I'm talking about Hopkins vs. Hotchkiss. It's on like Donkey Kong.
Here's how it started.
So, our teacher walks up to the front of the class today and says the sixth grade needs a class representative on the school's student council, and our homeroom needs one representative to send to the main election. And you know Little Miss Thang rose up her hand, waved it in the air like she was waving hi to someone.
So far, she was running without any competition. She was going to waltz into office, just like that.
The thought of Meredith Hopkins being MY homeroom rep was enough to make me ralph. Then, suddenly, I thought about it. In my American history class I was reading about this girl named Felicity Merriman, and I learned that our founding fathers broke away from England so that we could have the right to free and fair elections.
A free and fair election huh? That gave me an idea.
I passed Harriet a note in class and told her I was thinking about running against Meredith. "What, are you kidding me?" she whispered.
"I know she's the most popular girl in the sixth grade," I told her. "But it's not an election if nobody's running against her."
Harriet shrugged. "I guess that's true," she said.
During recess we went to the principal's office and I dropped my name in the jar she had on her desk.
A few minutes later Meredith approached me. Her skirt was so short, any more and I could see her underwear. And boy, was she angry. "Who put you up to this?" she asked.
"Put me up to what?" I asked her.
"I heard you were running against me for homeroom representative."
There were no hangers on, no onlookers. It was just her and me, face to face. I straightened up my posture. I cleared my throat and looked her in the eye, American girl to American girl. "Yeah, why?"
She looked at me again, then she looked away. Then she did a strange thing. She extended her hand. "You're on, Hotchkiss."
After extending mine, I felt her heavy grip as she walked away, tossing her blond head smelling of strawberry shampoo in my face. What had I gotten myself into?
Still feeling woozy from that attack of strawberry shampoo, I took another look at Meredith and I realized what I was up against. She's basically an eleven year old Barbie doll come to life. And I, plain old Haley Hotchkiss, am her only challenger to sixth grade supremacy.
This evening Harriet and I got some Crayola markers and started making some signs. Word spread pretty fast because as soon as I got home, Megan from the paper called. She wanted to arrange interviews with all the candidates from different homerooms. "I can't interview myself, could I?" I said.
"No, Haley, of course not, someone else will interview you." She wouldn't tell me just who would interview me, but I was secretly hoping it wasn't Alison. That girl, honestly, gives me the creeps, even more than Meredith does. And that's saying something.
"You sure you want to go through with it?" Harriet said while writing 'Vote 4 Haley' on a poster board.
Sure there was a part of me that was afraid. But there was an even bigger part that didn't want Meredith Hopkins to get the better of me.
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