Freshman for President

by Ally Condie

  “Wait a minute—you’re leaving me?”

  “Come down too.” Eden was navigating the precarious steps and didn’t look back. “We’ll climb back up as soon as things start moving again.”

  “All right.” Milo followed her. As they reached the bottom and hopped off the bed of the float into the street, some of the other volunteers came over to talk to them. This was the first time they’d had more then five or six volunteers show up to a campaign event. Word was getting out. “Thanks again for coming, you guys,” Milo told all of them.

  “We get some free candy later, right?” asked a familiar voice behind him. Jack had arrived late, after Milo had already climbed to the top of the float, so Milo hadn’t seen him up close until now. Neither had Eden.

  “What are you wearing?” Eden asked Jack.

  “The same thing you guys are wearing.”

  To a point, Jack was right. They were all wearing Spencer’s latest design of the Write in Wright T-shirts for the parade. Spencer had done his usual superlative work. The T-shirts were dark blue with red and white lettering and a tiny American flag hanging on the end of the “t” in Wright. But Jack’s shirt . . . something was wrong with it. It was way too small.

  “I guess it shrunk in the wash,” Jack admitted. His shirt didn’t reach the waistband of his shorts, and he couldn’t put his arms all the way down to his sides because the armholes were so small.

  “I guess so,” Eden said, laughing.

  “I hope I have an Incredible Hulk moment.” Jack pulled at the too-small neck of his shirt. “Wouldn’t it be great if this thing just burst open in the middle of the parade?”

  “It would get us some attention,” Paige said. “Maybe not positive attention . . .”

  “Oh, it would be positive,” Jack said confidently. He pretended to flex.

  “Yuck,” said Paige, but she was smiling.

  Eden was looking around at the crowd. “You know, this is turning out to be the perfect spot for us. Everyone loves the kazoo band, and they’re playing those patriotic songs. It could be a lot worse.”

  “I’m just glad we’re not after the Rodeo Club,” Jack said. “All those horses, you-know-whatting all along the street.” He pretended to gag and waved his hand in front of his nose.

  Milo was feeling less ticked-off, too. It felt wonderful to be off the top of the float and moving around.

  “Can I have a balloon?” a little girl called to him from the sidewalk. He unthreaded one of the red balloons from a cluster attached to the float and handed it to her.

  “There you go,” he said. Her little brother held out his hand, too. Milo was trying to untie another balloon to give to the little boy when he felt someone tapping on his shoulder.

  “Can some of the kids ride on your float?” a sweaty kazoo-band helper asked Milo. “They’re getting tired.” Three little kids clustered around her. One little boy was wearing a blue T-shirt with a cougar on it. Milo recognized him as one of his Purple People Eaters.

  “Hey, Taylor,” Milo said.

  Taylor squawked his kazoo in response.

  “Sure,” Milo told the kazoo-band helper. “We’ve got plenty of room.” He handed the kid on the sidewalk a blue balloon, then hoisted the other kids onto the float. The dance troupe seemed to be wrapping things up, so he tried to hurry. The children settled into the bed of the float with audible “ahhs.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on them,” Paige said, climbing up into the float.

  “Thanks.” Milo tried to extricate some more balloons to give to people in the crowd.

  Eden pulled on his shirt and pointed. “I don’t think we’re done yet.”

  “Hey! They get to ride on the float!” Other kids had noticed what was happening, and they left their formations behind, scattering out of the wobbly lines of the kazoo band. “I want a ride too!” one said. Then another. Then another. There was a mutiny going on.

  “We have room for most of the really little kids,” Eden said to the band director. “Will their parents care? We don’t have seatbelts or anything.”

  “I think they’d be a lot madder if their kids got heatstroke,” the director said. “These have to be record temperatures. Look at the crowd. Everyone’s going home.”

  The crowd was thinning out, Milo noticed. Another kid from the kazoo band ran toward him. He hoisted the little boy onto the float. The child called out happily, “There’s candy up here!”

  The rest of the kids started up immediately. “Can we have some? Can we eat it?”

  Paige looked down at Milo and he shrugged. “Why not?” The crowd was so listless at this point that if they threw them candy, it would probably just hit them in the face.

  What was left of the kazoo band started to march again slowly. “All right,” Eden said. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She and Milo climbed back to the top of the float.

  The truck lurched forward. Looking down at the kids’ upturned faces among the tissue paper decorations, Milo was reminded of a nest of little baby birds. Their skinny elbows stuck out like wings, their mouths gaped in anticipation. Occasionally, they popped pieces of candy into their open mouths. Milo waved down at them. A few of them waved back. The rest just stared up at him, Milo J. Wright, presidential candidate, and at Eden James, vice-presidential candidate, riding a rocket ship to the stars.

  Of course, what they probably saw was some teenage guy and girl standing next to a bulky papier-mâché rocket that leaned tipsily on its chicken wire frame.

  It was all about perspective.

  Chapter 11

  Fourth of July

  Post from Up and Running, Milo’s official blog at www.writeinwright.com

  And We’re Off . . .

  Hey, everyone. This is Milo, and this is my first time posting on the official blog of our campaign website. It’s kind of cool that it’s on the Fourth of July. Thanks to Spencer Grafton for getting everything all set up and ready to go in such a short time.

  Just in case this is your first visit to the website, I want to make sure that you know about the under-eighteen vote we’re sponsoring. We’re sending packets to all the schools we can find, asking them to vote and then submit those votes to us on Election Day. You can vote for me, for another presidential candidate, or you can even write in your own name. If you think your school might be interested in participating, click on the “Teenage Vote” link below.

  Now that we’ve got the blog going, we’ve got a couple of things we need your help with.

  First, we’re putting together our platform. Let us know what issues you feel strongly about and what you think could be done. Click on the link below that says “What I Think” to submit your opinions.

  Second, we have a few regular contributors to our blog, but we’d like a few more. Right now, there are four contributors: myself, my running mate and campaign manager, Eden James, and two other teens who have signed up to contribute, Jason Hepworth (who will be contributing from a conservative/ Republican point of view) and Lea Wainwright (who will represent a more liberal/Democratic point of view). The Wright campaign isn’t affiliating with either political party, but we want to give lots of different teenagers a forum that represents as many viewpoints as possible.

  So if you’re interested in being a contributor, click on the “Up and Running Contributors” link below to fill out a short application. Don’t worry if you don’t have a political affiliation or lots of political activities on your resume—right now we’re just looking for regular teenagers, because that’s what we are too.

  Okay, back to the Fourth of July celebration for me. More later.

  —Milo J. Wright

  * * *

  After the parade, they returned the sugar-shocked children to their parents and handed out the last few fliers to the remaining parade-goers. Milo thanked all
the volunteers, who scattered to go home for their family barbeques.

  “See you later tonight!” Eden called out to everyone.

  That night they were planning to campaign at the fireworks display. People from Sage always gathered in the high school bleachers to watch the show, which was staged in the high school’s massive parking lot, and Eden had decided it would be a prime time for them to all wear their T-shirts and mingle with the crowd, handing out the omnipresent fliers.

  But as the afternoon wore on, Milo decided they—and the rest of Sage—were due for a break. He called the volunteers and told them they were off the hook. Not one of them protested. Milo made a mental note to himself not to take them so much for granted. He wondered if he would be so willing to help if it were someone else’s campaign. He was lucky to have such good friends.

  In the early evening, Milo went over to Eden’s to tell her that he’d canceled the event. He hoped she wouldn’t be too mad he hadn’t cleared it with her first, but Eden needed a break too, even if she didn’t know it. Up on the float, it hadn’t seemed like she was enjoying herself much at all.

  He found her sitting in her backyard, eating her dinner. Her dad waved to him from the kitchen window, where he was washing dishes. “Do you want some food?” Eden asked. “I could run in and get you some before Dad puts it all away. I’m having seconds.”

  Milo looked at her plate. She was eating a hamburger, potato salad, watermelon, and corn on the cob. For a skinny girl, Eden could sure put it away.

  “Thanks, but I’m good,” he said. “We just finished eating at my house.”

  She handed him a piece of watermelon anyway. “You’re early. We don’t need to go over to the high school until nine or nine-thirty.”

  “I was thinking about that. I think we should take a break for tonight.” Milo paused. Eden didn’t protest, which he took as a good sign, so he went on. “Actually, I already called all the volunteers to cancel, and I called Paige and asked her if we could come to her house to watch the fireworks like we did last year.” He took a bite of watermelon to fend off her response. He was expecting her to argue with him or get mad that she hadn’t been consulted.

  Eden nodded. “We need a break. Our public needs a break. I think that was a good call. I was dreading going out there tonight. For some reason, the parade really took it out of me. I slept all afternoon.”

  “Me too,” Milo admitted.

  Eden sat up a little straighter. “Since we’re not going to be doing anything else, we could pick up those fliers before the fireworks start. It’s cool enough now.”

  Milo groaned, but he knew she was right. He’d noticed the litter from the parade was especially bad in front of her dad’s store, and he didn’t like to think of Mr. James out there picking it up by himself. The city cleanup crew went down Main Street after the parade, but they never got all of the trash.

  “I’ll call Jack and Paige and see if either one of them is up for it.” Eden stood up.

  Milo was still sitting in the backyard, waiting for her to come back, when she called out the window to him, “Milo! Get in here! You have to see this!”

  Milo jumped up and ran inside, throwing the screen door open so hard that it bounced back and caught his heel as he went through the door. “Ouch.” He limped into the front room, where Eden and her dad stood in front of the television.

  There, right on the television screen, was their float. Milo and Eden stood on top of it, waving. Jack walked past the camera. His shirt hadn’t ripped yet, so it must have been fairly early in the parade. Milo saw only a few seconds of footage before the segment cut back to the studio.

  “And that was Milo Wright, the teenager from small-town Sage, Arizona, who is running for President of the United States of America. If you want to learn more about this unusual candidate, you can visit his website at www.writeinwright.com.” Milo’s website address appeared at the bottom of the screen. “Mr. Wright is the only candidate Arizona has in this presidential election, and we wish him the best of luck.”

  The news anchor smiled at the screen and raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s certainly a very inventive way to celebrate the Fourth of July. Let’s see what other people around the state were doing to recognize the holiday.”

  Milo didn’t have time to say anything before Eden’s cell phone rang. “It’s Jack,” she mouthed to Milo as she answered.

  Jack was talking so loudly, Eden had to hold the phone away from her ear. Milo could hear every word Jack was saying. “Did you see us on the news? Can you believe how incredible that was? I look even better on television than I do in real life.”

  Eden laughed. “Milo’s here too. We saw it. Isn’t that great? All that free publicity!”

  “What are we going to do to celebrate?”

  Eden paused. “Um, pick up trash in front of my dad’s store?”

  Jack’s sigh was loud and clear. “You guys really know how to party.”

  “We’ll party soon,” Eden promised. “Right after we pick up the litter, we’ll have ice cream and watch the fireworks from Paige’s roof.”

  “All right.”

  Eden hung up the phone. “We’re going to owe these guys big time when this is all over,” she told Milo.

  “I know.”

  * * *

  “What are these?” Paige asked. She frowned at the long sticks with metal ends that Eden had handed her.

  “Litter guns,” Eden said, as if that were obvious. “You know, you kind of stab them through the trash.”

  “Okay,” said Paige. “But why do you have them?”

  “For our highway,” Eden said. “You know, that stretch of highway the drugstore adopted. My dad and his employees clean it up a few times a year, so he has a bunch of equipment.” She looked back at her dad’s pickup truck speculatively. “I wonder if we should wear the orange reflective vests too . . .”

  “No,” Milo told her. “It isn’t going to be that dark, and we’ll be next to the sidewalks. We’ll be fine.”

  “All right,” Eden said, “but don’t blame me if your campaign comes to an early end due to a tragic injury.”

  “And what are these for?” Paige held up a bouquet of rubber gloves.

  “So you don’t stick your hand in someone else’s gum,” Jack told her. “We’re picking up trash, remember?” Eden handed him a litter gun and he looked impressed. “All right. We get to use javelins.” He held it up as if he were about to throw it.

  “Careful,” Eden told him. “They’re really sharp at the end.”

  Paige grimaced and pulled on the gloves. “What do you want to bet me that Jack is going to injure himself by the end of the night?”

  “The only thing I’m going to injure is litter,” Jack said solemnly. For emphasis, he stabbed through a can and held it up like a prize trout. “See?”

  “Are we doing all of Main?” Paige asked. “That’s going to take forever.”

  “We’ll go for an hour and get as much as we can,” Eden said. “We can always come back tomorrow if it’s really bad. But this is where most of the crowd was, so I think this is where we’ll find most of the fliers. And other litter too, of course.”

  Milo snapped on his gloves and held out his hand, palm up, to Eden. “Scalpel,” he said in his best surgeon voice.

  She laughed and slapped a litter gun into his hand.

  “It’s going to rain.” Jack was looking up at the sky. He was right. Where clear sky had been before, dark clouds huddled together with the trademark swiftness of a high desert thunderstorm, and the wind had picked up.

  “Let’s get going,” Paige said. The four of them grabbed their trash bags and hurried to different parts of the street.

  The wind whipped the fliers around, making them hard to catch. Milo reached out to snatch one, only to have it caper away fro
m him. He caught several and stuffed them in his trash bag, then stopped to watch one spin in a tiny miniature whirlwind. Working alone, with no one else on the street and the dust swirling around him, the only sound the wind in his ears, Milo felt for a moment like Sage was a ghost town and he was the only ghost walking through it. He looked up. The sight of Eden chasing a flier across the street reassured him.

  Someone screamed in Milo’s ear. He jumped back before he realized what it was, and looked up to see Logan Nash leaning out the window of a truck. Logan’s friend, John, was driving.

  Logan laughed. “Hey, Wright. Hoping someone will come by and notice you doing all this community service? Do you even wear your little T-shirt to bed at night?”

  Milo’s face burned. They were all still wearing their Write in Wright T-shirts. Except for Jack, of course. Because his had ripped along the sides at the end of the parade, he was wearing one of his own shirts instead. Milo couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just stood up straight and glared at Logan.

  Logan tossed something at Milo’s feet. It was a firecracker, spitting and sputtering. It startled Milo so much that he jumped, dropping his litter gun. Logan and his friends laughed again and the truck’s tires squealed as they tried to pull away.

  Unfortunately, the truck had a manual transmission, and newly licensed John didn’t seem to be able to get it in gear very quickly. He tried one gear, then another. Then, for variety, he tried reverse. In a flash, Milo realized that Logan had sorely underestimated the skill of a former and future member of the Sage High soccer team. He nudged the firecracker with his sneaker, then kicked it, sending it in a perfect arc into the bed of John’s truck.

  None of the guys in the truck noticed, as they finally ground into gear and left a peel of rubber behind them. Milo grinned to himself. He knew they would notice, eventually.

  He was listening for the explosion when he heard Eden speaking behind him. “I saw that. You shouldn’t have done that. Someone could get hurt.”

  “It’s just a kiddie firecracker,” Milo said. “The worst it’ll do is scare them a little when it really starts sparking.”