Election Madness (8 page)

The auditorium doors open then, and in file the kindergarten classes. They take the front rows. Right behind them are the first- and second-graders. By the time the third-graders come in, the room is buzzing with anticipation. She can barely make out her own class. She can't even see Nikki. She'd feel better if she could see Nikki, even though Nikki's still being cool to her. In the car that morning (Nikki's mom had taken them to school), she'd kept her face turned toward her window and didn't speak to Deja. The fourth and fifth grade classes file in, and by the time they take their seats they are just a dim blur. Deja can't focus on the students in the crowd, but she can hear their rustling and their excited voices.

Mr. Brown takes the center of the stage and raises his hand with his five fingers spread out. "Five!" he says and looks around, waiting until most of the auditorium catches on.

"Five!" they repeat with their hands held up.

"Four!" he says, and looks around until they repeat what he says.

By the time he gets to three, the auditorium is perfectly quiet.

"That's better," he says. Then he gives a long talk—at least it seems long to Deja—about auditorium behavior, which is different from playground behavior. He reminds them how important the day is and how hard the candidates have worked and how worthy they are to represent their classes. A lot of what he is saying doesn't sound all the way true. Deja looks down the row of seated students onstage. Gregory Johnson is sitting up straight and confident. Lashonda is yawning, and Paula is shuffling her feet. Sheena is playing with the ball barrette at the end of her braid, and Arthur is slouched, showing poor posture. The other fourth-grader is biting her thumbnail. But Deja supposes they are just as worthy as anyone else. She takes a big breath and slips her hand behind her back. She's able to scratch on the back of her neck just under her sweater. For a second, it feels better.

Suddenly, she hears her name. Mr. Brown is looking down the row at her with a big grin on his face. He's calling her up. She'd thought it would start the other way around, with her going last. But she's first.

Slowly, Deja gets up. Slowly, she walks to the microphone, which Mr. Brown is lowering to her height. This is it. She has her index cards clutched in her hand. She hasn't looked at them since that morning before school. She's a little panicked to see that they aren't in order. Where's the one with her introduction? She shuffles through them quickly, and they spill out of her hands. Laughter spreads across the auditorium.

"Excuse me?" Mr. Brown says in a booming voice.

It stops as suddenly as it started, but it leaves Deja feeling even more jittery.

"My name is Deja," she says. Mr. Willis rushes over and adjusts the microphone just as she's saying, "and I'm running for student body president of Carver Elementary." Her voice suddenly booms out in the middle of her sentence, startling her. She stops and looks at her cards. They seem as if they're covered with scribble. She can't make out one word.

She blurts out all of the things she'll do for the school if they elect her. Nikki was right. All her promises suddenly sound silly. They're just promises, with no thought behind them. She wishes she had something else to say, but she can't remember anything else, not even her closing. She just says thank you and takes her seat, feeling a tiny bit relieved that it is over.

Arthur is next and he is not much better. He basically lists all the reasons people should vote

for him. He sounds scared and unconvincing. Sheena holds her speech, written on a piece of notebook paper with torn holes, right in front of her face. She keeps stumbling over her own handwriting. Deja wants to laugh, but she suppresses it. Lashonda and the other fourth-grader wrote theirs kind of like poems.
Lashonda's is better,
Deja thinks. It's even funny.

Paula, from Mr. Hick's fifth grade, simply reads her speech like Sheena. But it sounds as if it was written by someone way older. Deja thinks Paula's mother probably wrote it because it it has a lot of big words that Paula can't pronounce. Deja really wants to laugh now. But she knows that would look bad, so she bites her tongue. Gregory Johnson does his in a kind of interesting way. After he introduces himself to the audience, they cheer. He then answers questions about what he will do as student body president from a question box he'd placed on a little table just inside the entrance to the school building. Deja wonders why she didn't think of that. She can feel everyone's total attention as he answers each question smoothly and with a big, confident smile. He even has on a shirt and tie. He already looks like a student body president.

When he's finished there are cheers and loud, enthusiastic applause, which is more than the polite response Deja got. He takes his seat and Mr. Brown steps forward, clapping as he approaches the lowered microphone. He bends toward it to give his usual end-of-assembly talk about how to exit the auditorium in an orderly way. The candidates remain in their chairs onstage until everyone leaves. Then Mr. Willis dismisses them to their classrooms. Deja leaves the stage feeling she could have done better. She wishes she had another chance.

As soon as Deja enters the classroom, Ms. Shelby leads the students in applause for their classmate. "I know we're all excited about the election and the announcement of the results on Friday morning."

Some kids glance over at Deja; some don't even look like they're paying attention. Nikki gives her a tiny smile.

"You did good, Deja," Nikki says as they walk home. Nikki is no longer giving her the silent treatment.
She must be feeling sorry for me,
Deja thinks. Why else would she suddenly act nice? "You could win," Nikki adds.

Deja doesn't say anything. She wants to believe it. But she can't. Gregory Johnson's speech was too good and he's so popular. She doesn't stand a chance. That's what she repeats to herself all the way home:
I don't stand a chance.

She's still thinking this when Auntie Dee looks over at her across the dinner table and says, "How was your speech?"

"It was okay." Deja looks down at her food—vegetarian lasagna—and pushes the carrots to the side. She'll get to them later. "Some of the other kids' speeches were better. Except Arthur's from Mr. Beaumont's class and Sheena's from Mrs. Miller's class. They were pretty bad. And this other girl read hers and couldn't even pronounce all the words."

"Do you understand why I wanted you to do it on your own without a lot of help from me?" Auntie Dee launches into her self-esteem talk—how true self-esteem comes out of one's own behavior and decisions and personal responsibility. Which means it's sometimes best if she lets Deja do things on her own, and blah, blah, blah. Deja still really wishes Auntie had written her speech for her. She takes a bite of whole wheat pasta. She chews and chews. It's more rubbery than the nice, soft, white kind that Nikki's mother serves.

"So, what happened?" Auntie asks.

"I forgot most of my speech and my promises sounded dumb."

Auntie chuckles and says, "It's not the end of the world."

"And now Lashonda or Gregory Johnson is probably going to win."

"What grades are they in?" Auntie asks.

"Fourth and fifth."

"Hmm," Auntie says. "Aren't there just two fourth grades and two fifth grades?"

"Yeah," says Deja.

"And then aren't there three third grades?"

"Yeah..." Deja wonders what Auntie is getting at.

"Maybe the lower grades will vote for you."

"Or Sheena or Arthur," Deja says.

"Just don't give up yet."

Deja has just about given up, despite Auntie Dee's pep talk. But then an idea comes to her in the middle of the night. Something has been missing from her campaign. Stuff! Giveaways! Like campaign buttons! If only she had campaign buttons. She needs lots and lots of them—enough for the two first grades (kindergarten isn't voting), the two second grades, and the three third grades. One hundred and forty buttons! How is she going to get one hundred and forty buttons? How much would that even cost? She thinks and thinks so much, it's hard to get back to sleep.

"You don't even know how to make campaign buttons," Nikki says on the way to school the next day.

"Well, what else can I do? I've got to do something."

Nikki's face lights up. "I know! Why don't you make cookies with icing that says 'Vote for Deja'?"

It takes a moment for Nikki's idea to register. Deja thinks of the candy rule. "I don't know if we'll be able to give out cookies, since we can't give out candy."

"Cookies aren't candy," Nikki says. "It's the same as when someone has a birthday and their mom brings cupcakes. It's exactly the same."

"I betcha we're the only ones thinking of this," Deja says, her eyes getting bigger and bigger with excitement.

"How can we give them out?"

"I bet Ms. Shelby will let us pass them out—if it's after lunch, maybe close to the end of the day, and all our work is done."

The more Deja thinks of this plan, the more everything seems to come together. They'll have to get permission right away. Then they'll have to get Auntie or Nikki's mom to buy the ingredients, and then they'll have to make the cookies. The vote is on Friday, so they'll have to hand out the cookies tomorrow. The memory of their delicious taste will still be fresh when the little kids cast their vote.

A big grin spreads across Deja's face as she thinks of all the votes she's bound to get. "This is going to work!" she exclaims.

Ms. Shelby listens politely to their proposal. Perhaps she's thinking of all the times some birthday kid from another class delivered a piece of birthday cake to her and the other teachers.
This is kind of the same,
Deja thinks,
only they're cookies.

"Let me check with Mr. Brown," Ms. Shelby says finally, "and I'll let you know tomorrow."

Deja stands there a moment, thinking past Ms. Shelby's words. They can't wait for permission tomorrow. They'll have to make the cookies without knowing. They'll have to get those big, fat refrigerator dough things—a lot of them. The ones where you only have to slice the dough. And those tubes of icing, the kind you write with. Lots of those. Auntie Dee will have to go to the store as soon as possible because they have to get started tonight.

But when Deja gets home and tells her plans to Auntie, who's on the treadmill, she pulls out one of her earphones and says skeptically, "You want to do
what?

"I need to make cookies so I can pass them out tomorrow. Auntie, I need you to go to the store and get those refrigerator dough things."

Auntie Dee turns off the treadmill. "How many cookies do you have to make?"

"One hundred and forty," Deja says in a small voice, hoping that will make it go over better.

"One hundred and forty! And you tell me this
now?
"

"Puhleeze, Auntie. This is my last chance before the election on Friday. Puhleeze..."

Deja is careful not to put too much whine in her voice. She doesn't want to annoy Auntie Dee so much that she'll say no.