Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (10 page)

Patrick shrugged. “Good source of protein.”

At least things were quiet at home. Though it was weird walking along the hall upstairs. Bobby’s room was on one side of
mine. Smelly’s was on the other. Both empty. Meet the Hudson kids—one had split, one hadn’t arrived, and the other didn’t have a clue about where he was going.

Dad spent a lot of time in the garage working on the ‘vette, even though Bobby wasn’t around to give him a hand. I hung out there when I had a chance, though I mostly just watched Dad, or read. Sometimes, he’d look over to his left, like he was going to ask Bobby to pass him a wrench.

Whenever he asked me to hand him a tool, it took me about three tries to find the right one.

Once in a while, Dad would point to some part of the engine and explain what he was doing. I’d nod and try to say something that showed I was interested. Once in a while, I’d hold up my book and explain about some cool part I’d just read. Dad would nod and say, “That’s interesting.” I didn’t offer to read to him. That didn’t feel like a guy thing.

Mom was worried about Bobby, but he’d called when everyone was out and left a message saying he was visiting friends in Ohio, so at least we knew where he was. Dad had already stopped by the diner to let them know Bobby wouldn’t be showing up for work.

In school, the halls started to fill up with hand-lettered posters. Five kids were running for freshman-class president. Including Julia. The other candidates were dorks, so there was no way she’d lose.

Maybe she could do something about crime when she got elected. After being careful for nearly a month, I forgot to wrap up my change in my backpack. Just when I realized my
pocket was jingling, Wesley Cobble approached me for a donation.

I’m not a complete wimp, and it’s not like I’ll never stand up for myself, but Wesley is flat-out scary. He isn’t the biggest kid in the school. A lot of the football players are bigger. The thing is, he has this look in his eyes like he really doesn’t care what happens to him. There’s no way to predict how he’ll react to something. If I told him he couldn’t have my change, he might just shrug and walk off. Or he might punch me and kick me until there was nothing left but painful memories and calcium dust.

I wish I could lock Wesley and Vernon in a room and let them destroy each other. At the moment, all I could do was try to avoid him, and make a note on the subject for the benefit of others. I pulled out my notebook and wrote a quick list. The funny thing is that by the time I was finished, I felt a lot better.

Scott Hudson’s Guide for Spotting Unpredictable People

1. They have dried blood on their clothes.
   
2. Their tattoos are scarier than most horror movies.
   
3. They ask questions for which there is no safe answer, like “What are you looking at?”
   
4. They tend not to have a huge circle of friends.
   

Patrick, on the other hand, remained painfully predictable. He was always trying to talk me into stuff. “You should run,”
he said, pointing to the student-council sign-up sheet on the bulletin board.

“You’ve got to be crazy,” I said.

“Hey, I’m serious. There are just eight kids signed up for council. And three spots. You’d have a chance.”

“No, I wouldn’t. The whole thing is a popularity contest. Even if I did have a chance, why in the world would I want to be on the student council? I don’t even know what they do.”

Patrick grinned at me. “Because the council meets with the class president.”

I tried not to let my face show that I’d taken a shot to the gut. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not blind. I see you drooling whenever Julia moves into sight. I can hear your heart beat from the other side of the building. Can’t blame you. She’s pretty hot.”

“No way. I’m just …”

Patrick stared right at me, still grinning. I couldn’t lie to him. “God, is it that obvious?”

He shrugged. “I doubt anyone else around here cares whether your tongue is hanging out. Except maybe the guy who cleans the floors.”

A thought hit me, along with a second blow to the stomach. “You think Kyle noticed?” I could see him torturing me with that information. Or maybe torturing Julia with it. Or—oh, my God—mentioning it to Vernon just for fun. When we were little, it was always Kyle who did the worst damage to anthills and spiderwebs.

“Not a chance. He’s too busy noticing himself.”

“Yeah, I guess. Look. It’s no big deal. I think she’s cute. But there are plenty of cute girls. A whole school full of them. And she doesn’t even notice me, anyhow. It’s really nothing.”

Patrick tapped the board. “Your choice. But if it was me, I’d go for it. What do you have to lose?”

Friday morning, I was walking into the building with Mouth when I saw Wesley strolling down the hall. I slowed up and let Mouth get ahead. He didn’t even seem to notice that I wasn’t there. He just kept walking and talking.

When Wesley reached him, they had a brief conversation. Then Mouth handed over his money. I stepped into a classroom and waited until Wesley went past. On the way down the hall, I saw Mouth at his locker. I almost kept going, but I felt sort of bad for him.

“Need lunch money?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess I do. How’d you know? I had money, but I ran into this guy who asked me for some, and my mom always
says it’s better to give than receive, so I figured that was what I should do. But maybe not, because doesn’t that mean that the other guy is receiving? So it’s not better for him. Right?”

I handed him a couple bucks. He followed me down the hall all the way to homeroom and kept thanking me. I was glad I didn’t give him more. He probably would have asked if we could become blood brothers.

Later, he even came over to our lunch table and sat down so he could thank me some more and show me how wisely he’d used my money.

“Seat’s taken,” Kyle said, cutting into Mouth’s monologue.

Mouth moved to another seat. I glanced across to the popular girls’ table. The new kid with the green hair was sitting there again. I guess girls handle things differently than guys.

“That one’s taken, too,” Kyle said.

Mouth got up. “No problem. I don’t have time to hang out right now, anyhow. I have to work on my speech. How’s yours coming, Scott?”

My gut clenched with a ripple of panic as I wondered whether I’d forgotten about a homework assignment. “What speech?”

“For student council. You know, we have to make a speech next Tuesday. All the candidates.”

“Are you serious?” I’d never given a speech.

Mouth nodded.

I looked over at Patrick. “Did you know about this?”

He shrugged. “Why should I? I’m not running.”

Oh man. I tried to picture myself standing in front of the whole class. I felt like someone was kneeling on my throat.

“What’s going on?” Kyle asked.

“Scott’s running for student council,” Patrick said.

Kyle snorted.

“So am I,” Mouth said. “Which is good. Because you get three votes. So you can vote for me and Scott, and still have a vote left over for someone else.”

“Going to the game tonight?” I asked Kyle, in a desperate effort to change the subject.

“No way. I’ve given up on that.”

I wish I could have given up on football. But I had no choice. Worse, it was an away game. I rode there after school with the band. I could have gone on the players’ bus, but that would have been suicide. I didn’t even want to think about riding there with a bunch of psyched-up jocks. Or riding home with them after they’d lost.

And lose, we did. Big-time.

I ended up writing the article like it was a speech.
My fellow spectators, why are we here, and what do we want? I’ll tell you. We’re here to watch football, and we want touchdowns
. Which is fine for an article that nobody is going to read, but wouldn’t
be all that great for a real speech. Everything I came up with sounded stupid.

Hi, I’m Scott. Please vote for me
.

My name is Scott Hudson, and I need your vote
.

Hi, friends
…

Crap. Stupid popularity contest. What was the point? Nobody would vote for me. Even though they had three votes.

Wait. Three votes … That was it. I chucked what I’d written, and started something new.

i
’m Scott Hudson. I’m running for student council. I know two things for sure. Most of you have no idea who I am. And all of you are going to vote for your friends. So I don’t have a chance. With nine kids running, I’d probably come in tenth.”

They laughed at my joke, which I took as a good sign. I needed all the encouragement I could get. As it was, I had so much sweat dripping down my hand that I’d expected to be electrocuted when the principal passed me the microphone. The only thing that kept me going was hearing how pathetic some of the other speeches were. One kid even did his as a poem. A truly sucky poem. I was pretty sure
vote
didn’t rhyme all that well with
thought
. And I was positive
student
and
you bet
didn’t rhyme at all.

Another kid promised to try to get free ice cream at lunch and no homework on Fridays. Good luck. Actually, I guess you could promise to
try
to do anything. I could have promised to try to replace gym class with Victoria’s Secret fashion shows.

I finished my speech with what I hoped was a stroke of brilliance. “Even if you have no idea who I am, you get three
votes. I’d bet that most of you don’t have more than two friends running for student council. So I’m going to ask you to give me that third vote. Who knows? Maybe I’ll bring some fresh ideas to the student council. Thank you.”

They even clapped when I was done. Sort of. Either that, or the gym had just been invaded by a half-dozen mosquitoes.

For all his talk about getting prepared, Mouth didn’t seem to have a speech ready. He just rambled along until they told him his time was up.

Julia’s speech, on the other hand, was great. She seemed so calm and confident.

My public-speaking efforts didn’t attract any more attention than my writing. Nobody who didn’t already know me said anything to me in the halls. Well, I’d given it a shot. And at least I hadn’t written my speech as a sucky poem. Elections were in a week. Guess I’d find out then how my idea worked.

In one of those weird coincidences, Mr. Franka started out class the next day by saying, “How many of you don’t like poetry?”

Many hands went up. Including mine.

He passed an open book to Vicky Estridge. “Read that out loud.”

She started reading this poem about a guy freezing to death up in the Yukon. It was pretty cool. Mr. Franka grabbed another book and handed it to Julia. She read a short, funny poem about a pelican. Then I got to read one called “On the Naming of Cats.” I liked it.

After we’d heard three or four more poems, Mr. Franka
said, “There are as many types of poems as there are types of food. As many flavors, you might say. To claim you don’t like poetry because you hate ‘mushy stuff’ or things you don’t immediately understand is like saying you hate food because you don’t like asparagus.”