Free My Perfect Life by Dyan Sheldon

gave a soft and girlish laugh. “They’re just rumours, Sam. They—”
    “No they’re not,” snapped Sam. “They’re totally true.” He leaned his face a little closer. “Let me help you out, Carla. Refresh your memory.” He really has an amazing smile. “I got into trouble for cutting off all the hair of a cheerleader in my old school. Shaved her bald.” By now his face was right in hers. “You better watch out, princess. The mood you’ve put me in, it could just happen again.”
    “Bingo!” Lola whispered in my ear. Sam had joined the fray.

Desperate times
call for desperate
measures
    Mrs Baggoli made Carla leave her balloons out in the hall during English on the grounds that we were reading
Oedipus
, not
Dumbo
, but aside from that brief period in the day the cloud of silver and blue balloons followed Carla wherever she went. They bobbed above her as she walked through the corridors; they floated over her as she sat in classes; they made it easy for students to find her in the cafeteria – or anywhere else. Which at least meant that we always knew where she was – so she couldn’t sneak up and stab us in the back.
    “Makes you wish you had a slingshot, doesn’t it?” said Sam. He was staring through the door of our headquarters at the room across the hall where the Santini forces were stuffing their faces with free cookies and soda. There were enough balloons outside it to lift a heavy clown.
    “David and Goliath,” said Lola.
    “More like Goliath and Humpty Dumpty,” muttered Sam. “Since we don’t have a slingshot.”
    “But that’s where you’re wrong! We do have a slingshot.” Lola pulled a sheet of paper from her bag and held it high. “Behold! Here is our primary weapon of destruction and doom.”
    “It doesn’t look like a slingshot to me,” grumbled Sam. “It looks like a poster.”
    It was a poster. It was straightforward and unassuming, like Sam and me. The background was purple and the lettering was black:
    GERARD AND CREEK – MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT.
    “What’s wrong with it?” I thought it was pretty good, myself. Better than our first six ideas.
    “It’s meaningless,” said Sam. “If the poster’s our slingshot, that slogan’s a piece of gravel. What we need is a really big rock.”
    Carla Santini’s laughter rippled down the hallway like marbles.
    “What happened to our issues?” asked Sam. “What happened to ‘It’s Time to Give as Well as Receive’?”
    Lola tore her eyes from the door. “That’s all right for speeches and stuff,” she explained. “But we need something catchier for the posters.”
    This wasn’t the total reason. The total reason was that Mrs Turo, who ran the computer room, said it sounded more like a threat than a campaign promise.
    Sam stabbed at the poster. “Well, that’s not it.” Sam has zero tolerance for playing games – which probably isn’t a really useful quality in politics – but this time it had worked to our advantage. He was so angry at Carla for starting the rumours about him that every trace of negativity was gone. He wouldn’t stop now until Carla was stopped. “It’s too vague. Carla’s doing everything she can to make this campaign as personal as possible, and I think we should do the same.”
    I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.
    “Well,” I said, “I don’t think the fact that Carla’s making it a personal fight means it’s OK for us, too.”
    I wasn’t even sure if either of them had heard me. Lola already had that look in her eyes.
    “You mean roll up our sleeves and get down in the mud?” cried Lola, responding to Sam and not to me. “Pull out her hair? Gouge out her eyes?”
    “Smack down!” cried Sam gleefully. “Straight to the mat.”
    Lola started pacing. “You’re right, of course, Sam. We have to fight fire with fire. We have to make an attack.”
    I didn’t like the idea of attack, either. In my opinion, you don’t fight fire with fire, you fight it with water. I