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let his disappointment show. After all, it was just a stupid assignment, and people just voted for the only ones they could remember.
    “I’m sorry Coo didn’t win,” Tatiana said to him after class. She placed her hand on his arm as she said it.
    “No biggie.”
    “You gave the best speech,” she told him, her hand still there.
    “It would have made Ginny happy.”
    “She’s your sister?”
    “My neighbor.”
    “That’s right. She has leukemia?”
    “Cerebral palsy.”
    Armpit wondered if Tatiana had forgotten her hand was there, but if she had, he wasn’t about to remind her. Her fingernails were painted green. Her perfume smelled like cantaloupe.
    “Say, listen,” he said. “Do you like Kaira DeLeon?”
    She squeezed his arm. “‘Red Alert!’ I love that song.”
    “You want to go to the concert on Saturday?”
    She bit her lip. “You mean with you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Yeah?” he asked, just to make sure.
    She smiled. “Yeah.”
             
    By the time economics was over, Armpit had convinced himself that X-Ray had already sold the last two tickets and that he was going to have to buy two from a scalper for fifteen hundred dollars. He could hear X-Ray’s voice in his head. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars—
each
.”
    When the bell rang he bolted out of his seat and hurried to the office, where he asked the secretary if he could use the phone. She seemed sympathetic, but it was against school policy. Apparently not the principal, the superintendent, or even the president of the United States could change school policy.
    Where was Joe the Armadillo when you needed him?
    He left the office and spotted Matt Kapok, a skinny white guy from his economics class. Matt was probably the only student in his class who was taking summer school because he
wanted
to, not because he had to.
    “Matt!” Armpit shouted as he charged toward him. “You got fifty cents? I’m desperate, man!”
    Matt backed up against a row of lockers as he took his wallet out of his back pocket. “Uh, sure. Here.” He held out a dollar, but it dropped out of his hand before Armpit could take it.
    As Armpit bent down to pick it up, Matt sidestepped him and quickly disappeared around the corner.
    “I’ll pay you back!” Armpit called after him, but didn’t know if Matt heard him.
    He went back to the office, where the secretary gave him four quarters for the dollar, then went to the pay phone and called X-Ray.
    “You sell the last two tickets?”
    “Not to worry, not to worry,” X-Ray said in a soothing voice.
    “Have you sold them!”
    “Look, you got to—”
    “Yes or no?”
    “Not yet, but—”
    “Don’t!”
    “Wait a second. Who are you, and what have you done with Armpit?”
    Armpit told him about Tatiana. “She had her hand on my arm, and with her perfume and everything, I couldn’t think straight.”
    “Was she the one I saw you talkin’ to that time? Strange hair, goofy smile?”
    “Yeah.”
    “She’s pretty cute.”
    “I’ll pay you a hundred and thirty-five for the two tickets,” said Armpit. “That woulda been your share if you sold them.”
    A hundred and thirty-five seemed like a bargain. He was relieved not to have to pay fifteen hundred.
    “Man, that girl’s really gotten to you,” said X-Ray. “Look, they’re your tickets. You don’t have to buy them twice!” He laughed. “That musta been some perfume!”

13
    “Well, that’s the way it goes,” Ginny said when Armpit told her that Coo didn’t win. They were taking their daily walk around the block.
    “What they should have done,” said Armpit, “is write down all the candidates’ names on a ballot. The problem was nobody remembered any of the speeches.”
    “Well, that’s the way it goes,” Ginny said again.
    Her face twitched as she said it, and Armpit didn’t know if that was due to her disability or if she was trying not to cry.
    “But hey, I got an A on my speech,” he said. “Thanks to