Don't Vote for Me

by Krista Van Dolzer

  As the charge built up inside me, I knew I had to let it out or risk spontaneously combusting, so of course, I said the first thing that popped into my head: “That’s a nice banner you’ve got.”

  She glared at me across the Steinway. “It didn’t cost more than fifty bucks, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

  I held up my hands. “I was only making conversation.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, of course, but if I’d come right out and said, No, what I’m trying to say is that your campaign is gonna murder mine, she probably wouldn’t have believed me.

  Veronica’s shoulders slumped. “Mom thought I should get the big one—make a statement, you know? And she knew the guy at the print shop…”

  Instead of finishing that thought, Veronica glanced down at her lap. I could have sworn her cheeks reddened, but I only caught a glimpse of them before her hair fell across her face.

  “They went out for a while,” she explained, “so he said he owed my mom a favor. He only charged us forty-five. I can show you the receipt.”

  I shook my head. “No, I trust you.” That wasn’t strictly true, either, but I would have said anything—and I mean, anything—to keep from hearing more about her mom and Print Shop Guy.

  She straightened her music (though it hadn’t needed to be straightened). “Well, what about your signs?”

  “What about them?” I asked, stalling.

  “Where’d you put them?” she replied.

  I scratched the back of my head. I probably could have lied, but the truth was even better. “I didn’t, actually. They’re at the bottom of the trash can in the middle of the commons.”

  She half chuckled, half choked. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  Instead of answering, I shrugged. It was a shrug I’d learned from Nathan, who’d once worked on a sidewalk-chalked landscape on the back patio for months. Don’t bother me with silly questions, my shoulders seemed to say. Haven’t you ever heard of a work-in-progress?

  But she didn’t take the hint. “Where are they really?” she replied.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “They’re kind of Esther’s responsibility.”

  Or at least I hoped they were. For a second, maybe less, I considered the horrifying possibility that Esther had taken our money and run, then pushed that thought out of my head. We hadn’t given Esther any cash, and even if we had, where was she going to run? She wouldn’t make it very far on the old bike she rode to school.

  Veronica nodded knowingly. “Well, that sounds promising,” she said (which was probably a lie, but she said it so convincingly it was hard to say for sure). “Are you ready to begin?”

  I slid my mouthpiece into its slot. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Should we take it from the top, or is there a part you’re iffy on?”

  I was iffy about the second note and everything that came after it, but I’d told them I would do it, so I had to follow through. “Let’s take it from the top,” I said, “and see how far we get.”

  Veronica eased into the intro, and I came in on the second line. Her piano skipped across the notes like a smooth rock across a pond, my trumpet bouncing in her wake. Our easy blend surprised me. Two middle school band students weren’t supposed to sound this good.

  We made it through the repeat without stopping even once. As the final notes faded away, we just sat there, barely breathing. That had sounded good. I couldn’t decide if it was Edith Piaf or Veronica or both, but the only thing I knew for sure was that it definitely wasn’t me. I’d been playing “La Vie en rose” for days, and it had never sounded like that, with all its cracks and holes filled in.

  Veronica glanced up at me. It was weird to be above her. “Is there a part you want to work on?”

  “No,” I said carefully. I didn’t want to break the spell. “I want to play it just like that again.”

  We played “La Vie en rose” five more times before Veronica announced that she had to catch the bus. She’d scooted the bench out of the way and was leaping to her feet before I could lower my trumpet.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Where’s the fire? I’m sure the bus driver won’t leave you.”

  “This isn’t a school bus,” she replied as she gathered up her music and stuffed it back into her bag.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t get a word out before she hitched her bag over her shoulder and made a beeline for the door. When she slammed it shut behind her, the windows rattled nervously. It was the only evidence that she’d been here at all.

  “What the heck was that?” I asked as I threw up my arms. I’d heard of kissing and running, but we’d only played a song.

  Mom poked her head into the room. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  I returned my trumpet to its case. “Oh, yeah, everything’s fine.” I wasn’t going to admit that I’d been having a good time. “I just didn’t think the Pritchard-Pratt would scurry out of here.”

  Mom glanced out the window, but Veronica had already disappeared. “Give her a break,” she said. “Something tells me that that girl has more than a few balls to juggle.” She motioned toward our cordless phone. “Oh, and someone called while you were practicing. It sounded like a girl.”

  “Another one?” I asked.

  Mom nodded seriously (though one corner of her mouth did twitch). “She said that her name was Esther and that she wants you guys to meet her outside the school first thing tomorrow.” She stuck both hands on her hips, but the fact that she was smiling kind of ruined the effect. “Do I need to be concerned?”

  “Oh, probably,” I said, then scurried out of there myself. What I didn’t say was that, for once, I was actually telling the truth.

  Eight

  The next morning found Riley, Spencer, and me loitering outside the middle school. Spencer kept checking the time, but Esther kept not showing up. Apparently, our definition of “first thing tomorrow” was somewhat different than Esther’s.

  We were about to give up and go in when a blue truck turned into the parking lot. The closer it came (and it didn’t come closer very fast), the more I decided it was less blue and more gray. By the time it rolled up to the curb, I realized it had been constructed from trucks that had been blue, green, and black.

  Esther popped out of the bed before it had finished rolling. “David, you got my message!”

  “And who am I, no one?” Spencer asked.

  Esther didn’t answer, just grabbed whatever they were hauling. “I have the—poster here,” she said between noisy gasps for breath. “But I’ll admit—it’s kind of—heavy.”

  I crinkled my nose. “How can a poster be heavy?”

  Before she could reply, a man with a rosebush for a beard climbed out of the driver’s seat and grabbed the other end. As he helped her lug it toward the tailgate, I caught my first glimpse of the poster. It looked shiny.

  Esther dusted off her hands. “I stayed up all night to finish it. Toby helped, of course.”

  “Who’s Toby?” I replied.

  Esther motioned toward the man. “You know the guy who owns Renfro’s?” Her chest puffed up with pride. “Well, that’s Toby, my stepdad.”

  The man with the rosebush beard saluted, but he didn’t bother to reply. But then, Mr. Renfro had never struck me as a man of many words. He was into modern art, which, according to Dad, meant that he built toilets out of scrap metal, then put them on display. He had a studio on State Street, but no one had ever bothered to go in until he’d turned it into an ice cream parlor, too. Now Renfro’s was the hottest—or maybe the coldest—spot in town.

  Esther slapped him on the back. “He even taught me how to weld!”

  I had no idea what welding was, but it obviously excited Esther (and since Esther was an artist, having a stepdad like Mr. Renfro must have been a pretty sweet deal). But as they turned th
e poster toward us, I couldn’t help but shake my head. It was made of tons of mirrors in a hundred different shapes and sizes.

  Esther hopped down from the truck bed. “Now, I know what you’re thinking—there’s no freaking way we made this for fifty bucks.”

  “Actually,” Spencer muttered, “I was wondering what the heck it—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted as I jabbed him in the ribs. “That’s exactly what we’re thinking.”

  Esther dusted off her hands again. “Well, you don’t need to worry. Toby and I picked this up as scrap. The guy at the hardware store was gonna chuck it, so we offered to take it off his hands, and he said we could just have it!”

  “Wow,” was all I said. For once, I’d been rendered almost speechless. And like Spencer, I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was.

  “I know, right?” Esther said as she grabbed one of the edges and swung it around for us to see. “So what do you think?”

  I didn’t answer right away, just dug my toe into a crack. Now that I could see the whole thing all at once, I had to admit it was impressive. The sun had just crested the peaks of the mountains that cradled SV, and the mirrors seemed to catch every one of those pink rays. But I still had no idea what it was supposed to be.

  I raised a hand to shield my eyes as I tried to figure out how to break the news to Esther. But I didn’t have a chance to come up with the words before Riley’s eyes widened.

  “It’s David,” he said softly.

  I crinkled my nose. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Riley pointed at the poster.

  I tilted my head to the side, trying to see it how he saw it. And just like that, I did. That top mirror was my head, and the smaller bits stuck to my face were my eyes, my nose, my mouth. A set of trapezoids made up my torso, and four cascades of rectangles made up my arms and legs. Connecting wires ran through the whole structure to give the poster three dimensions, so a hundred reflections of my face could stare back at me at once.

  Spencer wasn’t impressed. “But what is it supposed to mean?”

  “It means he’s a part of us,” Riley said. “And we’re a part of him.”

  “Like the Blob?” Spencer replied.

  Esther shook her head. “No, like a metaphor,” she said. “When other kids look at this poster, I want them to see themselves.”

  I was catching the vision, but Spencer still wasn’t convinced.

  “It doesn’t say his name,” he said.

  Esther rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t have to say his name. David’s the only other candidate in the race.”

  Spencer shook his head. “As the campaign manager, I’m telling you that it has to say his name.”

  He faced her, and she faced him, putting herself between him and the poster. It was like we’d traveled back in time to a dusty street in a cardboard town. I started whistling the theme song for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but when someone fired up a lawnmower, the engine drowned me out.

  Esther stuck out her chin. “You’re not touching Shiny David.”

  Spencer snorted. “Shiny David?”

  “That’s his name,” Esther replied. “And he’s more than a poster. He’s a work of art.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but before he could get the words out, I threw myself between them.

  “If the name is so important, then we’ll add a sign,” I said.

  Spencer’s forehead furrowed. “But what will it say?”

  We set our sights on Riley, who was our designated speechwriter and official slogan maker-upper. He puckered his lips and folded his arms across his chest. I was familiar with that look, but he usually only got it when he was writing in his notebook.

  We just stood there waiting as the sun’s belly appeared, casting the mountains’ craggy faces in a checkerboard of lights and darks. The lawnmower smelled like gasoline but also grass clippings, my second favorite smell. I drew a deep breath through my nose, but before I could release it, Riley’s lips un-puckered.

  “I have it,” he said breathlessly, then raced into the school.

  Nine

  We mounted Shiny David on the wall outside the lunchroom. Esther had brought a roll of Velcro tape (which was surprisingly sturdy stuff). Spencer even liked the placement. Connecting my campaign to French fries was good subliminal advertising in his book.

  And of course, there was the sign.

  “Your Face, Your Vote,” it said in Esther’s spidery handwriting. We’d had no choice but to write it on the back of an old math assignment, but Riley’s words still rang with authority. It was the best thing he’d ever written, even better than his last slogan, “This Grainger Ain’t No Stranger.”

  Between classes, we camped out in the alcove down the hall from Shiny David so we could watch other kids discover him. They would stare for a few seconds, their faces scrunched up in confusion, and then everything would click, and they would poke their friends and random strangers and whisper excitedly. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but we had good imaginations:

  It’s amazing!

  It’s incredible!

  Do you think Esther designed it?

  Okay, so maybe she was the only one who thought they were saying that.

  By the time lunch rolled around, kids had smacked me on the shoulder so many times that I’d lost track, so to avoid the teeming hordes, I opted to enter through the side door. I skirted the edges of the lunchroom, keeping my eyes trained on the ground. I’d never had to work so hard to be invisible before. And I was working so hard to be invisible that I didn’t notice Esther, who was sitting at our table, until I almost sat on her.

  I clutched my lunch box like a shield. “What are you doing here?” I blurted.

  Esther didn’t answer, just stuck her chin out at my lunch box. It wasn’t until I looked down that I remembered it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles day.

  “My favorite’s Donatello,” Esther said.

  Slowly, I lowered my shield. “You’re a TMNT fan?” I asked.

  “I guess,” she said dismissively, “but I was referring to the artist. He was a sculptor, too, you know. His most famous piece was David.”

  “Don’t you mean Shiny David?” Spencer asked.

  “No, I meant David,” she replied, “as in the kid with the slingshot.” She glanced at me, then at my seat. “Were you gonna sit down?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I wasn’t really comfortable eating lunch with girls. I’d picked up some bad habits from my youngest older brother, Owen (who ate food like he fixed cars—with his mouth hanging open and his tongue lolling out the side). But I didn’t want Esther to think that I wasn’t grateful, either.

  “Look, I don’t like this situation any more than you do,” she replied, “but if you want to win this race, then you have to count me in.” She flicked a thumb over her shoulder. “Did you really think your posters were gonna get you any votes?”

  “Well, at first, we thought they might,” I said, “but then we saw Veronica’s and knew that we were sunk.”

  She took a swig of chocolate milk. “It was a rhetorical question.”

  I crinkled my nose. “What does ‘rhetorical’ mean?” For some reason, it hadn’t come up in any of Mom and Dad’s old law books.

  She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  Luckily, Spencer arrived before I could dig the hole any deeper. His hands were full of milk straws, and his eyes were wide and sparkling. “Guys!” he said, breathing hard.

  Esther punched him in the arm. “I’m here, too, you know,” she said.

  The fact that Spencer didn’t punch her back went to show just how pumped he was. “They love it, they absolutely love it!”

  I figured it meant Shiny David, but I wasn’t sure who they were. “Who loves it?” I replied.

  “Everyone!” he said, then sh
ook his head. “Okay, maybe not everyone. But some of them, at least, and some is way better than none!”

  Riley fished another carrot stick out of his lunch tote. I’d tried to let him borrow one of mine, but apparently, his mom didn’t believe in un-recycled plastic. The lunch tote was made of old milk jugs and, according to the label, wouldn’t spend the next millennium leaching chemicals into a landfill. That was a good thing, but then, it did look like a diaper, so I guess there were always trade-offs.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I took a straw poll!” Spencer said.

  “What’s a straw poll?” I replied.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But they’re always talking about them on CNN, so that must mean they’re important.”

  Esther lobbed a French fry at his head. “Well, if you don’t know what it is, then how could you take one, doofus?”

  The French fry hit him in the eye, but he managed to ignore it. “I took my own straw poll,” he said. “I stood at the end of the lunch line and gave everyone a straw, but before I gave them one, I asked who they were gonna vote for.”

  Anxiety tap-danced in my stomach. “I appreciate the thought, but the rules say we can’t hand things out…”

  “Not even milk straws?” Spencer asked.

  “Not even milk straws,” Esther said, lobbing another French fry at his head. “And isn’t it your job to keep track of things like rules?”

  This time, Spencer dodged it. “Look, I don’t need some airhead artist telling me how to do my job.”

  She drew herself up to her full height. “Well, unfortunately, this airhead artist is the only one getting things done!”

  “That’s not fair,” Spencer replied, taking a swig of her chocolate milk. “I did the straw poll, didn’t I?”