He tossed his spoon into the sink. “Just trying to make lemonade out of these lemons, Josh. I hate to quit after all the good work we’ve done.”
I agreed with him, but even my overactive mind had struck out on this one.
Peter turned on the kitchen radio to catch NPR describing our “young and passionate campaign staff—interviews with Lisa Carroll and Tim Hawthorne up next.” I couldn’t bear that they were talking about our campaign as if it were over. As I grabbed the knob and buzzed down the dial, a snippet of Dylan emerged from the speakers. Out of the guy’s entire canon of music—hundreds of songs—this was the line that screamed across the room. “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
It was a musical coincidence that Janine would have loved.
Ahhh, Janine. I hadn’t answered any of her e-mails or phone calls. Surprisingly, the weight of my grief and hurt no longer stemmed from her betrayal but my reaction to it. A week later, I was still horrified by my behavior. No matter what she’d done, humiliating her like that was inexcusable. I’d spent that night sleeping on the cold hard seats of the school bus, too mad at myself to go inside the house. I sat with my flashlight, thumbing through the copy of my previous book until I found the section I was looking for. But I didn’t have to preach to a million people to move civilization forward; offering a hungry person a bowl of soup was contributing too … I had been trying to fix the outside world without fixing the inside one first—a giant mistake.
I read my own words again. Here I was, at the finish line of being the first teenager to run for president and I’d failed. Not failed at running a good campaign, but at being a decent human being. The offshore holdings scandal hadn’t blown it, Janine’s betrayal hadn’t blown it—I had. From the beginning I’d run this campaign with respect and honesty for staffers and voters alike. I’d broken that vow when I spoke to Janine so harshly. Whatever happened from here on in, I deserved.
I scanned my Word Search for the Senator Wellstone quote I’d used when I announced my candidacy. “Let there be no distance between the words you say and the life you live.” The election hadn’t even happened yet and I was already a loser.
I put on my jacket and asked Peter if I could borrow his bike.
“We have to decide what we’re doing by the morning,” he said. “If you don’t, I will.”
I nodded and headed out the door.
All the way to Chestnut Hill, I weighed Peter’s suggestions. Beth had cornered me the night before, urging us to spend the money on a national ad campaign that underscored the issues we’d raised all year. Simon called from Harvard to suggest that aggressive attacks required aggressive responses. As I coasted down Route 9, I also wondered what the five e-mails from Janine had contained before I had deleted them.
Marlene’s face lit up when she saw me enter the makeup department.
“I don’t care what the papers say. You get my vote—100 percent.”
I thanked her and plopped down on the padded stool.
When she winked, her penciled-in eyebrows didn’t move. “Lots of people shopping—you’ll get good reception today.”
I was happy to hear the news; the last few times I’d come, I’d barely heard anything from Mom at all. I settled in and watched the shoppers buzz by.
“Mom, you obviously know about Janine, about me being framed, about the campaign going right down the toilet. We’ve got a few options on the table—all of them lousy choices, but still—I have no idea what to do. You’re the only one I trust with something this important. Will you help me?”
I gazed up at the fluorescent lights and waited.
And waited.
After about fifteen minutes, I felt like I was sitting in a Bloomingdale’s Bermuda Triangle where no instrumentation worked. Women would be chatting, but come to a conversational lull as they approached. Men would flip their cells closed as they entered my periphery. Toddlers would miraculously be soothed and quiet as they moved by the counter.
I was surprised but not despondent.
Until the unthinkable hit me.
She was gone.
I fidgeted on the stool like a two-year-old. “Mom, Mom, Mom,” I muttered to myself. “You can’t do this to me.”
Janine’s betrayal was one thing. Losing the trust of millions of Americans who believed in me was another. But having to say goodbye—real goodbye, forever goodbye—to my mother? That was more than I could bear.
I settled back into the silence of Bloomingdale’s as if someone had hit a storewide mute button.
After a few minutes, I did hear a sound.
My own sobbing.
Big racking sobs, accompanied by a runny nose and lots of sniffling.
Marlene scurried toward me with a box of tissues. “Joshie, Joshie, it’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t care how many people looked on, how many tabloids this might end up in. I leaned against Marlene and grieved, the pain as sharp as if my mother had died yesterday.
I walked past my bike in the parking lot and headed to the pond. I doubted that many of the Bloomies regulars knew about the woods directly behind the store, but I took advantage of the solitude. Fallen leaves covered the ground, crunching underneath my sneakers. (God, how I’d missed New England autumns while I was on the road.) I found a huge pile of leaves under an aging maple and settled in.
Peter, Beth, and the rest of the staff expected a decision; it only made sense. But I felt empty, with nothing left to give our campaign. I rummaged through my bag and took out my ethology textbook. The light began to fade, but I felt comforted by the simplicity of the animal world.
After half an hour I came to one of my favorite passages about the macaques in Japan. Back in 1952, scientists had experimented, leaving sweet potatoes on the island beach where the monkeys lived. One day, a young female macaque took her sweet potato into the water to wash it off. Before that, the monkeys had never ventured into the water, ever. The young macaque’s playmate then washed his potato, as did the female’s mother. Soon a new tradition evolved. It was as if monkeys had always taken to the sea; all the macaques now washed their sweet potatoes before eating them.99 The young ones were flexible and open enough to risk trying something new, resulting in a ritual that benefited the entire macaque community forever.
What if the youth of this country—at this moment in time—banded together to hit the voting booths? Years from now, would all kids vote, believing that kids had always voted? Like that original monkey in Japan in 1952, could a handful of eighteen-year-olds voting tomorrow start a trend that would change history?
I put my notebook away and looked at the pond. The sky screamed red and orange before me. The natural world had always nurtured me and now was no exception. The sunset and my animal behavior book made me realize what had taken place in Bloomingdale’s a few hours earlier. My mother had spoken to me; I just didn’t understand what she was trying to say.
I knew what we had to do tomorrow.
And Peter wasn’t going to be happy.
ELECTION COUNTDOWN
NOVEMBER 2: THE BIG DAY
“Nothing?” Peter asked. “That’s what you want to do—nothing?”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “We leave it up to the voters to decide.”
Beth dumped her coffee into the sink. “This is stupid, Josh. Let’s hold a press conference announcing that we’re dropping out of the race and donating the $190 million to a healthcare collaborative. Or setting up scholarships for the needy—”
“I think we should hold a press conference,” I agreed. “Saying that we trust the people to know the difference between the superficial and the real.”
“Look, it sounds like your mom’s changed frequencies,” Peter said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to take her silence literally.”
“All along, we’ve stated that people are smarter than politicians give them credit for, that the wealthy control the media and the media control the polls. What if the polls are wrong? What
if people are still behind us 100 percent and could care less about these ridiculous charges?”
“We can’t take that risk,” Peter said. “You should withdraw or use the money to save the campaign.”
“It’s my name on the ticket—”
“And mine,” Beth added.
“Exactly. That’s why I want you with me on this.”
She shook her head with so much world-weariness, her long hair swayed behind the chair. “Talk about going out with a whimper instead of a bang. A month ago, I almost thought we had a chance of winning this thing. But now …”
It was Election Day, pre-dawn. The dark autumn sky seemed to amplify Beth’s sense of impending doom.
She let out a long sigh. “We’ve been together the whole way on this one. Might as well finish together too.”
We left for headquarters where Tim and Lisa joined us in the office.
“Polls open in half an hour,” Lisa said. “What did we decide?”
Peter rapped his palms on the table in a drumroll. “Nothing.”
“I can’t believe you’re wonking out,” Tim said. “You should decide something.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Lisa said. “We came up with two good plans. You can’t do this.”
I stood up and stretched to the rafters. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to do something I’ve never done before in my life.” I gave them a huge grin. “I’m going to vote.”
Beth shrugged to Tim and Lisa, as if she’d done her best to persuade me and it hadn’t worked. The four of them looked ready for catastrophic defeat.
My neighborhood voted at the local branch of the library. When the town councilman unlocked the doors to the community room at 7 A.M., I was one of many waiting outside in the chilly November air. Peter and Beth would catch up with me later.
I took a sip of my coffee as the woman crossed my name off the town’s list of registered voters. It took her a minute to place the name.
“Well, I’m not going to ask who you’re voting for,” she said.
I smiled and headed to the small partitioned area on the left side of the room.
I wanted to scrutinize every candidate and referendum on the ballot but couldn’t get past the names at the top of the page: I ran my finger down the list until I got to my own: Josh “Larry” Swensen (Peace).
If I had done nothing else, I had raised important issues. Millions of teens had registered to vote. An eighteen-year-old could actually be president.
I had gotten the word peace on the ballot.
I took my pencil and shaded in the small oval next to my name. It didn’t matter how much I was going to get torpedoed in this election. I had accomplished a lot.
Back at headquarters, I insisted our staffers continue with our original plans for Election Day: working the phone banks, driving people who had no way to get to the polls, holding up signs at various voting locations. We’d lost several volunteers since the debacle with the offshore holdings, but many were still on board with their original enthusiasm. I knew they were talking among themselves about how we were going to get killed, but I hoped some of their original passion would carry us through the day. Even Simon drove in from Cambridge to help out.
By noontime, the online and television pundits were forecasting east coast results.
“Get ready for this one,” the CBS news anchor said. “In our preliminary exit polling, we’ve got a dead heat. The Republicans with 32 percent of the vote, the Democrats with 30 percent, and the Peace Party’s Larry Swensen with 29 percent.”
Peter dropped his burrito.
The anchor continued. “Record turnouts in every eastern state thus far, averaging about 78 percent.”
The room exploded. Seventy-eight percent! Almost two and a half times more voters than the last presidential election!
I jumped onto the top of the conference table.100 “I told you people wanted change! I told you they wouldn’t be fooled by all the negative type!”
Beth looked like she was headed for anaphylactic shock. She yanked me off the table and pulled me behind the popcorn machine. “You don’t think we can win, do you? I am so not ready for this.”
To be honest, neither was I.
“Don’t leave me all day—promise?” she asked.
“Are you nuts? We have to get back out there! We might actually have a shot!”
Tim and Lisa also looked like they needed resuscitation. Luckily Simon remained calm and handed out assignments.
Beth could barely speak. “The west coast just opened. We still have time to make an impact.” She got it together enough to set up a speakerphone conference with all the west coast offices.
Me? So much energy surged through my body, I could have run cross-country and visited each Peace Party office personally before the voting booths closed that night.
Peter jingled the keys to the bus in his hand. “Road trip!”
All the available staffers grabbed their coats and raced outside. We piled into the bus, chanting at the top of our lungs.
By the time evening rolled around, every person on staff was on fire. We headed back to the office to watch the national results come in over the next few hours. Beth, who had rallied thousands of activists for several years, seemed stupefied at the prospect of actually serving as vice president. She and I opted for the quiet of the back room while the others flipped from station to station on the big-screen TV on the stage. I could hear them screaming in the next room; seconds later Lisa appeared.
“Are you ready?”
I told her I wasn’t sure.
“We’ve got 33 percent of the vote.”
Beth buried her head deeper into her hands.
“Beth! Get it together!” I yelled.
“Give me some time to adjust, okay? This morning I thought we were going to get killed. Now I’ve got to think about picking out china for the vice president’s mansion.”
I looked at her, aghast.
“I’m kidding! Just let me process this.”
She was right; the magnitude of the news would overwhelm anyone.101
When I finally collapsed from sheer exhaustion, the rubber chicken sticking out from the bottom drawer ratcheted down my emotions. This was Janine’s old desk.
I took the chicken out and tried to amuse Beth by making it dance across the printer like the Democratic and Republican committees hearing today’s results.
She laughed, one step closer to her old self.
I rummaged through the drawers, looking for any of Janine’s other little gizmos. But all I found were folders filled with printouts of old newspaper articles. I took out the folders and read through them.
From the Boston Globe two years ago: LOCAL TEEN ADMITS HE’S GURU. Excerpts from my Barbara Walters interview. Photos of the Sagamore Bridge and my bike.
Beth sidled up behind me. “She must’ve been curious about your life before her. God, I haven’t seen these in ages.”
I scanned the articles, many of which I’d never seen. One—an interview with Tracy Hawthorne, a.k.a. betagold—was the most unsettling. Although Tony and Beth had never been able to link betagold to the $190-million sellout, she always flashed into my mind when we talked about people wanting to harm me.
“Ugh, put it away. The fact that Janine actually met with her makes me sick.” Beth stuffed the pages into the folder and dragged me to the stage.
The 9 P.M. newscaster said the race was still too close to call, but that the number of registered voters who’d showed up today was a record 92 percent.
Peter shook my hand. “All our hard work paid off. No matter who wins.”
I agreed with him; no matter who won, everything was different.
But as I stared at the pie charts and bar graphs on the television screen, something nagged at me. A word, a name, begging me to scratch it like an itchy scab. What was it?
And just as suddenly, I knew.
I raced102 through the joyous group to find Beth. She was wringing her han
ds by the TV with Lisa.
“Where’s Tim?” I asked.
Lisa scanned the room. “I just saw him a while ago with Susie.”
Our years of mental telepathy clued Beth in to my thoughts. She shouted at Lisa to go find him.
“It’s not that uncommon a last name,” Beth said. “Maybe he’s not related to betagold at all.”
“He was in charge of every scrap of information in this campaign!” I said.
“He had A1 clearance!”
“Which he obviously hacked! I told you it wasn’t Janine.”
Lisa returned breathlessly and said Tim had left. I grabbed the bus keys from Peter, then Beth and I hurried to the door.
To Tim Hawthorne’s apartment.
PART FIVE
“Democratic power is never given; it always has to be taken, then aggressively defended, and retaken when it slips from our hands, for the moneyed powers relentlessly press to gain supremacy and assert their private will over the majority. Today, our gift of democracy is endangered not by military might threatening a sudden, explosive coup but by the stealth of corporate lawyers and politicians, seizing a piece of self-government from us here, then another piece from over there, quietly installing an elitist regime issue by issue, law by law, place by place, with many citizens unaware that their people’s authority is slipping away.”
Jim Hightower
We made it to Tim’s apartment in less than fifteen minutes.
Beth pounded on the door; when no one answered, I threw myself against it until it opened.
The living room was a makeshift office with several banks of computers and monitors. Four different televisions lined one wall, each tuned to a different network. I found the remote and hit mute on all the sets.
“Tim!” I yelled. “Come out here!”
He appeared in the kitchen doorway eating a bowl of cereal. “Did you find the logic bomb on the hard drive?”
I shook my head. “I glarked it was you when I realized what your last name was. Totally redlined my bogometer.”
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