Free Don't Vote for Me by Krista Van Dolzer

before it had finished rolling. “David, you got my message!”
    â€œAnd who am I, no one?” Spencer asked.
    Esther didn’t answer, just grabbed whatever they were hauling. “I have the—poster here,” she said between noisy gasps for breath. “But I’ll admit—it’s kind of—heavy.”
    I crinkled my nose. “How can a poster be heavy?”
    Before she could reply, a man with a rosebush for a beard climbed out of the driver’s seat and grabbed the other end. As he helped her lug it toward the tailgate, I caught my first glimpse of the poster. It looked shiny.
    Esther dusted off her hands. “I stayed up all night to finish it. Toby helped, of course.”
    â€œWho’s Toby?” I replied.
    Esther motioned toward the man. “You know the guy who owns Renfro’s?” Her chest puffed up with pride. “Well, that’s Toby, my stepdad.”
    The man with the rosebush beard saluted, but he didn’t bother to reply. But then, Mr. Renfro had never struck me as a man of many words. He was into modern art, which, according to Dad, meant that he built toilets out of scrap metal, then put them on display. He had a studio on State Street, but no one had ever bothered to go in until he’d turned it into an ice cream parlor, too. Now Renfro’s was the hottest—or maybe the coldest—spot in town.
    Esther slapped him on the back. “He even taught me how to weld!”
    I had no idea what welding was, but it obviously excited Esther (and since Esther was an artist, having a stepdad like Mr. Renfro must have been a pretty sweet deal). But as they turned the poster toward us, I couldn’t help but shake my head. It was made of tons of mirrors in a hundred different shapes and sizes.
    Esther hopped down from the truck bed. “Now, I know what you’re thinking—there’s no freaking way we made this for fifty bucks.”
    â€œActually,” Spencer muttered, “I was wondering what the heck it—”
    â€œYeah,” I interrupted as I jabbed him in the ribs. “That’s exactly what we’re thinking.”
    Esther dusted off her hands again. “Well, you don’t need to worry. Toby and I picked this up as scrap. The guy at the hardware store was gonna chuck it, so we offered to take it off his hands, and he said we could just have it!”
    â€œWow,” was all I said. For once, I’d been rendered almost speechless. And like Spencer, I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was.
    â€œI know, right?” Esther said as she grabbed one of the edges and swung it around for us to see. “So what do you think?”
    I didn’t answer right away, just dug my toe into a crack. Now that I could see the whole thing all at once, I had to admit it was impressive. The sun had just crested the peaks of the mountains that cradled SV, and the mirrors seemed to catch every one of those pink rays. But I still had no idea what it was supposed to be.
    I raised a hand to shield my eyes as I tried to figure out how to break the news to Esther. But I didn’t have a chance to come up with the words before Riley’s eyes widened.
    â€œIt’s David,” he said softly.
    I crinkled my nose. “What is that supposed to mean?”
    Riley pointed at the poster.
    I tilted my head to the side, trying to see it how he saw it. And just like that, I did. That top mirror was my head, and the smaller bits stuck to my face were my eyes, my nose, my mouth. A set of trapezoids made up my torso, and four cascades of rectangles made up my arms and legs. Connecting wires ran through the whole structure to give the poster three dimensions, so a hundred reflections of my face could stare back at me at once.
    Spencer wasn’t impressed. “But what is it supposed to mean ?”
    â€œIt means he’s a part of us,” Riley said. “And we’re a part of him.”
    â€œLike the