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As Jennifer stood in front of the bathroom mirror smoothing her long, straight blonde hair that Friday morning before school, she couldn't help smiling slyly at herself. She pondered the events that were about to unfold. In just a few short hours, she would be President! Well, student body president, anyway. And rightly so. It was her senior year and she had worked oh-so-hard to get where she was today. She had been a straight "A" student, joined every club, chaired every committee possible, and even did that volunteer work that everyone else always thinks is such a great idea but then never follows through with. Yes, she was coming into her own; this would be her year.

She felt nothing but confident that she would win the election. After all, it had been she who had spent all of the long, hard hours making campaign posters, buttons, flyers, and even baking and decorating cookies with her campaign slogan: "In With Jen!"

Of course, there was the matter of her opponent, if you could call him that, Brad Burleson.

"He's such a slacker!" Jennifer thought. Putting him in office would be like putting Pauley Shore in charge. No one wants that.

Yes, now would be the moment when all of her sacrifices would pay off. Perhaps tonight she would even go to a party with some of the wilder crowd, as a victory celebration and to start branching out her contacts. But then again, as student body president, she should set a good example.

ANever mind, she thought, plenty of time for that later. Now she had to get going. No tardies for her, no ma'am!

Once in homeroom, Jennifer took her seat in the second row. Given a choice, she always sat in the first row. But the teacher, Mrs. Varnin, had placed them in an alphabetic seating arrangement by last name. Still, if her last name had been "Young" instead of "Burton," she probably would have bamboozled the teacher into giving her a seat in the first row by telling her she had trouble seeing the board.

Glancing around at her peers for the last few moments before she would be their President, she began to mentally tally specific votes she knew could be counted on.

There was Sam Roth; she had done his algebra homework their entire freshman year. If he'd been a little more industrious on the tests, he'd have gotten an "A" in the class. "But not bad, considering he would have gotten an 'F' without me," she mused.

Next her attention focused on four of the more popular girls sitting across the room: Lynn, Beth, Mandy, and Sarah. They all had "H" last names, so they were seated within close proximity of one another. Last semester when they had been assigned an advertising campaign in their English class, Jennifer had been in a group with this "fab four." Not that she had minded, though. A chance to raise her popularity quotient was always welcomed. Jennifer had planned, scripted, designed, orchestrated, and directed their entire campaign assignment, not to mention that she did almost all of the grunt work. And it was a huge success; they all got "A's". She knew she could count on them to show their gratitude today when it counted.

As her eyes drifted around the room and back again, she recalled countless other examples of her "good works." She mulled over what a good person she really was and made a mental note to reward herself with that yellow Prada scarf she had seen in the mall. "Yellow...the perfect color to match my perky image," she daydreamed.

Not that others hadn't noticed her admirable qualities, but she didn't believe that her classmates could really fully appreciate all she had to offer. No, they just didn't know how lucky they were to have her.

Jen had thought it one of the greatest compliments of her life when her psychology teacher, Mr. Randal, had referred to her as a great example when they had studied Type A and B personalities. She, of course, had been the quintessential Type A. And there had been that college boy she had dated over Christmas break last year. He told her how she was "head and shoulders" above other girls her age, and most his age for that matter. Yes, she had really appreciated that...

Her daydreams of good deeds and narcissism were quickly forgotten when the student worker yanked open the classroom door and distributed the ballots to Mrs. Varnin.

Finally, Jen's ballot arrived on her desk. Quickly, she marked all of people whom she thought were the least lazy for the less important offices and glanced around the room before placing a discreet "X" by her own name. "No reason to give Brad any votes, she thought."

Although she was bubbling up inside until she felt like she would boil over, she contained her enthusiasm to her usual level of "extra perky" as she attended the rest of her classes.

Finally, at 2:55, when she thought she just couldn't take it anymore, the final announcements for the day came over the intercom. Principle Brown's husky, cigar-smoking voice would announce the good news.

"...and finally, the new PHS student body president is...Brad Burleson..."

Brad Burleson? Brad Burleson? This had to be some kind of joke! There was no way that her classmates, as mentally-challenged as some of them appeared to be, would vote for Brad Burleson over her, was there?

Jennifer sat there, stunned. Now she was glad that they waited until the end of the day to announce the winners. She wasn't sure she could have functioned very well in her current state of disbelief.

The final bell rang and Jen gathered her things and left the classroom rather sluggishly.

Back at her locker, she glanced around the hallway and noticed some remnants of her campaign posters. "Ugh," she thought. "Guess I'll stay after and take them down, lessen the embarrassment of being a loser."

As she removed the posterboards, she saw some writing on one that hadn't been put there by her. One comment: "GET OVER YOURSELF--EVERYONE ELSE HAS!!" Another read, "GIVE IT A REST, MARY POPPINS ON CRACK!" And those were the nice ones.

Then it hit her.

"Damn it, I am not a loser! Brad and all of the slackers who voted for him are! They'll probably all be toking some big blunt and killing brain cells by the millions together tonight. Their fried little minds just couldn't appreciate someone of my class and mature demeanor. Damn slackers!" she fumed to herself as she ripped down the rest of her graffiti-defaced propaganda.

But that Friday night, as Jen sat alone in her room brushing up on her trig for the upcoming SATs, the same disturbing thoughts kept creeping back into her mind.

"Maybe it's not how much you go out of your way to do things for people; maybe it's how much you go out of your way to be nice to people. And Brad is a pretty nice guy. (Whether that's because he's too stoned to argue or get mad is another story....) Maybe if I'd taken the time to work with my groups on our projects and the time to teach the homework lessons I just did for people then they would have respected me more and appreciated what a good person I really am. Maybe that's part of what it takes to be popular. And maybe they aren't all just a bunch of slackers." 

Just maybe.

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