Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed! Read Free

so that all the girls want to be her friend, or you have to be someone like Chester Oliphant, who is funny and pretty much everybody’s favorite person inthe class. To be an annoying artistic genius like Ben is not going to win you any votes.
Ben would be a terrible president. He is unorganized and is always saying stuff that makes people mad, and he doesn’t care about anything like school spirit or making the cafeteria ladies serve pizza every day instead of just on Fridays. All Ben cares about is drawing comic books.
I don’t have time to be a campaign manager, and if Ben really wants to run for class president, he’s going to need a campaign manager. But I have already dedicated my life to ridding Woodbrook ElementarySchool of mold. This does not leave any room for politics.
    That reminded me. I opened my door and yelled down the stairs, “Hey, Sarah, you didn’t clean out the refrigerator today too, did you?”
    â€œYeah, I did,” Sarah yelled back. “Your mom paid me twenty extra bucks to do that, which I really need because—”
    I slammed my door shut. This was a real setback. Our refrigerator is one of the best sources of mold in the Western world.
    I guessed I would have to go over to Ben’s. Because if our refrigerator was the best source of mold, his bathroom shower was the second best. I could go over there, run some preliminary tests with different household cleaners, and start taking notes.

    And while I was there, I would convince Ben that he’d win the Miss America contest before he’d win the class president election.
    And he’d win by a lot more votes, too.

“I’d make a great class president!”
    Ben waved the remote at the TV set and let it do its magic. At my house we have a very strict TV-watching policy. You can only watch public-television cartoons, and then you can only watch the ones made for four-year-olds. At Ben’s house you can choose from about fifty different cartoon networks, and on every single one someone is alwayseither saying something really sarcastic or shooting some sort of computerized gizmo that makes everything explode.
    It’s awesome.
    â€œWho told you you’d make a great class president?” I asked.
    â€œMy dad did,” Ben said. “He called last night. He thinks I should start building my résumé.”
    â€œFourth graders don’t have résumés,” I said.
    Ben wagged his finger at me. “Fourth graders who aren’t thinking about the future don’t have résumés. My dad says it’s never too early to start thinking about the future.”
    I flopped down on the couch. Ben’s dad is a very tricky subject and not one you should tackle while you’re standing up.

    In my opinion, there are two not-so-great things about Ben’s dad. One, he lives all the way in Seattle, Washington, since he and Ben’s mom are divorced. Because he lives so far away, it is hard for him to come visit, and every once in a while Ben gets this dark, scowly look on his face, which means he is missing his dad and you better just leave him alone.
    The second not-so-great thing about Ben’s dad is that he is always trying to change who Ben is. He doesn’t think boys should be artists. He tells Ben that he is going to have to change his mind about spending the rest of his life drawing comic books.
    If you take comic-book drawing away from Ben, all you have is a person who sits there and watches TV in his pajamas.

    â€œYou know, if you become class president, you’ll have to go to a lot of long, boring meetings with Principal Patino,” I said. “And somebody like Stacey Wind-ham will probably be vice president, and you’ll have to call her on the phone every day to discuss class business. You will spend your entire life talking about school and thinking about school. You’ll probably end up living at school.”
    Ben clicked off the TV