Free Dodger for President by Jordan Sonnenblick

shifted his weight from foot to foot, looked everywhere but at me, and said, “Well . . .” His eyes flickered over to the lamp.
    A-ha! I rubbed the lamp, and suddenly Dodger’s brother, Rodger, was next to me, yawning. He was fully dressed in a pinstriped, dark blue suit, a very wrinkled white shirt, and a loosely knotted tie. His fur was sticking up in all directions. If you’ve never seen a chimpanzee with bed-head, it’s really quite a spectacle. Especially if he starts talking to you while another chimp is jumping up and down nearby, frantically gesturing for him not to say anything.
    â€œHello, greetings, felicitations, Willie. It’s good, satisfying, pleasurable to see you again. Honestly, when my brother, my sibling, my mother’s other child called up the Great Lasorda and asked for help getting you elected, I thought the whole thing sounded like a recipe for disaster, a Titanic in the making, if you will. But the Master’s planwas brilliant, sparkling, inventive. In fact, I think you will win the day, vanquish your foe, rise up to stunning new heights of—Willie, why are you staring at me in that strangely hostile manner? It’s not every day that I break into a school, cast a magic vocabulary spell upon a speaking platform, and then settle down to a richly deserved slumber, only to be rudely awakened, tumbled out of the sleeping chamber, rousted by an ungrateful young—”
    â€œBE QUIET!” I shouted. “What do you mean, you broke into my school and cast a spell on the podium? What did you do?”
    Dodger was still jumping up and down next to me, making throat-slitting motions at Rodger. Fortunately it takes more than a direct threat to keep Rodger quiet. “You know,” he said huffily, “you really shouldn’t tell me to be quiet and then ask me two questions in the next breath. It creates a paradox, an oxymoron, a conundrum. Am I meant to obey your first instruction or accede to the demands that follow? Honestly, I can see why Dodger felt you needed communicative assistance. Anyway, the operation was quite ingenious. The GreatLasorda gave me some enchanted dust that confers magical loquacity and instructed me to sprinkle it on the platform from which you are to speak, present, deliver your oration. In short, the next young person who gives a speech at that podium will sound exactly like me, myself, and I. All you have to do is speak first, and you will be just as splendidly well spoken as
I
am. Your classmates will love, adore, and admire you—and you will be sure to earn the coveted laurels of victory!”
    Hoo boy.

 
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CHAPTER TEN
The Old Switcheroo
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    AS I SAT ON STAGE in the school cafeteria-auditorium the next morning in my wear-to-your-cousin’s-wedding suit, my hands were sweating so much that the copy of my speech was all damp and soggy. Lizzie was next to me, whispering, “Calm down,” every five seconds, even though nobody in history has ever calmed down because someone told them to. We were on one side of the podium, and James sat with Craig on the other. The entire student body was in front of us, and Dodger had just appeared in back of the audience, holding a big dry-erase board and a marker, but that wasn’t whathad me so worked up. I was tormented by the thought of using magic to cheat on the speech, plus I wasn’t so sure that sounding like Rodger would be an improvement. The Great Lasorda was a pretty shifty guy; maybe he wanted me to lose the election—in fact, the more I thought about it, the more sure I became that this whole magic-dust trick would backfire. And besides, now that my dad had gone over my speech with me, I thought it was pretty darn good.
    Just as Mrs. Starsky gestured for me and James to approach the podium, I had an idea: I would leave things up to James. Mrs. Starsky had explained to me that he would choose who got to go first in this round