Firegirl by Tony Abbott Read Free Book Online Page B

talk about cars when he was having such a bad time at home, so I just said, “Yeah, you have better stuff.”
    Class started, and Jessica came in twenty minutes later. She was quiet and stayed to herself as usual. Since it was now only two weeks before the actual election, the whole project began to take up more and more class time. The day started with a half period of what Mrs. Tracy called the “background” part of the project. Talking the whole time, Samantha Embriano and Kayla tacked their extra-credit poster project about primaries to the bulletin board. It was drawn with lots of different colored markers. Right after them, Darlene marched up with a better one, a flowchart with little orange Halloween lights fitted through the poster board. The lights showed how candidates for an office start up a campaign, how they raise money, how they get nominated, and how elections are done.
    Mrs. Tracy wouldn’t allow us to campaign for class president until the end of each day, when we could get up and present five-minute speeches about ourselves. But Darlene, at least, started right from the beginning. She wore a homemade “Darlene” button every day, and she brought in brownies for lunch two days in a row. “Just because,” she said. “The ones with nuts are marked with a nut on top. The others are plain.”
    Eric LoBianco came in on Wednesday with his own plate of cookies. He said he baked them himself, which Darlene didn’t believe. When the cookies were found to not be very good, Ryan said it was probably true that he made them after all.
    Finally, it was time for the speeches and the real election posters to come out. Mrs. Tracy wanted everybody to do something, but not everyone did. Some kids just didn’t want to run and said so. I didn’t want to run for anything, but I didn’t say so because no one asked, so I just watched and listened.
    Karen talked about write-in candidates, which is when the person who votes can write in the name of someone who hasn’t been officially nominated. It was a dual presentation with Melissa. They were thinking of running together as co-presidents, and Mrs. Tracy said that was okay, for now.
    At the very end of the day on Wednesday, Courtney gave her talk. I listened to every word. She spoke the same way she did at the reading group, her voice going high and low. She looked at index cards some of the time, but didn’t for quite a bit of it. She told us about how the people who hold office really need to listen to the people they represent, even if they don’t say much. She said that listening was what being elected to a position was really all about.
    “It’s the heart of the democratic process,” she finished.
    When she said
heart
I think I shivered. Her face did a little frown when she prounounced the word, as if she meant everything the word could mean. She looked out at the whole class but at no one in particular when she said it. Then she nodded once and sat down.
    Jessica was out that day and the day before. I thought at first that she went into the hospital for more graftings, but then I thought that maybe she just had a cold or wasn’t feeling well or something. Mrs. Tracy didn’t say why.
    Mostly because my mother kept at me to get out there and get involved, even though I didn’t want to, that night I made a small poster with my name stenciled under a blown-up photocopy of my last year’s school picture.
    We were all around the kitchen table after dinner on Wednesday night looking at it.
    My mother frowned. “It needs more.”
    “It needs somebody else,” I said.
    “Just a little pizzazz,” she said, making a face at me.
    We were all thinking of things, when my father’s eyes lit up.
    He sat upright in his chair, a smile growing on his face. “I’ve got it,” he said. Then, not to me, but to my mother he said, “A vote for Tom is a vote for tomorrow. Except that the t-o-m of tomorrow is capitalized. So that it reads —” He moved his hands over