The Campaign

by Leila Sales

  “I have no idea,” Janet said as she turned off the car, “but there is only one way to find out.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day was rainy, so Janet was pleased, both because she’d correctly predicted it and because rain is one of her top five favorite weathers. She drove My Friend Daniel and me from school to the Lawrenceville Women’s Club and parked right across the street, but our umbrellas and our shoes still got soaked in the time it took us to run inside.

  We were there for something called a town hall, which is apparently a forum for citizens to meet with government candidates or officials and ask them questions. There weren’t that many citizens at this town hall, though. I guess most people figured that there was no point in asking the candidate questions when no one was running against her, so she was going to become mayor no matter how she answered.

  “I thought we were going to hang out today,” Daniel whispered to me as he looked around the room.

  “We are hanging out,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but I thought we were going to hang out at your house. Or the park. Or Jordan’s.”

  “Daniel, why would you think we were going to hang out at Jordan’s?” Jordan’s Hot House is this magical wonderland where dreams come true; it’s a pizzeria and ice cream shop that has arcade games and lasers and candy. “We’re not cool enough to hang out at Jordan’s,” I reminded him.

  “Speak for yourself,” Daniel said. “Anyway, I didn’t know we were going to some kind of political meeting.”

  “It’s not so bad,” I said unconvincingly.

  One of the old men in the audience chose that moment to ask, “My name is Edwin Barker, and what I want to know is, what are you going to do about that big pothole in front of the bank on Main Street? That pothole has been there for four years, and it’s only getting worse. My daughter blew out her tire in it last spring, and did the city take responsibility? No, ma’am.”

  My Friend Daniel rolled his eyes at me, and I rolled mine right back. “It’s pretty bad,” he mouthed.

  Lucinda Burghart stood at the podium at the front of the room, and she began to answer the question.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Lucinda Burghart said to Edwin. “When I was in the Olympics in ’88, we showed up, all the way from this great country of America, and the locker room for our training pool hadn’t been completed. No curtains on the shower stalls, missing tiles on the floor.

  “Now, we could have complained. We could have kicked up a real fuss. Some of the girls wanted to. But I said, ‘We’re not here to talk. We’re here to make history.’ And I stand by that today, Edwin. I’m not here to talk about fixing that pothole. I am here to fix it.”

  She paused as though waiting for applause.

  “What?” My Friend Daniel whispered to me.

  Nobody else said What? so I wondered if Lucinda’s answer actually made sense to them. Maybe this was just another one of those instances of everyone understanding something I didn’t, but personally I had no idea what locker rooms from thirty years ago had to do with our broken roads. I suspected Lucinda had just brought it up so she had an excuse to mention that she was once in the Olympics.

  Which was impressive, I had to admit. I didn’t know anyone else who’d ever been in the Olympics. My aunt was once in the audience at the Olympic speed skating trials, but that wasn’t really the same.

  “Do we have any other questions?” Lucinda asked. “I want to hear your concerns. I want to make Lawrenceville into the great city that we all know it can and should be.”

  I really did not want to say anything. For starters, if Lucinda answered my questions like she’d an answered Edwin Barker’s, it wouldn’t help. Furthermore, it was kind of nerve-racking and embarrassing to stand up in front of a room full of adult strangers and tell them my concerns. What if they made fun of me or thought I was stupid just because I was a kid? What if I did accidentally say something stupid with everyone watching?

  But I reminded myself that my question couldn’t possibly be any stupider than that guy’s question about a pothole. And also, I had come here to make my case for art. It didn’t matter if I felt awkward or anxious. I needed to do this, because if I didn’t, then my school, my life, my everything would be empty.

  I stood up.

  “Oh, hello, sweetheart,” Lucinda Burghart said in a singsongy voice, like I was about half as old as I actually was. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Maddie Polansky.” I knotted my hands in front of me. “Um, I wanted to ask you . . .”

  “Can you speak up, Maddie, honey?” Lucinda said, still in that high baby voice.

  “Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I wanted to ask about, um, defunding arts education.” I paused for a moment, but then I thought about how that pothole guy just kept going without any encouragement, so I kept talking, too. “I heard that you’re planning to fire the art teachers and stop offering art and music and theater classes in schools. I’m very concerned about it. I know you’re the one who came up with it, so you probably don’t want to hear this, but I think it’s a really, really bad idea.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d talked to any kids about your plan to cut arts funding. Maybe you just asked the principals or parents or something. So I thought a kid should tell you that it’s not a good idea for us.”

  Lucinda Burghart gave a little laugh—“Tee-hee,” it sounded like—and silently applauded. “Thank you, Maddie,” she said. “How inspiring to see Lawrenceville’s youth getting involved in governance. Your intelligence and confidence are testaments to the strength and value of our public school system. And once I am mayor, that school system will be even stronger.

  “My number-one priority is to cut taxes for ordinary working people, like most of us in this room. Now, Maddie, you’re too young to pay taxes, so you can’t really understand what it’s like. Imagine it this way. Do you get an allowance?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Five dollars a week.”

  “Now imagine that every week, you had to give a dollar fifty of your five dollars to the government,” Lucinda said. “So now you only get to keep three fifty. How does that make you feel?”

  I frowned. “Bad,” I said. “But what happens to the dollar fifty that I gave up?”

  “The government has it,” Lucinda explained in an I already told you voice.

  “I know,” I said, “but why? What is the government doing with it?”

  “They’re funding public services. And some of those services are necessary, of course. We need firefighters and police officers. We need stoplights that work and streets that are paved. It will be my job as mayor to cut the services we don’t need that are costing the government money. Do we need libraries to purchase dozens of brand-new copies of every book? No! Do we need to run buses that nobody is riding? No! Do we need to pay for children to spend their school days on time-consuming amusements that will never get them careers? We do not! That money is going back to you, the people of Lawrenceville!”

  She kept saying no like it was obvious, like you must be stupid if you couldn’t see this truth that was so clear to her. And maybe I was stupid. But I couldn’t see it. Art wasn’t a “time-consuming amusement” for me. It was my life.

  And what did she mean, that art was never going to get me a career? Cartoonists had to start somewhere, didn’t they? Mr. Xian had studied art as a kid, and being our teacher was a career, wasn’t it?

  “But—” I said.

  “I know it’s a child’s job to complain about school,” Lucinda said. “This might be hard to believe, but I was once your age myself! So I do think what you’re doing is very cute. But we can’t do what’s wrong for our city just because you don’t like it, little girl.”

  Cute? Cute?!

  “I need art class,” I whispered. My throat felt tight, so it was hard to make the words come out.

  “Children don’t know what’s best for them,” Lucinda announced to the room. “That’s why they need a more focused school da
y. So they can learn what they need! Next question?”

  Someone else stood up then and started talking about affordable housing, so I slowly sat down, my eyes fixed on my hands. I felt Janet’s hand on my back, but I couldn’t look at her.

  This wasn’t right. How could a person who didn’t know anything about me claim to know what was best for me? How dare she tell me that my passion was “cute”? Lucinda hadn’t listened to me at all. She already had her mind made up, and she wasn’t going to change it no matter what I said or how good my argument was.

  If I couldn’t talk her out of her devious plan, then I had only one option:

  CHAPTER 5

  The only way to stop Lucinda from winning the race and enacting her evil plan was to find someone to beat her. Unfortunately, nobody could beat her when nobody was even running against her.

  It was time to take matters into my own hands.

  “I’m going to run for mayor of Lawrenceville,” I announced to Mr. Xian. I paused, then asked, “Do you think anyone will vote for me?”

  At school, most elections weren’t really about who would do the best job. They just turned into popularity contests. So I’d never entered a school election before, because I didn’t need a formal contest to find out that I wasn’t popular. I hoped mayoral elections didn’t work the same way.

  Mr. Xian smiled at me. “I bet lots of people would vote for you if they could,” he said, “but they can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the law says you have to be over eighteen to run for elected office in this state.”

  But I wasn’t giving up that easily. Fortunately, I lived with two people over the age of eighteen.

  I started with Mom. She was in the basement, getting ready for a workout webinar.

  “Can I talk to you?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty busy right now, honey,” she told me as she stretched out her arms. “Can you talk to Janet instead?”

  “Janet’s not here. She’s at a job fair. You gave her the evening off. Remember?”

  “That girl really should get a job,” Mom agreed, rotating her neck around like an owl. “Twenty-three and still living with her parents? That’s no good, no good at all. I read a fascinating article about this exact topic the other day. This whole generation, they’re going to college, getting these useless degrees, and then moving right back home. They have some name for it. ‘The Lost Generation,’ I think. Maybe it was a different name. It sounded very depressing, whatever it was.”

  “I know,” I said. “Janet knows, too. That’s why she’s at this job fair. She wants to get a job that has to do with weather, maybe. Or maybe not, because she says it’s not always a good idea to monetize your passions.”

  “Sure,” Mom said. She laid out her yoga mat. “Just as long as she doesn’t get too busy to take care of you. I was so impressed when you told me she took you to that political event yesterday.”

  “The town hall,” I supplied.

  “What a fascinating enrichment opportunity for Janet to come up with for you. I’ve always intended to go to one of those. Really get involved in the community, you know? But I just have so much going on. There aren’t enough hours in a day, Maddie.”

  “I guess. It depends on the day,” I replied. “Some days are way too long.”

  Today had been one of those. In drama class we’d had to do some exercise where you mirrored the movements of your partner. Of course partner activities create a huge conflict for Holly and Molly and Polly, and they always beg to work as a threesome. And Mrs. Cheng usually lets Polly get away with whatever she wants, because Polly is the darling of the theater department and the lead in every play, so Mrs. Cheng bends over backward to make her happy.

  But today Mrs. Cheng held firm, so Polly and Molly partnered up, and then My Friend Daniel saw his opportunity and swooped in to claim Holly as his partner. Good for him, but unfortunately My Friend Daniel and I were already partners for the exercise, so all of a sudden I didn’t have a partner at all, and I wound up having to mirror Mrs. Cheng’s movements.

  “Mom?” I said now, as she arranged her pairs of weights in front of her. “Are you going to vote for Lucinda Burghart for mayor?”

  “I imagine I will,” she replied. “She’s been on the city council for years, and it seems like she’s always done a fine job. I don’t even know who’s running against her, to be honest.”

  “No one is running against her,” I said.

  “Well, there you have it.”

  “What if she wanted to do something bad, though?” I asked.

  “Like what?”

  “She said that if she’s elected, she’ll cut funding for a ton of good things. Like art classes.”

  “Hmm.” Mom rotated her arms forward, then backward. “Politicians make a lot of campaign promises, Maddie. They promise to do whatever they think people want, but often once they’re elected, they don’t go through with those things. Sometimes it turns out to be harder than they’d imagined to make changes. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

  That gave me some hope. But I didn’t feel all that relieved. “So what am I supposed to do, then? Just wait for her to get elected and keep my fingers crossed that she doesn’t get around to doing what she promised?”

  Mom kicked her leg up behind her and grabbed on to her ankle to stretch her quadriceps, and she sounded tired as she said, “I suppose so.”

  “Why do they even call it a campaign promise, anyway?” I went on. “Like, if I promise I’m going to watch the new season of Killer Science with My Friend Daniel, I have to actually do it. Later I can’t just be like, ‘Oh, sorry, it turned out to be harder than I thought not to watch Killer Science the instant it comes out, so I guess my promise is meaningless now.’”

  “A lot of politicians are unscrupulous,” Mom agreed. “It’s certainly not a job I would ever want.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Sure that politicians are unscrupulous?”

  “Sure that you’d never want to be one,” I said. “Like, don’t you think it would be fascinating to be mayor? Don’t you think it would be a real enrichment opportunity?”

  Mom laughed like I was joking. “Maybe if I had more spare time.”

  “Are you ready?” shouted some voice from her phone. “Are you ready to get into the best shape. Of. Your. Liiiiiiife?”

  “Ready!” Mom shouted, jumping into a squat position.

  “When are you going to have more spare time?” I asked.

  “Take a deep breath!” the workout guy shouted. “Breathe your arms all the way up! Over your head! That’s it!”

  “Mom.”

  “I’ll have time when I win the lottery or when I’m dead, whichever comes first. Now, Maddie, I need to—”

  “SPRINT!” shouted the workout guy.

  Mom was not going to be much help in my fight against Lucinda Burghart.

  CHAPTER 6

  I moved on to my next potential mayoral candidate: Dad. He was out in the garden, as usual.

  “You think you can take over my garden,” I heard Dad muttering at a plant as I approached. “‘Oh, I’m a tree of heaven,’ you think to yourself. ‘I’m a big shot. I can grow wherever I want!’ Well, tree of heaven, looks like you have finally met your match!”

  I stood nearby for a couple of minutes and waited for Dad to notice me, but he was too engrossed in his battle of wits with the weed. “Dad,” I said at last.

  “Oh, hey, Maddie! You were so quiet I didn’t even see you there, sweetheart. You’ve come out here just in time to see your old man triumph over this ingrown ingrate.” He snapped his shears at the plant with all the focus of an executioner. “Did you know that these leaves are poisonous?” he said, glaring at it.

  Here is the important thing to know about my dad: He is wrong basically all of the time. Sometimes I think he’s purposefully lying in order to make life sound more exciting. Most of the time, though, I think he genuinely doesn’t remember details a
nd just assumes everything is a bigger deal than it actually is.

  So for this plant, for example, when he said that the leaves were poisonous, what I understood that to mean was that some leaves of some plants are definitely poisonous. Just possibly not this one.

  “Hey, Daddy,” I said, “I have a question. Would you run for mayor of Lawrenceville?”

  Dad seemed to take this question much more seriously than Mom had. He looked thoughtful. “My old childhood friend became mayor of a major city. Miami, I think it was. He made some big changes there. Had a huge impact. Good man. Ever since we were kids, I knew he was cut out for that sort of work.”

  Translation: My dad once knew a guy who got elected to do something somewhere. They may not have been friends. The job may not have been mayor. It definitely wasn’t in Miami.

  “What about you, though?” I pressed. “Would you want to be mayor?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “I usually don’t even vote, to be honest.”

  “Why not?” I asked. If I could vote, I definitely would. Why would I purposely sit on my hands and let other people make decisions about my life? I got enough of that just by being twelve.

  “I’m not that interested in politics,” Dad said, bending down to pull up a weed. “And all politicians are pretty much the same. It doesn’t really make a difference which one you vote for, or if you vote at all. It works out fine in the long run.”

  This seemed like one of the wrongest things my dad had said in a lifetime of saying wrong things. As usual, I didn’t know for sure that he was wrong. But just based on what I’d seen at yesterday’s town hall and what I’d read in the Lawrenceville Gazette, what he said didn’t make much sense. Lucinda literally wanted different things from the current mayor. She was planning to change our city. Maybe that would work out fine for some people, like my dad. He didn’t have to go to school, after all. But it wouldn’t work out fine for everybody. And I knew that, because it wouldn’t work out fine for me.