So I shared my French toast and had my coffee. I’m only allowed a half cup on school days and a whole cup on the weekend. Dad handed me the business section of the paper while he went straight to the sports section. Warm French toast and coffee in my tummy, my lucky barrettes and my ponytails extra fluffy—it was time to get this party started.
After I got to school and we hung up our posters, we all wondered where Becks and Jasmine Moon were. We finished by the time the first bell rang.
With two minutes till the second bell, in walked Tabitha Handy, Robin Geller, Jasmine Moon, and Rebecca.
“So, what’s up?” I said. Becks took her seat in front of me. She dumped her hefty backpack on the floor and took out her notebook and favorite pencil box. She set her inhaler on the right side of her desk, easy to get to if she needed it later.
“Guess what?” she said when she spun around.
“Settle down, fifth graders; we have much to do today. I need your full attention,” Mrs. Nutmeg said.
Becks covered her mouth with her hand and whispered, “Everything’s going to be okay. Jasmine Moon is really nice. She doesn’t think she can win. She just wants to make friends. You’ll see. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
For the next hour Mrs. Nutmeg led us through our vocabulary assignment, then we started math. I could barely concentrate. All I could think about was what Becks had said about Jasmine Moon.
“She just wants to make friends.”
By the time lunch rolled around, I was itching to get to the cafeteria. I needed to know what was going on with Becks and what else she would tell me.
“Class, I have a surprise for you.”
Mrs. Nutmeg told us that instead of the cafeteria, she’d arranged for us to have lunch in our classroom. She’d ordered pizza!
“Now we can use the time we have until the pizza arrives to talk about the election.”
Everyone else was all excited. Toady and his tadpoles were saying “Yeah!” and high-fiving each other. Surprise pizza parties sort of had that effect on kids. Can’t explain it. Just a fact of fifth-grade life.
Mrs. Nutmeg was talking again, this time about past presidents and some of their personal traits. It was hard to concentrate, though, because the whole time I kept wanting Becks to look around. But she never did.
“Voters need to trust a candidate. So it’s important to know not only how the candidates stand on the issues, but also who they are and how they act.”
At first, I thought I was going to explode. I was trying so hard to make the time pass faster, but then I actually got to listening to Mrs. Nutmeg, and all of a sudden I didn’t want her to stop. With a competition on presidential trivia for the kids who win the primary, learning as many facts as possible was necessary. And Mrs. Nutmeg was cramming so many facts in our brains I thought my head would burst.
Like, I’d never heard that President George Washington liked to put out fires. He was a volunteer firefighter.
Or that John Quincy Adams was the first president to be photographed.
And Thomas Jefferson kept a mockingbird named “Dick” in the White House and let it ride around on his shoulder. How cool was that?
When the pizza arrived, a lot of us didn’t want Mrs. Nutmeg to stop. I volunteered to help pass out the pizza and napkins. Becks looked up as I handed her a slice of pizza. She took it and said, “Don’t worry about the speech. Even though I helped her, I know yours will be awesome. But could you promise me one thing?”
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t be mad.” Becks’s expression went from all happy and smiley to squirmy and nervous.
I pretended to drop a napkin and then bent down to pick it up so I could whisper in her ear. “Mad about what?”
“I… just don’t want to hurt your feelings, but maybe she’s really like us.”
“Really? Jasmine Moon?”
Before she could answer, Miss Moon herself came up and put her arm around Becks’s shoulder.
“Rebecca,” she sang out. I rolled my eyes. “Hey, Brianna, good luck today.” Jasmine Moon shook her crinkly hair at me. She was really starting to get on my nerves. Was I being too sensitive?
And then—here’s the worst part ever—Becks gave me her “It’ll all work out” look and I knew, knew right then that Jasmine Moon had gotten inside her head. Oh, Becks! How can you be so blind?
“Rebecca was so much help. She talked about you all day. Told me a lot about you. Well, good luck today. Really. I’m sure you’ll do awesome,” said Jasmine Moon.
What had Becks told her about me?
My stomach churned. I didn’t want to admit it, but I felt ashamed that I’d asked Becks to spy. And scared, too. Was it possible that Becks told Jasmine Moon that I wanted her to spy?
11
The Race Is On
“We should call them Moon Bots,” said Lauren as we watched Jasmine Moon and her posse hang all over each other and go around the room spreading their foolishness, one student at a time.
It was time for the candidates to start introducing ourselves before we did our speeches. I knew everybody in the room, but it was kinda fun and kinda funny to shake their hands, and mostly everybody just laughed and it was nice.
An hour before the final bell, we’d talked to all the kids in the class and passed out cupcakes to everyone.
“Brianna, your cupcakes are so, so, sooooo good!” said Nancy Chen.
Even Mrs. Nutmeg ate a cupcake. “Very tasty, Brianna,” she said. I felt a warm, happy feeling in my belly. Over summer break, I was at a party store with my dad getting stuff for a July Fourth picnic. That’s when I spotted these little plastic dollar signs that stick right up in a cake or cupcake. I used my whole allowance that week to buy them and put them aside because I knew I’d want to use them for the election when school started. They were red, white, and blue and sparkled. Perfect for a school election!
I’d read on the Internet that a successful political campaign relied on the candidate really getting her message to the people.
Well, my message was simple: I’m a great cupcake maker. I want to make cupcakes and millions when I grow up.
And I want Justice for All!
Even when there used to be a president in each fifth-grade class, those kids were in charge of a class budget. They were in charge of holding sales, working with their teachers on charity fund-raisers, and raising money for class trips and projects. So letting the kids know I was a girl who could handle her money was really important.
Kenny drew a huge dollar bill, but instead of George Washington he had drawn a cupcake in the center. He’d written “The U.S. Mint” around the cupcake, and on the bottom he’d written “Justice Dollars.”
I had my own money! Isn’t that the first real step to world domination?
Everybody who took a cupcake also got a piece of green construction paper that Sara and Lauren had worked on. They’d cut them the size of dollar bills and drawn lines and everything so it would sort of look like money; only each piece had cupcakes in the center just like Kenny’s big poster, and the same words. In each corner it said “Brianna Justice.”
Todd shouldered a cupcake-eating voter out of the way.
I glared at Toady. He snatched up two cupcakes and shoved them in his mouth. Then Mrs. Nutmeg said it was time to do our presentations and the first name she called was Todd Hampton. He still had cupcake frosting stuck to his face and the side of his mouth when he went to the front of the class.
“My name is Todd T. Hampton.” Yeah, the “T” is for Toad, I thought. He went on. “Here is why you should vote for me.”
I held my breath. The whole class went silent. All eyes were on Todd.
Deep, deep, deep down in my stomach, I could feel myself getting all clenched up like the way your toes curl at a scary movie. What if he was really good? What if everybody liked him better than me? What if he said mean things about me and everybody laughed?
“I know you all know me…,” Todd began. Then something
really weird happened. I noticed the paper he was holding was sort of shaking.
That’s when I knew: Toady Todd Hampton was nervous.
He cleared his throat and tried to laugh. “Go on, Mr. Hampton,” Mrs. Nutmeg said.
“Give me a minute, will ya?” he said.
Then… nothing. He just stood up there and looked at us.
“Todd?” Mrs. Nutmeg said again.
Then he got real huffy and said, “All right, all right. I just want to say, here are some things to know about me. First, I like hockey. Number two, I’m the tallest one in the class. And last, um, well, just vote for me ’cause I’m the best.”
Then he balled up the paper and walked really fast back to his seat.
I couldn’t help looking back at him. He slumped down in his seat and a few of the tadpoles started pointing and laughing at him. He didn’t even tell them to shut up or anything.
Freaky, right? I almost felt sorry for him.
“Very well, Todd. Next we’ll have…”
My heart was doing double Dutch. All I could think was, Please don’t say my name. Please don’t say my name. Please don’t say my name!
“… Jasmine Moon. Would you come up and present your speech to the class.”
I let out a big exhale. I really wanted to go last. I needed to know if my presentation was as good as the competition’s.
“Don’t be mad, okay?” Becks whispered.
Her voice made me jump.
Then she got up and went to the coat closet and got a long black case, and then she went and stood next to Jasmine Moon. She opened the case and took out her flute.
Jasmine started her speech, and Becks began playing the flute. It was just like some old war movie you might catch your dad taking a nap in front of on a Saturday afternoon.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, another boy I’d known since pre-K strapped a drum around his neck, stood up there with them, and played; and it was all very much like a school play.
And Jasmine Moon was the star!
“Students of Room three-eighteen, we are fifth graders. Before I tell you about myself, I just want to say it would be my honor to be your class representative in the elections. When George Washington became president, people elected him not because they’d known him his whole life; not because he thought he was supposed to be president; but because he was the best person for the job.”
I couldn’t stop looking at Becks. Did she come up with all that stuff? Were they talking about me? Like I thought I was all that and that everybody should vote for me just because?
I mean, I wasn’t anything like that! Right? RIGHT???
“What traits do I have that would make me a great president of the fifth grade? I am a good student. I’ve been a Girl Scout since first grade and I believe in helping others. And just like Thomas Jefferson, I play the violin.”
Hmph! Thomas Jefferson did a lot more than play the violin. Did you know he came up with the idea to base America’s money system around decimals, using 100 cents as the base? See, Jefferson knew we needed an easy way to count our money. I like counting money. So, hey, I had as much in common with good ol’ T.J. as Jasmine Moon did!
She kept talking, and as soon as she said “Thank you,” the entire class was applauding and grinning. This time when I looked at Becks, she looked as if she was lost somewhere between jumping with joy and bursting into tears. Maybe she just needed her inhaler after all that flute playing.
Sara said to Becks, “Glad to see all those flute lessons your mom made you take are paying off!” Becks bit her lip and rushed to her desk, where she took two big puffs from her inhaler. She spun around quickly, and before I could say a word, she started:
“See. Don’t be mad. It was really good, right? But who cares, because we all know you’re the best and you’re totally going to win and Jasmine is okay with that and I just—”
“Now if we could have Miss Brianna Justice to the front of the room,” Mrs. Nutmeg cut in. She was standing right at Becks’s desk with her arms crossed. I was beginning to think I had the world’s loudest spy!
Lauren was already on her feet heading toward the front of the room, while Jasmine made her way back to her seat.
“Mrs. Nutmeg, we’re going to need the computer to help with Bree’s speech,” Lauren said.
“Class, our third and final candidate, Miss Brianna Justice.”
My stomach burned, and for about a second I feared that leftover Crest from brushing my teeth that morning would come shooting out of my nose. Not to mention the French toast. Urp!
I took a deep breath, then blew it out. It was like being at the free-throw line with the score tied at the end of the game. My knees trembled. Then I remembered how I’d made free throws “my thing.” How hard I’d worked to become the best free-throw shooter on the team.
“My name is Brianna Justice, and I want to be your president.” Soon as I said the words, it was like hitting the first shot of my one-and-one. The trembling stopped, but I went on. “I have many traits that might help me be a great president, but here are a few things I’ll share with you today. First, I love basketball. I love to play and I love to watch. The Pistons are my favorite professional team. Michigan State is my favorite college team.”
Now the kids were sitting up, paying attention, and I didn’t feel as nervous.
“Another thing you probably know about me is that I love to bake.”
Almost the entire class, all at the same time, said: “We know, we know…”
Then the quietest kid in the class said, “You’re going to be a famous cupcake maker with your own TV show and make lots of money.”
My face got really, really hot. Should I run screaming from the room? Jump out the window?
Wait a minute!
They were all smiling.
Everybody.
Were my eyes playing tricks on me, or were the Back Row Boys—Toady Todd included—also smiling?
I let out a long breath and smiled, too. “Okay, so maybe I’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
More laughter. Hey, this speech thing was going pretty well.
Kenny had poured water into the inflatable pool, and Lauren pressed play on the DVD player. Layla’s voice sang from the computer speakers and the image of Pinks 257 filled the monitor.
Lauren, Sara, and Kenny all sang along:
She needs your; vote; freedom’s not free.
She will fight for your lib-er-ty.
We passed out sheets of paper that had all the words on it, and we were telling the others to sing along.
When it got to the next part, more people sang with us.
This girl is smart, so let’s hear it.
Bri-anna Justice has spirit.
No need to worry, she won’t forget; Brianna Justice is your best bet!
Now most of the kids were bobbing their heads and singing along.
So cast your vote—no need to stall.
A vote for Brianna means…
Justice for all! Justice for all! Justice for all! Justice for all!
We opened small boxes while each of us walked down the rows passing out tea bags. We had everybody stand and form a line, walking up to the pool and throwing in their tea bags. You know, like the Americans did to protest all those high taxes back in the 1700s. We weren’t protesting anything, but I knew everyone would get a kick out of slamming those tea bags into the pool and watching the water go from clear to all-American mud color.
It was way, way cool.
By the time it ended, the entire class, including Toady Todd Hampton and his crew, were standing and singing and nobody was looking at Jasmine Moon.
It was the perfect way to end the day. I went home feeling unbeatable. Everything was perfect, until…
12
Uncommon Sense!
Have you ever felt blue?
You know. Weird. Down in the dumps. Blue. And you couldn’t quite figure out why.
That’s how I felt on Saturday.
&n
bsp; The day started well enough. I got up, read the morning paper, and sipped my cup of coffee. It was Saturday, so I had a full cup and added French vanilla cream and a dab of whipped cream. So, so good.
I flipped through the sales papers, didn’t see anything great, then went straight for Aunt Tina’s column. Every Saturday she had a column that ran on the front of the business section. The columns almost always highlighted some new product or invention or told the story of a person from the area who’d taken their small business dream and made it a reality.
I loved those columns the most!
Today’s column, though, was about a man whose business had failed. He talked about how he’d put everything he had into it, but he was so focused on his product, he said, that he’d forgotten to do what it took to run a successful business. I thought about that. This guy offered a good product—New York–style pizza—but the column says he went out of business because he didn’t take care of those who helped him. His staff. His peeps.
That would never happen to me, I vowed. I was going to focus on my product—cupcakes—and my peeps.
After a while, like every Saturday, Sara’s mom picked me up for our weekly “Woodhull Society Saturday” trips to make deposits. Then we got Lauren and Becks and went to the bank. We’d all had savings accounts for a long time.
Like always, inside the bank the four of us walked to the bank teller together.
“Morning, girls,” said Mrs. Sanchez. When she smiled, a tiny dimple showed in her cheek. We like Mrs. Sanchez. We’d gotten to know her over the years of saving here.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sanchez,” I said.
“Cómo está?” said Sara.
We all gave her a look. She shrugged and said, “What? I’ve been practicing my Spanish.”
“Muy bien, gracias!” Mrs. Sanchez responded. We passed her our deposit slips. We’d each written our very own account numbers on our slips. My deposit was twenty-six dollars—ten dollars for allowance; ten dollars for helping Mr. Kruger down the block rake up all the grass and gunk in his yard after he mowed his lawn. The other six dollars came from Katy. She was always borrowing money!
President of the Whole Fifth Grade Page 4