Cheesie Mack Is Running like Crazy!

by Steve Cotler

  “Too bad we can’t just postmark it ourselves,” Georgie said. “You know, write the time and date on it, and then drop it in the slot there. Too bad it has to be officially stamped by someone who works here.”

  Georgie had just given me an idea. “I know what to do!” I said. “C’mon!” I pulled Georgie up, and we ran outside.

  Our bicycles were gone!

  “Stay here!” I said to Georgie. “Look for our bikes. I’ll meet you back home. I’m running to Lana’s.”

  “Why?” he shouted after me as I ran away.

  “Her father’s a postman!”

  I sprinted a few blocks without thinking about what I was doing. I just ran, Goon’s big envelope flapping against my belly with each swing of my arms. I ran past stores and houses. The pavement was still warm from the bright fall sun, but the air was starting to cool. I ran down to the harbor, the caws of the gulls getting louder, and then along the road where lots of lobstermen bring their catch. I smelled the ocean and fish, and I liked it. I ran and ran, my sprinting slowing to an easy sort of floating, my feet barely touching the ground.

  Had I been running for five minutes or five hours? It was automatic. It was magical.

  Then, as I started up the long hill toward Lana’s house, a switch flipped somewhere in my brain, and my mind was filled with nothing but questions:

  1. If the post office was closed, what was the hurry?

  2. Who could run farther without stopping, me or Deeb? She’s faster, but would she poop out before I did?

  3. If I get Goon’s letter mailed in time and she wins that ballet thing, do I give myself points in the Point Battle?

  4. Most cars are white, black, gray, blue, or red. Why are there almost no orange cars?

  I have no idea where my ideas come from.

  I turned onto Lana’s street, and suddenly I was exhausted. Her house had to be more than three miles from the post office. It took every remaining bit of energy and willpower for me to run (well, actually, I was probably moving at a slow trot) past the last few houses. Lana was on her porch, waving to Oddny, who was just getting into her mom’s car. I staggered up, breathing so hard I couldn’t talk.

  “Your dad,” I finally panted out. “I need to talk to your dad.”

  “What about?” Lana asked. She looked concerned.

  “Post office” was all I could say. Then I plopped down on her porch steps.

  Moments later Mr. Shen was sitting next to me, listening and watching as I told him about Goon’s ballet and pointed to the envelope.

  “Is there anything you could—”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Let’s figure this out.”

  “I want to see what happens,” Oddny said. She turned to her mom. “Can I stay? Please?”

  “I’ll bring her home,” Mr. Shen said. Oddny’s mom waved and drove off. Mr. Shen led me into the house, where Mrs. Shen gave me something to drink. My breath finally returned to normal. Then Mr. Shen sat at his computer, asked a few questions about Goon’s ballet thing, and did a bit of online searching.

  “Looks okay,” he finally said. “Let’s go to the post office.”

  “Can we come?” Lana said.

  A few minutes later we were getting out of the car in the parking lot behind the post office. Mr. Shen unlocked a rear door, and we went into the post office’s back room. I expected it to be deserted, but there were several workers sorting and moving letters and packages into slots and bins and carts.

  “Whatcha doin’ back, Donny?” one of them asked Mr. Shen.

  “A special letter,” he said, holding up Goon’s application.

  It was strange to be on the other side of the windows where customers bring their mail. Mr. Shen placed the envelope on the scale, then took money out of his pocket.

  “You can pay me back tomorrow,” he said with a smile. “When I checked the ballet company website, it said postmarked today, so this is okay. If it had said by five o’clock today, I couldn’t do it.” He touched a computer screen a few times and a sticker with the postage and date came out of a slot. He slapped it onto the envelope.

  “Let’s be double sure,” Mr. Shen said, picking up a rubber stamp and smacking it against the envelope. He pointed to where he had inked today’s date above Goon’s purple address, and then flung the envelope across the room into a basket. We all laughed.

  When Mr. Shen dropped me off at home, Georgie was waiting out front, astride his bike. Mine was lying on the lawn next to him. Lana and Oddny shouted goodbyes as Mr. Shen drove away.

  “Where’d you find our bikes?” I asked Georgie.

  “They were right here,” he said. “Weird, huh?”

  I was unsurprised. I’d been thinking about the bike-napping on the drive home. “Actually, not so weird,” I said. “I bet it was Goon and her friends. She took them just to torture us. Now it’s our turn to get her. Din?” I asked.

  We eat over at each other’s houses so often, we don’t even have to ask the whole question. Georgie nodded enthusiastically.

  I cornered Granpa while we washed up and told him how he’d forgotten the envelope and what we’d done with it.

  “Holy tamales,” he whispered. “I owe you a big one.”

  The second we sat down to eat, Goon turned to Granpa and asked, “Did you mail my application?”

  “You don’t see it on the table, do you?” he responded sweetly. “Must’ve gotten taken care of, huh?”

  Granpa wasn’t exactly lying.

  Georgie did most of the storytelling while we ate. He went through the whole day, and when he described the kids’ reaction to my speech he made it sound like the auditorium’s windows had been blown out by the cheering. The way he told it, I was the Huge Hero of the World.

  “That was a wonderful thing to do,” Mom said.

  “Darn clever!” Granpa said loudly. “Exactly what I’d’ve done.”

  Dad gave me a squinty-evil-eye.

  Goon looked bored.

  Granpa patted Georgie’s shoulder. “You’re going to win this one, kiddo.”

  Georgie grinned super big, and I felt great. But there was one score left to settle.

  “There’s something Georgie left out,” I said, staring right at Goon and holding up a purple marker. “Somebody used a purple marker to deface Georgie’s campaign posters. So I asked Mr. Amato to do a chemical analysis of the ink in this marker and the ink that messed up the posters.”

  Goon got instantly incensed. “You went in my room! Mom, I locked my room. How did he get in my room?” She glared at me. “Give me my marker.”

  “So you admit that this is your marker,” I said. “And you admit that you drew mustaches on Georgie’s posters.”

  “Not all of them!” she screamed. Then, realizing what she had said, she whined, “It was just a joke.”

  Mom sighed deeply. “We will discuss punishment after dinner, June. I am very disappointed.”

  Goon was majorly upset. And she should’ve been. We both know Mom is much tougher than Dad with punishments.

  “But what about his trespassing?” Goon complained. “It’s my room!”

  I gave her a big grin. “I never went in your room. This isn’t your marker. It’s one exactly like it that I borrowed from Lana Shen today. And I never asked Mr. Amato to do anything.”

  Goon flung herself back in her chair and crossed her arms. She was steaming mad at how she’d given herself away. I did a quick Point Battle calculation. This one was big, and it could be even bigger!

  Here’s how I figured it. Goon had embarrassed herself. That was four points. Because I had tricked her into confessing in a very excellent way, it doubled to eight. She’d gotten punished by Mom. That was four more points. And since I was the one who turned her in, the whole thing was doubled to twenty-four points, making the score Goon: 694, Cheesie: 711!

  And if Mom’s punishment turned out to be really big, my points would double again to forty-eight, and I’d be ahead by forty-one points. Neither one of us had
ever been that far ahead! And too bad the Point Battle didn’t allow me to give myself points for doing a good deed by mailing the envelope.

  Goon started stabbing her fork over and over into a potato on her plate, probably wishing it was me.

  Sixth grade at RLS was turning out to be excellent.

  Zombies!

  The next day, moments after I sat down in my homeroom, Mr. Stotts totally surprised me and everyone.

  “And in the contest for sixth-grade president,” he said over the loudspeaker, “something very unusual has happened.”

  I looked at Eddie. He seemed calm, but I didn’t believe it. In the back row, Georgie was fidgeting, his eyebrows waggling up and down, a sure sign he was nervous.

  “Of the two hundred fifty-three votes cast,” Mr. Stotts announced, “Eddie Chapple received thirty-nine, Georgie Sinkoff forty-one, Diana Mooney forty-five, and, with a surprising one hundred twenty-eight write-in votes, the winner is Ronald Mack!”

  “I thought I was the only one!” Georgie shouted. “I wrote your name in!”

  “So did I,” Lana said.

  “Me too,” Oddny said.

  A bunch of other kids shouted they had, too.

  “Congratulations,” Eddie mumbled.

  I must’ve been in a daze because the next thing I knew I was standing at Mrs. Wikowitz’s desk.

  “There must be some kind of mistake,” I told her. “I need to talk to Mr. Stotts.”

  Moments later I was alone, walking toward the office. My mind was jumping from one thought to another.

  This is crazy….

  Goon will go ballistic….

  Granpa will say he knew I was going to win….

  I was thinking so hard, I was unaware of anything outside my thoughts. The corridors were deserted. Classes were going on inside the rooms I passed, but I heard nothing. It was as if I were walking in a world of no sound.

  Suddenly a huge raven swooped past me with a sharp caw, its wings almost touching my head. I jumped as the giant black bird turned and started back toward me. I grabbed the nearest doorknob—a janitor’s closet—and yanked it open. I leaped inside and pulled the door toward me, but the bird twisted sideways and flew in through the crack just before the door slammed shut.

  It was pitch-dark. I could hear fluttering, and then nothing except the tremendously loud pounding of my own heart. I fumbled for the light switch.

  The light clicked on. The raven was gone, transformed by some evil magic into a hideous, bloodthirsty zombie whose undead hands were reaching for my throat!

  The Curse of Diana

  Fooled you!

  Everything in the last chapter was fake. I just wanted to write about zombies.

  And I didn’t get a single write-in vote. It was actually Diana Mooney who won the election.

  Georgie was depressed.

  I was depressed.

  And then it got worse.

  Much worse.

  Diana cornered me as I was walking to my math class. “You said for everyone to vote for the person who’d be the best sixth-grade president. Without your speech, I never would’ve won.”

  She was smiling and sort of rocking side to side with happiness. Lots of kids walked past us.

  “Congratulations,” I said without much enthusiasm.

  She leaned close and spoke softly. “I owe you so much, Cheesie.” Without warning, she gave me a huge hug and whispered, “Would you like to be my boyfriend?”

  I squirgled (squirmed and wiggled REALLY HARD!) out of her grasp and ran.

  I ran down the corridor.

  I ran past the office.

  I ran out of the school.

  I ran like crazy!

  I didn’t stop running until I was eight blocks away.

  Georgie’s Betrayal

  Fooled you again!

  Everything in the last chapter was also fake. The disappointing truth is that Eddie won the election. And that turned out to be the way worst thing that ever happened to me.

  Here’s why:

  1. Over the next several weeks, Georgie started to act strangely.

  2. He told me he thought he should’ve won the election and blamed me for losing.

  3. I called him lots of times, but he always seemed busy.

  4. He began going over to Eddie’s house, and pretty soon they were doing things that didn’t include me.

  Georgie and I had been best friends since we were two years old, and now, all because of a stupid election, the one friendship that meant everything to me was crumbling into a pile of dust.

  It upset me so much, I can’t even finish this chap …

  The Best Man Wins … Sort Of

  If you believed anything in chapter 19, then I fooled you a third time! That whole chapter was maxitotally (maximum and totally) bogus!

  Think about it. Georgie and I are BFF, and the last letter of that abbreviation stands for FOREVER.

  The actual election results (and this is the real, absolute, honest truth) were:

  “It’s a landslide!” Georgie screamed when he heard the news. “I totally crushed them!” Then he wiped his hand across his brow like he’d been sweating and whispered, “Whew.”

  Mrs. Wikowitz told us it was the closest election in the history of the sixth grade. And she should know. She’s been at RLS since the school first opened.

  Mr. Stotts called Georgie, Diana, and Eddie into his office to discuss the results. Georgie asked me to come along. Mr. Stotts didn’t mind.

  “Kids,” he said, “to be declared the winner of most elections, you need a majority—you know, more than half—of the votes. Since none of you received a majority of the votes, we would normally set up a runoff election between the top two candidates. But since Diana and Eddie are tied, we’d have to flip a coin or leave all of you on the ballot. The first doesn’t seem fair, and the second doesn’t seem useful.”

  “You could just let Georgie win,” Diana said. “He did get the most votes.”

  Georgie looked at the election tabulation on Mr. Stotts’s desk. “I don’t think that’s right. It was really close.”

  “If we have a runoff,” Eddie said, “the jerks who wrote in Santa Claus shouldn’t get to vote again.”

  Diana nodded in agreement.

  There was a long pause. Then Georgie whispered in my ear, “This is sort of like what happened in the Cool Duel vote. You know … the tie.”

  (If you read my last book, you know what he was talking about. If you didn’t … well, it would take too long to explain.)

  Georgie smiled at me. It was a weird grin. Sometimes Georgie and I know exactly what the other is thinking. This was one of those times. I knew what he was going to say next.

  “Mr. Stotts,” Georgie announced, “I am officially canceling my vote for myself. I abstain.”

  Before anyone else could talk, I spoke up. “And so am I. That takes two votes off Georgie’s total. Now it’s a complete three-way tie.”

  Georgie pointed at Eddie and Diana. “And I say the three of us should be copresidents!”

  Mr. Stotts looked at Diana … and then at Eddie … and then at Georgie. “That’s a great idea,” he said, a toothy smile lighting up his face.

  He was right. It absolutely was one of Georgie’s Great Ideas.

  And that’s how the election ended!

  The Finish Line

  I am now finished with my third book. But I just had another adventure that included:

  1. Giant earth-moving equipment

  2. The sewer in front of my house

  3. A pregnant cat

  4. A very special gold ring … and

  5. The mayor of Gloucester

  So I’ve already started on my next book. There’s lots of homework in middle school, but when I’m finished, the title will be on my website.

  Goon got picked for the ballet thing in Boston, and I never did tell her I was the one who mailed her application. I am saving it in case I need it someday.

  Mr. Sinkoff’s and
Ms. Dinnington’s marriage plans got majorly messed up because of me and Georgie. (WHY and HOW are in my next book.)

  Georgie is getting an A in science. He is also continuing to be very friendly with Oddny. I guess that’s okay.

  Mom punished Goon for the purple mustaches by grounding her for two weeks. No visiting any friends, and even worse, no cell phone when she’s at home, which means no texting. Goon totally freaked, proving it was a REALLY BIG punishment, so I got another twenty-four points. I am hugely ahead: 735–694!

  Bwa-ha-ha!

  This chapter is called “The Finish Line” because I am really loving being on the XC team. Practice is hard but mucho rewarding. The races are fun. And the title of this book is totally true. I am running like crazy!

  Thanks for reading all this. I really mean it. Because even if I don’t know your name, I am your friend. (Maybe you could go to my website and say hi.)

  Signed:

  Ronald “Cheesie” Mack (age 11 years and 3 months)

  CheesieMack.com

  The End

  (There’s actually more on the next page. It’s about my website.)

  What You’ll Find at CheesieMack.com

  There’s a bunch of new things from this book that are on my website (plus lots of stuff from my first two books):

  1. Do you like this book or don’t you or can’t you make up your mind? (this page)

  2. The rules for the Point Battle. (this page)

  3. Excellent mulligans you’ve had. (this page)

  4. Mr. Amato’s really cool experiments. (this page)

  5. Taste buds. (this page)

  6. Do you know any good fish jokes? (this page)

  7. Favorite-color survey. (this page)

  8. My report about demodex creatures on eyelids. (this page)

  9. Ms. Prott’s story about being in India during World War II. (this page)

  10. National Parks you’ve visited. (this page)

  11. Why kids don’t get “bussick.” (this page)

  12. Georgie for President stickers. (this page)

  13. How to balance a stick with one hand. (this page)

  14. Plans for building Jet Stilts. (this page)

  15. What plays you’ve been in … and a stage diagram. (this page)

  16. My report about the frozen Ötzi guy. (this page)

  17. Whether I’ve written another book. (this page)