Cheesie Mack Is Running like Crazy!

by Steve Cotler

  Livia Grant and Kandy DeLeon tried to get a cheer going for the Sinkoff campaign, but our supporters were just too disorganized. I leaned close to Georgie and spoke right into his ear. “Let ’em yell. It won’t matter. When you do the Great Georgio at the speeches tomorrow, Diana and Eddie will be dead meat.”

  Georgie spun around. He had a weird look on his face. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the cafeteria and into the schoolyard. We could still hear the sound of the chanting.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I can’t do the Great Georgio.” He held up his red-and-blue-splinted right hand.

  It took me a second to realize what Georgie meant. There are probably some magicians who can do one-handed tricks, but I guess the Great Georgio isn’t one of them.

  “No problem,” I said. “We’ll write a killer speech instead.”

  He didn’t say anything; he just gave me an I-hope-so look.

  Georgie’s broken finger got him excused from PE that afternoon. Coach T let him hang out with me, Glenn, Eddie, and about ten others while everyone else played touch football.

  Coach T was holding a clipboard. “I’d like you boys to consider being on the RLS cross-country team,” he said. “Based on how well you did on your mile run, you could be a major part of the squad.”

  “What are the requirements for participation?” Glenn asked.

  “Discipline, dedication, and teamwork,” Coach T replied. “It’ll be hard work, but incredibly rewarding. You need technique and guts. I can teach technique. You supply guts.”

  I looked over at Georgie. He was nodding his head enthusiastically. That nod was telling me, You can do this, Cheesie!

  Coach T continued, “My seventh and eighth graders have been practicing since August. I need to build my sixth-grade team. You boys could be part of that.”

  Coach T motioned for Georgie, then handed him the clipboard. “I’ve got all your names on this list. If you know you want to participate, tell Georgie.” He looked at Eddie, then at me. “Chapple and Mack, I’ve already checked you off. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Eddie and I glanced at each other. Josh Lunares, one of Eddie’s friends and the son of my Spanish teacher, raised his hand. Coach T pointed to him. “How long are the races?” Josh asked.

  “They vary, but mostly three-K. Three thousand meters. That’s a little less than two miles.”

  Glenn whispered sort of to himself, “One-point-eight-six miles.”

  How does he know stuff like that?

  “Are there uniforms?” Georgie asked.

  “You bet,” Coach T responded. “Really sharp ones. Blue with red trim.”

  Georgie grinned and held up his school-colors splint and wristband. “Go, Stevenson!”

  Coach T started jogging toward the track. “Okay, let’s head out!”

  Everyone followed.

  “I’ve never been on an organized sports team before,” Glenn said. “I think I’ll really like this.”

  It turned out Glenn was right. Three weeks after we started practicing, we had our first meet. The RLS sixth graders finished in first place, and Glenn was the hero!

  Scoring for XC (short for “cross-country”) is different from any other sport I know. After everyone crosses the finish line, you add up the places of the first four finishers on each team, and the team with the lowest number wins.

  Confused? It’s actually really simple. Here’s what happened in our first meet.

  The first four finishers of our archrival, Cape Ann Middle School, came in fourth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth. Adding those up (4 + 11 + 12 + 13) gave Cape Ann a score of 40.

  Eddie came in fifth. I finished three steps behind him in sixth place. Josh came in ninth. Those three places (5 + 6 + 9) added up to 20. I did a quick calculation in my head. All Glenn had to do was to finish better than twentieth, and RLS would win.

  The course went everywhere, with uphills, downhills, and a few sharp turns. The last leg ran right next to the finish line, where Eddie, Josh, and I were waiting and panting. Then it cut across a park and around a stand of oak trees before finally heading back toward us.

  When Glenn ran by, heading for the oak trees, he was dragging. He looked like he was almost out of fuel.

  Eddie and Josh screamed, “Go, Glenn, go!”

  I had been keeping track of the runners. I yelled, “Glenn Philips! If you pass three guys, we win!”

  I couldn’t believe what happened next. His arms began pumping harder. His legs sped up, and he passed a kid from Beverly. Then he was mostly out of sight among the oak trees, his red-and-blue uniform flashing between the trunks. When he reappeared, he had passed a boy from Marblehead. On the home stretch, with only fifty yards to go, I shouted, “One more, Glenn!”

  Glenn poured it on. I have no idea where he found the energy. On the last stretch, he was moving so fast when he passed the kid from Ipswich, his jet exhaust almost spun the guy around!

  That’s what is so cool about cross-country. Even though Eddie, Josh, and I all had better times, it was Glenn’s nineteenth-place finish that gave us the victory: RLS 39, Cape Ann 40! We lifted him on our shoulders and carried him around. I had never seen him so happy!

  That XC meet happened weeks after the sixth-grade speeches and election, but I thought you’d like to know about it.

  Oh, and BTW, Lana Shen turned out to be the absolute fastest runner on the sixth-grade girls XC team. She came in fifth or better in every meet. She even beat me once in practice. Only once, though.

  Oh, and second BTW, Georgie attended every one of my meets. That’s just what friends do.

  The Disappearing Streamer

  Since we hadn’t ridden our bikes to school (because of Georgie’s finger), and because Granpa had a chauffeur job later that day, Granpa was waiting for us in a limo when school let out. Lots of kids at RLS didn’t know my dad owned a limo company, so there were plenty of stares.

  As we neared the limo, I heard one kid ask, “Is the president or some kind of movie star at our school?”

  Granpa must’ve heard him because he hopped out of the car and opened the back door like Georgie and I were celebrities. I got in, but Georgie stood by the door for a moment, waving both arms in the air like a politician. “Thank you!” he cried. “Vote for Georgie Sinkoff!”

  Georgie was in a terrific mood when we left school, but when we got home and I said, “Let’s get started on your speech,” something changed. He got very quiet. We went up to my room. Deeb came in. I closed the door.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I didn’t think he was telling the truth, but I got started anyway. “Okay, Georgie. How’s this for the beginning of your speech? ‘My fellow sixth graders, today is a day we will all remember. Today is when you’ll vote for the most courageous, most outstanding, most ugly …’ ”

  I thought that would make Georgie laugh, but it didn’t work.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked again.

  He sat on the edge of my bed. He had a strange look on his face. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Give a speech.”

  I spun halfway around in my desk chair and waited for him to continue. I had no idea what was bothering him.

  He began petting Deeb, which was weird because he usually stays far away from her because of her smell. Finally he said, “I get nervous in front of people.”

  “You do not,” I said quickly. “You’ve done the Great Georgio in front of tons of people, and you never get nervous.”

  Georgie’s shoulders got all slumpy. “That’s different. That’s not me.”

  “Huh?”

  “When I do magic, I’m a different person,” he said. “I’m the Great Georgio, not Georgie Sinkoff.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked. “You’re still onstage. You’re still the same human being.”

  “It’s not like that,” Georgie said. “I’ll get n
ervous. I know it. I can’t explain it any better.” Georgie flopped over on my bed and buried his head under my pillow.

  After a few moments of nobody talking, I took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out. We’ve got plenty of time. Right now, since lots of kids asked us, why don’t we write down directions about how we made the stilts and give copies away tomorrow? Kids’ll love it. It’ll be like bringing stilts to school without the stilts.”

  Georgie poked his head out from under my pillow and sort of smiled. “That I can do.” He was the old Georgie again.

  We worked on the stilt plans for a while. Georgie did most of the drawing because—even with a splinted hand!—he’s much neater than I am at that kind of stuff. When we were finished, he wrote Jet Stilts across the top of the paper and drew a jet plane next to it, his tongue moving as he added exhaust clouds behind the plane.

  Then we trotted downstairs to my dad’s office and turned on his copy machine. While we waited for it to warm up, we went into the kitchen for a snack. Goon was at the table, writing. She looked up and glared.

  I poured two glasses of milk. Then I got a snag of cookies (snag is my word for the number of cookies you can grab with one hand) and gave a half snag to Georgie. “I bet if we made stilts we could sell them to kids and make lots of money.”

  “Too much work,” Georgie replied, munching a cookie.

  “Yeah,” I glurpled into my milk, then set my glass down on the table as far from Goon as possible.

  “Get out of here,” she muttered. “I’m working on my ballet essay, and you’re bothering me.”

  We ignored her.

  “And also,” Georgie said, “probably some kid would get a splinter, and we’d get sued.”

  “Or fall and break a finger,” I said.

  “Get out,” Goon repeated, not looking up from her paper.

  “Or break his butt,” Georgie said, pushing me butt-first into the refrigerator.

  “Oh, pain!” I yelled. “I’m suing you! You made me get a splinter in my butt!”

  We laughed hysterically. It wasn’t really that funny, but it was a good way to bother my sister.

  It worked! Goon screamed “Shuh tup!” so loudly, she gave herself the hiccups. Georgie laughed, and Goon got embarrassed.

  Victory! I gave myself two points. The score was 694–687. We left the kitchen with our snacks and made photocopies of our Jet Stilts plan. (The plans are on my website.) Then we went back up to my room.

  “Let’s work on your speech,” I suggested.

  Georgie shook his head, so we played board games until it was time to eat. I wasn’t worried. We’d think of something.

  At dinner that evening, Goon was in a good mood … then a foul mood … then a fouler mood.

  1. Good mood: “Tonight’s the dress rehearsal for my dance recital this weekend.”

  2. Foul mood: “I have tried and tried, but I cannot come up with a good idea for my ballet essay, and it’s due tomorrow.”

  3. Fouler mood: “What? No! I do not want my twerpy little brother to come to my rehearsal. Please, Mom! Can’t he stay home by himself?”

  But my dad had a limo job. And Granpa had a meeting at some club he belongs to. And even though it was a school night, Georgie was sleeping over at my house because Mr. Sinkoff had a date with Ms. Dinnington, our school nurse, so I couldn’t hang out at his house. And my mother was going through a phase where she thought I was still a little boy. (Of course I could stay home by myself. For crying out loud, I was eleven!) So Georgie and I were forced to go to the high school auditorium to watch my sister’s ballet rehearsal.

  Goon seemed angry on the ride over, but once we arrived at the high school, her mood changed. “Mom, I’m sorry I acted so upset about the boys coming,” she said sweetly. “In fact, I’m glad they’re here. I want them to sit with you and the other parents and watch the rehearsal.”

  I was confused for a moment. Then I realized what she was up to. “No way,” I said. “We are not going to sit around staring at a flock of tutus flopping across the stage.”

  Goon acted really sincere. “Please, Mom? It’s important for the dancers to have an audience.”

  “Don’t fall for it, Mom,” I pleaded. “She’s trying to dump an auditorium full of boredom on us.”

  Goon gave me an evil smile behind Mom’s back.

  “Besides,” I said, “Georgie and I can’t watch. We have to write his speech for tomorrow.”

  That convinced Mom. Once we arrived at the auditorium, Georgie and I found a place to work, the boys’ dressing room backstage. We could hear the music coming from the stage and an occasional shrill shout from Goon’s teacher, but there was a door we could close for privacy. I sat at a table with a mirror (I guess for putting on makeup) and got ready to write. I could see Georgie in the mirror, pacing around behind me.

  “I know you’re nervous about tomorrow,” I said, “but it has to get done. How about we write just a really short speech?”

  Georgie stopped his pacing and looked at me in the mirror. “Okay. One minute long. Maximum.”

  I smiled at him. “Two minutes.”

  He nodded.

  “Or three.”

  “Cheesie!”

  I thought for a few moments. “We have to come up with a list of reasons why you’re the best candidate. Things like responsible, dedicated, confident, reliable, a good listener, enthusia—”

  “Wait,” Georgie said. “If I’m going to do this—and I don’t guarantee I can—whatever I say cannot be so-so-so boring. Everybody will say junk like that. The kids will space out on me.”

  “Probably right,” I mumbled, putting down my pencil.

  “It has to be funny,” Georgie said. “And it’s got to be something that makes kids remember me. Like the stilts.”

  “Or the stickers,” I said.

  “Right.”

  We sat staring absently, thinking. There was a box of safety pins on the table. For costumes, I figured. Sometimes when you’re trying to be creative it’s good to have something to fiddle with so you can just let your mind wander. I began to construct a safety pin chain.

  Finally Georgie said, “How about I make a bunch of campaign promises? Like softer toilet paper in the bathrooms and hot fudge on Fridays.”

  “But you won’t be able to keep those—”

  “Nobody will remember what I promised.”

  “Lame.”

  More silence. Well, not exactly silence. There was plenty of music coming in from the rehearsal. My safety pin chain now reached the floor.

  “Actually, promises are good,” I said. “But they’ve got to be real promises. And you’ve got to keep every one. You’ve got to promise not to do what you won’t do.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like school uniforms.”

  “We don’t wear school uniforms at RLS,” Georgie said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s the point. You say, ‘I’m Georgie Sinkoff, and I oppose school uniforms.’ You say, ‘I’m Georgie Sinkoff, and I’m against a shorter lunch period. And when I’m president, I will not support sixth graders having to attend school on Saturdays.’ Stuff like that.”

  “Cool,” Georgie said, smiling.

  I wrote it all down.

  The music from the stage, which had been sort of slowish, suddenly became fast and jolty. That’s probably what gave Georgie our next idea.

  “And, and, and,” he suddenly blurted, “when I get to the boring parts of my speech, I do it as fast as I can. It doesn’t matter if people understand what I’m saying. No one cares anyway, and all the other speeches will be way more boringly boring.”

  He grabbed the paper with my notes.

  “I start very slowly, dragging out each syllable. Like this: ‘Hi … I’m Georg ie Sink off … and I am run ning for sixth-grade class pres i dent. I am …”

  He took a deep breath and super-zoomed through the list of words I’d written on my pad: “Responsible-ded
icated-confident-enthusiastic-reliable-trustworthy-confident-and-blah-blah-blah.”

  “And balloons,” I said. “You walk up to the microphone holding a big bunch of red and blue balloons.”

  Georgie gave me a questioning look.

  “And a pin.” I held up one of the safety pins, then stuck it in my shirt pocket. “You pop them to get everyone’s attention.”

  We both laughed. Our brains were full of ideas now. For the next half hour we came up with lots more good stuff and a totally awesome speech. We timed it using the clock on the wall. Two minutes and forty seconds.

  Georgie agreed to do it and then asked, “What now?”

  “We’re done. Let’s explore,” I said.

  We left the speech papers and snuck into the backstage area, where there were girls moving every which way. Onstage, there were girls twirling and jumping all over the place.

  We tiptoed to the very back of the stage, where large pieces of scenery were stored, one of which was a pirate ship.

  “Arrrgh,” I muttered as we peered out of its portholes.

  “Look,” Georgie whispered, pointing to a ladder bolted to the wall.

  I followed the ladder up with my eyes. At the top it connected to a platform hung with lights and ropes and all kinds of stuff. The platform stretched from stage right to stage left. (Mom was in lots of plays in college. She told me what everything’s called. If you are interested in theater—like me—there’s a stage diagram on my website. You can tell me what plays you’ve been in!)

  We skulked to the ladder and started climbing. Georgie and I are both excellent tree climbers, so this was easy for me. With his splinted hand, however, it was sort of hard for Georgie.

  “Arrrgh,” Georgie muttered.

  “Shh,” I warned.

  As we clambered onto the platform, Goon appeared in the wings directly below us, dressed in a pink bodysuit and holding two long pink ribbon streamers. Goon draped her streamers over the back of a chair behind her and watched the dancers prancing around onstage. I watched them, too. I have to admit they were pretty good.

  Georgie tapped me on the arm and whispered, “I have a Great Idea! Gimme that safety pin.” He was holding a ball of twine that had been sitting on the platform.