Chapter 9

Handling Suellen and Carnival Queen proved to be no problem at all.

There were eleven of us in the large girls shower room in the gym. It’s one of those tiled palaces with shower heads lining three walls along with a bunch of drains. Privacy? Let’s just say I was delighted by the fact that I was — and am — more comfortable bare than clothed.

There should have been twelve, but — as usual — Suellen Winslow had blown off the cheerleading practice and the girls had asked me to run it. Run it I did, and maybe they ended with second thoughts about ever inviting me to do that again. But that’s neither here nor there. Suffice it to say we did get a workout. I guess we were all sweating rivers by the time I called an end to it. Now we were trying to clean up the mess.

It seemed like a good opportunity, so I said to no one in particular, “What do you think of Suellen?”

Wow! I should have been wearing armor and a hardhat. “She’s a gold-plated bitch!” was the nicest thing said. Clearly, my fellow cheerleaders hated her guts. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. As soon as they had elected her captain the previous spring their usefulness to dear Suellen had come to an end. And as I’ve said before, to Suellen the people are divided into two groups: A very small one composed of people who she deems to be useful at the moment or in the near future, and everyone else. The latter group she treated with disdain — at best.

“Guys,” I said slowly when the pejoratives stopped flying, “there’s going to be an election for Carnival Queen pretty soon. What about my sister, Sheila?”

“She would be super,” Jody Miller, a senior, replied, “but she’s only a sophomore. I think the queen has to be a senior.”

“She’ll be graduating in June,” I reported. “I don’t know if she’s officially a senior yet, but she soon will be.”

“Sam, she has my vote,” Jody responded. “And she has every vote I can possibly scare up for her, too.” Then she looked at me carefully and said, “Did you know that Jill Miller is my sister?”

Suddenly a lightbulb lighted in my pea-sized brain. “She’s in the 11^th grade, isn’t she? And on the high honor roll?”

“And the recipient of a Honda Civic from your sister? She sure is!” Then Jody grinned and added, “That girl would take that car to bed with her if she could figure out how to get it up the stairs. As far as she’s concerned — and me, too — your sister walks on water without getting her feet wet!”

At that point I looked up and there was Sheila standing right outside the shower room. “There’s room for one more, Big Sister,” I declared. “Why don’t you strip and join us?”

When she went off toward her locker to do just that, Jody asked, “Do you know where your sister has been while we’ve been practicing?”

Her question really took me by surprise. As a matter of fact, I had no idea what Sheila did while I had cheerleading practice which was almost every afternoon. “No, I guess I really don’t,” I finally replied.

“She’s been tutoring in virtually every subject area. My sister, Jill, was in tears because she was getting into trouble in Advanced Algebra. Your sister saw that she was unhappy, took her aside and figured out the problem. The result? Your sister coaches her and now she’s not getting A’s anymore ... Her algebra grades are now all A+!”

At that moment Sheila appeared and went to a vacant showerhead next to me. As she did, I saw Jody’s eyes widen and she said, “Would you two please stand next to each other and stand close?”

We did, and almost unconsciously each put our hand on the hip of the other. Then we just looked at Jody.

“Guys, look at this!” Jody exclaimed. “The Red and Gold Twins! My God, the kids don’t know the half of it. Except for the color of their hair and eyes. these two are identical!”

The other girls crowded around and finally agreed that Jody was exactly right. Then Kim Johnson, another senior, said, “Okay. We’re going to elect Sheila Queen of Carnival. But how?”

“All we’ve got to do is to put the word out. What do you all think?”

“I think it’s going to be hilariously funny, is what I think,” Jody responded. With a broad grin she continued, “First of all, there’s that pack of puppies that follow you two everywhere. It’s become a real joke in this school.”

I guess that was news to me but not a great surprise.

Jody continued, “Then there are all the juniors to whom Sheila has given cars, most particularly including my sister.

“One thing you two may not know: The guys who follow you around include every computer geek in the school. Among them, they can get a computer to do anything! And they worship the ground you walk on.

“Then, Sheila Callaway, there are the myriad people you have helped in ways big and small. I think that with the possible exceptions of your brother and sister, you are the best-loved person in this school...

“No! You are the best loved. Samantha and Jim are certainly respected by everyone, but you are loved.” She shook her head and continued, “Sheila Callaway, you do so damned much for so many people, and usually in the most unobtrusive way possible, I’m sure there are kids in school who don’t even know themselves what you have done for them. But on the other hand, there are a helluva lot that do!”

At that point something registered in my brain. “Big Sister, there’s something else about those kids for whom you bought cars. Not only are they smart as hell, they’re class leaders, too!”

Along with everything else — surprise, surprise — cheerleaders tend to be very popular girls. The composition of the squad was four girls from each class, and it looked like we had the two lower classes locked. Jody and her two fellow seniors pointed out that Suellen had used and abused so many of her classmates they thought the seniors would go for Sheila, too.

The election was run in the same way I described earlier: Names are written on slips of paper and the two people with the highest number of mentions participate in the subsequent election ... unless one person receives an absolute majority of the total slips in which case it’s all over.

I guess Suellen thought she had a lock on the queenship. She had cultivated enough seniors, she thought, but she had seriously underestimated the amount of ill will she had generated over the years. It seemed like the only thing needed was someone to go up against her. That someone was Sheila. Furthermore, as a rule the election for king and queen was left pretty much up to the seniors. Normally, they cast between 65 and 80 percent of the total vote.