President of the Whole Fifth Grade

by Sherri Winston

  We all cracked up.

  “So, you guys are looking for a slogan?” Layla said.

  “We were going to make campaign buttons and posters. There’s a rally on Friday. We just haven’t figured out what it should say,” Sara went on.

  Lauren said, “It should be catchy.”

  We all started shouting ideas and giggling because we were saying some goofy stuff, when we heard the drummer count out, “A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three…”

  Then he was drumming and Toby Z. was back on the guitar and the keyboard guy was jamming, and Layla took the mike and wailed:

  She needs your vote; freedom’s not free.

  She will fight for your lib-er-ty.

  This girl is smart, so let’s hear it.

  Brianna Justice has spirit.

  No need to worry, she won’t forget; Brianna Justice is your best bet!

  So cast your vote—no need to stall.

  A vote for Brianna means… Justice for all!

  And just like that, we had a slogan.

  Who on Earth could top having an almost famous real-life band make up a song just for them? Who could possibly top that?

  Brianna’s Cookbook

  Becks told me all the top TV cooks start out with cookbooks. I keep a notebook filled with all my recipes. One day, with Becks’s writing help, of course, it’ll get published and we’ll be superstars!

  Chocolate Frosting

  2 ¾ cups confectioners’ sugar

  7 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

  6 tablespoons butter

  4 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk

  ½ to 1 cup regular milk

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  First, add the dry ingredients in a medium-size bowl; in second bowl, cream the butter with condensed milk.

  Combine milk-and-butter mixture with dry ingredients, slowly adding in 1/2 to 1 cup of regular milk and vanilla flavoring. You can add more milk to make the frosting creamier or more confectioners’ sugar to thicken it up.

  Now take a bite, but sit down first. This frosting is so good it’ll knock you off your feet!

  7

  The First Attack!

  While I had been in my backyard with Pinks 257, apparently Jasmine Moon was in the park passing out little triangle-shaped bribes.

  Triangles covered in meat and cheese!

  Lauren told me she’d heard that Jasmine Moon went to Orchard Park and passed out pizza that same day. Her father bought LOTS of pizza and she was just giving it away to kids “as a way of introducing herself.”

  Ha!

  Should I really believe that? Like people go around saying Hi, I’m new in town; have some pizza.

  A guilty feeling scratched at the back of my mind. What if she had only wanted to make friends? What if her pizza was not an underhanded way of buying votes?

  Besides, hadn’t my friends warned me not to get too carried away? She was new. She passed around some pizza. Big deal… right?

  Well, what happened next stung more than the time I got flipped in karate class and saw stars.

  We three candidates were picking our campaign teams before the big “primary”—which is what they call the little elections in each classroom before the BIG election involving the whole school.

  Of course, I’m picking all my girls, right?

  With my first pick, I chose Sara. We’d discussed it all through the summer like a gazillion times. She would be my campaign manager. Then Becks. Becks would be in charge of the creative stuff, like slogans and posters. Lauren, who was taller than almost anybody in fifth grade, would be in charge of making sure our posters were hung the best. We had it all planned.

  Except, guess what:

  Jasmine Moon picked Becks first!

  Becks looked all squirmy and nervous.

  When Mrs. Nutmeg smiled at Becks, I knew there was trouble. She bent down at Becks’s desk, right in front of me. She said, “It might be a nice show of citizenship if you helped our newest student with her election campaign, Sweet Pea.”

  Mrs. Nutmeg could make going to juvie hall sound like the kindest, greatest thing that could happen to a kid. When she smiled at us and patted us on the back and called us “Sweet Pea,” we were putty in her hands. Becks didn’t stand a chance!

  From the back of the room,Toady Todd began imitating Becks.

  “Umm… mmm… mum…,” he said, screwing his face up into these real pathetic-looking expressions, then he laughed real hard and in true frog fashion I think he croaked a little. He was the funniest toad he knew.

  “Todd Hampton, you will control yourself this instant, or the primary will be over by default, young man, because you will be out!” Mrs. Nutmeg glared at him.

  Jasmine Moon looked as if she might be nervous. She said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Nutmeg. I didn’t mean to cause any problems. If Rebecca has to work with Brianna, I… well, I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Rebecca is free to make her own choices, right, Brianna?” Mrs. Nutmeg looked at me the way Mom does when she’s asking something like, “You do know you’re not a grown-up, right, Brianna?”

  Then if that weren’t bad enough, Jasmine Moon looked at Becks and said, “It’s just that I don’t know many people, but you live down the street from me. We could just walk right down the block, you know.” From the far side of the room, Taurus the snake slithered around in his glass box. The fish tank made its usual bloop-bloop-bloop sounds. The big, black hand on the huge clock over the door seemed to get stuck, just sitting there.

  Becks looked at me, then at Sara, as if she didn’t know what to do.

  Mrs. Nutmeg placed her hand on Becks’s shoulder. “I know you have close ties in the class, but maybe just this once…”

  Becks gave a small nod.

  And just like that, Jasmine Moon had lured one of my best friends… over to the OTHER SIDE!!!

  8

  “A Chicken in Every Pot!”

  Who was I?

  No, I hadn’t fallen down, hit my head, and lost my memory. I was just asking myself what Mrs. Nutmeg had told all the candidates to think about: She’d said once we understood ourselves—our strengths and weaknesses—it would help us understand what kind of leader we could be and help us come up with good slogans so that the voters could understand us, too.

  So I’d been thinking about it since I brushed my teeth that morning. Who was I?

  I was Brianna Diane Justice.

  I had a mother and a father and a bossy older sister. My dad worked as a nurse and liked restoring old cars. My mom worked for the FBI—not in the exciting part. She mostly worked on catching people who did crimes on computers. She was a tomboy like me. She taught me to play basketball, ride a bike, and tumble over and over without throwing up.

  Dad taught me how to change the oil in the car, how to run a mile without passing out, and how to bake.

  I was the reigning champion of our school’s penmanship award. I’d won two years in a row.

  Let’s see… what else?

  I planned to be a millionaire chef when I grew up. ’Cause remember, being president of the whole fifth grade is the first step in my lifelong plan to be a successful cupcake chef and millionaire. Without Becks, I settled on this kid named Kenny. I didn’t know him too well, but everyone had heard about how good he was in art. A good artist could make some good posters, right?

  Mrs. Nutmeg was talking about President Herbert Hoover and his campaign slogan, “A chicken in every pot.” She said that slogan was important because around that time the country was in something called the Great Depression. A lot of people didn’t have jobs then and were hungry.

  So if Hoover was going to guarantee they’d all have chicken, he was the man they’d vote for. I thought about some other facts I’d read about Hoover. He’d made his fortune in gold. Funny, huh? How a man who was popular because he’d gone from being really poor to really rich then became president while most of the country was really poor. Mrs. Nutmeg said he had a hard time help
ing people get their lives fixed up. I looked at the board, where Mrs. Nutmeg had written another slogan:

  “I like Ike”—1952 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Dwight D. Eisenhower

  “This is an example of a candidate making a play on his own name as a way for voters to remember him,” Mrs. Nutmeg said. Just like I was planning to do. Justice for All… And with the way things were going, I was going to need some justice, big time.

  “But his name is Dwight, right?” asked Todd.

  “That’s correct,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.

  “Then who is Ike?” Todd said.

  I turned around in my seat. “Ike is his nickname. That’s what people called him. Duh!”

  “Oh, yeah. Like you were there.”

  “Enough!” Mrs. Nutmeg interjected. “You have one more evening to work on your campaigns. Tomorrow is the in-class campaign primary. Candidates can pass out buttons or posters or goodies. Then Todd, Jasmine, and Brianna will each give a speech and describe three personal traits they possess that would make them a great president.”

  The bell rang and I was getting my backpack out of my cubby when I felt someone come up behind me. I looked over my shoulder, but I already knew it could only be one person.

  Jasmine Moon.

  “I had no idea what a wonderful writer your friend Rebecca is. We worked on my speech all day yesterday!”

  And before I could say anything, she was gone.

  “What?” Sara asked when she and Lauren came over and saw me looking as if I’d just swallowed a spider.

  “I think she did it on purpose!” I whispered. “She picked Becks because she knows good and well that Becks is the best writer in the whole fifth grade!”

  Sara looked skeptical. “But how could she know that? She’s only been here like two minutes. It was just lucky for her, that’s all.”

  As we were leaving class, I thought about it. Maybe Sara was right. Maybe it was just Jasmine Moon’s good luck.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling. Was Jasmine Moon just a lucky girl who happened to wind up with my best friend on her campaign team and gave out pizza just to introduce herself?

  Or was she some sort of political evil genius?

  ELECTION NOTEBOOK

  Did you know there was a president named Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, and he’s the one they named the teddy bear after? Well, there was and they did.

  All I can think about now is how cool it would be to have people buy cupcakes named after me!!!

  My big, secret, super-spectacular idea for the campaign came from something Mrs. Nutmeg wrote on the board: the Boston Tea Party and the creation of the first U.S. Mint.

  And that gave me an idea. Here are a few things I’ll need for tomorrow:

  An inflatable kiddie pool

  Chocolates

  Tea bags

  9

  A Spy!

  After school, I stopped Becks in the hall. Lauren and Sara were always the last to leave class because they helped Mrs. Nutmeg clean the animal cages and take care of the small zoo we had in there, including a brown ferret, a green snake, a large fish tank, and Bubba the overweight turtle.

  “Becks, don’t feel bad; it’s not your fault.”

  She blew out another long sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath again. “I just don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings,” she said.

  Now it was my turn to take a big gulp of air. I had thought of another idea. One that I thought would make everything work for everybody.

  “Becks, I was wondering, what if, while you’re helping her, you tell me what she’s up to.”

  “You mean SPY?!!” Becks’s eyes were rounder than a full moon, and she looked guiltier than a kid covered in cookie crumbs before dinner.

  “Shhhh!” I snapped. I pulled her to one side of the hall hoping they couldn’t hear us all the way downstairs in the principal’s office. All I needed was to get a black mark on my permanent record in fifth grade. How would I start my cupcake empire if I couldn’t get into college, go to business school, start my own business, and launch an empire using the valuable leadership skills I learned as president of my whole fifth-grade class? Becks helped me write most of that this summer, part of my acceptance speech. Anyway, how would I do any of that if my permanent record got jacked up for spying on the competition?

  “Remember in class today? Mrs. Nutmeg told us about some general guy, Thomas Cage or Gage, something like that.” The general was a British commander in Boston and he knew that someone close to him was spying on his army.

  Becks nodded. “Mrs. Nutmeg said they never figured out who it was, but they thought it was his wife!”

  “Exactly. I mean, you wouldn’t have to do anything creepy. Just, you know, sort of let me know what’s going on. You know, in case I need to make my campaign better. Just think, you’ll still be helping me, just like we planned all summer. Except now you can help in a different way. Will you do it?”

  Becks’s dark eyes turned stormy and her bushy brown brows squished together. I knew that look. That was her “uh-oh” face. As in, “Uh-oh, something awful is about to happen.” She frowned and bit her lip. She looked at the ground and dug around in her book bag for her inhaler.

  “Just think about it,” I said. “It could be a secret, just between you and me. Okay?”

  The door to the classroom opened. Sara and Lauren had finished and were heading to the restroom to wash their hands.

  “Meet you guys downstairs at the bike racks,” I said.

  But when I turned around to loop my arm around Becks, something silly we did sometimes when we were walking together, I let out a tiny gasp.

  Jasmine Moon had beat me to it.

  “I thought you could come over to my house today,” she said, her voice honey-sweet. Honest to goodness, she had her arm looped into Becks’s just like I always did.

  Had she already been spying on us? On me?

  Becks looked like one of my sister Katy’s rescued stray cats after I’d trapped it under a laundry basket. Whenever I did it, I’d yell for Katy to come and spring her animal from kitty jail.

  Becks looked like she was in kitty jail. Poor Becks.

  I gave a small nod toward Becks, to remind her what we’d talked about. Later, as I rode my bike along with Lauren and Sara, I didn’t mention my plan. Was I going overboard? Getting too crazy? Sara would probably roll her eyes and sigh and tell me to back off. Lauren might push Becks too hard, get her all nervous, and ruin everything.

  Or maybe I didn’t mention it because, well, I couldn’t believe I asked my best friend to sneak around and get information. For me!

  The thought of Becks spying gave me a tiny shiver along my spine, cold like rain down your collar. Icy cold, like secrets… or fear.

  ELECTION NOTEBOOK

  An Act—during the American Revolution, the people of Great Britain came up with laws or “acts” for the new Americans to obey.

  Colonists—people who came from Great Britain to form the New World (which is what they called America).

  All of these Acts were like laws, and if the Americans didn’t follow them they’d get in big trouble. Which is really stupid when you think about it because the king should have known if you send people far, far away and call them the New World, then they don’t want to still act like the Old World.

  So of course the New World people didn’t want to put up with the Sugar Act (1764) that made it cost more for sugar and other stuff.

  The Quartering Act (1765) said colonists had to provide a place to stay for up to 10,000 British troops. (Who wants 10,000 British army men in their house tracking in mud and eating their food?)

  Since tea back then was as popular as soda or chocolate milk today, the Tea Act (1773), which said colonists could buy tea only from Britain’s East India Company, made the New Worlders go bananas.

  So the colonists got mad and dressed up like Mohawk warriors and sneaked on a ship and dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor.

&n
bsp; 10

  Intolerable Acts of the Fifth Grade

  The next morning I was up before the alarm went off. It was Friday. All the candidates and their campaign teams were meeting at school early to hang signs and plan strategy. I felt excited and jittery and sort of weird all at the same time.

  Pig Pig gave me an encouraging wink. I made sure my ponytails were extra fluffy. I chose my money-clip barrettes for extra good luck!

  I’d met with Lauren, Sara, and Kenny after school yesterday. We’d blown up balloons, gone over my speech, made more posters, and arranged cupcakes in plastic containers. All the while, I couldn’t help thinking about Becks.

  Would she spy on Jasmine Moon for me?

  Would she tell me if Jasmine Moon was planning some really spectacular presentation that might just blow me out of the election?

  Was it cheating to ask Becks to pass along information?

  Downstairs I made myself some French toast, careful to keep an eye on the stove. Technically, my parents didn’t want me messing around in the kitchen when they weren’t up, but as long as I didn’t start any fires, I figured they wouldn’t really mind.

  Besides, French toast was so easy. I took a few egg yolks, whisked them together, and added a bit of milk, cinnamon, and a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring. Then, I heated our skillet with some sweet butter, dipped a few slices of thick bread into the egg mixture, and plopped it into the hot skillet.

  The coffeepot was perking up while the toast was cooking.

  “Smells amazing in here!”

  I almost jumped out of my shoes.

  “Dad! You scared me. Want some?”

  “Sure.”