Chapter 3

The wrath of Richie Rich was neither long in making itself felt nor particularly subtle. On Monday morning, Gunner pulled me aside in the hallway.

"Have you seen the picture?" he asked with concern.

"No," I said. "What picture?"

"Here," he thrust it into my hand. "There are copies all over the locker room."

I looked down at a photograph of a naked girl with her head buried in Richie Rich's lap as the little scumbag gave the camera a thumbs up. The photograph was taken from directly in back of the girl, so that her only recognizable characteristic was her long, red hair.

"Holy shit!" I looked back up at him.

"Yeah," he said. "And, of course, the word is that Richie just smirks when you ask him who it is, and just smirks more if you ask him whether it's Karen."

"That little son of a bitch," I said. "I'm gonna kick his ass."

"Then everyone will think it's Karen," Gunner said. "I mean, it's not, is it?"

"Shit," I said. "The fucking little son of a bitch."

I was stumped. Somebody smarter than me was going to have to figure out how to deal with this. And that somebody was going to find out about it soon enough anyway, so she might as well hear about it from me.

I caught Karen before lunch, and dragged her out to the football stands with me. I don't know what I expected. Crying, wailing, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments. What I got was white hot fury.

"I'll teach that little son of a bitch not to mess with me," she growled.

I repeated Gunner's advice.

"Hell," I said. "He could have even worse pictures than this."

She looked back at me with an odd little grin.

"He could," she said. "I wasn't there. Shall we find out?"

I just stared at her as she picked up her books and walked back toward school. She was back in the building before I found my legs and headed after her. But she'd vanished. I didn't meet up with her again, in fact, until we got ready to walk home after school.

"We have to wait up," she said.

"Why?" I asked her.

"We have to wait for Julie and Gordon," she explained.

"Okay," I said. "Because?"

"Because Julie's my running mate and Gordon's my campaign manager," she said.

"Uh-huh?" I cocked my head.

She flashed me a particularly bright smile.

"I'm running for student council president," she said.

I just stared at her.

"We turned in the papers not more than fifteen minutes ago," she went on. "The election's Friday. Did you know that today was the deadline for signing up?"

"No," I said. "I don't think anyone in school knows it other than —. This is how you're gonna teach him a lesson? By letting him beat you in a student council election?"

"See?" she laughed. "That's why you're not my campaign manager. You have absolutely no faith in the electoral process."

"In high school? No," I said. "In Hardwood? No. By Friday? No. Do you know how Andy got to be president in the first place?"

She shook her head.

There's this rule, see," I started to explain, "that says you can't have any written campaign material before the election. The penalty is supposed to be that you lose ten percent of the vote you get for the first violation, twenty-five percent if there are two violations, and one-third if there are more than two. So Andy decides, when we're all still just ninth graders, that he's gonna run, and he plasters the high school with posters."

Karen nodded.

"So the principal hauls him in — remember, he's not even in high school at this point — and explains the rule. And the next thing that happens is the principal gets a call from Andy's father, arguing that the rule violates Andy's right to free speech and the penalty violates students' rights to cast votes for the candidate of their choice, blah, blah, blah. And so the principal backs down. And then all the other candidates back down. And Andy wins, like, by default."

"What a little shit," Karen smiled. Stop smiling!

"Last year," I continued, "nobody else even signed up to run, but all the posters went up just the same. I assume it was supposed to happen again today but now they have to fix the posters to take Julie's name off. I don't understand any of this. How is this going to teach him anything?"

"O, ye of little faith," she laughed. "Hey, Gordon. Hey, Julie. You guys ready to go?"

"Sure," Gordon said. "This guy's not on the ticket, is he? That'll make things much harder."

"Asshole," I muttered as he laughed.

"No," Karen joined him. "Julie's the veep, you're the treasurer, and Scott Kamen is the secretary."

"Gordon's going to be your treasurer?" I asked. "And who's Scott Kamen?"

"He's this hunky ninth-grader who has a crush on me," she said. "Should be a good ticket, huh?"

"Oh, sure," I said, "you're appealing to all the groups. Cheerleaders, nerds, and hunky guys with poor taste."

She slugged me in the arm. But she was laughing when she did it.

The posters were going up Tuesday when we got to school. All kinds of posters, some with pictures, some without. They'd been printed the week before, obviously, requiring a rush job to cover up the name Pinsky with a new sign for Stoller, the sophomore girl whom Richie Rich had taken to the prom and had anointed to take Julie's place as his — excuse me, as the council's secretary.

Another publication came out on Tuesday, too. This one was a close-up of the same girl from the side, with a dick obviously inside her mouth. It was only a little bit more recognizable as Karen, but the warning was clear. Andy had no intention of letting a contested election take place.

"Did you see this?" I asked Karen at lunch.

"Yup," she said between bites of her sandwich.

"And?"

"I don't think he got her good side, do you?"

Julie and Gordon burst out laughing. Sue and Gunner joined me in staring at them.

As it became clear that Karen had no intention of withdrawing, the pictures became progressively more graphic. Until on Friday, the day of the election, the four of us arrived at school together to find a full frontal picture of someone who was very obviously Karen, facing the camera as she straddled someone who was very obviously Andy Richardson.

"Oh, my God," I said.

"Perfect," Karen said. "Here."

She took the picture and handed it to Julie, who immediately took off at a dead run with Gordon behind her. Karen turned to look at me.

"You're embarrassed," she said.

"Well, yeah," I said. "It's you."

"I need angry," she told me.

"Huh?"

"I need you to be angry at this," she said. "You know I wasn't there, right?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "I mean, sort of."

"So I'm angry about these pictures, aren't I?" she asked.

"Yes," I agreed slowly.

"And as my brother, and my boyfriend, you're angry, too, aren't you?"

Okay.

"Damn straight I am," I agreed, with considerably more enthusiasm than I actually felt.

"Good boy," she punched me on the arm. "Just hold on to that through fifth period."

"What's fifth period?" I asked.

"The debate," she said. "And the election."

We all piled into the auditorium for fifth period: the juniors, the sophomores, and the freshman, for their first official visit to the high school. Hardwood tradition dictated that the candidates for student council president engage in a debate for the hearts and minds of the electorate. Without prior advertising — the supposed ban on written materials — kids were supposed to cast their votes based solely on the extent to which they were persuaded during the debate. It was an excellent theory.

The stage had three chairs. Karen sat on one end and Andy on the other. In between sat the faculty moderator. Usually that was the faculty member with the least seniority, the one least able to decline the principal's "request" to supervise the election. This year, it was Gail Dodge. All three of them sat there waiting, little portable microphones pinned to their clothing. To the left of the stage there was a podium, and as soon as everyone was seated, Gail stepped up to it.

"Boys and girls, welcome to this year's election for student council. There are two slates of candidates this year, and I'd like those running for office to stand when I call your name. Running for president on the first slate is Andy Richardson. His vice-presidential candidate is Bobby Parker, his candidate for treasurer is Fred Mars, and his candidate for secretary is Annette Stoller."

They had each stood up, Andy on stage and the others from the audience, as their names were called. As I looked around to find Annette Stoller, sitting in the back with the rest of the freshman, I saw a hand waving at me. My eyes widened. Mom and Dad. Sitting in the back. Sitting right next to Andy's father, in fact. Mom caught my eye and waved harder. I couldn't believe that Karen had invited them here to watch this slaughter. Oh, my God, what if somebody showed her the pictures? I slowly turned back as Gail began speaking again.

"Running for president on the second slate is Karen McCarthy. Her vice-presidential candidate is Julie Pinsky, her candidate for treasurer is Gordon Ackerman, and her candidate for secretary is Scott Kamen."

Gordon and Julie, who were sitting right next to me, bounced to their feet when their names were called, grinning like they'd just been named king and queen of the prom. Actually, Gordon hadn't grinned at all when he'd been named king. Maybe Julie had helped him find his balls during the past week. Or maybe she'd done that on Saturday night. I know that was when she found them.

Karen won the coin flip to determine the order of speakers, and choose to go second. So Andy got up, and gave the same smug little speech he'd given last year, about what a great thing it was to have a democratic process, and how he and his little assistants would continue giving us the same excellent quality government that they had for the past two years. It was well-written (yeah, like he wrote it) and well-rehearsed. The kind of performance we'd all come to expect from Richie Rich.

And then Karen got up. And totally bombed. I was stunned. She'd always seemed to be so self-assured when she was giving presentations in the classes we had together. Of course, that was before a crowd of twenty. This was a crowd of six hundred. Every third word was "um." She licked her lips. She sweated. Not just perspired, but sweated. I wanted to rush up there and hug her to me and tell her that I loved her and that by the time school started again next year, nobody would remember it. I couldn't do that. Instead, I just started sinking lower and lower in my seat.

Everything she said was fine, brilliant even. She spoke about how it was time for a change, about how a close examination of the record of the current administration would reveal that they had done very little to benefit the average student, and about how the changes they had managed to effect had been cosmetic, or had only affected a small group of students, like those who drove fancy sports cars to school.

But it sucked. I mean, my God, she'd been practicing — along with Gordon and Julie — for three hours in her room last night. And three hours the night before. At least, I'd assumed they'd been practicing. I looked over at the two of them. They both had little half-smiles on their face. Yeah, I should probably be doing that supportive crap, too. If Karen looked over here and saw what her boyfriend/brother/fiancée thought of her performance, she'd probably start crying. So I smiled. Just a little smile. You didn't want to look like you actually enjoyed sitting on the deck chairs of the Titanic. Nice night, huh? A little chilly, maybe. Doesn't the ship seem a little less horizontal than usual?

When Karen sat down, it was clear from her expression that she knew that the election was over, and that the final tally of votes would simply be the final humiliation.

Ms. Dodge stood up, and with a worried glance at Karen, walked back to the podium.

"And now the question portion of the debate," she said. "Mr. Richardson, it's your turn first."

"I'm sorry, the what?" Andy looked over at her, with the shit-eating grin he'd been wearing ever since Karen started speaking.