Dodger for President (5 page)

Lizzie came upstairs with Dodger trailing invisibly behind her and threw three rolled-up posters on the bed. “They're ruined,” she said in disgust.

“What do you mean, ruined?”

“They're blue—all blue. One hundred percent blue. Apparently Dodger's camera only takes blue pictures.”

“Uh, can I see them anyway?” I asked.

I could tell Lizzie didn't even want to see the posters again, but Dodger grabbed one right up. “Dude,” he said, “I think they're pretty cool. I mean, come on—what's better looking than blue? That's right—nothing!” He opened the poster with a flourish.

And there I was, leaning against the blue tree with one hand, all decked out in the baseball uniform. Sure enough, I was blue. But I could see Dodger's point. The effect was kind of cool. Dodger
laid that poster gently on the bed and then showed me the second one. I was wearing a suit, standing tall and straight in front of the late-afternoon sun. I thought I looked pretty mature and noble. Also, unfortunately, blue. The third poster was the best: me, back in my regular old jeans and T-shirt, with my backpack on one shoulder. Dodger put that poster down next to the other two just as Amy charged into my room unannounced. The girl was developing some alarmingly bad little-sister habits. On the other hand, she had kicked Beeks that morning. Maybe she was on my side.

Amy looked at the posters and snorted. “Hey, big brother. Are you running for President or Blueberry Princess? 'Cause if you're running for Blueberry Princess, your campaign is really getting good!”

She bent over one of the pictures, snatched up yet another blue hair for her evidence collection, and walked out. All right—even if she had kicked Beeks—she might not have been totally devoted to my campaign.

Lizzie, Dodger, and I all looked at one another. Then Lizzie and Dodger spoke at the same
time. She said, “Sorry about the waste of time, Willie. We'll just have to—” And then he said, “So, bud, am I right or am I right? I say we go blue all the—”

I cut them both off by jumping up and shouting, “THAT'S IT! Dodger, you're a genius!”

Once again, I heard two voices at once. Dodger said, “I am?” Lizzie said, “He is?” Then he said, “Wait, I'm not?” and looked at Lizzie with puppy-dog eyes. I mean, puppy-dog eye. Well, puppy-chimp eye. Anyway, she replied, “I'm sorry, Dodger. I didn't mean—it's just that you're rather—”

“QUIET!” I yelled. “We're not throwing out the posters, Lizzie! I know exactly what they need to say. We're going to use these posters. In fact, we're going to print up a whole bunch of them. And we're going to win this election, fair and square!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LIZZIE
,
DODGER
,
AND I
had a lot of work to do that night, but we got it done together. The next morning, for the third day in a row, I was the first kid at school. Lizzie was right behind me (Dodger was at home, sleeping in his lamp on my top shelf). Lizzie and I each carried a big roller tube of posters and a tape gun. By the time the front doors of the building opened, we had plastered the hallways and classroom doors with our posters. There were equal numbers of posters with each picture, but all of them had my name across the top and the same slogan across the bottom. They said:

 

VOTE FOR WILLIE RYAN
THE TRUE-BLUE CANDIDATE

 

When the last piece of tape was stuck to the last wall, Lizzie smiled at me, and I gave her a high five. Then we leaned against the lockers and watched the students come in. People were stopping to read the posters, pointing at them, giving us little thumbs-up signs. I saw Craig walk in and read a poster. He actually looked kind of impressed. Then James stepped through the door, pushed Craig aside, and scowled at my picture. He even reached out to rip the poster off the wall, but then—out of nowhere—Amy was next to him. She stamped on his toes, pushed him away from the poster, and stomped off down the hall.

Little sisters. You never know whether to hate them or give them a medal.

In class, Mrs. Starsky announced that we would be doing a whole mini-unit on elections: “Because it's great to see you all so excited about democracy in action!” I swear, the woman could turn anything into a lesson. I think if the classroom ceiling collapsed
on her, she'd be lying on the floor with a hole in her head, going, “This is great, class! Now we can study how blood circulates through the human body!”

Apparently the highlights of the unit were going to be an assembly with speeches by each presidential candidate, and then another assembly with a second set of speeches, this time by the vice presidential candidates. And the first assembly would be in only five days. Assuming I survived that, the second one would be two days after that, with the election one day later.

Jeepers. Making posters was one thing, but standing in front of the whole entire school and sounding like I knew what the heck I was talking about? That was a whole new level of terror. I could feel the nervous sweat of failure pouring out of me already—at this rate, I might drown before I ever had a chance to speak. I couldn't wait to get home so I could thank Dodger for getting me into this mess. Lizzie, on the other hand, was squirming in her seat with joy. I knew I was lucky to have her help, but did she have to look so DELIGHTED about it?

At lunch, all Lizzie could talk about were the assemblies. She babbled on about “issues,” “priorities,” and the electoral whatchamacallit thing, while I looked around the cafeteria and tried not to run out of there screaming in total panic. I wondered how Beeks and Flynn were taking this new development, but I couldn't see them anywhere . . . until the last minute or so of lunch period, when they suddenly appeared against the back wall. Craig looked kind of nervous, but James was pounding him on the back and holding out his hand for a high five.

Uh-oh.

As soon as the bell rang, I found out why Beeks was so happy. There were new posters in the hallway. They featured side-by-side photos of him and me. Beeks was posing in front of the school, with his body facing the camera and his head turned to one side. He looked like a superhero. And the picture of me—YIKES! I was facing the camera, and it looked like I had my index finger up my nose. Beneath the pictures, in bright red letters, were these words:

 

B
EEKS OR
R
YAN
?
TAKE YOUR PICK!

 

My mind was churning. As the whole darn fifth grade rushed by me, pointing and laughing, I thought back. How in the world had Beeks gotten that picture? I was pretty sure I'd have remembered if someone had come up to me with a camera and said, “Okay, Willie. Stick your finger up your nostril and say CHEESE!” And then it hit me: the girl at the doughnut table. When she had told me about the chocolate on my lip, it had been a setup. She had taken the picture on her cell phone camera.

Holy cow. Dodger had been right about the lesson of
The Little Mermaid
. I should have been on the lookout for suspiciously helpful witches.

The afternoon was horrible. Everywhere I went, kids were pointing, staring, and cracking up in my face. My class passed Amy's on the way to art class, and she whispered to me, “What are they all laughing about? If you ask me, 'snot funny at all!” Then she giggled. “'Snot funny! Get it?”

Yeah, I got it, Sherlock.

After school, Lizzie grabbed my elbow when we got off the bus and marched me toward my house. “What's going on?” I asked.

Through gritted teeth, she said, “Crisis meeting.” She steamrolled me into my house, right past my parents, and up to my room. As soon as we got there, she strode over and banged three times on the side of Dodger's lamp.

He appeared beside it, in bright orange pj's. He was wearing an old-fashioned nightcap and clutching his ears. “Lizzie, OWW! What's going on?” he asked.

I looked at her. “Yeah, that's what
I
said.”

Lizzie explained the whole poster thing to Dodger. I couldn't bear to hear it again, so I ran downstairs to get a snack. My dad was sitting in the big chair in our living room and asked me, “Son, is your friend up there talking to herself?”

“Dad,” I said with what I hoped was a light-hearted tone, “that's silly. Why would Lizzie be talking to herself?”

Great. Now Amy was investigating us, my mom was practically planning our wedding, and my father
thought Lizzie was a nutcase. I trudged back up to my room, where Dodger was sitting on my bed. He still had on his bizarre sleeping outfit, but was holding a pencil and a writing pad. Lizzie was using the dry-erase board in my room to give him a lecture. And—get this—Dodger was taking notes!

Then, out of nowhere, I heard the weirdest music. It sounded as if there were a million percussion instruments going at once, but all of the instruments sounded like coconuts being banged against logs or something. There were singers, too—if you could call them that. They were chanting, “
Ook ook eeee eeee eeee, ook ook eeee eeee eeee,
” over and over in harmony. The effect was kind of amazing.

Lizzie said, “Dodger, what in the world is that?”

Looking around with exaggerated casualness, Dodger said, “Oh, that? It's just the Chimptopian National Anthem. Technically, we should stand up right now, eat a banana, and scratch under our—”

“No, I mean, where is it coming from?”

He started edging his way toward the shelf that held his lamp. “Uh, it's just my ring tone. But don't worry, I didn't use my cell phone to call any old magical friends or anything, because I'm not at all
worried that you'll get totally slaughtered in the—I mean, I wouldn't just go calling the Great—uh, let me just take this call, okay? Back in a jiffy!”

With a snap of his long fingers, Dodger disappeared into the lamp. The jungle music stopped. Lizzie and I were left to stare at each other in horror. Very quietly she asked, “Did Dodger just say what I think he said?”

“I'm not sure. What do you think he said?”

“What do you think I think he said?”

“I think you think he—oh, never mind! I think he said he called the Great Lasorda. But he couldn't possibly be that dumb, could he?”

Lizzie looked at me some more without another word. But the scrunched-up look on her face told me everything I needed to know. And that was some scary news. See, the Great Lasorda was this super-powerful genie who was Dodger's boss for thousands of years. And I had accidentally freed Dodger from working for Lasorda when I wished for Dodger to be my best friend forever. There was this fire in my kitchen and some really burned salmon and a baseball game. Oh, and a bunch of magic.

Hey, if you think that all sounds pretty complicated, you should have tried living through it. And if Lizzie and I were right, I had a feeling my life was about to get complicated again.

Yeah, like it wasn't already.

After a few minutes, Dodger popped out of his lamp with a sheepish grin on his face. “Well,” he said, “that was interesting. It seems my dear aunt Sally has been growing mujango beans in her rain-forest garden again this fall. And little Cousin Bongo is getting his vine-swinging license. It's always nice to catch up with the old—what? What are you both staring at?”

“Dodger,” Lizzie asked, advancing on him, “did you call the Great Lasorda today?”

“Um, well, that wasn't the Great Lasorda on the phone just now, I swear. It was just, uh, someone else.”

I gave Dodger my best raised-eyebrow look (which I have to admit, I learned by watching Amy). “For real?”

Dodger put his hand over his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to smell a durian fruit!”

“What the heck, Dodger?”

Lizzie chimed in, “You know, a durian fruit. They're considered a delicacy in Southeast Asia, but are famed for their unpleasant—”

“I don't care about the stupid fruit, Lizzie. I want to know what the heck he was doing on the phone if he wasn't talking to Lasorda.”

“Buddy, it was no biggie, okay? I was just talking to, uh, a member of my family. So, Lizzie,” Dodger said, “can you get back to telling me about your three-part election strategy?” He smiled dazzlingly at her. “I love hearing all of your clever plans!”

Lizzie fell for it—she totally let Dodger distract her from whatever trouble he had been creating on the phone. I swear, she's willing to argue with me at an instant's notice, but she instantly forgets her brains for the first flattering chimp that comes along and flashes some teeth her way.

Girls!

Well, at least I would get to hear Lizzie's brilliant ideas. Apparently, our campaign should address three topics, which Mrs. Starsky had explained while I was staring out the classroom window and panicking. The topics were school
climate, school rules, and school spirit. So we needed to come up with intelligent things to say about each of them. Lizzie stood next to the dry-erase board, chewing on the closed cover of a marker, waiting for our input.

I was wracking my brains, trying to come up with something that sounded like a president might say it, when Dodger jumped straight up in the air and shouted, “I've got it! I've got it!”

Lizzie was so startled that she accidentally bit down on the cap of the marker, splitting it in half. She got a mouthful of bright blue ink and ran out of the room gagging. I ran after her, while Dodger hid himself in my closet. Lizzie ran into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. Of course this was the perfect moment for Amy to appear, so she came out of her room, chewing a huge wad of gum. She walked around me, Sherlock Holmes–style deerstalker cap on her head, and examined me with her magnifying glass. I didn't say a word; I just hoped Amy might finish checking me out and go away before Lizzie came back out.