Dodger for President Read Free

“By the way, Willie, can you help me with my math homework?”
    â€œUh, I’m kind of busy right now, but I guess if you make it quick . . .”
    â€œAll right, then. I’m a little confused. What does one plus one make?”
    I wondered how a kid with such an amazing imagination could be so bad at math. “Uh, Amy, one plus one equals two.”
    â€œI see . . . and there’s one of you in this room, plus one of Lizzie, right?” Amy said. Then she suddenly switched back to her Sherlock voice andasked, “Then why did I hear THREE voices in this room before I came in?”
    With a triumphant smirk, Amy flipped the sock in my direction and glided out of the room. I slammed the door behind her.
    â€œWow.” Lizzie sighed.
    â€œYeah,” I said, removing the sock from the front of my sweater. “Wow. Now, about that election.”
    â€œWe didn’t mean it, Willie. It just kind of happened,” Dodger said. “One minute, everything was going great. I drank the potion, pretended to be you for a couple of hours, took that quiz I was telling you about, watched the cake fall on James Beeks—it was all fun and games. Then all of a sudden, everybody was yelling at each other, and I had to stick up for Lizzie. The next thing I knew . . . umm . . . well . . .”
    Lizzie took over: “The next thing he knew, Mrs. Starsky was walking out of the room to the water fountain so she could wash the cake off of her shoes. As soon as she left, Beeks said, ‘Shut up, Wimpy. You think you’re so great now just because you got one lucky game-tying hit in one stupid baseball game. Well, I think you’re ridiculous. Yougot one hit. ONE hit. And all of a sudden, a few people pat you on the back, you have your dorky English girlfriend, and you think you’re popular. Is that it, Ryan? Do you think you’re all popular now?’ ”
    Dodger took over the story: “I tried not to say anything, I really did. But, dude, he called Lizzie dorky. And he insulted your big hit. So I just said, ‘Maybe.’ Then Beeks poked me in the chest, and said, ‘Maybe WHAT, Wimpy?’ So I said, ‘Maybe I’m popular. And maybe you should wipe the cake off your head before you call somebody else ridiculous.’ After that, things got a little out of hand.”
    I shouted, “After THAT, things got out of hand? How much more out of hand could they possibly BE?”
    Dodger and Lizzie hemmed and hawed for a while more, and little Sherlock Holmes knocked on the door two more times, but I eventually got the whole story: how Mrs. Starsky had come back from the hall with her shoes dripping and separated Dodger and Beeks. How they had kept yelling at each other until Mrs. Starsky had written both myname and Beeks’s on the board. How Beeks had challenged Dodger to run against him for student council president. How Flynn had muttered, “Yeah, right. Wimpy for president!” How Dodger had stopped for a second to think. And how, in the momentary silence, Lizzie had slammed her palms down on her desk and shouted, “We accept!”
    After Lizzie left, and Dodger fled to the inside of his magic lamp for the night, I got ready for bed. While I was lying there in the dark, I kept picturing the whole nightmare classroom scene in my head and wondering what the heck I was going to do about it. Finally, before I drifted off into a night of nervous, tortured half-sleep, I decided what I would have to do. I’d just get up in the morning, march off to school, and tell Mrs. Starsky that I was sorry, but I couldn’t run for president after all. I mean, Dodger had gotten all worked up in the spirit of the moment and put me in a bad situation. But I had spent years carefully avoiding the spotlight. If I backed down, Beeks would probably make fun of me for a while, but soon things would be back to normal. I would be happily