me. Ryan was looking at me. Alexia was looking at me. Neil was looking at me.
Everybody
was looking at me!
âWhat are you looking at me for?â I asked.
âYou should run for president of the third grade, A.J.,â said Alexia.
âYeah!â everybody agreed.
âWhy?â I asked. âI donât want to be president. Thatâs for nerds.â
âA.J., if you donât run, Andrea will become president,â said Michael. âSheâs going to make us wear uniforms and turn the school into a prison.â
âSheâll probably close the boysâ bathroomand make us hold it in all day,â said Ryan.
âSo why donât one of
you
guys run?â I asked.
âYouâre the only one who can beat her,A.J.,â said Neil the nude kid.
âWell, I donât want to run,â I said.
âA.J.,â said Michael, âif you donât want to run against Andrea, that means you must be in love with her.â
âThatâs right,â everybody agreed.
âWhat?â I shouted. âIt does not! It just means I donât want to be president.â
âOooooh!â
Ryan said. âA.J. doesnât want to run against Andrea. They must be in
love
!â
âWhen are you and Andrea gonna get married?â asked Michael.
âShhhhhhhhhh!â
I said. âOkay! Okay! Iâll run for president of the third grade.â
If those guys werenât my best friends, I would hate them.
We needed to have a meeting in a place where Andrea and her girlie girl friends couldnât spy on us. Ryan has a cool tree house in his backyard, so we decided to meet up there. Michael, Neil, and Alexia came over to Ryanâs house after school.
âI donât know anything about elections,â I told the gang. âHow am I going to beat Andrea? Does anybody have any ideas?â
âYou need a slogan,â suggested Alexia. âLike, âA.J. Puts the
Cool
in School.ââ
âYou should get the No Bell Prize for that,â I said. *
âHow about, âA.J. Puts the
Drool
in Schoolâ?â suggested Michael.
âThat doesnât make any sense,â said Ryan. âThereâs no
d-r
in the word âschool.ââ
âWe should make a commercial and put it on TV during the Super Bowl,â suggested Neil the nude kid.
âThe Super Bowl is in January,â saidMichael. âItâs too late. The election is in November.â
âHow about we make one of those Batman signs and project it on the sky at night?â suggested Ryan.
âThatâs dumb,â I told him.
âHey, nobody likes to floss, right?â said Alexia. âSo what if we knock on peopleâs doors, show them how to floss correctly, and tell them to vote for A.J.?â
âThatâs the dumbest idea in the history of the world,â said Neil the nude kid.
âWell, Iâm stumped,â said Michael.
âYour legs were amputated?â I asked.
âNo, dumbhead,â he replied. âStumped meansââ
But he didnât get the chance to finish his sentence. Youâll never believe in a million hundred years whose head popped up into the tree house at that moment.
It was Mayor Hubble!
âI heard you were running for president of the third grade, A.J.,â he told me. âI came to help you win the election.â
âHow did you know we would be holding our supersecret strategy session up
here
?â asked Ryan.
âI was a boy once, you know,â said the mayor.
âJust once?â I said. âIâm a boy
all
the time.â
âLook, A.J.â said the mayor. âLetâs getdown to business. You donât like Andrea, do you?â
âNo!â
âYou want to
beat
her on Election Day, donât you?â
âYeah!â
âYou want to
humiliate
her, right?â
âYeah!!â
âYou want her to wish she was
Salman Rushdie
Ed Lynskey
Anthony Litton
Herman Cain
Bernhard Schlink
Calista Fox
RJ Astruc
Neil Pasricha
Frankie Robertson
Kathryn Caskie