Vote

Alida’s Song • The Amazing Life of Birds • The Beet Fields • The Boy Who Owned the School
• The Brian Books:
The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return
, and
Brian’s Hunt
•
Canyons • Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats
•
The Cookcamp • The Crossing • Crush • Danger on Midnight River
•
Dogsong • Father Water, Mother Woods • Flat Broke
•
The Glass Café
•
Guts: The True Stories Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books
•
Harris and Me • Hatchet
•
The Haymeadow • How Angel Peterson Got His Name
•
The Island • Lawn Boy • Lawn Boy Returns
•
The Legend of Bass Reeves • Liar, Liar • Masters of Disaster
•
Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day
•
The Monument • Mudshark • My Life in Dog Years
•
Nightjohn • The Night the White Deer Died
•
Notes from the Dog • Paintings from the Cave
•
Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers
•
The Quilt • The Rifle
•
Sarny: A Life Remembered • The Schernoff Discoveries
•
Soldier’s Heart • The Time Hackers • The Transall Saga
•
Tucket’s Travels
(The Tucket’s West series, Books One through Five) •
The Voyage of the
Frog
• The White Fox Chronicles
•
The Winter Room • Woods Runner

Picture books, illustrated by Ruth Wright Paulsen
Canoe Days
and
Dogteam

I’m the most gifted leader you’ll ever meet.

I should be good; I’ve had a lot of practice. I’m only fourteen, but I’ve known for as long as I can remember that some people lead and some people get out of the way. It’s a universal rule. A cosmic inevitability.

If you ask me, people who aren’t out in front are just looking at someone else’s rear end.

My ability to lead is a gift. I must have been born with the innate ability to take control of the situation.

See, people like being around someone who’s not afraid to exercise authority.

I’ve shown my capacity to assume command
ever since I first had a name tag stuck on my shirt in kindergarten; I raced to be the line leader every time we went to the drinking fountain or out to the playground for recess. I’m quick to raise my hand to volunteer to head class projects.

I’m the one who took it upon himself to post the emergency exit routes out of our house and put together that disaster survival pack in our crawl space. Upon reflection, a loaf of bread probably wasn’t the best item to stash under the family room in case of a terrorist attack or severe-weather warning. But my mother is totally exaggerating when she says she can still smell mold every time she goes downstairs to do the laundry. And I’m pretty sure that forgotten, moldy bread is a valuable survival tool—isn’t that how penicillin was invented in the first place?

And I’m the one who showed foresight by bringing the video camera to the baseball play-offs to capture the candid moments of our team in the dugout. I don’t care what Dash says, it wasn’t my fault that he didn’t know he was being filmed and I happened to catch him spitting in Wheels’s water bottle because he was mad that Wheels struck out and didn’t sacrifice to move Dash to second like he was supposed to.

If you look at it the right way, I’m doing everyone a favor with my initiative.

I’m not bragging or being conceited. I’m just saying what everyone knows deep down.

I don’t lie and I don’t hustle for money and I don’t set up my friends and family to study their reactions.

Not anymore.

I merely recognize my administrative influence, superior people skills and habit of acting definitively in moments of maximum need. I have a knack for being calm, cool and collected.

I used to think like that.

Until my life took a flying leap into the deep end of a nuclear power plant’s spent-fuel pool.

I was sitting on the front stairs of school Monday morning, waiting for the first bell so I could head to homeroom. I was also watching Tina, who was standing by the flagpole with her friends.

Katrina Maria Zabinski, the World’s Most Beautiful, Most Perfect, Best-Smelling Girl. Never in the history of girls has anyone been as … radiant as Tina. I looked up pictures of Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Mata Hari and Nefertiti and, even though they’re supposed to be world-class babes, they’ve got nothing on Tina. In fact, I thought they were kind of horrible-looking, but when you’ve seen perfection up close and in person, everything else
seems dismal in comparison. Especially if all you have to go by is ancient artwork that usually makes them look super crabby.

I was now Tina’s official boyfriend. I no longer had to worry about how to
get
her. Now I was panicked about how to
keep
her.

We’d had a great time at my neighbor Betsy’s grandparents’ fiftieth-anniversary party a week ago. It had been everything I’d ever dreamed of—me and Tina talking and laughing and eating chunks of banana dipped in the chocolate fountain. The perfect first date.

I freaked out after the party, though, and reverted to form last week at school.

Which meant that I fell over my own feet every time I saw her and, for conversation, made sounds like the dinosaurs probably did the nanosecond they saw the giant meteorite hurtling toward them. She didn’t seem to mind, she’d smile and wave as I hurried away from her, so I didn’t make a bad situation worse. But I couldn’t count on her tolerance forever. If you want a girl like that to stay your girlfriend, you’ve got to raise your game.

I had to find a way to impress her. Fast.

“Hey.” My best buddy, JonPaul, appeared as if
out of thin air. That’s the thing: when Tina’s around, I don’t notice anything else. A volcano could erupt next to me and I wouldn’t flinch. Unless, of course, the molten lava threatened Tina’s safety, in which case I like to think I’d swoop in to save her. Kevin Spencer: middle school superhero.

“Hey.” I watched JonPaul pull Baggies of edamame and slivered almonds and dried figs out of his messenger bag. He’s a health nut and a jock and he eats the ugliest food on the planet. This was his post-breakfast, pre-midmorning-snack snack. He’s obsessed with fueling his body for optimum performance on the field. On the court. In the ring. Whatever. I can never keep track of what sport he’s playing.

“What are you doing sitting on the steps all by yourself?” He slurped from a bottle of pulverized-seaweed juice. I shuddered at the scummy green mustache it left behind.

“Watching Tina.”

“Why?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“If you say so.” JonPaul had a girlfriend of his own, Sam, and wasn’t the kind of shady boyfriend who’d notice other girls. Even if they were
shockingly gorgeous. “Why are you just watching her? Thought you two were official.”

“We are. Kind of. Sort of. I guess.” I was about to explain my dilemma when I noticed Cash Devine working his way through the crowd, handing out buttons, flashing his big phony smile and shaking hands. He was wearing a sandwich board—VOTE 4 CA$H.

“What’s he doing?” Cash is my mortal enemy. He doesn’t realize I can’t stand him, but I’ve loathed Cash from the moment I saw him two weeks ago, when he transferred to our school and latched on to Tina. Cash looks exactly like the kind of guy who should be dating a girl who looks like Tina. Therefore, I spend a great deal of time thinking about how he annoys me.

“Running for student-body president.”

“Don’t we already have one?”

“Not anymore. Danny Donnerson moved.”

“What’s with all this moving all of a sudden? Don’t today’s parents care about providing stability for their kids—and their kids’ classmates—anymore?”

“Dunno.” JonPaul stays pretty detached when I rant and rave. He’s very calming that way.

Just then Cash headed for the group of girls standing near the flagpole.

He headed toward Tina.

The same primal instinct that prompted the cavemen to wave spears in the air when the woolly mammoth came too close kicked in and I was on my feet, barreling toward my competition.

I arrived at Tina’s circle of friends just as Cash was reaching out to hand her a button; I slid between them at the last second. He jerked his hand back and jabbed himself in the leg with the pin.

“Oh, hey, Cash, you okay there? Gotta be careful,” I said, hoping Tina would appreciate the concern in my voice and not realize how insincere I was.

“Uh, yeah, I’m good. First blood of the campaign season,” he guffawed, sounding exactly like the guy on the local-access cable channel who’s way too excited about selling used cars. “Can’t win an election without a little wear and tear.” He looked over my shoulder and winked at the girls.