Double or Nothing (9 page)

Ms. Farmen stepped to the podium again and was ringing her bell. Alex wasn't sure whether it was because Logan's allotted three minutes were up (mostly used up by the noise from his friends) or to restore order. The bell worked, and the crowd quieted back down quickly. Alex felt Logan drop casually into the seat beside her. She heard Ms. Farmen introduce her, and stood up on shaky legs. She tottered over to the podium.

She was still seething, mostly at Logan, but a tiny bit at Ava for causing this stress. She had
her speech ready. It was all about how organized she was, how prepared she would be to listen to her constituents and take up their grievances to the school administration, how her worthy opponents were great representatives of the athletic kids and the smart kids (respectively), but that she, Alex, was “an everyman,” someone who didn't fit neatly into any one category and how hers would be a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” That was to be her big finale. There was no time to change it.

But as she stared at the sea of people, including her sister's expectant face, she thought about chucking out what she'd prepared.
I will stand up for my sister. For girls in general. So what if it makes me lose the election? It's the noble thing to do.

She cleared her throat.

But then again,
she thought,
why should I let Ava playing football wreck my chances to be president? It's not like she's been all that considerate about my feelings!

Precious seconds had already ticked by. She had to act fast. She made the decision—

—and delivered the speech she'd prepared and memorized.

It was perfectly timed out, and she came in
at just under three minutes. The applause was warm but not full of whoops and enthusiasm the way Logan's had been.

She sat down, still trembling slightly. She barely heard Ella's speech, but from what she could tell it was a pretty good one; it was well written, and Ella sounded polished as she delivered it. It got about the same level of applause as her speech had. Logan was going to win for sure.

Ms. Farmen invited kids to ask questions of the candidates. “We have just about three minutes remaining before the bell,” she said, “so please keep your questions brief.”

A hand shot up near the right side of the room. Ms. Farmen called on the girl, whom Alex didn't know.

“I have a question for Alex,” she said.

Alex froze and felt her mouth go dry. She was totally confident fielding questions about her plans as president, but she had a sneaking feeling this question wasn't going to be about that.

“Do you think your sister should be allowed to play for the football team?”

She was right.

There was an immediate murmuring throughout the cafeteria as Alex got to her feet and
accepted the microphone from Ms. Farmen.

“Ah,” she said. Her mind was whirring. What should she say? Of course she believed Ava should be allowed to play football, but she didn't want to lose voters by saying so. “Um, I believe that sports should be unrelated to politics . . . and as a candidate I think it's important to remain impartial on this issue . . . while I believe girls can do anything boys can do, I, um, think it's also true that I don't want my sister to get hurt, so, ah . . .” She continued to blather on and on, without really saying anything specific. She was dimly aware that the bell rang, and then everyone was bustling around getting ready to go.

She handed the mike back to Ms. Farmen. Had she really spent the whole Q and A on that one question? How would Ava react to her lame, noncommittal answer? She looked at the place where Ava had been sitting.

The seat was empty.

Ava had left the cafeteria before Alex had even finished her long, convoluted answer to the basic question. She felt hot, angry tears in her eyes, but she wiped them away fiercely. Her sister had let her down. Logan had practically invited Alex to challenge him on the issue, and Alex had wimped out. The least she could have done was say something intelligible in answer to the girl's question, but she already sounded like a politician.

After school she headed for the track over at the high school. With the football and the cross-country teams all away, she had it to herself. She ran sprints, did some agility drills, and
practiced some kicking. Then she took the late bus home. She planned to eat an early dinner so she could watch Coach and Tommy's game on the webcast.

Alex was already home and was just pulling a veggie frozen pizza out of the oven when Ava walked in.

“Hi, Ave!” she said cheerfully.

“Hi,” muttered Ava.

“I already walked Moxy,” said Alex. “Because I figured you'd be getting home late.”

“Thanks,” said Ava, and moved past her sister to head up to her room.

They didn't say much to each other all night. Ava could hear Alex clanking plates and silverware, but she decided to stay in her room until the start of the game and eat her dinner at halftime.

At kickoff time, the two sisters gathered in Coach's office and sat in side-by-side chairs at his desk, watching the webcast on the big desktop computer. Moxy sprawled out on the couch next to them. Normally Moxy was not allowed on the couch, but she understood that when Mrs. Sackett wasn't home, the girls would have no objection.

It was a lopsided game—the Tigers trounced the Spartans. At halftime, the score was 28–7, and Ava went into the kitchen to eat her pizza. Alex made popcorn. Neither girl brought up Alex's speech.

By the start of the fourth quarter, the Tigers were up 38–10. Alex sat flipping through a magazine, only half watching. Ava remained engrossed in the game. Suddenly she breathed in sharply.

“What?” asked Alex quickly, looking at the screen.

“Tommy's in,” said Ava.

Their brother, the second-string quarterback now that his teammate Dion had a stress fracture, was getting a chance to play. Coach probably didn't want to risk PJ getting hurt, and he wanted to give Tommy game experience.

A minute later Ava groaned.

“What? What happened? I didn't see what happened!” said Alex.

“He just fumbled the snap,” said Ava.

“Aw, Tommy,” said Alex softly.

The Tigers ended up winning 38–17. In addition to the fumble, Tommy completed just one of four passes, and that was just for three yards.
When it was over, Ava clicked off the computer and headed into the kitchen to clean up. With a quiet “I'm going to bed,” she went upstairs.

Much later she heard Moxy bark twice, her happy bark, and then she heard Tommy and her parents come in. Her clock told her it was fifteen minutes past midnight. There was low murmuring, the clanking of plates and glasses. Of course Tommy would be eating another big meal before bed. Ava turned toward the wall and fell asleep.

The rest of the weekend passed uneventfully. The mood in the Sackett house was somber. Coach watched film in his office. Mrs. Sackett was still working on finishing a big pottery order for a wedding, so she spent most of the weekend at her studio. Tommy kept to his room, banging away on his keyboard. Alex spent a lot of time in her room, working on her final speech, to be delivered at an all-school assembly on Wednesday. The elections would be held on Thursday.

Ava worked on drills at the park near their house and tried to study the playbook, but as she'd predicted, she found it very hard to concentrate on the diagrams. It was so much
easier to go through the motions with the team. Tommy and her friend Jack tried to help her a little, but Jack was a soccer and basketball player and didn't really know the football plays. And part of her wondered what the point was. What if the school board decided at the meeting on Wednesday night that she couldn't play? What difference would it make then if she knew the plays or not?

Alex woke up Monday morning feeling unprepared for classes, and she hated that feeling. She knew she'd spent way too much time working on her speech over the weekend. She'd neglected her SAT vocabulary cards yet again—it had been over a week since she'd had time to learn even one new word. But Wednesday was so important. She had to nail this next speech.

Once again, speeches would be limited to only three minutes. This time the sixth- and eighth-grade candidates would talk too, so they had to get through nine speeches in one class period. There wasn't any room for going over the time limit, and Ms. Farmen had warned
everyone she would not hesitate to ring her bell when their time was up. There would be no time for Q and A.
Which is probably a good thing,
Alex thought grimly,
considering how badly I flubbed that part last week.
She cringed just thinking about it.

At school Lindsey continued to be oddly kind to Alex. She offered to pass out fliers on election day to kids as they got off the bus.

“That's so nice of you, Lindsey,” said Alex cautiously. “But I don't have any fliers. Should I make some, do you think?”

“I can help you,” said Lindsey eagerly. “And I was thinking I could organize some cheerleaders from last year's squad to create a cheer for you. We could do it on Wednesday morning before first period.”

“Oh, no, please don't bother,” said Alex. She was feeling increasingly guilty about Lindsey helping with her campaign because of this “unspoken deal,” as Ava called it.

On Tuesday morning Alex and Ava arrived at their lockers to find Lindsey in the process of decorating Alex's locker.

“Oh, shoot!” she said with a laugh. “I wanted to surprise you before you got here! Oh, well.
Like you wouldn't have guessed it was me.”

Alex's locker was papered with a big sign that said
SHE'S NUMBER ONE! ALEX FOR PRESIDENT! VOTE SACKETT!
Lindsey had stuck several balloons to the top part and was sticking tiny silver and gold stars around the edges.

Ava raised an eyebrow as she regarded Alex's locker, but didn't say anything. She opened her own locker, shoved some books and papers in, took some books and papers out, and headed off to homeroom.

Lindsey was still peeling off little shiny stickers and putting them on Alex's locker, talking the whole time. “Almost done here,” she said. “I just want to—”

“Lindsey.” Alex said it quietly.

Lindsey stopped and looked at her.

“You don't have to do this,” said Alex. “I'm not going to tell anyone.”

A look of pretend confusion crossed Lindsey's face. “I don't know what you're talking about!” she said. She stared down at her sheet of star stickers.

“About seeing you in the bathroom. And about the thrift store. It's not a big deal. I'm sure no one would care even if they knew, but I'm
not going to say anything to anyone, I promise.”

Lindsey sighed, and the look of innocent bewilderment disappeared from her face. She glanced to the right and to the left, as though worried they might be overheard, then leaned in closer to Alex. “Okay, thanks,” she said. “I—it's been really rough this year. For my family, I mean—we don't have a lot of money right now. My dad says it's temporary, but he's been trying to turn things around with the restaurant for a while now and it's been . . . hard. I hate school lunch. I hate that I have to get it every day.” She stopped talking and took a deep breath.

“What happened with the restaurant?” asked Alex.

Lindsey closed her eyes and leaned against the lockers. “My dad was a banker. A really successful one. But he's always loved to cook, and he always wanted to own a restaurant. So he and my mom invested most of our savings in the place, and Corey's parents became their partners and also invested money into the business. It was really starting to do well.” She sighed. “It was doing so well, they opened a second restaurant.”

Alex waited. Lindsey had a faraway look in
her eye, as though recalling troubled memories.

“But then this chain restaurant offered to buy both restaurants. Corey's parents sold right away, but my parents refused. So the chain people opened one of their restaurants right across the street from our restaurant on purpose, to drive us out of business. And we can't compete with their prices, even though ours has way better food.”

“That's so unfair!” said Alex indignantly.

“I know. I even think they did some really underhanded stuff, like posing as customers and writing bad reviews online, and bribing the zoning guy so we couldn't add a bigger parking area.”

“That sounds illegal!”

“It probably is. And that's the other complicated thing. See, Corey's mom is a lawyer. When my dad asked her to help him with the legal aspects of the whole thing, she said she thought he should find someone else, someone who wasn't a former partner. Which was weird because he thought they still were partners. So our parents kind of stopped being friends.”

So that explained why there was awkwardness between Corey's and Lindsey's families.
Alex nodded. Lindsey seemed to want to go on.

“Sometimes I'm ashamed that we lost most of our money and are having trouble paying for our house,” said Lindsey. “But other times I'm proud of my dad for following his dream, even if it hasn't worked out so well.”

“I understand being embarrassed about money,” said Alex quietly. “I mean, my family's had times when it's been hard and we haven't been able to do stuff other people are able to do. And you always find people with more money than you have. Like in this dumb campaign. I don't know where Ella and Logan get all their campaign money, but I can't even begin to do what they've done in terms of posters, and handing out candy and stuff.”

“I think Ella's parents are way involved in her campaign,” said Lindsey. “And I know Logan's kind of spoiled. His parents are divorced, and they give him anything he asks for.”

Alex nodded. “That makes sense. But anyway, it's really nice of you to help me, but please don't worry about me saying anything to anyone. I think it's awesome that your dad is following his dream, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. I hope you guys fight that chain and win.
And—” Alex broke off, lost in a new thought.