Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President by Barbara Park Page A

know, Judith. But Alan would never even have thought of the pizza idea if it wasn’t for me.”
    “Would’ve, too,” she’d say back.
    After she turned around, I would make a gross face at the back of her head. The one where I pull down the bottoms of my eyes and stretch my mouth out with my thumbs.
    I never let her see me, though. ’Cause here’s the worst part of all. Even though I can’t stand Judith Topper’s guts, I still wanted her to vote for me.
    I’m not proud about it, but it’s true. That’s what happens in politics. Even if a disgusting green slimeball oozed under the classroom door, you’d still want it to vote for you.
    Stuff like that can make you very mixed-upinside. And sometimes when you’re very mixed-up inside, you do things you know you shouldn’t do.
    Like I’ve never told anybody this. Not even Maxie. But I wanted Judith Topper’s vote so bad I let her look at the answers on my state capitals test. I mean it. I actually let Judith cheat off me on purpose.
    I still think about it a lot. About how I pretended to drop my pencil on the floor that day. And how I leaned down to pick it up as slowly as I could. To give her time, you know? Time to see almost any answer she wanted.
    I even wrote I NEED YOUR VOTE in the margin of my paper, so she would understand that we were sort of helping each other out here.
    I’m still not exactly sure what happened. Maybe it’s just hard to read state capitals when they’re upside down. But Judith still didn’t pass the test. She put down that the capital of Delaware was Rover, instead of Dover. Like Delaware would actually name its capital after a dog. Also, she wrote that the capital of Idaho was Potato.
    But what made me the sickest was that thevery next morning, she
still
came to school wearing one of Alan’s pepperonis.
    I put one of my little pink stomach buttons on her desk so she could switch. But instead of pinning it on, she picked it up by the very edge—like it was dirty or something—and she dropped it on the floor.
    “No offense,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “But these little stomachs are the most disgusting campaign buttons I’ve ever seen.”
    This time I didn’t even think about being nice. “Yeah, right, Judith. Like wearing a hunk of oily meat on your shirt is in good taste.”
    Judith smiled meanly. Then she started singing, “You’re gonna lose.” Only she sang it real loud and slow, like, “YOU’RE GONNA LUUUU-OOOOZE … YOU’RE GONNA LUUUU-OOOOZE.”
    Two rows over, Billie Ray Carver grabbed a pencil and hopped up on his chair. He pretended to be her conductor. You know, the orchestra guy with the stick.
    I hate Billie Ray Carver. Not quite as much as Judith Topper, but still a very, very lot.
    Sometimes when he walks past my desk, I hold my breath. He doesn’t smell bad or anything. I just don’t like to breathe in the air he’s stirred up. It’s filled with BRC’s—Billie Ray’s cooties. And I don’t want them getting into my nostrils.
    Anyway, the stupid thing was that the whole time Billie Ray Carver was pretending to be a conductor, he was wearing one of my campaign buttons. Not on his collar, though. He was wearing it on his stomach just to be gross.
    Billie Ray really loved my buttons. Maxie said he was the best advertisement we had. “Face it, Rosie. Jerks like that have a lot of friends,” he said. “You’ve got to suck up to Billie Ray Carver, even if it kills you.”
    And so that afternoon, when we went out to the playground for recess and I saw Billie Ray Carver put gum on one of the swings, I didn’t say a word.
    He knew I saw him, too. “Hey, Swanson,” he hollered. “Want to see something funny?”
    Then he called to this cute girl in our class named Anna Havana. “Hey, Anna. Come over here! I’ll push you!”
    And so Anna Havana went over and sat down right on the swing with the gum. And I didn’t even try to warn her. I just kept my mouth shut. And I watched.
    I told