Dodger for President Read online

  Neither one of them said anything for a while. Then Craig said, “I’m sorry that happened to you, but I still don’t see the big deal about the election.”

  “Craig, this is my big chance to show my dad I’m a winner again. And that’s why we have to sneak back into that school and—”

  “I won’t do it, James. I won’t cheat!”

  “What are you talking about, Craig? You cheat all the time. Remember when you got busted for copying off Wimpy’s spelling test? What was that, an accident?”

  “No, but that was different. If I had gotten a better grade on that, it wouldn’t have made someone else get a lower grade. But if we cheat on this and win, it hurts Lizzie and Willie.”

  “And what do you care?”

  “Umm . . . well . . . I don’t know. But there’s another thing, too. My mom said if I get in trouble at school one more time, she’s going to take away my cell phone.”

  “And?’

  “James, you know this. Don’t you even listen when I tell you stuff?”

  “Kind of.”

  Craig snorted. “You know my mom’s been divorced twice. And you know my ex-stepdad has custody of my little half brother every other week.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Well, my brother, Tyler, gets nightmares. So I sleep with my cell phone on vibrate under my pillow. And when he gets really scared, Tyler calls me.”

  Wow, I couldn’t believe it! Craig Flynn—big, scary Craig Flynn—was, like, his little brother’s protector.

  James made a face and said, “Aww . . . that’s tho thweet! Cwaig helps his wittle bwother!”

  “Oh, shut up. The point is, I can’t get caught—wait! What’s that?”

  Craig was pointing right at us!

  “What’s what?” James asked.

  Dodger said, “Oopsie! I need to take evasive action. Hold on!”

  Wow, I thought advanced maneuvers had been wild, but evasive action opened up a whole new world of heart-stopping panic. First we shot straight up maybe thirty feet. Then we rocketed backward into the trees at the edge of the playground so fast that I thought my nose would break against Dodger’s shoulder blade. Finally we did a full 180-degree-spin move, then accelerated to absolute top speed as Dodger . . . umm . . . dodged his way between the tree trunks until we shot out of the woods into my backyard.

  Then we stopped so short that we went tumbling off the front of the carpet together. I think I might have fainted for a moment, but when I opened my eyes, Dodger was smiling from ear to ear. “Oh, man,” he said. “That was awesome!”

  I felt like I had to swallow to keep my heart from flying up my throat and out my mouth. So I gulped a few times. Then I said, “What happened back there? I thought the carpet was invisible.”

  “Well, it is, mostly.”

  “What do you mean, mostly? How can something be mostly invisible?”

  “Dude,” Dodger said. “Aren’t I mostly invisible? I mean, nobody but you and Lizzie can see me.”

  Good point. “But wait, didn’t Craig just see us? Oh, wow, I am so—”

  “No, Craig couldn’t see us. He must just be a Carpet Seer, that’s all. It’s not that crazy. I mean, there used to be a whole bunch of Carpet Seers in Roswell, New Mexico, and back in 1947, they saw me out on a practice run with—”

  “What’s a Carpet Seer?”

  “Well, it’s like having one of the minor magical subtalents. You know, like having the Ghost Ear. Or being a Horse Whisperer. Or an Elf Smeller.”

  Elf smeller? Elf smeller? “So, all these different kinds of people can see or feel or hear magic?”

  Dodger looked thoughtful. “Willie, I think almost all people could—if they gave it a chance.”

  Then the sparkle came back into Dodger’s eye, and he yanked me to my feet. “Walk!” he commanded.

  My knees were pretty shaky, and it was weird seeing myself again. I kept feeling cross-eyed from staring at my own nose. But I had to admit, when I walked, there was a whole new roll to my steps. “Buddy,” Dodger said, “you are looking good! I am a great flight instructor!”

  That made me smile. But the next thing he said wiped the smile right off.

  “In fact, I think you’re ready to fly solo!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Headaches and Handshakes

  SO THAT’S WHY I went to school the next day with a black eye. It was pretty gruesome, and I don’t really want to talk about it. All I will tell you—just in case you ever try to fly a magic carpet—is that the hard part is avoiding both power lines and tree trunks at the SAME TIME. Oh, and if your mom ever has to pull many shreds of bark out of your cheek and eyebrow with tweezers, tell her to be gentle with the rubbing alcohol.

  Trust me.

  Even though I was mortified at the thought of seeing anyone, I marched right to the school bus stop in the morning. My mom said that black eyes usually look even worse the second day, so it would be no use staying home, plus I had to tell Lizzie about the discussion between James and Craig. And I wanted to know if she was still mad at me for the problem with the marker, even though it totally hadn’t been my fault.

  I got to the bus stop before her. Amy walked there with me but stayed about ten feet to my left—I don’t think she wanted to be seen with her black-and-blue, alleged nose picker of a brother. I had my baseball cap on, pulled way down so the shadow of the bill covered the top half of my face. When Lizzie got there, she stood about ten feet to my right. I noticed she had a scarf wrapped around the entire bottom half of her face.

  We looked like some sort of demented cosmic twins. I forced myself to stroll casually over to her with my cool new skater walk, took a deep breath, and pushed my hat way back on my forehead. Lizzie gasped and said through several layers of scarf, “Oh, my goodness! What on earth happened to your eye? And why are you limping?”

  Hmm. Maybe the skater walk still needed a tune-up. I said, “Long story. How’s your mouth?”

  She looked both ways to make sure nobody was around, and unwrapped herself. It was my turn to gasp. She looked like her lips had been attacked by blind face painters. Sloppy blind face painters. I said, “It’s all right. It doesn’t really look . . . that . . .” And then I couldn’t help myself. I let out a little giggle. I covered my mouth, horrified at the thought that now Lizzie would hate me forever. But then she started giggling, too. By the time the bus pulled up, my hat was completely off, her scarf was in her coat pocket, and we were laughing so hard we had to hold on to each other to keep from falling over.

  That’s when James’s cheerleader friend opened her bus window, held up her cell phone, and took their next campaign picture.

  We got on the bus, and Lizzie kept asking me how I’d gotten the black eye. Of course, the entire busload of kids was staring at us, so I told her I’d explain the whole thing later. At lunch, when we were seated at our usual table away from everybody else, Lizzie decided that “later” had arrived. After a whole morning of being teased about the eye without being able to tell anyone how it had happened, I was ready to talk.

  I gave Lizzie the story in great detail, and her eyes just lit up. When I was finished, she asked, “What did you tell your parents when you got home? And what did they say?”

  “I told them I had fallen off my bike trying to jump a ramp in the woods. You know my mom isn’t nearly as protective as she used to be, but she was pretty mad about that. Plus, of course, my glasses got pretty bent up, which always makes her mad. While she was cleaning up my face, she made me promise like a thousand times that I wouldn’t try any more jumps.”

  “And your dad? What did he say?”

  “Well, he just sat there quietly while Mom was giving me the lecture. Then, when she left the bathroom, he leaned over and asked me, ‘So, was it cool?’ ”

  Lizzie laughed, but then she got all serious and said, “So, was it? Because—because—WOW! You FLEW!”

  I shushed her frantically, but the roar of the lunchroom appeared to have prevented the other
s from hearing her. “Uh, it was kind of cool,” I admitted.

  Lizzie said, “I knew it! So can I go flying with you?”

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous.”

  Lizzie said, “Oh, Willie! Are you trying to protect me? That’s really sweet!”

  Jeepers.

  Then she stamped her foot under the table and said, “But if you can do it, I can do it!”

  Double jeepers.

  I didn’t know what to say. I really didn’t want Lizzie to get hurt. Heck, I didn’t want me to get hurt; the very thought of climbing back on that carpet made my stomach feel all funny. But, on the other hand, if she had gone flying on a magic carpet without me, I’d be absolutely dying to go, too. I got a break from replying when James and Craig appeared in the doorway of the cafeteria. James was cracking up, but Craig definitely looked annoyed.

  Swell.

  The bell rang, and the whole grade got its newest episode of campaign entertainment. I had no idea how they had done it so fast, but James and Craig had put up a new set of posters. These featured side-by-side photos again. On the left, James and Craig were standing solemnly in front of an American flag, which was blowing majestically in the wind. On the right, Lizzie and I were huddled together, bruised and stained. The caption on this one said:

  RED, WHITE, AND BLUE

  or BLACK AND BLUE?

  TAKE YOUR PICK!

  Grr.

  As soon as we got to class, Mrs. Starsky called James into the hallway. My seat is right in front by the door of our classroom, and when we got back up there, I could hear Mrs. Starsky arguing that James would have to take the posters down. She told him they were cruel, and that this was his second mean poster in a row. He said, But in the last election, the Republican candidates insulted each other’s religions. I had to admit, he had a point. She told him the posters were unacceptable. He said, But in America we have freedom of speech. And aren’t these elections supposed to teach us about American values? Ooh, I had to admit, he was good. She accused him and Craig of sneaking out of the lunchroom to use the school’s computer lab to make the posters. He said, W-e-e-l-l-l-l-l . . . She warned him that if she caught them sneaking around the building again, there would be serious consequences. He assured her it wouldn’t happen again, and the posters stayed up.

  By the next day, Lizzie’s mouth was pretty much back to normal, but my eye had turned the sickly blackish green of a rotting banana peel. Also, it was throbbing pretty constantly. Maybe that’s why my speech didn’t turn out so great. This was my first draft:

  Dear fellow classmates,

  Hi, I’m Willie Ryan. I am running for fifth-grade president, and my running mate is Lizzie Barrett. She’s running for vice president. We are supposed to talk about three things: school environment, school rules, and school spirit. I like our school environment. If I become president, I would like it even better because I would be president of it. I think our school would have a better environment if the teachers bought nice plants for their windows. I think I would be good at getting teachers to buy plants. Plants make oxygen, and I like oxygen. So do you, I bet.

  About those rules: I think it should be a rule that lunch is longer. With recognizable meats. And there should be no tests on Fridays or Mondays. Possibly not ever. On the other hand, Lizzie likes tests. I’ll see what I can do.

  On the topic of school spirit, I have a lot of school spirit. Just the other day I wore a school sweatshirt to school, which showed a lot of spirit. Also, my favorite pencil has our school’s name on it.

  So please vote for me and Lizzie. We are true blue. Also, we are not geeks. James was just saying that.

  I read the speech to Lizzie at my house after school. She said it was all wrong. “First of all,” she said in her snotty, perfect British-girl tone, “you don’t say ‘My fellow classmates.’ It’s redundant, because your classmates are automatically your fellows. Also, blah blah blah . . .”

  I mean, she didn’t actually say blah blah blah. It’s just that after a while, that’s what I heard. Of course, we argued about it. She said she’d rewrite it for me, and I said I could do it myself. Then she said I was stubborn and ungrateful. I said I just didn’t want a vice president who told me what to do all the time. She said that I shouldn’t worry, because all I had to do was give that speech, and I’d definitely lose the election and not have a vice president, period.

  The argument got so bad that Dodger woke up from his mid-afternoon nap under my bed and scolded us. “Dudes,” he said, “you’re, like, total pals. Don’t let some stupid election make you forget that, all right?” Then he made us shake hands, which was completely embarrassing. Especially because my palm was all sweaty. I swear, I wasn’t nervous about shaking hands with Lizzie or anything. It was just really hot in the house. In fact, it was so hot I needed a drink. I went downstairs, got juice boxes for us, and went back up.

  Lizzie and Dodger looked way too happy when I got there. I said sheepishly, “Okay, Lizzie, do you want to help me fix up my speech now?” Dodger did his weird one-eyed wink thing and said, “No worries, Willie. It’s, like, taken care of.”

  “Uh, hold on a minute. What do you mean, it’s taken care of?”

  Dodger held up my speech. “I mean, this is totally out of your hands, dude. Just leave this speech in the hands of the expert!”

  “Expert? What kind of expert are you?”

  He rolled his eye. “What kind of expert am I? A speech expert, that’s what kind of expert. Did you ever hear of a guy named Thomas Jefferson? Who wrote a little thing called the Declaration of Independence?”

  This was too much, even for Dodger. “Are you telling me you helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence?”

  Dodger said, “Well, not exactly. I was, like, supposed to. But then that Ben Franklin guy tricked me into holding some kite with a key on it—and by the time I woke up, I’d missed the whole revolution. Which was really too bad for George Washington, because I made him this really awesome set of magic teeth, and I never even got to give them to him. The Great Lasorda ended up selling the teeth to some boxer named Muhammad something or other, like, two hundred years later, and they made him float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. But that’s not even the point. The point is, I was totally ready to write that whole declaration, just like I’m totally ready to make your speech the best one ever!”

  I said, “Um, I totally appreciate the offer and all, but I’d really rather just do the whole thing myself if you don’t mind.” I reached for the paper.

  There was a POOF! Suddenly Dodger was gone. So was Lizzie. So was the speech.

  Just then, Amy knocked on the door. When I opened it, she was wearing her Sherlock clothes and was carrying a stethoscope my parents had gotten her for her fifth birthday, when she was going through her “I want to be a puppy doctor” phase. “A-ha!” she exclaimed. “Entering the suspect’s room, I find one boy—where only moments ago I heard three voices. I’m going to solve this mystery, or my name isn’t Sherlock Holmes!”

  “Uh, no offense, Amy, but your name ISN’T Sherlock Holmes.”

  She kicked me in the shin. All of a sudden, I felt kind of sorry for James Beeks. And anyone who would ever have to face Amy on a soccer field. “By the way,” she said, “I agree with Lizzie and the mysterious, unseen character with the deep voice. Your speech needs some serious work.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Little Help from

  My Friends

  “WILLIE, IT’S A DISASTER!” Lizzie shouted as she came charging up to the bus stop on Monday morning.

  “What are you talking about? Where did you and Dodger disappear to? And what’s the disaster? Are you okay? Is Dodger all right?”

  She said, “Dodger’s fine, and I’m fine. We flew on the magic carpet. It was brilliant! Dodger told me I was a much better carpet pilot than—I mean, he said I was a natural.”

  Oh, so Lizzie was a better carpet pilot than I was, huh? Super. “So,
Miss Flying Ace, what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is where Dodger said he was going after he dropped me off.”

  Dear Reader, here’s some more life advice from your friend Willie:

  -If your two best friends, one of whom has access to magical objects, suddenly disappear right after telling you not to worry about it, do yourself a favor: Worry about it.

  -If one of those friends tells the other one he’s “just popping into the school to fix something,” worry about it even more.

  -If the other friend gets all cocky about her ability to fly one of those magical objects, try really hard not to slug her.

  “What do you mean, after he dropped you off? Maybe you should just tell me the whole story from the beginning.”

  Fortunately, the bus was late, because this story was a doozy. “Well,” Lizzie said, “it started when we left your room, obviously. We reappeared in the Field of Dreams, and Dodger explained the whole flying thing to me. But he told me that if he let me fly, I would owe him a favor later. And I had to give my word of honor. That was tricky. I mean, I trust that Dodger means well, but his ideas—well, you know.”

  Yeah, I knew exactly what she meant.

  “I gave him my word, though. I mean, a friend is a friend, right? Plus, I admit it: I really wanted to fly. So he gave me the basics, and those were so easy that pretty soon I was doing an Ollie over the town water tower—you know, like in skateboarding, when you push down on the back of your board and do a little jump? I’m sure Dodger showed you that one, it’s so elementary. Anyway, while you were doing your Ollie over the water tower, did Dodger tell you the origin of the term? My next-door neighbor’s older brother is big into skateboarding, and he once told me that Ollie was short for allez-oop, which is what French circus performers used to shout before leaping into the air. But Dodger informed me that it really comes from Ali Baba. Apparently, Dodger was once showing him how to fly over the pyramids in Egypt and—”