Election Madness (4 page)

"But I think Casey can do the job."

Deja is at a loss for a moment. Just as she opens her mouth to ask ChiChi why she thinks that Casey can do the job, the freeze bell rings. She's left with her mouth hanging open for a moment, until she remembers that you don't have to freeze your mouth. The second bell rings and she and Nikki walk to the line. Deja tries to take her place in front of Ralph, but he moves forward as if to squeeze her out. "Back up, Ralph," she warns him. Ralph looks at Ms. Shelby walking briskly toward the class and steps back. Deja takes her place and the students march across the schoolyard toward their classroom.

Soon everyone is in their seats, fishing through desks for their morning journals and checking the board for the topic of the day. Deja quickly retrieves her journal from the mess in her desk, opens it up, writes the date at the top of the page, then checks the board for the topic.

Her shoulders slump.
The Person I Most Admire.
Every once in a while, Ms. Shelby pulls that one out of her collection of topics. And every time, Deja is at a loss. She looks over at Nikki, already knowing that Nikki's pencil will be skittering across the page with so much to write she can hardly get it all down. She checks Antonia. Antonia is staring off into space, but then she calmly picks up her pencil and begins to write. Deja thinks and thinks. She can't write about Martin Luther King, Jr. She's done that already. She can't write about Ms. Shelby. She tried that a few months ago and found herself challenged to fill up a page.

Then, suddenly, it occurs to her. She has never written about Auntie Dee! She quickly begins, and it's hard to write as fast as the thoughts spilling over each other in her head.

My Auntie Dee is the best person. She takes care of me even tho she doesn't have to because she is not my mother or my father she does it just because she loves me. I love my Auntie Dee. My mother passed away when I was real little and my father can't take care of me. So my Auntie Dee takes care of me. I have my own room and it even has a desk in it because Auntie Dee says everyone has to have a place to settle down and get to work and I have a bookshelf too because Auntie Dee says one of the most important thing a person can do is love to read and, she cooks good too but she cooks a lot of healthy stuff so I have to eat lots of vegetables and cookies made with apple juice that don't taste all that good. And one time she made a cake that didn't have any eggs or butter. It tasted really good. But I had a real cake for my
birthday with lavender icing and light pink flowers made from real sugar. And it tasted good too.

Deja stops and looks at what she's written. Ms. Shelby always has to remind everyone how important it is to read over what they've written when they finish, because then they'll see all the skipped words and misspelled words and run-on sentences. There it is: a run-on sentence in the middle of her great paragraph, which takes up a full page because she wrote kind of big. It's a long one. Just when she's trying to figure out where to put the periods and capitalizations, she hears the timer—the one in the shape of an egg—go off. Time's up. Deja sighs, looking at the page, and hopes Ms. Shelby is not going to ask for the journals to be turned in today so she can do a spot check. Once a week Ms. Shelby looks over journal entries and writes comments at the top of the page.

Happily, she doesn't direct the class to turn in their journals. She just moves to the front of the room and looks around as if she is readying herself to make an important announcement. Deja puts her journal away and sits with her hands folded, waiting for Ms. Shelby to get the class's attention.

While she waits, she glances around, attempting to determine which kids might nominate her. She looks over at Erik. He has already pulled his reading workbook out of his desk and is waiting calmly for their teacher to tell them the page number.

She checks Casey. Casey's nose is buried in her Sustained Silent Reading book. She's doing just what Ms. Shelby says to do when you find that you're an early bird. Ms. Shelby has to tell the goof-offs over and over, "It's not your job to disturb your classmates when you finish a task early. You can always take out your SSR book. I should never see anyone doing absolutely nothing." Deja doesn't know why Ms. Shelby bothers to repeat this. The same kids have to be reminded again and again.

Deja digs around in her desk for her Sustained Silent Reading book. It's way in the back and the cover has gotten dog-eared from having been squished amidst the mess. She smoothes the cover, then opens it up, not knowing exactly where she left off. She stares at the page, not actually reading, but trying very hard to give the impression that she is.

"So, class..." Ms. Shelby says in a very serious tone.
Here it comes,
Deja thinks.
Finally we get to the important stuff.

"We need to go over something before we move on to reading activities." Deja folds her hands and smiles. She feels excitement and a little fear ripple through her. She's waiting to hear the word
nominations.
It's coming. Casey slips a bookmark into her book, closes it, and puts it away. Erik gazes at the workbook on his desk and then looks at Ms. Shelby. Deja sits up straight.

"I have an announcement, so pay attention. We are going to trade play areas with Mr. Beaumont's class. They want to finish their sock-ball tournament from last week, so we're going to have their tetherball/foursquare area for the next couple of days."

A few boys groan. Deja groans too, inwardly, because this is not what she was expecting. In fact, Ms. Shelby is acting as if she's forgotten all about the election, even though she'd made such a big deal about it and gotten the class all excited. Deja's hand flies up before she knows it.

"Yes, Deja," Ms. Shelby says in a distracted tone of voice.

"What about nominations?"

"Oh, yes. Sure. That's on our agenda."

Deja checks the agenda posted next to the whiteboard. There it is:
1:30–1:45 Nominations.

Actually, this works out better. It means she still has morning and lunch recess to convince everyone to nominate her.

Morning recess can't come fast enough. But when it does, Deja takes her time exiting the classroom. She holds Nikki back as well. As soon as they reach the schoolyard, Deja grabs Nikki's arm. "This is what I want you to do, Nikki," she begins.

Nikki's already eyeing the line for tetherball. She looks at Deja suspiciously. "What?" she says.

"I want you to go around and find out who everyone's nominating. Just make a tally mark on your writing pad for everybody who's voting for me." As Deja is saying this, she notes Nikki's brows sinking lower and lower. Her mouth turns down in a frown.

"I don't want to do that, Deja. I want to play tetherball."

"Come on, Nikki. You're my campaign manager. That's what they do. They take polls."

Nikki sighs and drags herself off, holding her pad and pen. Deja looks after her for a while before finding a bench to sit on and wait for the results. She can't help watching as Nikki makes the rounds. Most of the kids in the class look either surprised to have their play interrupted, or annoyed. Finally, Nikki comes back. She's walking briskly and her mouth looks as if she is holding back a smile.

"Okay, tell me how many are nominating me," Deja says.

Nikki sits down beside her and flips open her pad. Deja immediately sees seven tally marks.

"I told everybody that you wanted to be nominated so you got Keisha, Anna, Rosario, Melinda, me, Yolanda—I got her to change her mind—and Erik."

"Erik?"

"He said he's not the president type and that's what I told Yolanda, so she's going to nominate you."

Deja thinks about this.
Only seven?
"What about Ayanna?" Deja had seen Nikki talking to Ayanna for a long time.

"Oh, she's nominating Antonia."

Deja scans the yard. When she spots Ayanna, she watches her for a few moments, trying to figure out why she has decided to nominate Antonia. Deja's never even seen them playing together. What was that about? "Did you ask everybody?"

"I couldn't find everybody. Some kids might have been in the bathroom."

"Hmm." Deja needs to think about this.

The freeze bell rings and she sits very still, thinking about the number
seven.

Lunch recess doesn't go as planned, either. When Nikki comes back with her pen and pad to join Deja on the bench next to the second grade portable, she has nothing much to report.

"Well," she announces cheerfully, "I told almost everyone that you want to be nominated, so maybe they'll nominate you."

Deja looks at Nikki, but her mind is on the number seven.
Seven.

After a chapter of
The Whipping Boy,
which Deja listens to with her head on the desk and her eyes closed, Ms. Shelby says, "Okay, let's move on to the nominations. Let me go over some rules first. You will be getting a ballot. How many know what a ballot is?"

Oh, boy,
Deja thinks.
Now we have to go through everyone trying to explain what a ballot is. Why can't Ms. Shelby just tell us?
Ms. Shelby moves to the whiteboard and picks up one of the dry-erase markers. She holds it up, waiting for hands.

Carlos waves his around with a look of certainty on his face. "It's a piece of paper and has a bunch of people's names on it and they put a check next to the person's name who they want."

Ms. Shelby looks out the window for a moment and Deja knows she's trying to think of a way to reword it so that it will be close to the answer she has in mind.

"Well, yes. That's basically what it is." She returns the marker to the tray in front of the whiteboard.

Deja's relieved. Ms. Shelby has decided to just tell them. "I am going to give each of you a ballot. On it you will find the names of your classmates as well as your own. You are to put your name at the top, then put a check beside the name of the person you think will make the best student body president of Carver Elementary School." She stops to look around the room. "Now, I want to make it very clear that you are not—
not—
to select yourself." She stops and glances around the room again as if she's addressing this only to certain students, not the entire class. "Your name will be on the ballot so it will be easy to see if you chose yourself."

With that she picks up the stack of ballots and passes them out a batch at a time to the person sitting at the front of each row. Now Deja feels an agitation in the pit of her stomach. It's going to take extra time because there's always a knucklehead who can't just take the paper on top and simply pass the remainder behind them.

Sure enough, Alyssa is Miss Butterfingers when the ballots get passed back to her. Ralph drops them over his shoulder, probably thinking Alyssa's hand is ready to receive them. But she's busy daydreaming, so they spill onto the floor. Then it takes a few more seconds for her to look at them helplessly as if she doesn't know what to do.

Deja leaps out of her seat to scoop up the papers and pass them out to everyone in her row who doesn't have one. "Thank you, Deja," Ms. Shelby says.

When everyone has a ballot and has written his or her name at the top—and several students have to be reminded to do this—Ms. Shelby instructs them to mark their votes.

Deja hesitates, pencil poised. She'd assumed she'd nominate herself. But Ms. Shelby said that wasn't allowed and now she has to come up with someone else to vote for. Not Nikki, because she doesn't want to be student body president. Not any of the boys, of course. Melinda? Keisha? Rosario? ChiChi? Yolanda?

It occurs to her then. Yolanda is perfect! Deja will probably be the only one voting for Yolanda. That way, she won't be giving her vote to someone who might be nominated. Deja puts a big fat check next to Yolanda's name. Perfect.

At last the ballots are collected and Antonia, who happens to be general helper that week, gets to go up to the whiteboard to help Ms. Shelby tally the vote. Ms. Shelby has put everyone's names on the board.