’re better than us?” Polly asked me.

  “What?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Polly said wearily. “You think our Halloween costumes are boring and dumb because they all look the same. Well, we like looking the same. So what if you’re going to do something different and wow-nobody’s-ever-thought-of-that-before for your Halloween costume? Why is that any better than what we’re doing?

  “And now you’re acting like caring about Halloween at all is silly, because it’s not the thing you care about right now. Just because you don’t like a thing, Maddie, doesn’t mean that everyone who likes it is pathetic.”

  My mouth was agape. “I’ve never called you pathetic.”

  “You don’t have to say it. We’re not stupid. We can tell when you’re judging us. You’re not subtle about it.”

  “I’m having a rough day, okay?” I protested. “What if we lose? I can’t just hang out and plan a trick-or-treating route when all I can think about is how we might lose!”

  “Are you always having a rough day?” Polly asked. “Because you always treat everyone like your stuff matters more than their stuff.”

  “That isn’t fair.”

  Polly shrugged and went back to her poodle skirt. “If you say so.”

  “And anyway,” I yelled, “why should you care what I think? Everyone already loves you. You tell them to do something, and they do it. Actually, you don’t even have to tell them—they just see you doing something, and they want to copy you. Everyone wants to be friends with you and be in your dumb plays and hear all about your dumb Beyoncé concerts. Why isn’t that enough for you? Why do you need me to be obsessed with you, too?”

  “Firstly,” Polly said, “that’s not true. Secondly, I don’t want you to be ‘obsessed’ with me. I’m just asking you not to be outright rude to me and my friends. We’re doing a ton of work for this campaign, just like you. So stop acting like whatever we do isn’t good enough for you.”

  This wasn’t fair! At all! I wasn’t the bad guy here—Molly and Polly and Holly were. They were the mean, popular clique, and I was the artist who cared about downtrodden outsiders. They were the judgmental ones—they told me I was weird all the time and laughed at me for doing things ‘the wrong way.’ So how dare they act like any of this was my fault?

  “You know what?” I said. “This campaign is over.”

  “What?” Michaela asked. Now even she, Deke, and Daniel were looking at me.

  “It’s over,” I repeated. “We fought a good fight, but it’s not worth it anymore. It’s time to face the facts: Lucinda is the real politician here, and she’s going to win. She was always going to win. She has more money, more experience, more connections—there’s nothing we have that she can’t beat.”

  “So you’re quitting?” Polly asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “You all clearly want to. So why don’t you just go ahead? You won’t have to put up with me and my ‘judgment’ anymore. Because I’m going home. And you should, too.”

  And as soon as I got home, I would tell Lucinda the news: I was taking her deal.

  CHAPTER 24

  I stormed out of Jordan’s, my head down, hands in fists, and almost ran into the garbage man. “Hey, kid,” he said. He’d become a lot friendlier since I’d told him Janet wanted to increase the sanitation department’s budget and hire more people to work there.

  “Hey,” I muttered, not looking at him. I knew I was being rude, but my eyes felt tense and hot, and I was worried that if I said more than a few words, I’d start crying. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t really feel like talking.”

  “Who feels like talking?” the garbage man asked. “I don’t feel like talking. Well, maybe I do, but I certainly don’t have time to talk. Do you have any idea how many stops I still have to hit today?”

  I shook my head, averted my eyes, and tried to find a way around him.

  “But you know what helps?” he said to me.

  “What?” I mumbled.

  “Knowing that it’s not forever. Knowing that when Janet gets elected, she’ll make this better.”

  I finally looked up at him. Tears threatened to spill out of my eyes, but fortunately, the garbage collector didn’t seem to notice.

  “It’s not just me,” he said. “Every garbage collector in this town is fed up with how we’re being treated. We’re all supporting Janet. We even got pins made. See?”

  I stared at the pin. I didn’t really care how many people worked for the sanitation department. It had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t a garbage collector, I probably never would be, and the farthest I’d ever carried a trash bag was from my front door to the curb.

  But this issue mattered to the garbage collectors just as much as art class mattered to me. They wanted a leader who would try to fix their problems just as much as I wanted a leader who would try to fix mine.

  Maybe I could get Lucinda to add this to our deal. I’d tell her that we’d stop campaigning for Janet so long as she promised to give us arts education funding and sanitation department funding. She would probably agree to that. Right?

  But then I started thinking about all the other people who’d asked Janet for so many other things over the course of this campaign. How Molly wanted more streetlights so she wouldn’t be scared walking in the evening, and Isabelle wanted high-speed internet, and Dylan’s sister wanted to be able to afford community college, and Theo’s dad wanted to be able to afford to buy a house. Everybody wanted something, and they were all depending on Janet to help them get it.

  And who was I to say that art class mattered more than the rest of it?

  Daniel had told me that I only thought about issues that directly affected me. Polly had told me that I judged other people for caring about things I thought were dumb and worthless. And I had told them both that they were wrong, because I didn’t want those things to be true.

  But what if they were?

  I could have a guarantee that my own life would get better if I started supporting Lucinda.

  But I had a chance at making lots of lives better if I stayed with Janet.

  I turned around and marched back into Jordan’s Hot House. Everyone looked up at me warily, like they thought I was going to yell at them again.

  “Daniel,” I said, and he paused his game. “I’m sorry that I acted like your soccer team doesn’t matter. Dahlina”—she crossed her arms—“I’m sorry that I acted like your play and your Halloween costumes are dumb. Adrianne, I’m sorry that I’ve been calling you Molly like I don’t even care what your name is. I’ve been rude to all of you, and I’m going to try to do better.

  “But you’ve laughed at me and called me names, and even though I try to act like I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, I can’t help but care. When people tell you all the time that you’re a weirdo, it makes you feel like one. When no one wants to hang out with you, it makes you feel like you’re not worth hanging out with. I’m sorry I’ve treated you badly. I think I was just trying to get revenge for the way you’ve treated me.”

  And then something happened that I never would have expected: Holly spoke up.

  “I�
�m sorry, too,” she said. “You’re different, but that’s not really a bad thing. In fact, maybe it’s a good thing, because only someone who’s different would have put together a campaign like this. If you weren’t different, Maddie, then nobody at all would be trying to stop Lucinda.”

  “Whoa,” I said, staring at her. “You talk?”

  She gave me a Holly Look.

  “Oh, that was me being judgy, wasn’t it?” I realized. Everyone in the room nodded. “Sorry about that,” I said to Holly. “And thanks.”

  “Look, we’ve spent a ton of time working together,” Polly/Dahlina told me, “and I’ve realized that maybe you’re not as weird as you seemed before I got to know you. Or, like, maybe you are that weird—but it’s a good weird.”

  “I’ll take good weird,” I replied. “And now there’s something I need to do . . .”

  I pulled Lucinda’s business card out of my pocket and quickly sent her a message. Here’s what it said:

  I didn’t care if she ever wrote me back.

  My Friend Daniel clapped his hands. “Will you come to my bar mitzvah?!” he hollered at the room at large.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “What?” Molly/Adrianne asked.

  “You know, now that we’re all friends,” Daniel explained.

  Holly gave him a Holly Look.

  “Hey, Daniel?” I said. “Let’s come back to that. Right now, we have a campaign to run.”

  “I thought you said we shouldn’t even bother because there’s no way we can win,” Dahlina pointed out. “You said there’s nothing we have that Lucinda doesn’t.”

  “Well,” I said, picking up her poodle skirt, “you made me think of one thing.”

  CHAPTER 25

  A woman in a witch’s hat opened the door to 414 Noble Street.

  “Trick or treat!” we shouted.

  “Happy Halloween!” she replied. “My, look at your darling costumes! Now you, of course, are a soccer player,” she said to Daniel.

  “I’m a Red Team soccer player,” he informed her.

  She smiled and looked puzzled. “And you are,” she said to me, “a . . .”

  “Superwoman banana ballerina fairy,” I explained.

  “Ah, of course. Well, you are both very spooky indeed,” the woman told us, and she dropped mini 3 Musketeers bars into each of our pumpkins.

  “Thank you!” I said. “We also wanted to remind you that Election Day is on Tuesday. Do you have plans to vote?”

  “I . . . yes?” The woman looked thoroughly confused by the change in conversational direction.

  “Great!” Daniel said. “This is going to be a very tight race, so your vote is incredibly meaningful. Will you consider supporting Janet Teneman for mayor?”

  I pulled a glossy “Janet for Mayor” flyer out of my pumpkin and put it in the woman’s hands. “Janet is the only candidate who is going to expand public services, repair what’s broken in this city, and—most importantly for us—give us the kind of well-rounded public school education that we need.”

  “Can we count on your vote on Tuesday?” My Friend Daniel asked.

  Daniel and I high-fived as we walked back down the driveway to the street. “That’s ten,” he said.

  “Well, they didn’t all say they’d support Janet,” I reminded him. “Four of them said they would, one of them said he couldn’t vote but he’d tell his dad, and the others said they would think about it.”

  Daniel made a face at me. “I meant that’s ten candy bars.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “But also ten possible votes for Janet.”

  I looked up the street. It was crowded with ghosts and vampires, Harry Potters and Elsas, Mickeys and Minnies and Minions. They were all carrying bags of candy. And they were all carrying postcards for Janet.

  It’s hard to ring strangers’ doorbells. It’s hard to strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know. It’s hard to get people to open their doors for you.

  But you know when all of that’s not hard? Halloween.

  On Halloween, everyone is home and ready to open their door with friendly smiles. And if they’re not? Then they just turn off their lights, so you don’t even have to waste any time trying! It’s a perfect system for getting candy . . . and for getting votes.

  And getting kids to agree to participate? That was easy, too. We were all going to spend hours walking around town and ringing doorbells anyway. Might as well canvas for Janet while we were at it.

  So we didn’t just get the kids who were actively involved in the campaign to help. We got kids from all the different clubs and cliques at school, from all different grades. We even got the elementary school kids involved—everyone with younger brothers and sisters gave them flyers, and then the younger brothers and sisters distributed the flyers among their friends. There were hundreds of us out on the streets tonight, and we all had the same goals: get candy and help Janet.

  “Should we go up Maple or stay on Noble?” I asked Daniel when we reached the next intersection.

  A little boy with a puffy coat over his princess dress overheard me and offered his opinion.

  “Yuck,” Daniel and I both said. “We’ll stick with Noble.”

  The kid gave us a salute and then ran off in pursuit of more non-raisin treats.

  By eight o’clock, we’d picked up so much candy our arms ached, and we’d handed out all of our Janet flyers. We headed to Jordan’s to see how everyone else had done.

  Jordan’s was even more crowded and noisy than usual, and when we first walked in, I felt overwhelmed. Most years when we were done trick-or-treating, My Friend Daniel and I would return to his house, and we’d trade and categorize candy until my parents came to get me. I wouldn’t describe it as calm, since we were always hyped up on sugar, but at least it was just the two of us. This was like . . . a party.

  “Do you have any Milky Ways?” Michaela shouted as soon as she saw us. She was dressed up as a lady ghost.

  “No way,” I replied, holding my pumpkin closer. I don’t trade chocolate things. It’s just a rule.

  “Would you trade me two things for a Milky Way?” Daniel asked her.

  “Depends on which two.” They dumped out their candy and started inspecting each other’s wares.

  “Maddie, catch!”

  I looked up just before a Starburst hit me in the head. I unwrapped it, stuck it in my mouth, and grinned at Dahlina, who had thrown it to me. “Thanks,” I said. The Starburst was pink, which was pretty generous of her. Everyone knows that pink Starbursts are one of the best non-chocolate foods out there. “How’d it go?”

  “So good,” she said.

  “We hit fifty-two houses!” said Adrianne. “See, I told you guys my neighborhood has the best candy.”

  “And I convinced two undecided voters to vote for Janet,” Holly announced.

  “How did you do that?” I asked. “Like, with your voice?”

  She gave me a Holly Look.

  Dahlina grabbed me and pulled me onto a beanbag chair with her.

  “You’re right,” Adrianne said. “No kids would want to go trick-or-treating for her.”

  “She wouldn’t care if they did,” I said. “She has a lot of money and a professional campaign staff and a fancy campaign office, so what would she want with trick-or-treaters? She doesn’t believe that kids can do anything important.”

  Dahlina grinned. “Well, then she’s not going to believe what we did tonight.”

  I grinned right back at her, and I gave her a Hershey’s Kiss. Like I said, I don’t trade chocolate. But sometimes I give it away.

  My mom came to pick me up at nine. “Bye, Maddie!” everyone shouted as I left. “Happy Halloween! See you tomorrow!”

  I had to take off my banana suit so I could fit into the car. Once I was finally buckled in, Mom asked, “So you had a good time tonight?”

  I watched Jordan’s through the window, all its lights on, all the costumed campaign workers making so much noise that I c
ould still hear them even out here. “Yeah,” I said as she started up the car. “I really did.”

  CHAPTER 26

  THE LAWRENCEVILLE GAZETTE

  THE LAWRENCEVILLE GAZETTE ENDORSES JANET TENEMAN FOR MAYOR

  A surprisingly contentious election season draws to a close on Tuesday, when voters will at last head to the polls to cast their ballots for Lucina Burghart or Janet Teneman.

  Both are excellent candidates, each of whom would bring very different strengths to the role. Burghart offers decades of experience in city government and a demonstrated commitment to making budgets as lean as possible. Teneman brings fresh energy, new ideas, and vision for the city’s growth. Depending on your priorities, either candidate could be a solid pick. After much deliberation, however, our editorial board has given its endorsement to Janet Teneman.

  Teneman has proven herself naturally able to connect with the public. She demonstrates the true spirit of a civil servant, seeking the mayorship in order to help her fellow citizens rather than to grab power for herself. And the public has responded to her concern for them with a groundswell of support. In debates and town halls, Teneman has shown herself to be well-intentioned, if not as well-informed as her competitor. Becoming the mayor would be a steep learning curve for her, but we believe that she is more than up to the challenge.

  The polls are open on Tuesday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Visit the city’s website for information on polling locations and absentee ballots.

  ________

  Tuesday was the big day.

  Election Day.

  The polls didn’t open until seven in the morning, but I woke up at five and couldn’t fall back asleep. All that work over the past few months—all the rallies and debates and flyers and postcards and phone calls—came down to today.

  And if people didn’t turn out to vote for Janet today, then it wouldn’t matter how many doors we’d knocked on or how much money we’d raised. All of that would be for nothing if people didn’t actually get in the voting booth and select her name.