Freshman for President, Page 25

  “I could drive you.”

  “No offense, but I kind of need to do this on my own.” He stood up. “If Mom and Dad wake up, will you break the news to them?”

  “Sure.”

  He stopped in the doorway. “Hey, I just remembered something. Who did you vote for yesterday, anyway? You’re nineteen. You actually voted.”

  She smiled at him, and although she could never go back to Old Maura, there was plenty of spunk in her smile. “I wrote in Wright. Maura Wright, that is.”

  Milo’s jaw dropped.

  “Of course I voted for you.”

  He grinned at her, and she grinned back.

  “Okay.”

  Then he ran. And ran.

  He felt out of shape and out of breath and his legs got tired and it felt wonderful. He ran longer than he thought he could have gone, sucking in the air and gasping it back out.

  He ran past Jack’s house, and Eden’s house.

  He ran past Mrs. Walsh’s house, and slowed to a walk. The For Sale sign was gone. The dead plants had been removed. The curtains were open in the front room and he was surprised to see a light on so early in the morning. Then he saw a woman holding a baby walk past the window. The sight of them made him start running again, a little bubble of joy surprising him.

  So he’d crashed and burned like the kid in the myth. So he’d flown a little high. What if Icarus hadn’t dared to fly in the first place? He would have lived his life locked in a tower, staring at those same walls. At least he’d taken that step off the windowsill and spread his wings. At least he flew.

  Milo was starting to look forward to his victory party now. He felt like he could face everyone again. He felt hopeful.

  * * *

  At five-thirty on a November morning, the only place open that sold flowers was Walsh’s Grocery, which stayed open twenty-four hours. Milo went inside and found the refrigerator where the flowers were kept. The pre-arranged ones in vases were all too fussy, too many sprouts of this and that sticking up everywhere. He looked down to the tub where the cut roses sat.

  He definitely didn’t want yellow. She already knew they were friends. But he would come back and get some yellow ones for Mrs. Walsh sometime. Or maybe Eden would let him cut some yellow ones from her garden next year to take to the cemetery. That would be even better. Mrs. Walsh wasn’t forgotten. All her family, and all her neighborhood family, remembered her.

  But yellow wasn’t what he wanted for Eden, so he kept looking. He didn’t want white roses, either. There were some purple ones that didn’t even look real. Those weren’t right.

  Then he saw pink, for gratitude and admiration. He pulled a few roses out of the bucket, dripping water on himself as he checked to make sure they looked all right. Perfect. That was it. He had everything he needed. Six pink roses.

  Was that everything he needed?

  It wasn’t.

  He took a deep breath and pulled out a red rose, too. He could imagine Maura rolling her eyes and being proud of him at the same time.

  When he reached the cash register, Milo stopped short. It was Mr. Walsh himself running it, and at five-thirty in the morning. “Hello, sir,” he said, placing the roses on the conveyor belt. “I didn’t know you still worked the register.”

  “Just lately,” Patrick Walsh said. “I’m starting to like the early morning shift and being in the office a little less. Just once a week. Anyway, congratulations. I was listening to the results on the radio and it seems like you did pretty well for yourself.”

  “Thanks. I lost the online election, though.”

  “Did you lose by much?”

  “Half a percentage point.”

  Mr. Walsh waved away the news with his hand. “That’s nothing. You still ran a great campaign.”

  “We couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Milo wanted to talk about Mrs. Walsh. He wasn’t sure how to start, so he blurted out what he had just seen. “You sold her house. I saw the new family in the front room.”

  “They put in an offer the day the sign went up,” Patrick told him. “I didn’t expect it to be so fast. I thought I wouldn’t accept it. But then I saw them walking out of the realtor’s office. I thought she would have liked the family.” Patrick looked out somewhere in the distance. His eyes were soft. “I thought she would have liked to know that there was a baby in her house.” He shook his head. “Well, you’re all set.”

  “I still need to buy these.” Milo slid the roses toward Mr. Walsh on the counter.

  “It’s on the house,” Patrick Walsh told him. And then he smiled. “I don’t know who they’re for, but I wish you success.”

  As Milo ran down the street, away from the grocery store, he thought about what Maura had said, about not being the same person anymore. About going through something that could change you completely.

  What she said was true. You could, to some extent, say you were not that person anymore, that you’d left that person and that part of your life behind you for good. You had to say that, sometimes, to move on. But somewhere inside him, he was still the Old Milo who sat on the sidelines. The funny, spunky Old Maura was still a part of who she was now, and if he was honest about it, so was the Maura who had sat alone in the dark and cried that night in Tucson, and the Maura who had been silent for so long afterward. They were all still in there.

  Governor Hernandez was right too. The experiences you had, win or lose, changed you, shaped you, became part of you. But you weren’t completely malleable. You could stand up and choose who you became, too.

  And so Milo Wright, walking up to Eden’s door, knew he was a loser in some ways. He had lost an election. He had lost a season of soccer. He had lost a true friend and champion in Mrs. Walsh. He had lost some of his innocence.

  But he had also won. Maybe he hadn’t won the election, but there had been victories nonetheless. He had gotten a phone call from the new President of the United States of America. He had his sister back. He had learned that if you go for something, the unexpected might happen. It might be harder than you would think or than you would like. But then . . . life would be like that, no matter what. So you might as well go for it.

  He was the imperfect sum of all the parts of all the experiences he’d had this summer, this fall, this life.

  And he was more than that. He was everything, every Milo, that he was still going to be sometime in the future.

  He didn’t know who he was yet. But he knew more than he had known. And he had hope.

  And if Governor—oops—President Hernandez was right, there was a certain victory in that. And there was someone he had to tell all of this to, someone who had been there for the journey with him, winning and losing.

  He knocked on Eden’s door.

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from the memoirs of President Hernandez

  One of the people I will always remember from that first presidential election is Milo Wright. Some considered him a novelty; some considered him a mockery. I know that both my opponent and I considered him an entity. We knew he was a person to be dealt with, to respect, and in the end, to admire. Even though we knew the chances of his winning the election were small, what he managed to do and how he managed to galvanize the teenage vote was enormous.

  My election as President of the United States of America was, of course, only the beginning for me. And Milo’s story, of course, didn’t end with the election. I followed his career with considerable interest.

  Shortly after Milo’s “loss,” the Sage City Council held a special meeting. At a suggestion from Councilman Patrick Walsh, they created a seat on the city council to be held by a citizen of Sage City under the age of eighteen. This is still in effect today. The council member is determined by a vote of his or her peers at t
he high school and serves a one-year term with full voting power in council affairs.

  Milo J. Wright was elected unanimously by his peers to serve as the first teenage council member.

  Sage High reinstituted its class elections in the spring after that remarkable election year. Eden James was elected class president.

  Proms for a Cause and RecyclABLE are still popular programs in high schools throughout the country.

  Milo’s website still exists as a forum for teenagers to express different political beliefs and discuss current issues, although when he turned eighteen, he turned it over to another politically motivated teenager who was under the voting age.

  Milo’s campaign made a difference to many people, myself included. After I won the election, I called Milo. I told him that we are who we are because of the times we win and the times we lose. I believe that. And the young man who lost the election also won in many, many other ways.

  Milo has since grown up. He still lives in his hometown where he teaches history and coaches soccer at Sage High. I have hopes that he will one day again enter the national political arena. After all, he will be turning thirty-five in the next election year.

  Bibliography

  Although this is a work of fiction, I did use several sources as a basis for the numbers and statistics found in Freshman for President.

  I based my list of signs of teenage depression on a list found at the following website: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/depres sion_teen.htm#sign_and_symptoms

  The U.S. Government has several helpful census websites, where I was able to find information about the number of students enrolled in schools throughout our country: http://www.census.gov/ prod/2006pubs/07statab/educ.pdf

  The National Center for Education Statistics had useful stats in determining how many high schools and middle schools there are in the United States, so that I could find a reasonable number for the number of students/schools that might participate in Milo’s online election: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/overview/table05.asp

  The statistic about teenage driving fatalities was found at:

  http://www.teensafedriver.com/statistics.htm

  Acknowledgments

  I have a cabinet of fabulous readers. It includes:

  My trusty family: Elaine, Bob, Arlene, and Nic. Their honest and first-round responses are always just what I need.

  My sage friends: Sarah McCoy, Brook Andreoli, Tim Andreoli, Tami Chandler, Jason Wright, and Justin Hepworth. Even though they all have busy lives, they gave thorough and helpful feedback on everything from the political system to the amount of kissing that should take place.

  My teenage readers: Hope B., Lizzie J., Taylor B., Greg K., Dane S., McCall J., Carly G., and Katie B. Thank you for your feedback and for taking the time to read this book and make suggestions! I owe an extra-big thank-you to Hope and Lizzie for going over (and over and over) text messages and instant messages to make sure I wasn’t completely off-base and for not laughing at me for being so technologically un-savvy. Thanks to them, I can now send text messages with ease. Sort of.

  I appreciate the Evan Vickers family of Cedar City, Utah, who allowed me to use their fantastic drugstore as the inspiration for James Pharmacy.

  I am also indebted to Lisa Mangum (for stellar editing), Chris Schoebinger (for continued mentoring), Ken Wzorek and Richard Erickson (for awesome cover and interior design), and Tonya Facemyer (for creative typesetting). Shadow Mountain did a great job of making this book ready for its public debut.

  And most of all, I am grateful for my two small boys, future teenagers, who remind me of what is important and why being involved and engaged truly matter.

  About the Author

  Ally Condie received a degree in English teaching from Brigham Young University. She went on to teach high school English in Utah and in upstate New York for several years. She loved her job because it combined two of her favorite things-working with students and reading great books.

  Currently, however, she is employed by her two little boys, who keep her busy playing trucks and building blocks. They also like to help her type and are very good at drawing on manuscripts with red crayon. She enjoys running with her husband, Scott, listening to Neil Diamond (really!), reading, traveling, and eating.