Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed! Read Online Free

wouldn’t.
    Mrs. Tuttle blew the whistle to let everyone know that recess was over. As I got closer to the building, I saw Ben standing on the steps, smiling a big, goofy fake smile and shaking hands with everybody in our class as they were about to walk through the door.

    â€œWhat are you doing?” I asked him when I got to the front of the line.
    â€œRunning for president, just like I said I would,” Ben said, shaking my hand. His hand was all sweaty. Who would vote for a kid with sweaty hands for president?
    I mean, okay, I would, but only because he’s my best friend.
    â€œYou’ve got to get over this idea,” I said. “It won’t work in a million years.”
    Ben flashed his fake grin at me. “Move along, move along, I’ve got more hands to shake.”
    I walked to Mrs. Tuttle’s room. I was trying to feel excited about the mold museum idea, but instead I was feeling worried about Ben’s running for president. The only thing Ben had ever won in his life was honorable mention for the fourth-grade science fair. He stillhad that dumb ribbon pinned to his backpack like it was the Nobel Prize in Physics, which is a very important award that the most genius scientists of all win.
    If Ben lost the election—make that
when
Ben lost the election—he would probably be dark and scowly all the time, and then it wouldn’t be fun to be best friends with him anymore. Only, I’d have to stay best friends with him, because otherwise it would seem like I’d stopped being best friends with him because he lost the election.
    I was starting to feel sorry I lived in a democracy.
    â€œI see the campaign for class president has already begun,” Mrs. Tuttle said after everyone was back in their seats from recess. “Since Ben has gotten theball rolling, let me see a show of hands from everyone who plans to run.”
    I looked around the classroom. Ben’s hand was stretched a mile into the sky. Three seats behind him, Stacey Windham fluttered her hand in the air like a queen waving to all the little people. On the other side of the room, Chester Oliphant stuck his hand in the air, and so did Roland Forth, the only kid less likely to win than Ben.
    Aretha popped her pencil on the back of my head. When I turned around, she nodded toward Ben. “That’s not your idea, is it?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” I said. “Do I look that dumb to you?”
    â€œNo, you don’t,” Aretha said. “Even Ben doesn’t look that dumb to me. So why is he doing it?”

    â€œIt’s his dad’s idea.”
    Aretha rolled her eyes. She has a bossy dad too. “Well, his dad needs to wake up and smell the coffee, because Mr. Superhero Comic Book Man over there has a zero percent chance of winning this election.”
    I knew she was right. Everybody in the world knew she was right.
    Everybody, that is, except for Ben.
    And I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to convince him that he was wrong.

Here is a scientific observation I have made about my life: For
every
good thing that happens, there is usually an aqually bad thing that happens. For instance, this year I got Mrs. Tuttle for my teacher. That’s a good thing. Then my mom hired Sarah Fortemeyer, Teenage Girl Space Alien, “to be our babysitter. That’s bad.
    Very bad.
    Sometimes it’s the other way around,though. At the beginning of the school year my best friend, Marcus, moved away, which was bad, but a little while later I got a new best friend, Ben, which was good.
    At the end of every day you can add everything up to see how your life is going so far. If I graphed it, I think the graph would show that most days everything sort of evens out—not great, not terrible. At first I thought yesterday would be that kind of day. The mold museum idea was great, Ben running for president was not so great. It was kind of even steven. But then three things