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want. You know, like do they want a good education, or better cafeteria food, or whatever. So I thought I’d start with you. Seriously. What do you want? I mean, within reason.”
    I want out of this conversation
. “Um, I don’t know.”
    “I was thinking maybe we could get together and talk about it. Because you just seem like a really perceptive person.”
    June liked that he thought she was perceptive. But was he asking her out, or what?
    Jerry said, “For coffee?” When June didn’t immediately reply, he added, “It was just an idea.”
    June imagined Jerry’s face with startling clarity, his ears and cheeks reddening, his soft brown eyes tearing up. She heard herself say, “Okay.” Because it was such a relief that it was just coffee. She wouldn’t have to get dressed up and deal with the whole Big First Date thing — not that she would have said yes to that, but still.
    He said, “You know where the Bun and Brew is? We could walk over there tomorrow, from school?”
    June thought of Wes, and wondered why she hadn’t seen him on the way home lately.
    She said, “Okay. Only I have something else I have to do right after school.” It wasn’t true, but she didn’t want to walk to the coffee shop with Jerry. It would feel too public, too exposed. “I could meet you there at three thirty?”
    “Deal,” said Jerry. “And think about what you want.”
    “A cappuccino and an éclair,” June said.
    “I mean as a voter.”
    June laughed. “Sorry!” She could feel herself relaxing. One thing about Jerry — she would always know what
he
wanted.

CHAPTER
EIGHT
    A LAN S CHWARTZ PLUNKED HIS TRAY DOWN next to Wes at lunch and said, “Your friend Jerry is a certifiable moron.”
    “
All
my friends are morons,” Wes said.
    “Yeah, well, Jerry Preuss makes the rest of us look like Einsteins.”
    “What did he do?”
    “Let’s see.” Alan sat down, picked up a carrot stick, and counted off his points by tapping it on the table. “Wants to be class president.”
Tap.
“An unpaid and thankless position.”
Tap.
“Talks about it constantly.”
Tap.
“To people who could give a rat’s ass.”
Tap.
He raised his eyebrows as if to invite disagreement, put the carrot stick in his mouth, and bit down.
    “I can’t believe you put that thing in your mouth,” Wes said.
    “I can’t believe
Preuss
expects us to listen to his campaign rhetoric for another six months,” Alan said through a mouthful of pulverized carrot.
    “Wait.” Wes sat up straight. “Six
months
?”
    “Course. The election is in April. You vote in the class president for the next school year.”
    Wes shook his head. “The way he’s been acting, I thought it was next week.”
    “Negatory.”
    “So who’s president this year?”
    “Laurie Floss.”
    “Who’s Laurie Floss?”
    “The budding politician we voted into office last April.”
    “I don’t think I voted anybody into office.”
    “It was not a highly publicized affair.”
    “Huh. What did she promise everybody?”
    “Nobody knows. But whatever it was, I’m pretty sure we didn’t get it.”
    “So maybe Jerry’s strategy of promising everybody everything isn’t so stupid after all, if nobody is going to remember it next year.”
    “What’s
stupid
is that he wants to be president in the
first
place. And what were those things he had you handing out?”
    Wes shrugged. “Questions for potential voters.”
    “How come I didn’t get one?”
    “Did you want one?”
    “No!”
    “There you go.”
    “You know what I think?”
    “About what?”
    “I think all
my
friends are idiots too.”
    “Oh. My. God. Jerry
Preuss?”
Phoebe made her eyes go huge. “You’re totally joking. What was it
like?”
    “We didn’t
do
anything,” June said, looking from Phoebe to Britt to Jess. “I just went out with him.”
    “I know. I mean … I didn’t mean … I mean, was he, like … or what?”
    “He’s just a
guy,”
June said, wishing she hadn’t brought it up at