Free Eighth-Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich Page B

the end of the session, Jeff said his partner wanted to build birdhouses, and I watched this little girl pretending to be an astronaut. That takes a kind of faith that I’ve never even thought about before.
    Donovan is sitting on the school steps eating what looks like a bacon sandwich. I try to slip by, but he sees me and jumps up.
    “Pukey!” he yells. “Good to see you. It’s always nice to encounter lower life-forms. Reminds me of how lucky I am.”
    “Whatever,” I say. I don’t know what I’d do without that word. I head over to the folding table set up by the front door for campaign activities and pull the stack of Vicky flyers out of my backpack. I’m giving up on Vicky too quickly. I bet there’s a way this school can help the shelter. If the whole “can-do” spirit thing can be in full effect
there,
then we’ve
got
to be able to get it together at Clarke. Maybe if I stress how good it will look for that mayor grant money thing, Vicky will listen to me, we’ll makethis campaign about something … and I might actually redeem myself.
    Donovan saunters over, picks up a flyer, and immediately rips it in half. A piece of bacon falls out of his sandwich. I grab the ripped papers from his hands.
    “Hey, everybody,” he calls. “Pukey’s gonna blow!”
    Amazingly, people seem eager to verify this, and drift over.
    “Your girl is already inside,” he says. “Talking about how she is going to make us pay for her college education.”
    Huh?
A few people boo.
    “What’s next?” he continues. “A kindergarten slave trade?” More boos. “V is for
vomitocious!”
he yells. I notice Hector’s grin out of the corner of my eye. “Which is exactly what you and Vicky are, Pukey.” More people come over. “V is for
vengeance,”
he continues, trying to be all Martin Luther King, “which is what We the People Who Matter will seek if you and that moose-faced hoghead get anywhere near the presidency.”
    I’m glad the bell ringing drowns out some of the laughter. I wait a few minutes before I start packing up, and a couple of kids come over to the table.
    “Uh, hi,” I mumble. I glance around to make sure Donovan’s gone, and then I raise my voice. “Vicky Ross for president. Vote Vicky for … victory, for … veracity, for …” I look at the flyer. “Value.”
Value? What does that even mean?
    My candidate and I need to talk.
    A boy with binocular-thick lenses and $1 coins in his penny loafers takes a flyer.
    “Thanks,” I say. “I’m Vicky’s campaign manager. We want tobe the voice of the people. What are your biggest concerns about life here at Clarke?”
    “Not concerns, exactly…. We have some ideas for her campaign platform. LARPing would be really good for English, and also, we’re tired of the censorship of the library computers.” He rolls his eyes. “We’re not all looking for porn.” At that, his friend looks down at his own shoes.
Speak for yourself.
    “I’ll see what I can do,” I say. “Uh, what’s LARPing?”
    He lights up. “Thanks for asking!” He takes out a flyer. “Live-Action Role-Playing. I’m trying to spread the word. People from all over create stories and act them out, with costumes and everything. A group of kids in Vermont started a national LARP organization for teens. You can be assigned a character in an existing game, or create an original story world. People think we’re just weirdos, but it’s kind of a great way to get involved in stories.”
    “We use the same principles as official LARPers,” says the other guy. “It’s like we create a living video game.” He finally looks up at me and I can see how much he loves this LARP stuff.
    “Sounds interesting,” I say. “We’ll check it out.”
    “Tell Vicky to come to the next session at my house,” he says.
    His friend grins. “Yeah, he has some love scenes he wants to act out with her.”
    I try not to shudder since that wouldn’t exactly look supportive. “I’ll see what I can