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“Janie’s right, okay? Everything has to be fair. So first everyone’s got to sit down. Then we’ll have an election to see who runs the concert. You can vote for anyone—like for me, or Janie, or for Colleen.”
    â€œHey!” yelled Tim. “What about me?” And his friends started chanting again, “TIM! TIM! TIM!”
    Ross grinned. “Sure. Tim too. But everyonehas to sit down. And the person with the most votes wins.”
    Ross grabbed four or five pieces of paper from his notebook, ripped them into little squares, and started passing them out.
    As quickly as the room had gotten noisy, it got quiet again. Everyone took a ballot and began writing.
    Hart almost voted for Janie, but at the last minute he wrote Ross’s name. Ross was sort of a brainhead, but he was still a pretty good guy.
    Colleen took a small drum from a shelf at the front of the room, turned it upside down, and dropped her ballot in. Then she walked up and down the rows until everyone had put one ballot into the drum.
    She took the drum to a table at the front of the room and dumped it out. When she started to unfold the ballots, someone yelled, “Hey—no fair! Someone else should count!”
    And another kid yelled, “Yeah, Mr. Meinert should count.” Around the room, kids nodded and said, “Yeah! Mr. Meinert!” “Yeah, ’cause he won’t cheat!” “It should be Mr. Meinert!”
    Mr. Meinert, still reading his magazine, shook his head.
    Colleen walked over to him and said, “Please , Mr. Meinert? Everybody wants you to.”
    Mr. Meinert was actually relieved, glad to be taking charge of his classroom again. But he didn’t show it. He put down his magazine, slowly stood up, and rolled his desk chair over to the table. He sat down in front of the heap of ballots and began unfolding each one, sorting the different names into separate piles. The only sound in the room was crinkling paper.
    When the last ballot was unfolded and sorted, Mr. Meinert began counting. He counted the ballots in the first pile, and then counted them a second time. Then he pulled a pad of Post-it notes out of his pocket, wrote down a number, peeled off the note, and stuck it onto the pile. Then he started counting the second pile. There were almost seventy-five ballots, so it took him about ten minutes to count them all.
    When he was done, Mr. Meinert looked at the numbers he’d written on each pile of ballots.Then he picked up what looked like the biggest stack and counted them again. And then he counted the other big stack.
    Mr. Meinert stood up. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked around the room, enjoying the silence, enjoying how completely he had everyone’s attention.
    Speaking slowly, he said, “First, I want to thank those few students who voted for me. It was a kind thought, but your votes were wasted. I’ve already told you that between now and Christmas vacation I will be in this room only as an observer. Therefore, it is now my duty to announce the results of this free and fair election. The new chorus director for this year’s holiday concert is none other than our very own … Hart Evans.”

Eight
DIRECTOR
    A fter Mr. Meinert’s announcement the room was quiet, but only for a second.
    â€œNo way!” Hart gripped the sides of his desk. He shook his head and looked around the room. “No way! I’m not gonna be the chorus director—I wasn’t even in this election—no way!”
    Colleen jumped to her feet and said, “I can be the director, okay? I know I can do it. And I’ll do a good job at it too.”
    Mr. Meinert said, “Colleen, please sit down.” Then, turning to Hart, he said, “You already are the new director, Hart. We all heard the rules. Ross said that the whole chorus could vote for anyone. That’s what he said. And you didn’t complain about that. And like