Chapter 15- Jessica

Mr Bark stopped Sara the following Monday morning as she was leaving his political science class. Jessica was with her.

“What is it?” Sara asked defensively.  “I stayed awake the whole period.”

“It’s not that. I have some news for you.” He paused, and it was no denying from his expression that he thought it was bad news. “You know I am the faculty advisor to the student government?”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Sara said cautiously. “What’s up?”             

“You’ve been elected student body president.”

Sara laughed. “What the hell? No you’re kidding. What are you talking about?”

“You were elected by a landslide.”

Sara swallowed. “But I wasn’t running. Jessie, tell him it was all a joke.”

“You didn’t want to be president?” Jessica asked in surprise.

“Your name was on the ballot,” Mr Bark said.

“Now hold on a second,” Sara said. “I explained this to the whole school last Friday. Jessie put my name down.”

Jessica smiled. This was great. “No I didn’t.”

“Polly did then. It makes no difference. I can’t be president. I hate politics. I hate politicians. No, absolutely not.”

“I don’t want you to be president, either,” Mr Bark said. “I think you have a bad attitude. But the student body doesn’t think so. Your nearest competitor didn’t get a quarter of your votes. You have a responsibility to your peers. There is a lot of business that has to be taken care of immediately. We don’t have time for another election.”

“Who’s the new vice-president?” Sara asked.

“Clair Hilrey.”

“I thought she was running for president,” Jessica said.

Mr Bark frowned. “I thought she was too. Maybe she put herself down for both offices. She shouldn’t have done that.”

“Make her president,” Sara said quickly.

“I can’t do that,” Mr Bark said.

“Then I’ll do it,” Sara said.

“No you can’t do that either. It’s against the rules.”

“The President of the country never follows rules, why should I? No wait. If you won’t accept my resignation this instant, I’ll intentionally break every rule in the book. Then you’ll have to impeach me.”

Mr Bark was getting angry. “You don’t impeach student body presidents.”

“Why not? This is a free and vicious society.”

“Why are you being so difficult? There are kids in this school that would give almost anything to have the honour that has been bestowed on you.”

Sara started to speak, stopped, and silently shook her head.

“It might be fun,” Jessica said. “It might make you popular.”

Sara glared at her. “No,” she said firmly.

Mr Bark had run out of patience. “I can’t stand here all day arguing with you. We’re having our first student council meeting tomorrow at lunch in H-Sixteen. If you should change your mind and want to accept the office, see me this afternoon. There are notes on the student body financial status you should go through before the meeting. If not, then I guess we’ll have to carry on without you.”

Jessica had chemistry next. She had to go. Once outside Mr Bark’s class, Sara refused to speak to her anyway. She went off in a huff. Jessica couldn’t help laughing.

The laughter did not stay with her. She’d had a miserable weekend. She was still sleepy and tired from her travels. She’d had to take long naps on Saturday and Sunday afternoon just to stay awake at dinnertime. Also, she’d been laminating Bill Skater’s obvious interest in Clair Hilrey. The disappointment was silly, she knew. She had only started at the school. She couldn’t realistically expect the resident fox not to have some sort of girlfriend. Nevertheless, she had spent hours since the football game wondering how she could get his attention. In Mr Barks class just now, Bill hadn’t  look at her once. And she’d worn her shortest skirt.

Her gloom deepened when her chemistry teacher announced a surprise quiz in the middle of lab. She practically fell off her stool. “He didn’t say anything about a quiz on Friday,” she complained to her lab partner, Maria.

“Last Monday he warned us to be ready for a quiz at any time,” Maria said pushing aside their row of test tubes, getting out a fresh sheet of paper. “You weren’t here. But I wouldn’t worry, it shouldn’t count for much.”

Jessica worried anyway. To get into Stanford she had to keep her GPA close to a perfect four. She hadn’t even glanced at the textbook over the weekend.

The teacher let them stay at their lab desks. He wrote several molecular formulas on the board and asked for their valence values. It appeared no big deal for the bulk of the class; they went right to it. Jessica sat staring at the board. She’d left her glasses at home again. She could hardly read the formulas.

What’s a valence value?

When Jessica finally looked down, she saw that Maria had slipped her a piece of paper with two rows of positive and negative values. Sitting across the grey-topped table Maria nodded.

“I can’t,” Jessica whispered.

“Just this once,” Maria whispered back.

The teacher wasn’t watching. Jessica scribbled the numbers on her paper. The teacher collected them a few minutes later. Then he wrote the answers on the board. Maria knew her stuff; they each got a hundred. Jessica thanked her as they returned to lab.

“I’ve never cheated before,” she said embarrassed.

“But you didn’t know there could be a quiz,” Maria said adding softly, “Sometimes it’s hard not to lie.”

“Well if I can ever make it up to you, let me know.”

Maria nodded- she didn’t talk a lot- and they continued with their acid based reactions, which made no more sense than they had before the quiz. Jessica swore to herself that she would study at least two hours of chemistry every night until she caught up. She even entertained asking Michael Olson for a couple of tutorial lessons. She wasn’t getting much out of the teacher; he talked too fast, and seemingly in a foreign language. Michael obviously had a sharp mind. She’d felt rather silly when she needed his help with her camera at the football game. He was right about the jamming disappearing when the temperature evened out. Although she found his intelligence somewhat intimidating, he was easy to talk to. Yet she worried what he thought of her. He would start out friendly enough, and then in a couple of minutes talking to her, he’d be in a hurry to get away.

He probably thinks I’m an air-head.