The Ninth Grade Rebellion

The assembly is about student government, which means the assembly is about nothing. I know this already and I'm fourteen. Everyone around me knows it too. The bleachers are doing that groaning-metal thing they do when nine hundred teenagers try to sit on them at the same time, and three rows down a boy named Kellen is eating what appears to be an entire sleeve of saltines in a way that is both impressive and concerning. Mrs. Dell is at the podium. Mrs. Dell is always at the podium. She has been our Activities Director for approximately eleven thousand years and has the posture of somebody who was told in 1993 that good posture would save her life and never stopped believing it.

"This is," Mrs. Dell is saying into a microphone that only works when she gets within an inch of it, "an exciting opportunity for every one of you to have a voice —"

Somebody in the senior section coughs a word that is not voice. The word they cough is voiceless. That gets a laugh. Mrs. Dell smiles the way she has been smiling through that laugh since before I was born.

Simone is sitting next to me because Simone sits next to me when she can, which is a thing I have started to notice and am trying not to make a big deal about. She leans over. She smells like the cinnamon gum she says she hates and chews anyway. "She's going to say opportunity again," Simone whispers. "I'm calling it."

"Opportunity,"says Mrs. Dell.

"Told you."

"That was cheating."

"It was pattern recognition," Simone says, and lifts her chin in a way that means she wants me to laugh, and I do, and I try to do it quiet, but it comes out with an edge that makes the girl in front of us turn around and give me the look that means grow up. The girl in front of us is in tenth grade. The amount of energy tenth graders spend pretending they are not one year older than us could power a small city.

What Mrs. Dell is telling us is that elections for the Student Representative Council will be held the last week of September. The ninth grade gets two seats. There will be a ballot. There will be candidates. There will, she tells us, be speeches, and everyone should consider running, because student government is about having a voice and a seat at the table and other things that go on posters in guidance counsellors' offices. She does not say this body has no power. She does not have to. Every single person in this gym has spent nine years being told that the student council gets to pick the theme of the dance and nothing else. We know. She knows we know. The whole thing has the energy of a play that nobody auditioned for, being performed for an audience that has already seen it.

Except.

On my seat, when I sat down, there was a folded piece of paper. I thought it was gum somebody was trying to pass me and I almost flicked it off. It's not gum. It is a pamphlet, a real one, with a staple in the corner and a cover that says Student Representative Council: Bylaws and Charter of Authority (Rev. 2011) in a font that is trying to be serious. I assume Mrs. Dell had a stack of these at the door and somebody handed one to everyone, the way they hand out flyers about the flu shot. I did not take one at the door. This