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disaster, obviously.
    I managed to smile. “Thank you, Mrs Baggoli.”
    “And as for you, Sam Creek.” She then took Sam’s hand. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time.”
    I could hear Sam swallow. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Me too.”
    All of a sudden, Dr Alsop was standing next to us. “I couldn’t agree more with Mrs Baggoli. We’re all very proud of Carla Santini, of course, she’s always been a credit to this school – but it’s nice to see someone else getting into the middle of things for a change. Especially you two.”
    Sam did some vague grunting and I kept smiling. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
    “I truly welcome your nominations,” finished Dr Alsop. He extended his hand to me. “I’ve always had the feeling that you tend to hide your light under a bushel, Ella. This has come as a most welcome surprise.”
    What I wanted to hide under a bushel right then was me.
    I couldn’t tell him I was backing out now; I just couldn’t. He looked so happy. And there were so many witnesses.
    I glanced over at Sam. He looked like he’d swallowed a sparkplug. He wasn’t going to say anything, either.
    I reached for Dr Alsop’s hand. “Thank you,” I said.
    Then Dr Alsop shook Sam’s hand. “And as for you, Mr Creek, surprise doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. It’s very gratifying that you’ve made this decision. I think we’ve really turned a corner here.”
    “Yeah,” Sam mumbled in my ear. “Right into a wall.”

Carla Santini
changes my mind
    I always went over to Lola’s after school on Friday afternoons. Friday was Lola’s sisters-minding day and she couldn’t come to me, and it was also my mother’s afternoon as a volunteer at the local nursing home so she didn’t get home till late. And, since I was going to Lola’s and Sam had to work, I was the one who was volunteered to explain Sam’s and my position on the election to Lola. Which was that, having failed to resign, we would be in the election but not really part of it. We would be candidates in name only.
    Lola and I stopped in town on the way home to pick up the badges she’d ordered.
    She talked all the way. Blahblahblah the election … the election blahblahblah. She didn’t notice that I was quiet and pensive. I was waiting for the right moment to give her a shot of reality.
    The badges were kind of black and a shade of yellow I associate with the flu. The writing was fuzzy.
    “They’re the cheapest I could get,” said Lola. “We don’t exactly have a big budget.”
    We had a total budget of one hundred and fifty dollars from the school fund. Each of the candidates got that.
    “We’ll need some money to buy paper for more posters and stuff like that,” said Lola as we pedalled to her house. “But we won’t need any money for the actual production.” Besides the cash, on Monday each candidate would be given an empty room to use after classes as his or her headquarters, a key to the photocopy machine in the office, and use of a computer. “The graphics program the art department has is excellent.”
    I said, “Um,” which was basically what I’d been saying since we left the campus.
    “We’ll have to have a rally, of course, so you can give your major speech. But we can use the gym, so that won’t cost anything.”
    This really cheered me up; incredible as it may seem, I’d forgotten about the speech-giving.
    “Great,” I said. Major as in “big” was bad enough; major as in “more than one” was my worst nightmare come true. The one time we had to give a speech in English, I was so nervous that I threw up my breakfast. I had to run out of homeroom with my hand over my mouth. When I actually got up to speak, I was shaking so much it sounded like I was playing maracas, not discussing the symbolism of William Blake. “Terrific.”
    “So that puts us way ahead,” continued Lola. “We can use the money for something really spectacular…” She gazed at the road ahead