President of Poplar Lane

by Margaret Mincks

  “What posters?”—Frankie Hsu, eighth grade

  MEANWHILE . . .

  Mike cracked up his second-period history class when he burped instead of saying “present.” He continues to stay busy on the campaign trail. . . .

  Mike’s Tuesday Agenda

  by Amelia Flem

  Before bell: Stump speech (on top of tree stump by the flagpole)

  All day, between classes: Locker-to-locker canvassing of students. Hand out campaign stickers.

  Lunch with special interest groups:

  11:00–11:10: Meeting with the Couples/PDA Acceptance Committee

  Pro cell-phone use in school so they can send lovey-dovey texts and post couple selfies throughout the day.

  11:11–11:20: Meeting with Swing Voters

  Single-issue interest group. They want to eat lunch outside by the tire swings.

  11:21–11:24: Makeup touch-up in bathroom/eat energy bar/bathroom break (only if necessary!)

  11:25–11:34: Meeting with Traders

  They negotiate food trades at lunch; very serious about maximum ROI (return on ingestion).

  11:35: Lunch bell rings

  After school: Video editing for campaign-rally video in Student Media Resource Center

  12

  MIKE

  After school, Amelia and I waited in the Student Media Resource Center for Peter and Scott. We were supposed to be picking photos for my campaign-rally video. Instead Amelia was filling me in on Clover.

  “Let me give you a brief on the opposition,” she said. “Clover got in trouble for her bracelets. And for sneaking into the boys’ bathroom without permission.”

  I nodded, remembering the sound of Brayden Monk’s shrieks echoing down the hallway.

  “I thought the bracelets were pretty creative,” Amelia said.

  “Maybe I can do something creative, too.” I had this idea to deliver my speech as Mike the Microphone, but I’d been scared to tell Amelia about it. Maybe she’d give me a chance.

  “Too risky,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Peter,” Amelia said. “His emails are . . . pushy. And his street team isn’t staying on message.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed. “Daniel Gronkowski was supposed to poll voters about how much time they spent on homework each day. Instead he polled them about their favorite dog from Canine Brigade.”

  “The cartoon?”

  She nodded. “Gabby threatened to judo kick anyone who votes for Clover. And Susie just asks people if they think her outfit is ‘designive.’”

  She shuffled through the photos I’d brought from home. They were mostly of me with my family and some of me doing magic.

  “I’m worried we don’t have enough raw material for the video,” Amelia said. “There’s not much we can use here.”

  “Oh,” I said, looking down.

  Just then Peter and Scott strolled in.

  Amelia glanced at the wall clock. “The media center closes soon,” she said, tapping my photos with her fingernail. “And we’re missing something important for Mike’s video.”

  “An ad for Peter’s Pen Cap Replacements?” Peter asked.

  Amelia shook her head. “We need a baby.”

  * * *

  On our way to the school pickup circle, Amelia explained.

  “Every political candidate kisses babies,” Amelia said. “It’s a thing. Ever since Andrew Jackson was president.”

  “Babies?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Kissing babies shows you’re human,” Amelia said. “That you care about small, cute things. It makes people like you.”

  I nodded. I was so tired from campaigning that this made some weird kind of sense to me.

  “Are you sure?” Peter asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Positive,” Amelia said. “But we don’t have much time. The media center closes in an hour.”

  “Isn’t stealing somebody’s baby . . . weird?” I asked. Maybe I was the weird one. Maybe this is what people who didn’t hang out in their room practicing magic tricks did with their spare time. “What about a puppy?”

  “Do you have a puppy?” Scott asked.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Nobody’s stealing a baby,” Amelia said, patting me on the back. “You just have to kiss one!”

  I don’t think I’d ever kissed a baby in my life. I’m an only child. I held my baby cousin Dylan once, but I didn’t kiss him. I gave him back to his mom pretty fast, because holding an infant is stressful. They scrunch up their faces and scream a lot.

  We followed Amelia around the car pickup circle. The Poplar Middle School Pops Band practice was just letting out.

  “We’re looking for minivans,” she said. “And SUVs. Especially ones with those little sticker families on the back. Sometimes you get lucky and there’s a sticker of a baby with a pacifier. Or a BABY ON BOARD decal. That’s a real unicorn.”

  “Have you done this before?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  Tuba players, trumpeters, and drummers filed past us as we peered as best we could through tinted windows.

  “We have to ask their parents, right?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer again.

  At first I thought Amelia was just being wacky. But she looked so determined. This was getting serious.

  We passed a minivan with a baby sticker.

  “Aha!” said Amelia. She peered in the window and wrinkled her nose. “That’s a full-grown toddler! People should update their sticker families. It’s irresponsible, really.”

  “Isn’t a toddler a baby?” I asked.

  “You don’t know much about politics, do you?”

  None of the babies we found passed the Amelia test.

  “That one has too much hair,” she said. “It’s practically a shrunken adult.”

  The next baby appeared to have a cold sore. Another one had his hands shoved down his throat.

  “Teething?” Scott suggested.

  “Or hand-foot-mouth disease,” Amelia said seriously. “We can’t take any chances this late in the game.”

  Finally, we reached the last large SUV in the line. This time, the window was down. In the middle row was a car seat turned backward. Amelia gasped.

  “He’s beautiful,” she said.

  The baby waved to us, practically begging for a kiss. Even I knew this was an A-plus baby. Fat cheeks, big sparkly eyes, roly-poly thighs, smiling, drooling, the whole nine yards.

  We could almost reach out and touch him.

  But the baby’s mom was on the phone. And you can’t just interrupt someone’s mom when they’re on the phone.

  “The pants I ordered from your company have holes. Holes,” she said. She paused. “How dare you! My home does not have a moth problem!”

  “Let’s try something else,” I told Amelia.

  “This is our last chance,” Amelia said.

  I wanted to tell Amelia no way. Granberry would say I’d lost my mind if she saw what I was doing. But she wasn’t the one running for president. And she didn’t have three new almost-friends breathing in her face, waiting for her to make a move.

  “Scott, can you protect me from . . . conflict?” I asked.

  Scott raised his eyebrows. “No way,” he said. “I don’t fight mad moms. I have my limits.”

  I swallowed. “I can’t,” I said. My words fell like a thud.

  Amelia chewed her lip, looking a little panicked.

  “Wait!” said Scott, running off. “I have something in my locker.”

  “Scott has a baby in his locker?” Peter asked.

  Amelia shrugged.

 
We waited, watching the baby-filled minivans and SUVs pass us by.

  After a few minutes, Scott came back waving a baby doll.

  “Why do you have a baby doll in your locker?” Peter asked.

  “For Family and Consumer Sciences class. I’m taking care of her.”

  “You keep her in your locker,” Peter said. “Is that taking care of her?”

  “I didn’t say I was a great dad yet,” Scott shot back. “I’m still learning.”

  Amelia studied the doll’s face. “She looks a little pale,” she said.

  “Rude!” Scott said, grabbing her back.

  Peter put on his rubber gloves and pulled out a container of pink powder. “Blush will help,” he said. “I learned it from Rafael X’s ‘Healthy Glow’ tutorial.” He rubbed a few circles on the doll’s cheeks.

  Amelia looked relieved. “She’s beautiful,” she said.

  Scott beamed like a proud father. He handed the doll to me.

  “Take good care of her,” he whispered.

  “Let’s put you guys under the American flag here,” said Amelia. “Why don’t you kiss her head, Mike? And, I don’t know, maybe coo to her a little bit?”

  For the first time in my life, I cooed. I swore I heard Scott sniffling in the background.

  “You’re really good at this, Mike!” Amelia said. “You’re a natural!”

  Natural? This was anything but natural. I was used to doing illusions in magic, but that was different. This was supposed to be real.

  * * *

  Later that night I ate dinner with Granberry and Dad.

  “How’s the campaign going?” Dad asked.

  I swallowed a bite of shrimp pasta. Great, I wanted to say. We almost stole a baby from a car and kissed it. But don’t worry, we just put makeup on a doll, and I kissed that instead. Pass the pepper.

  What if I did tell him? Would he still think that was better than shuffling cards in my room? I didn’t want to know the answer.

  “It’s totally . . . fungal,” I said.

  Granberry started choking.

  “Fungal?” Dad asked. He pulled out his phone. “I need to write that down.”

  Just then I got a text. I’d changed my ringtone from the Amusing Illusions theme to some song about being bad to the bone. I thought it sounded cool and mysterious, like Amelia said I should be.

  “Pretty popular these days, huh?” Dad asked with a grin.

  The text was from Amelia. “CRISIS,” it said in all caps.

  “I have to answer this,” I said.

  “Okay, Mr. Fungal,” Dad said, waving me off.

  “Are we talking mushroom or foot infection?” I heard Granberry ask as I headed to my room.

  I called Amelia. She picked up before I even heard it ring on my end.

  “We have a Peter emergency,” she said. “I’m sending you a screenshot from Mel Chang’s blog.”

  It was a picture of me, Brayden Monk, and Peter from the Meet the Candidates Luncheon. Peter was holding up the dollar bill Brayden donated to our campaign with a huge grin. Brayden had his arm draped around me like he might crush my neck.

  “Scandal,” the caption read. “Is Mike’s camp taking dirty money?”

  “What does that mean?” I asked Amelia.

  “Mel says the money Brayden gave Peter might have been stolen. Some other kid’s lunch money. That makes it dirty.” She paused. “This is terrible optics. Voters will be really upset if they know we took dirty money. It could be the death of our campaign.”

  Or the death of me, I thought, looking at Brayden’s grip around my neck.

  “So what do we do?” I asked her.

  “We need to put distance between you and Peter,” she said.

  “What does ‘distance’ mean?” I said. But as soon as I said it, I already knew. I had to fire him from my campaign. The only person who believed in me when I was just a comedy magician. The only person who might actually be my friend.

  “I’m sorry, Mike,” she said quietly. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

  We hung up.

  Against all odds, I actually had a chance of winning. That meant going to magic camp. And Dad was proud of me. He even typed “fungal” in his phone.

  I couldn’t let dirty money mess that up, even though it felt worse to fire someone.

  I held my breath and called Peter.

  13

  Clover

  On Tuesday, for the second day in a row, I got called to the principal’s office.

  Thalia Jung was already there.

  “What are you in for this time?” she asked.

  “Um, I guess my rubber band bracelets,” I said. “There’s nothing about bracelets in the Integrity Contract. I checked! And Mike’s team is giving out stickers and stuff, so it’s not really fair. Also, I may have snuck into the boys’ bathroom to leave the BOY LADYBUG bracelets.”

  “They’re pretty sweet,” Thalia said, holding up her wrist. She was wearing a purple-and-black one. “I’ve already snapped mine, like, five times today.”

  “Awesome!” I said. At first I was excited. I was already making a difference in someone’s life! But then a group of kids passed by in the hallway. They pointed at us and started whispering and giggling.

  Maybe people wouldn’t vote for me if they saw Thalia wearing my bracelet. Then I thought about those girl rules Amelia mentioned. The little ones, the ones that made me worry what people thought of seeing me and Thalia together, even if we were only just talking.

  We sat in silence for a second.

  “What about you?” I asked. I kind of turned my head away from her, though, in case more kids walked by.

  “I turned the clocks back to get out of class early,” Thalia said.

  “Oh.” I stared at the bandage on her hand. “What happened to your hand?”

  Filter failure. The question came out of my mouth before I could even think about it. Maybe Thalia and I weren’t close enough for me to ask her yet. But what if we were that close? Was that even worse? And maybe I didn’t really want to know.

  “I destroyed school property,” she said.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Did your frog, like, lay eggs in Ms. Templeton’s desk?”

  She laughed. I’d never heard her laugh before. “No,” she said. She leaned forward. “Here’s what happened.”

  I gulped.

  “You know the machine in the bathroom that has supplies?” she asked. “For your period?”

  I nodded, even though I cringed hearing the word “period.” It was kind of like this forbidden thing. Most everyone knew about it, but we didn’t really talk about it.

  She leaned in closer. “I punched it. The machine.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t working. I put in three quarters and nothing came out. So I punched it.”

  “Oh,” I said. My face burned. I hadn’t gotten my period yet.

  Thalia’s nostrils flared. “Yeah,” she said. “I was late for class because I had to go to the nurse, and then I got in trouble again. What was I supposed to do? Tell Mr. Ishizawar, ‘Sorry, the period machine was broken’? No way.”

  “Did the nurse help you get . . . supplies?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. But why did I have to get them from the nurse? Do people have to go to her to get toilet paper? No! It’s always there because people need it. So why not period stuff? And then we have to pay for it, and the machines don’t even work.”

  The word “period” pounded in my brain. Other than a health teacher, I’d never heard anyone talk about periods so much. Part of me wished Thalia would stop saying it, because it was embarrassing to even think about. But the other part thought she was right.

  * * *

  This time Dr. Dana called my parents. They weren’t super happy that I’d been to the prin
cipal’s office for the second day in a row, for only the second time in my life.

  “This isn’t like you, Clover,” Dad said.

  “You’re running for president,” Mom said. “You have to think about how it looks when your classmates see you getting in trouble.”

  “Mike gives out stickers,” I said. “Why can’t I give out bracelets? And isn’t it a good message?”

  “You also went in the boys’ bathroom without permission,” Dad said. “And you’re close to being grounded.”

  “Not to mention if you get in trouble one more time, Dr. Dana says you’re out of the race,” Mom said, crossing her arms over her gigantic cardigan sweater. I knew she was wearing it to hide her belly, which was getting bigger every day.

  I wanted to say, I can’t break dumb rules at school but you guys can lie about Mom being pregnant? Why don’t adults have to sign an integrity contract?

  But I found my filter. I didn’t want to be grounded. And I really, really wanted to be president, especially now that I had something to fight for.

  Instead I said I’d stay out of trouble.

  Then I called Rachel.

  * * *

  “I’m tired of just talking about girl power,” I told Rachel, pacing around my room. “I want to actually do something to help girls.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath. “It’s the greatest idea ever,” I said. “I want to talk about periods.”

  Rachel’s eyes grew as big as beach balls.

  “Right?” I said. “I’m so impressed with myself!”

  Just then Dahlia popped out of the closet.

  “You said ‘period’!” Dahlia said. “Ha!”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Are you ever not being a creepy spy?”

  Dahlia shrugged and ran downstairs, singing, “Clover said ‘period,’ Clover said ‘period.’”

  “It’s not a bad word!” I called after her.