I rubbed my arm, rolled over, sat up, and looked at Dodger. This was great. My magical, invisible campaign strategist thought War was a game of skill.
When I finally gave up on sleep, got up, and stumbled out to go to the bathroom, the last thing I heard was Dodger muttering, “Wow . . . next he’ll be trying to tell me that the dinosaurs were real!”
Dodger and I walked to school really early with our garbage bags full of doughnuts (because it wouldn’t be good if someone was looking and saw several black bags floating through the air) and met Lizzie, who had brought paper plates and napkins. Dodger loped off into the fields behind the school. As he was leaving, I asked him what he was going to do all day, and he winked at me with his unpatched eye. “Meet me in our spot after school,” he said.
Jeepers. I hoped he wasn’t up to something.
Lizzie and I set up a folding table that Lizzie had arranged to borrow from the custodians, and when the school buses pulled up, our campaign began. I’m pretty sure we gave at least one doughnut to every kid in the school except James and Craig, and even Craig grabbed a doughnut from the hands of a frightened third grader. Craig was standing about fifty feet away from us with James, who was handing out hundreds of buttons. Craig kept sneaking bites of the doughnut, and then Beeks would catch him and smack his arm. I couldn’t tell what the buttons said, but I wasn’t looking forward to finding out. All of Beeks’s cool-kid friends laughed their heads off as they pinned the buttons on themselves. Some other kids took them and laughed, while a smaller group took them and looked disgusted.
One little second grader took a button, read it, and then kicked Beeks in the shin. I’d never been prouder of my little detective.
Finally, a kid in our class named Joey Carbone, who had a broken leg, hobbled over to us on his crutches to get a doughnut. In order to grab one, he had to drop his things on the table in front of Lizzie. One of the buttons was attached to his backpack strap; it read:
BEEKS > FREAKS
Joey looked horrified when he realized Lizzie had read the button, but she just smiled and said, “Joseph, I suppose you will have to decide which is more important to you in a candidate: cruelty or sweetness.” Then she held a doughnut just out of his reach. He took the button off of his backpack and threw it in the garbage next to the table. “A wise choice,” Lizzie said, and handed Joey his doughnut.
Right before the late bell rang, Lizzie and I treated ourselves to two of the last three doughnuts. While we were eating, one of Beeks’s cheerleaders came up to us and said, “Hey, Willie, you have a little chocolate smeared under your nose.” I tried to wipe it off while she played around with her cell phone—which you’re not even supposed to have at school in the first place, but whatever. She kept pushing buttons on the phone as she said, “Higher, Willie. Almost got it . . . a little to the left . . .” Then I heard a click, just as she exclaimed, “Perfect!” and skipped off to class.
I had no idea what that had been about. The popular girls were even stranger than Lizzie!
We folded up our table, cleaned up our stuff, and rushed off to class. I gave Mrs. Starsky the last doughnut, and she told me, “You know I don’t get to vote, right?” Then she winked at me. What was this, Wink at Willie Day?
CHAPTER FIVE
Playing Fair
AS SOON AS SCHOOL LET OUT, Lizzie and I took off for the woods. Dodger had said to meet him in our spot, which means the secret clearing in the forest that only Lizzie and I could see. It’s called the Field of Dreams, and Dodger could magically transform it into any kind of place he wanted—well, except that nearly everything in the field was always blue. When we got there, we found Dodger sitting on a blue beanbag chair, under a blue tree, watching a blue TV with a built-in digital video player, which was plugged into a blue battery.
He was smiling. And eating, as usual.
“Hi, Dodger,” I said. “What have you been doing all day?”
“Research, dude. Want some blueberry pie?”
“No, thank you.”
“Lizzie, some blue-corn tortilla chips with blue cheese dressing?”
“No, thanks.”
I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I blurted out, “What research?”
“Well, we needed some, like, scientific information about elections. So I watched some totally useful movies about government. And let me tell you, I learned a lot.”
“Such as?” Lizzie asked.
“Let’s see.” He rummaged through a stack of DVDs he had piled up on the ground. “Ooh, here’s an excellent resource.”
“Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court?”
“Yeah, buddy! From this fine film, I learned that you definitely shouldn’t cheat if you want to win. King Arthur believed in being fair to everybody, and he got elected.”
“But . . . but . . . ,” I stammered, “King Arthur wasn’t a president. He never even got elected. He was a king!”
Dodger shrugged. “Huh, how ’bout that?” he said. “But, dude, that’s only one example.” He waved another video case at me. “Like, in this movie, there’s this little mermaid, and she almost loses her swimming-princess job forever, but then she’s nice and sings really cool songs and stuff. And this dancing crab helps her get elected to be a princess again.”
“She doesn’t get elected. She just marries a prince. Princesses don’t get elected either. It’s, um, automatic.”
“Oh. Well, I still learned stuff. Here’s an example: If some evil person acts like she’s suddenly trying to help you, you prob’ly shouldn’t let her.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Yeah, right. In case a sea witch came around and tried to trick me.
Lizzie grabbed the next case on the pile. “Hey, Dodger, did you watch The Polar Express today?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“What does that have to do with elections?”
“Nothing. But I thought I deserved a break after doing all that heavy research.”
Lizzie shook her head to clear it, as if there were water in her ears. Dodger sometimes had that effect on my brain, too.
“So,” I said, “what’s the next phase of our election plan?”
Lizzie said, “It’s time to examine our electoral demographics.”
“Our electro-whoosie ma-whatsits?”
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Electoral demographics. Honestly, Willie, don’t you ever look at The New York Times?”
“Uh, not so much, no. Is that, like, some special clock?”
She sighed. “No, Willie, it’s not some special clock—it’s the most important newspaper in the world. And electoral demographics means taking a look at which groups of people are probably going to vote for us, which groups of people might vote for us, and which groups of people probably aren’t going to vote for us. Then we can figure out how to get our message out to the voters we need the most.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “Hey, Lizzie, why don’t you make a nice chart of the projectoral memographics, and Dodger and I can take a little nap break?”
Dodger gave me a high five and immediately put his feet up on the blue tree. Then he whipped out an extra eye patch, put it on his unpatched eye, sank back into his beanbag chair, and started to snore dramatically.
Lizzie said, “I can’t do this alone, Willie. The election will be upon us before you know it, and we have to come up with an overall strategy. Here! Take this marker and set up a chart.”
She bossed me around for a while, as Dodger made some extremely powerful snoring noises. We argued back and forth for a while. My first chart looked like this:
Will Vote for Us
Might Vote for Us
Would Only Vote for
Us if We Held Their
Moms Hostage or
Offered Them a Million
Dollars (or both)
Willie Ryan
Joey Carbone
Beeks & Flynn
Lizzie Barrett
Chess Team
Anyone popular
That one k
id who
got kicked off the
chess team for being
too dorky
Anyone athletic
Anyone who’s
afraid of Flynn
Anyone who wants
to be popular or
athletic
“All right,” Lizzie said. “That’s a good start.”
“How is that a good start?” I asked. “It looks like we’re going to get killed!”
“Ah, but it also tells us what we have to do if we don’t want to get killed.”
“Huh?”
“Willie, all we have to do is position you as athletic, popular, and somewhat fearsome, while retaining your core qualities of honesty and goodness.”
“Oh, is that all? While we’re at it, why don’t we convince the whole school that I’m a world-class surfing champion? Or a legendary movie stuntman? Or that there’s a whole series of best-selling books about me and my invisible friend?”
“Very funny, Willie. Now, can we get down to business? First, how are we going to make you seem athletic?”
Dodger pulled his spare eye patch up onto his forehead. Apparently he hadn’t actually been sleeping. “Lizzie, what do you mean, make him seem athletic? You’re talking about Willie Ryan, the kid who hit the game-tying double in the fall Little League championships. Remember?”
“Yes, I do. But nobody else will. And even if they do, Beeks will say, ‘So what, it was just one little hit. And I’m James Beeks.’ ”
“Okay,” I said, “maybe we should get back to the athletic part later. How about the popular part?”
Lizzie just stared at me.
“Well, what about the fearsome part?”
Lizzie smiled grimly and cracked her knuckles. “Don’t worry, you can leave the fearsome part to me.”
I believed her. “And the honesty and goodness?”
Dodger said, “Dude. Just be yourself!”
Just then, Lizzie snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. “Posters!”
Wow, posters. What a brilliant new idea.
She looked at Dodger. “Dodger, do you have a camera?”
Without even sitting up, Dodger reached into the huge pocket of his baggy orange shorts and pulled out the Bottomless Well of Treats. Then he stuck his arm into the bag, groped around for a while, and yanked out a blue camera. He tossed the camera backward over his shoulder.
Lizzie scrambled to catch it, but made a disgusted face when she did. “Ugh,” she said, wiping chocolate, powdered sugar, and what appeared to be a blue hairball off her hands onto the leg of her jeans.
“What?” Dodger asked.
She sighed. “Nothing.”
I sidled over to Lizzie and checked out the camera. It was awesome! I don’t know much about photography, but I could tell this thing was fancy. It had a huge zoom lens, a million buttons, and a big display window on the back. On the side, in large block letters, it said OCHYMPUS.
“So we have a camera—now what?” I asked.
Lizzie grabbed Dodger by the elbow and started whispering in his ear. He whispered something back, and then they put their heads together and totally ignored me while they figured out a whole photo campaign. I walked around the meadow, kicking a little blue rock and trying not to think of all the embarrassing things Dodger and Lizzie would probably make me do.
When they called me back over, I couldn’t believe it. They actually had some excellent ideas. For the first time, I started to believe I might even get more than two votes in the election.
Lizzie grabbed the camera and Dodger pulled me behind a tree.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
Dodger gave me his biggest, goofiest grin, and said, “Costume time!”
He waved his hand at me, and suddenly I was wearing a beautiful baseball uniform. I stepped out from behind the tree, and Lizzie started clicking away. Then she pushed me behind the tree, and Dodger changed my wardrobe again. By the fourth set of pictures, I was seeing flashes of color everywhere I looked, and my cheeks hurt from smiling on cue. This candidate stuff was hard work.
But soon we were done. Dodger and Lizzie sent me home and told me they had to go to the local copy shop to get the photos made into posters. “Wait,” I said. “Why don’t you just make the posters magically?”
Dodger looked hurt. “What do you think I am?” he asked. “A miracle worker?”
Two hours later, I was doing homework in my room when my mom came to tell me that Lizzie was at the door. “You sure are seeing a lot of that girl lately,” she said with a smirk. “Oh, my little boy is growing up so fast! But, Willie, try to comb your hair before she sees you, okay?” Just a few weeks ago, Mom would have freaked out if a girl had come over at all, much less more than once. But Mom’s attitude had undergone a little magical adjustment therapy, and now she had turned into some kind of “cool mom.” It was kind of scary.
Lizzie came upstairs with Dodger trailing invisibly behind her and threw three rolled-up posters on the bed. “They’re ruined,” she said in disgust.
“What do you mean, ruined?”
“They’re blue—all blue. One hundred percent blue. Apparently Dodger’s camera only takes blue pictures.”
“Uh, can I see them anyway?” I asked.
I could tell Lizzie didn’t even want to see the posters again, but Dodger grabbed one right up. “Dude,” he said, “I think they’re pretty cool. I mean, come on—what’s better looking than blue? That’s right—nothing!” He opened the poster with a flourish.
And there I was, leaning against the blue tree with one hand, all decked out in the baseball uniform. Sure enough, I was blue. But I could see Dodger’s point. The effect was kind of cool. Dodger laid that poster gently on the bed and then showed me the second one. I was wearing a suit, standing tall and straight in front of the late-afternoon sun. I thought I looked pretty mature and noble. Also, unfortunately, blue. The third poster was the best: me, back in my regular old jeans and T-shirt, with my backpack on one shoulder. Dodger put that poster down next to the other two just as Amy charged into my room unannounced. The girl was developing some alarmingly bad little-sister habits. On the other hand, she had kicked Beeks that morning. Maybe she was on my side.
Amy looked at the posters and snorted. “Hey, big brother. Are you running for President or Blueberry Princess? ’Cause if you’re running for Blueberry Princess, your campaign is really getting good!”
She bent over one of the pictures, snatched up yet another blue hair for her evidence collection, and walked out. All right—even if she had kicked Beeks—she might not have been totally devoted to my campaign.
Lizzie, Dodger, and I all looked at one another. Then Lizzie and Dodger spoke at the same time. She said, “Sorry about the waste of time, Willie. We’ll just have to—” And then he said, “So, bud, am I right or am I right? I say we go blue all the—”
I cut them both off by jumping up and shouting, “THAT’S IT! Dodger, you’re a genius!”
Once again, I heard two voices at once. Dodger said, “I am?” Lizzie said, “He is?” Then he said, “Wait, I’m not?” and looked at Lizzie with puppy-dog eyes. I mean, puppy-dog eye. Well, puppy-chimp eye. Anyway, she replied, “I’m sorry, Dodger. I didn’t mean—it’s just that you’re rather—”
“QUIET!” I yelled. “We’re not throwing out the posters, Lizzie! I know exactly what they need to say. We’re going to use these posters. In fact, we’re going to print up a whole bunch of them. And we’re going to win this election, fair and square!”
CHAPTER SIX
Take Your Pick
LIZZIE, DODGER, AND I had a lot of work to do that night, but we got it done together. The next morning, for the third day in a row, I was the first kid at school. Lizzie was right behind me (Dodger was at home, sleeping in his lamp on my top shelf). Lizzie and I each carried a big roller tube of posters and a tape gun. By the time the front doors of the building opened, we had plastered the hallways and classroom doo
rs with our posters. There were equal numbers of posters with each picture, but all of them had my name across the top and the same slogan across the bottom. They said:
VOTE FOR WILLIE RYAN
THE TRUE-BLUE CANDIDATE
When the last piece of tape was stuck to the last wall, Lizzie smiled at me, and I gave her a high five. Then we leaned against the lockers and watched the students come in. People were stopping to read the posters, pointing at them, giving us little thumbs-up signs. I saw Craig walk in and read a poster. He actually looked kind of impressed. Then James stepped through the door, pushed Craig aside, and scowled at my picture. He even reached out to rip the poster off the wall, but then—out of nowhere—Amy was next to him. She stamped on his toes, pushed him away from the poster, and stomped off down the hall.
Little sisters. You never know whether to hate them or give them a medal.
In class, Mrs. Starsky announced that we would be doing a whole mini-unit on elections: “Because it’s great to see you all so excited about democracy in action!” I swear, the woman could turn anything into a lesson. I think if the classroom ceiling collapsed on her, she’d be lying on the floor with a hole in her head, going, “This is great, class! Now we can study how blood circulates through the human body!”
Apparently the highlights of the unit were going to be an assembly with speeches by each presidential candidate, and then another assembly with a second set of speeches, this time by the vice presidential candidates. And the first assembly would be in only five days. Assuming I survived that, the second one would be two days after that, with the election one day later.
Jeepers. Making posters was one thing, but standing in front of the whole entire school and sounding like I knew what the heck I was talking about? That was a whole new level of terror. I could feel the nervous sweat of failure pouring out of me already—at this rate, I might drown before I ever had a chance to speak. I couldn’t wait to get home so I could thank Dodger for getting me into this mess. Lizzie, on the other hand, was squirming in her seat with joy. I knew I was lucky to have her help, but did she have to look so DELIGHTED about it?
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