Free Mayor Hubble Is in Trouble! by Dan Gutman Page B

me. Ryan was looking at me. Alexia was looking at me. Neil was looking at me.
Everybody
was looking at me!
    â€œWhat are you looking at me for?” I asked.
    â€œYou should run for president of the third grade, A.J.,” said Alexia.
    â€œYeah!” everybody agreed.
    â€œWhy?” I asked. “I don’t want to be president. That’s for nerds.”
    â€œA.J., if you don’t run, Andrea will become president,” said Michael. “She’s going to make us wear uniforms and turn the school into a prison.”
    â€œShe’ll probably close the boys’ bathroomand make us hold it in all day,” said Ryan.

    â€œSo why don’t one of
you
guys run?” I asked.
    â€œYou’re the only one who can beat her,A.J.,” said Neil the nude kid.
    â€œWell, I don’t want to run,” I said.
    â€œA.J.,” said Michael, “if you don’t want to run against Andrea, that means you must be in love with her.”
    â€œThat’s right,” everybody agreed.
    â€œWhat?” I shouted. “It does not! It just means I don’t want to be president.”
    â€œOooooh!”
Ryan said. “A.J. doesn’t want to run against Andrea. They must be in
love
!”
    â€œWhen are you and Andrea gonna get married?” asked Michael.
    â€œShhhhhhhhhh!”
I said. “Okay! Okay! I’ll run for president of the third grade.”
    If those guys weren’t my best friends, I would hate them.

We needed to have a meeting in a place where Andrea and her girlie girl friends couldn’t spy on us. Ryan has a cool tree house in his backyard, so we decided to meet up there. Michael, Neil, and Alexia came over to Ryan’s house after school.
    â€œI don’t know anything about elections,” I told the gang. “How am I going to beat Andrea? Does anybody have any ideas?”

    â€œYou need a slogan,” suggested Alexia. “Like, ‘A.J. Puts the
Cool
in School.’”
    â€œYou should get the No Bell Prize for that,” I said. *
    â€œHow about, ‘A.J. Puts the
Drool
in School’?” suggested Michael.
    â€œThat doesn’t make any sense,” said Ryan. “There’s no
d-r
in the word ‘school.’”
    â€œWe should make a commercial and put it on TV during the Super Bowl,” suggested Neil the nude kid.
    â€œThe Super Bowl is in January,” saidMichael. “It’s too late. The election is in November.”
    â€œHow about we make one of those Batman signs and project it on the sky at night?” suggested Ryan.
    â€œThat’s dumb,” I told him.
    â€œHey, nobody likes to floss, right?” said Alexia. “So what if we knock on people’s doors, show them how to floss correctly, and tell them to vote for A.J.?”
    â€œThat’s the dumbest idea in the history of the world,” said Neil the nude kid.
    â€œWell, I’m stumped,” said Michael.
    â€œYour legs were amputated?” I asked.
    â€œNo, dumbhead,” he replied. “Stumped means—”
    But he didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. You’ll never believe in a million hundred years whose head popped up into the tree house at that moment.
    It was Mayor Hubble!
    â€œI heard you were running for president of the third grade, A.J.,” he told me. “I came to help you win the election.”
    â€œHow did you know we would be holding our supersecret strategy session up
here
?” asked Ryan.
    â€œI was a boy once, you know,” said the mayor.
    â€œJust once?” I said. “I’m a boy
all
the time.”
    â€œLook, A.J.” said the mayor. “Let’s getdown to business. You don’t like Andrea, do you?”

    â€œNo!”
    â€œYou want to
beat
her on Election Day, don’t you?”
    â€œYeah!”
    â€œYou want to
humiliate
her, right?”
    â€œYeah!!”
    â€œYou want her to wish she was