Cast Your Ballot!

by Rachel Wise

  Then I saw Michael, who was so sweet and apologetic and asked me to save him a seat at lunch. I accepted his apology and told him I was moving on. No point in staying mad at him, right? “It’s fine,” I said again.

  Finally, I ran into Hailey, and she jumped on me and hugged me hard for saying yes to the scary movie. “It’s fine,” I found myself saying for the third time this morning. It seemed I was making people happy all over the place, which should have been great. There was only one problem: It didn’t really feel that great. It didn’t even feel fine.

  Now I would be stuck seeing a movie I didn’t want to see, interviewing someone at a really inconvenient time, and having lunch with someone who’d annoyed the heck out of me just yesterday. It made me flash back to the Know-It-All letter Mr. Trigg had forwarded to me just hours ago. There was even more to it than I’d first realized, something about spending your time in a way that makes you happy. I’d just need to mull it over some more.

  At lunch Hailey chattered on happily about the scary movie. I nodded and acted like I cared while watching the door for Michael’s arrival. Bored, I picked at my organic chicken-curry wrap and made a mental tally of the homework assignments I’d received so far today. Then I spotted Michael.

  He got his lunch and, with his tray held aloft, crossed the room to join us. I felt a smile blooming on my face despite my best efforts to conceal it. I couldn’t help but be happy to see the guy, even though I was annoyed at him.

  Hailey cocked her head and looked at me. “Oh! Michael’s coming up behind me, isn’t he?” she said.

  “What?” I asked, looking back at her.

  Hailey grinned. “I can tell! You’ve got your special lovey-dovey face on!”

  And, of course, Michael plopped his tray down right after she spoke, just verifying everything she’d said. Psychic Friend Drives Girl Batty.

  “Guess who I’m meeting after this?” he said, by way of greeting.

  I shrugged, acting disinterested.

  “Uh-oh! Are you still annoyed at me for yesterday even though you said you weren’t?” he teased.

  “Maybe. A little,” I said. I didn’t want to play games, but I did feel I’d glossed over it a bit quickly this morning.

  Michael suddenly dropped to his knees with his hands folded, in begging posture. “Please, please, forgive me, Sam Martone, for being an idiot and a rude person. I apologize. I’m begging your forgiveness!”

  I covered my face with my hands in mortification as kids at other tables turned to stare at the spectacle he was making.

  “Get up! Please! Get up!” I said through my hands. My face was burning with embarrassment.

  “Only if you really and truly accept my apology!” he demanded from the floor.

  “Fine! Just get up!” I peeked through my fingers. I could see Hailey laughing and clapping with joy.

  “Nope! You have to say it. Say you forgive me!”

  “Okay! I forgive you!” I cried, and he got up.

  “See how easy that was?” he said, settling into his seat and beginning to eat.

  “You are so embarrassing!” I said, my blush starting to subside.

  “That was awesome!” Hailey giggled. “People thought you were proposing!”

  “Oh, please!” I protested, mortified. Note to self: Fire Hailey as best friend later.

  Michael just grinned and kept shoveling food into his mouth, so I decided to change the subject. “So who are you meeting after this?” I asked.

  “John Scott!” he replied, taking a bite out of his roll and chewing.

  “Oh, interesting. I’m meeting him for lunch on Friday and Anthony at five that day.”

  “I think I’d better meet with Anthony again, too,” he said between bites.

  “I’m going to do the research tomorrow. By the way, I’ll look in the Cherry Valley Voice for you while I’m there, to see if there’s anything you need on John. So you’ll be meeting them cold, and I’ll be meeting them maybe prejudiced or maybe with an agenda, depending on what I find in my research. That should be fair, anyway,” I said.

  He nodded. “Then let’s set up our Buddybook poll for the weekend. Just a simple ‘Who’s Your Candidate?’ poll. No posting, no saying why. Just ‘Who gets your vote?’ Okay?”

  I nodded my agreement. “Don’t tell me anything before I meet with these guys,” I said. “I don’t want your observations to cloud my opinion. I want to think for myself,” I said.

  “Don’t you always?” mused Michael.

  “Yes!” Hailey nodded emphatically.

  “Hey! No comments from the peanut gallery!” I said. It was something my mom always said; I think it’s from a TV show when she was little.

  “Okay, so lunch Monday, then, to compare notes?” suggested Michael. It seemed so far off.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “If we don’t see each other before then . . .”

  “Yeah, like at the movies Friday night!” said Hailey.

  I stared daggers at her.

  “Oh, what are you going to see?” asked Michael as he gathered up his stuff to leave for the interview.

  Hailey shrugged casually. “That new scary action movie everyone’s talking about.”

  “What? Are you kidding me? That’s supposed to be awesome! Can I come?”

  Now I truly hated Hailey.

  “You’ll have to ask the boss,” said Hailey, raising her eyebrows and gesturing toward me.

  “Is it okay if I come?” he asked.

  It’s fine, I almost said. But it wasn’t. I knew Hailey would be okay with it, but she sometimes gets her feelings hurt if I talk about Michael too much or if I try to involve him. We had been planning this for a long time. I needed to speak up or risk doing something against my own best interests again.

  “You know what? I’d love to see it with you and I don’t want to be mean, but we’re doing a girls’ night with Jenna and Kristen that night—dinner and a movie. Maybe I can see it with you at another time”—I winced at the thought of seeing it twice—“but we just can’t sit with you Friday. I’m sorry. For real,” I said. My stomach was in knots, dreading his reply by the time I’d finished talking.

  But Michael nodded. “I totally get it. You girls go, and I might get a bunch of guys together if I get organized. Maybe if we’re all there, we could grab some ice cream after or something. Unless that would that be in violation of girls’ night?” He grinned his adorable grin and his eyes twinkled.

  “That would be fine,” I said calmly.

  Hailey was still smiling.

  “Okay, catch you later,” he said as he took his tray and left.

  “Good luck!” I called after him.

  “See you Friday night!” called Hailey.

  And then I did what any girl would have done to her BFF in the same situation.

  I kicked her.

  Chapter 5

  JOURNALIST MAKES RIGHT CHOICE

  At the library on Thursday, I searched the digital archive of the back issues of the Voice from the past two years. Anthony and John would have been mentioned only while they were students here, and since they were eighth graders now, it meant I didn’t have to go back years and sift through tons of articles to find info about them.

  I really love research, and I’m pretty good at it, I have to say. While I longed for the kind of well-researched files that Mr. Trigg had described the other day, I didn’t mind putting together my own.

  Here’s what I found about each of the candidates:

  • John Scott writes a lot of letters to the editor.

  • Anthony Wright has won three major chess competitions, one of them statewide, and he is a nationally ranked competitor.

  • John Scott is on the debate team and is the founder and president of the Young Republicans club at school.

  • Anthony is in the Model UN club.

  • John’s older brother went here and graduated the year before I got here.

  • Anthony’s mom is a nutritionist and spoke at a PTA
meeting.

  None of this was exactly earth-shattering, and I was a little disappointed. I’d hoped to find some juicy tidbit to run in our article—what, I don’t know. It wasn’t like the school newspaper printed the week’s arrests or anything (not that they’d been arrested!). I guess I just have this fantasy that our school election will be as jazzy as the real ones I read about all the time, but the truth is, it isn’t that jazzy.

  The candidates are kids. They’ve never really done anything else that we could dig up info about (like held a job in a public corporation or filed taxes), and they haven’t been working toward this office for years like real candidates. All we’ll know of them is what they’ll tell us about themselves. It’s all going to be “the message,” as the blogs call it.

  I stared into space at the computer terminal and drummed my fingers on the table, wishing a bombshell would materialize in print. When it didn’t, I sighed and logged off. Maybe I’d find something in my “person-on-the-street” interviews. I made a list of questions in my notebook; then I set out to do a few interviews now, just to appease my hunger for information.

  The first person I nabbed at my post outside the newsroom was a sixth grader named Sara Freund, a girl in sports clothes who didn’t look like she was in a rush. I asked if she’d be willing to talk on the record for attribution in the school newspaper (in other words, I’d use her name), and she agreed.

  “Okay,” I began, pen poised above the paper in my notebook. “What do you think of John Scott, candidate for school president?”

  “Um, I don’t know him,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” I nodded supportively. “Have you heard of him?”

  “Is he the guy who’s in that band that played at the talent show?” she asked, a perplexed look on her face as she tried to place him.

  “No . . . that was Scott Johnson. Close!”

  “Yeah, so I’ve never heard of John Scott.”

  “Okay. How about Anthony Wright?” I asked in a chipper voice.

  She shook her head again. “Sorry. I don’t know him, either,” she admitted. “I guess I’m a lousy interview.”

  “That’s fine. I’m just getting started. Maybe you’ve just highlighted an interesting point. Maybe they’re not that well known to underclassmen. Are you interested in the election?” I asked.

  “Well, I just got to Cherry Valley, so . . . I don’t really know what the issues are.”

  “Okay, so the underclassmen need to be made aware of the issues,” I said, writing swiftly.

  “Or maybe just I do?” she asked.

  I stopped writing. “Oh. Good point. Well, I’d better talk to some more sixth graders,” I said. “Thanks.”

  The next kid I stopped was a sixth-grade boy named Henry Graham. He agreed to talk on the record, too, but hadn’t heard of either of the candidates and also didn’t know the issues.

  “That’s great! Thank you!” I said, happy to be building a theme. (Sixth Graders Apathetic About Election! ran the headline in my mind.) He walked away with a puzzled look on his face but I was pleased.

  A seventh grader named Tim Howard stopped. He said I could quote him but not use his name. He knew Anthony Wright and said he was nice if a bit nerdy, but most of all, he was stunned that Anthony would run for office. “Anthony? The chess guy? For school president?” he kept repeating incredulously. It was pretty annoying.

  I was relieved to see Kristen and her friend Pam coming toward me in the hall. “Pam! Kristen!” I waved them over. “I need some quotes about the candidates, for the paper. Can I use your names?”

  “Sure,” they agreed.

  Pam told me John Scott was hilarious and so fun in her language arts class. She said Anthony Wright was “quiet, but nice.”

  Kristen agreed John was fun and charming, and she said she didn’t know Anthony well enough to comment.

  Okay, so the candidates are known to most upperclassmen, so far, I theorized.

  I grabbed a few more kids, all ages, until it was time to go to my next class. And they were all the same: The sixth graders had never heard of either of them, didn’t know anything about the election process or the issues. The seventh graders knew one or the other (most knew John Scott, and those who knew Anthony were surprised he was running), had a few vague ideas of the process, and knew one or two things that the school president might be interested in working on. Finally, most of the eighth graders knew both, loved John Scott, were surprised at the idea of Anthony Wright running for school president, and had a pretty decent grip on the election process and the issues facing the school (food, sports team fees, music and art programming being cut, needing tutoring or extra help for hard classes). I was pretty impressed with the eighth graders, actually.

  Obviously, I had more interviews to do, and Michael would need to do some too to make sure I tried being completely fair when I asked my questions. I mean, I try hard to be neutral (it’s not like I say, “And can you believe that Anthony Wright is running?”), but you have to be so careful in the way you ask questions, so I just need to remember that and address it.

  The article was starting to take shape in my mind—the intro at least. Uninterested sixth graders, voting solely on what the candidates tell them. Eighth graders clearly preferring one candidate over the other, on reputation alone. And seventh graders undecided, with some knowing a candidate personally and some not. I couldn’t wait for my interviews to pull this whole thing together in my mind and then on paper.

  At lunch Friday I secured two seats in a quiet area, leaving my messenger bag and jean jacket on them to save them while I got my lunch. I went to get a sandwich and look for John Scott. He was about ten minutes late, which actually was a little annoying but worked out to my advantage since I’d finished eating and could concentrate on the interview while he ate. I did make a little note of it though; lateness can reveal a person’s character in many ways.

  When John arrived, he got his food and joined me at the table, with a brief apology about his tardiness.

  “Samantha Martone!” he began with a friendly grin. “It’s an honor to be interviewed by a journalist of your caliber.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I can’t believe you’re interviewing me!” John said. “After reading your articles in every issue—the Pay to Play article was awesome, the school lunch article intense, and I loved the coverage last year on the new curriculum—I always feel I have my finger on the pulse. You’re always on the front page and always hitting the most important issues. I could take my campaign plan straight from your articles in the Cherry Valley Voice! And the writing! So good.” He shook his head admiringly.

  “Wow. Thanks! I’m flattered,” I said, a tiny blush reddening my cheeks. “I can’t believe you read all that.”

  “Well . . .” John stopped to find a fresh napkin on the table and spied my notebook. “Wait. You use a notebook?”

  Surprised, I looked down at my trusty brown notebook. “Uhhh . . . yeah?” What was wrong with it? It looked okay to me.

  John shook his head sadly. “Samantha—one of the first things I will do if elected school president is make certain everyone on the Cherry Valley Voice staff receives state-of-the-art iPads. How can you do your best work if you’re not using the best equipment?”

  “Really? Wow. That would be awesome!” I said excitedly, thinking how cool it would be to tote around an iPad for my articles. It would make things so much easier: online research, editing drafts, sharing with Michael. Not that I’d ever had many problems with my notebook before, but still.

  I glanced at my list of questions about John’s background and qualifications; then I decided to just go with the flow of the conversation. “So, what else would you do if you were elected school president?” I asked, uncapping my pen and poising it above the page.

  John brightened, and he pushed his tray away and folded his hands earnestly on the table in front of him. “Well, first of all, extra-long lunch breaks . . . How can
the teachers expect us to work if we’re not properly rested? Next, less homework—it’s a proven fact that stress is not healthy for anyone, and homework adds a lot of stress to a student’s life. Third, more extracurriculars. Like, why don’t we have film class? That would be so cool. Fourth . . .”

  John outlined about ten great ideas while I nodded along and scribbled quickly to get it all down on paper before our hour was up. I could see what John envisioned for our school, and it was exciting. School life would be much better with John Scott at the helm! Plus, his delivery was amazing—I was objective enough to see that, though I actually had to fight myself from becoming totally charmed by his friendly voice, his sense of humor, and his enthusiasm.

  After he outlined his plan, I asked him a couple of questions about his background, including about his family.

  John was ready for this, too. “Well, I’m from a very small, tight-knit family: just me, my parents, and my older brother. We spend a lot of time together, and my brother and I are kind of our parents’ life: They never miss a game or a debate; they quiz us at the table on current events; they drive us to all our lessons and stuff. We get along very well,” he said proudly. “Also, I don’t know if you’ve heard this story, but it’s something I’m very proud of. I saved a little girl from drowning at the town lake two summers ago . . .”

  “So, that was you!”

  He nodded proudly. “Yup.” He filled me in on the details, which were exciting but basically amounted to him yanking her out of the water before anything really bad happened and calling 911 on his brother’s phone. Still, he did think fast. He finished the story by patting his heart. “Anna and I are still very close.”