by Sheryl Berk
What does he mean by “interesting”? Delaney thought to herself. She wished she could just hit Fast-Forward and be far, far away from this moment. It was too nerve-racking to bear!
Mr. G continued: “I would like to congratulate…”
Why was he pausing? Why couldn’t he just spit it out? Didn’t he know everything depended on his next words?
“Our new fifth-grade co–class presidents, Olivia and Delaney!”
Delaney was shocked. Co–class presidents? What did that even mean? Mr. G must have read her mind. “We had a tie between our candidates. They each had the exact same number of votes. So for the first time in Weber Day history, we are having two class presidents who will work together.”
Delaney remembered how she had cast her vote for Olivia. What if she had checked off her own name instead? Would that have made the difference and broken the tie?
“Congrats!” Sophie squealed, hugging her. “That’s amazing!”
Delaney didn’t know what to say. It didn’t feel all that amazing. It felt like she hadn’t really won—not if someone else hadn’t lost.
When the end-of-day bell rang, she went to her locker to grab her jacket and bag. Everyone was patting her on the back and congratulating her. Olivia was having the same reaction at her own locker, but she snuck away to give Delaney a hug.
“I can’t believe it! We both won,” she said.
“Yeah,” Delaney replied. “Cool.”
Olivia looked puzzled. “You don’t seem very thrilled about it. I thought you really wanted to be fifth-grade president.”
“I did—and I do. But copresidents? There’s no such thing. The president of the United States doesn’t have a copresident.”
“Oh,” Olivia said. “I see. You don’t wanna share the job.”
Delaney realized she might have hurt Olivia’s feelings. “It’s not that…”
“It is,” Olivia continued. “But it’s a really big job, Delaney, and I’m glad I have someone like you to share it with me.”
Now it was Delaney’s turn to be confused. “You are?”
“Of course! You care so much about the arts, and I care so much about sports. We’re the perfect team. We’ll make sure it’s fair for everyone.”
She did have a point. What did Delaney really know about the soccer team needing uniforms or nets? And what did Olivia know about what art or drama supplies were lacking?
Mr. G found them both in the hall talking. “It’s nice to see our two presidents already conferring,” he said. “I hate to break this up, but Delaney has her play rehearsal after school.”
With all the stress over the election, Delaney had almost forgotten she was playing Julius Caesar—and the show was less than two weeks away.
“I hope you know all your lines,” Mr. G said. “I’m no Shakespeare, but I worked really hard on the script.”
Delaney remembered what had made her want to run for president in the first place. “Hey, do you think we could have our first presidential meeting with the school administration tomorrow?” she asked her teacher.
“I don’t see why not,” Mr. G replied. “I’m sure the vice principal and the dean would be delighted to meet the new student officers.”
She waited till Mr. G was down the hall to tell Olivia her plan. “I need your help,” she said quietly. “We need paint and costumes for our play, and Mr. G says there’s no money left in the school budget. Help me convince the administration to pay for it.”
Olivia smiled. “I’d be happy to try. But what if they say no?”
Delaney raised an eyebrow. “Then I have a great backup plan.”
• • •
Vice Principal Ovietto and Dean Retter listened carefully the next morning as Delaney pleaded her case. “Our play looks ridiculous without the right scenery and costumes,” she insisted. “Can’t we just find the money somewhere?”
Dean Retter sighed. “If it were only that simple,” he said. “We can’t just pull funds out of thin air. They need to come from donations, allocations, fund-raising…”
“I thought you might say that,” Delaney piped up. “So I have a suggestion. We want to hold a bake sale tomorrow to pay for what we need for the play.”
“We’re calling it ‘Sweets for Caesar,’” Olivia chimed in. “All donations will go to Mr. G’s history-class play.”
Vice Principal Ovietto looked concerned. “It’s very short notice.”
“Short notice is my specialty,” Delaney insisted. “I’ve made three hundred cupcakes in just one night. Trust me, this is nothing out of the ordinary.”
“All right,” she said. “If you want to try to raise money for your play, I’m okay with it. Just save me a cupcake.”
Olivia and Delaney left the vice principal’s office and high-fived each other.
“Yes! We are so getting new togas,” Delaney said. “Pretty white ones!”
“How are you going to make enough cupcakes to sell?” Olivia asked. “You were just making that up about three hundred cupcakes in one night, right?”
Delaney put an arm around her co–class president. “Liv, I think you need to join my PLC team after school today. We may not have uniforms, but we have aprons.”
• • •
This time, Delaney made sure to write a list of ingredients and check it twice when her mom took her shopping at the supermarket. The club agreed they would donate the cost of making the cupcakes to Delaney’s fund-raiser, and Jenna had come up with the two perfect flavors: Roman Ricotta Cheese Cupcakes and Brutus’s Killer Carrot Cupcakes.
“I see you remembered the cheese this time,” Kylie teased her as she unpacked the groceries.
“Ricotta and cream cheese, check-check!” Delaney said.
As the girls began dividing the ingredients into piles, preheating the oven, and firing up the mixers, Olivia looked overwhelmed.
“You guys are so professional,” she said. “I can’t even boil water.”
“But can you crack an egg?” Sadie asked.
“I don’t know,” Olivia answered. “I’ve never tried.” Sadie handed her one, and with one quick motion, Olivia cracked it open over the bowl.
“Whoa, you’re a natural!” Sadie said. “And you’re not bad at beating the batter either.”
Olivia was having a blast, but her favorite part, by far, was delicately packing the cupcakes into the boxes so they didn’t budge an inch. She made sure each box was sealed tight and tied with a pretty pink ribbon.
“I love your attention to detail,” Lexi complimented her. “Usually Jenna just slaps on a bow or puts the cupcakes in backward…”
“Do not,” Jenna bristled.
“Do so!” Lexi said, laughing. “I’m lucky if they’re not upside down.”
“The only time I put them in upside down was when they were pineapple upside-down cupcakes,” Jenna replied, defending herself. “It made perfect sense.”
“To you maybe,” Delaney teased her. “To the rest of us they were upside down.”
To further illustrate her point, Delaney did a cartwheel in the kitchen. “Look at me! I’m an upside-down cupcake!” she joked.
Olivia laughed. “Are you guys always this much fun?”
Kylie shook her head. “Nope. We’re usually very serious. Delaney never puts a chocolate mustache on her face. And Jenna never accidentally dumps flour on my head.”
“Wait? Is that a dare?” Jenna asked, waving a sifter in the air.
Kylie pretended to duck. “Kidding! I was kidding! No flour fights—my mom will kill us!”
After just a few hours, they had twenty dozen cupcakes baked, cooled, decorated, and packed for delivery to Weber Day. It was Lexi’s idea to top them each with a laurel-leaf crown made of green fondant.
“That’s so Caesar,” Delaney said approvingly.
; She had done a few quick calculations. They needed about $500 to purchase fabric and paints. If they sold cupcakes for $2.50 each, that meant they had to sell two hundred to meet their goal.
“I made you an extra forty—just in case,” Lexi said, putting the finishing touches on the last box.
“Your club is really amazing,” Olivia said. “You’re so lucky to have each other.”
Delaney noticed that Olivia sounded a little sad—or maybe the word was lonely.
“You must have tons of friends, Liv,” she said. “I mean, you’re so smart and involved in school stuff.”
“I try to be busy,” Olivia replied. “But I don’t really have a lot of friends. At least not best friends like you guys are for each other. It’s why I wanted to be fifth-grade president—so people would want to be my friend.”
Delaney was shocked. Olivia was not at all the person she’d thought she was when they first met. She felt bad for desperately wanting to beat her. Instead, Liv was kind, considerate, and a good sport.
Delaney took Kylie aside and whispered something. Kylie nodded.
“So, Olivia, what are you doing this weekend?” Delaney asked her.
“Homework, I guess,” she answered. “Why?”
“Well, we have this huge order for a sixteenth birthday party with a Hollywood theme, and the birthday girl wants a giant Hollywood sign made out of mini…”
“We could use your help,” Kylie jumped in. “An extra pair of hands to help us bake and decorate and get everything packed up.”
Olivia blushed. “You mean that? You’re not just saying it? You want me to help you guys?”
Delaney remembered how great it had felt when the girls all finally accepted her as a PLC member—like she was part of a team. “We mean it,” she said. “I have a lot of lines to learn for the play this weekend, so maybe you can help me with that too.”
Olivia smiled. “I’d love to. Besides, what are copresidents for?”
It took Sophie, Olivia, and Delaney just a little over an hour to sell out all of their 240 cupcakes at the bake sale. Dean Retter bought the last two dozen to bring home to his wife and kids. Thanks to PLC, Mr. G was thrilled he could now have the perfect backdrops and costumes. And Delaney was equally delighted. She practiced Caesar’s death scene over and over, until Mr. G told her he believed she was actually stabbed and gasping for her last breath.
“Very authentic, Delaney,” he said, noting the fake blood Kylie had helped her sprinkle on her new white toga. “I especially liked the part where you clutched your throat and rolled across the stage making a gurgling noise.”
Delaney remained motionless.
“Delaney?” Mr. G said, gently tapping her with his foot. “You can get up now.”
Delaney leaped back up to her feet. “It’s not long enough,” she said. “I think Caesar would have had a long, drawn-out death scene, don’t you? At least five minutes.”
Sophie shook her head. “I think the whole thing is too much. The blood? The gore? It’s gross. I mean, why do we have to assassinate anyone? It’s mean and violent.”
“Unfortunately, it’s how the senators handled their grievances with Caesar,” Mr. G said.
“Well, it’s icky.” Sophie sighed. “If I were Brutus, I would have handled it better.”
“It’s history,” Delaney insisted. “You can’t rewrite history.”
Mr. G thought for a moment. “And why couldn’t we? What would you do differently, Sophie—I mean, Brutus—if your friend Caesar was out of control?”
“I’d sit him down and tell him to chill out,” Sophie said. “I’d say, ‘Jules, enough is enough. If you don’t stop bossing everyone around, you’re going to be friendless—and I’m gonna have to take daggers into my own hands.’”
Their teacher scribbled some notes on the script. “I like it. Keep going with this.”
“Brutus would make Caesar see the error of his ways through peaceful negotiation,” Sophie continued. “I think that would be a much better solution. And there’d be no killing involved.”
“That’s ridiculous! Why doesn’t Brutus just take him to lunch while he’s at it? Or buy him a frappuccino? That isn’t how it’s supposed to happen!” Delaney cried.
Sophie didn’t like it one bit that her friend was dissing her ideas in front of the class and Mr. G. “Well, maybe it would happen that way if Caesar wasn’t so obsessed with hogging the spotlight!”
A hush fell over the classroom as Sophie and Delaney stared each other down.
Mr. G tried to referee: “I think we’ve tossed out some good ideas here, and I welcome all students’ input.”
“You’re being the tyrant, not me,” Delaney told Sophie. “You’re the one trying to get your own way. You don’t even want to try to work this out.”
“Why should I?” Sophie asked. “Face it. My idea is the better one, and you just can’t handle it.”
“I think we should call our play Rome Reimagined and show what would have happened if things had gone down differently,” Mr. G said, stepping between them. “Violence is never the answer—and right now what I want is peace in this classroom. Is that clear?”
“But it’s an awesome death scene!” Delaney protested. “I love my death scene.”
“Well, now Brutus and Caesar can hug it out,” Sophie said. “So much better!”
“Sophie, it’s not just your opinion that counts,” Delaney protested. She felt like her friend was being completely inconsiderate.
“Well, Mr. G likes it,” Sophie fired back. “So that’s two opinions that count.”
Delaney looked to Mr. G for support, but he was too busy tearing pages out of the script—pages that she was sure included her death scene.
“It isn’t fair,” she said, pouting.
But Sophie wasn’t interested in being fair, and that left Delaney feeling both angry and sad. Why was her friend treating her this way?
“I’ll have the new scenes for you tomorrow morning,” Mr. G called after them as the bell rang. “Good work today, class. I like to see you really thinking hard about how to make the play better.”
Sophie ran out before Delaney could say another word.
“What’s wrong?” Olivia asked, spying Delaney by her locker. “Why the long face? I thought you’d be happy with the money we raised.”
“I would be,” Delaney said, “but Sophie is bossing me around and totally changing the play. She’s turned a classic tragedy into Peace, Love, and Caesar. It’s so wrong!”
Olivia couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s pretty funny, don’t you think?”
“No, not really,” Delaney said, pouting.
“But it could be—right, Zany Laney?”
Delaney suddenly had an idea. “Liv, did I ever tell you you’re a genius?” she asked, hugging her copresident. “I think I know how to make our play a huge hit—and save my death scene. It’ll be so great that Sophie won’t mind at all…I hope!”
• • •
Delaney went along with all of the script’s rewrites during rehearsals, but she was secretly planning her own revisions for the day of the play. She tried to talk to Sophie one last time before the curtain went up.
“Remember when you warned me that I was being too bossy with the cupcake club?” she asked her friend.
“Yeah, you were. So?”
“So, you made me think about it and realize I wasn’t being fair. I called Kylie to say I was sorry.”
Sophie adjusted her toga. “I don’t get what this has to do with our play.”
“Soph, you’re being bossy. I get that you didn’t like the way things were, but you can’t just ignore what everyone else thinks and feels.”
“Everyone? I don’t see anyone complaining, Laney—except you,” Sophie said. “You’re the only one who doesn’t like the new ending.”
/> “Well, that should be enough. I’m your BFF. You should care.”
Sophie shrugged. “What I care about right now is doing our show.” She pulled back the curtain to reveal the audience packed with fifth-grade students and faculty. “Can we please talk about this later?”
Delaney shook her head. “Later will be too late. Please, Soph, can’t we come up with a compromise? Something we could do that we would both be happy with?”
“You play your part, and I’ll play mine,” Sophie insisted. “Stick to the script.”
“Places,” Mr. G called. “It’s showtime!”
“Did you hear that?” Sophie said, pushing Delaney aside to get to the stage.
Delaney raised an eyebrow. Oh, I heard it, she thought to herself. Loud and clear.
As Mr. G cued the lights and the curtain, Delaney appeared onstage in her red flowing cape and laurel-leaf crown.
“I, Caesar, declare myself dictator for life!” she said, storming across the stage.
“But, Caesar, listen to your senators,” Sophie said as Brutus pleaded with her.
“What?” Delaney replied. “Speak up! Can’t hear ya!”
A few students chuckled as she pretended to be hard of hearing.
Sophie cleared her throat and spoke louder. “I said, ‘Caesar, listen to us! We want what is best for the people.’”
“What’s that?” Delaney repeated. “You want vests for the people?”
She dashed offstage and came back wearing a bright-yellow traffic vest. “Will this do? I think it also comes in blue…”
This time, the audience roared with laughter.
“Let me tell ya something, Brutus,” she continued. “I know how you feel. You’re so mad that you could just kill me.”
Sophie shook her head. “No! No! I don’t want to kill you. That would be awful.”
“Even if I did this?” She took a cupcake from inside the vest pocket and smooshed it in Sophie’s face.
“Delaney!” Sophie cried. “It’s not funny.”
“But it is!” Delaney whispered to her. “Come on, Soph, have some fun with it! You don’t have to be a brutal Brutus, and I can have my death scene. We can compromise and both be happy.”