Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President

CONTENTS

1
ROSIE SWANSON—
SECRET INFORMER

“HEY, YOU! NERDHEADS! GET OFF THE SWINGS!”

The voice came from behind us.

Maxie and Earl and I spun around. Three sixth-grade boys were hurrying toward us.

“YEAH,
YOU
THREE!” the kid shouted again. “THE FAT KID, THE SKINNY KID, AND THE FOUR-EYED, GEEKY GIRL! IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR EARS, DUDES? I SAID, GET OFF THE SWINGS! IT’S OUR TURN.”

Earl jumped right up. Since Earl Wilber is a little on the plumpish side, he always likes to get a head start when he’s making a break for it. “No, wait, Earl! Don’t run,” I said quickly. “If we run, they’ll just chase us. Let’s stay right where we are and pretend we didn’t hear them.”

Nervously, Earl sat back down. Even though
he and Maxie are in fifth grade and I’m only in fourth, they still listen to me sometimes.

I hunched over and tried to pull my head inside my turtleneck sweater. Everything fit except my glasses.

Maxie’s eyes were squeezed shut. “We’re dead people,” he muttered. For some reason, he started to spell it. “D-E-A-D P-E-O-P—”

“No, we’re not,” I snapped. “We’re not going to die, Maxie. Who ever heard of dying on a swing set?”

Maxie opened one eye and looked at me. “News flash. Little people die wherever big people kill them. It’s a law of physics. Look it up.”

By now, the sixth-graders were right behind us. Angry that we still hadn’t moved, they grabbed the chains of our swings and began shaking them.

“You guys don’t hear too good, do you?” said the biggest one.

Earl started to whimper a little. I was scared, too. But something inside me just wouldn’t let me give the kid my swing.

“We were here first,” I managed.

The three bullies bent down and laughed in
my face. “
We were here first, we were here first
,” they mimicked in baby voices.

After that, the big one leaned right next to my ear. “GET OFF, GIRLIE!”

I don’t like to be shouted at. Also, I hate being called a girlie.

“No!” I said back. “These are our swings, too, you know.”

Hearing myself say that made me feel a little braver. “If you don’t leave us alone, I’m going to report you to the principal,” I said.

Suddenly, the kid jerked my swing so hard I thought my head would snap off.

“Gee, girlie. I’m shaking in my shoes. Aren’t you, Frankie? Aren’t you shaking in your shoes?” he asked his friend.

After that, the three of them started twisting our chains around and around until our swings were all wound up in little knots. We were way off the ground.

“We don’t care that you’re doing this, you know,” I said. “We actually like this. This is fun. We love being twisted, in fact.”

The bullies stopped twisting.

“ONE … TWO … THREE!” they hollered.

On “three,” they grabbed our swing seats and spun us as hard as they could.

“Bye-bye, you little dipsticks!” they called as they ran off.

I’ve never twirled so fast in my life. Not even on that carnival ride where everyone throws up.

Next to me, Earl was making a high-pitched whining sound—like a siren, sort of. Earl is one of those kids who has to keep nose drops in his pocket to clear out his sinuses. Also, he has a mouth inhaler. But if he needed it now, there was no way he could get it while he was spinning.

Maxie said a bad word. It was only one syllable, but he dragged it out for the entire time he was untwisting.

It took forever for us to unwind. I mean it. It seemed like we would spin for years. But even after our swings stopped, none of us got up right away. We just laid our heads on our knees and moaned for a while until the world stopped moving so fast.

Finally, I held on to the chain with one hand and stood up. I tried to smooth out my dress without falling over.

“There. See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked.

The two of them moaned some more.

“I don’t care. We did the right thing by not running,” I said. “Bullies like that make me sick. They don’t own the school, you know. Sometimes kids like us just have to stand up for our rights.”

Maxie raised his head. His eyes looked like cartoon eyes—all round and white, with a little black dot in the middle.

Earl was holding his hand over his mouth, trying not to throw up.

“Okay, okay. I know it wasn’t fun,” I said. “But at least we didn’t give in. We’re just as much a part of this school as anybody else. And it’s time we acted like it.”