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How It All Began…

My name is Brianna Justice.

I am president of the whole sixth grade. If you are thinking that being class president means I’m popular, you’re wrong. At least, you would’ve been—before everything that happened.

The truth is, getting chosen as class president in middle school was NOTHING like it was in elementary.

When we voted for class president in fifth grade, it was a big BIG deal. Win or lose, you knew it meant something—it mattered. Everybody was excited. Hearts were broken. Dreams were realized. It was… amazing.

In sixth grade? Yeah, “running” for class president meant having Mr. Galafinkis tap me on the shoulder and ask me to stay after class and fill out some paperwork. I think my only qualification is that I looked least likely to set a fire in the trash can. And I was one of the few kids who was shorter than him.

Anyway, being president of the whole sixth grade was an important job. It didn’t matter whether or not you were popular. What mattered was getting the job done.

And the idea of failing started giving me nightmares.

See, every sixth grader at Blueberry Hills Middle School learned about THE BIG class trip to D.C. long before we started middle school. But somehow, despite about seventy-five of us paying our deposits the first week of school, our class was still twenty-five hundred dollars short.

Now it was up to me to turn my classmates into a lean, mean fund-raising machine, otherwise our big trip was not going to happen. And I didn’t just want us to go—we had to go to D.C.

Why I HAD to help the sixth grade get to Washington, D.C.!

1. TO WIN! Each year, the leadership conference has a theme based on government—this year’s theme was ancient Rome. We were going to compete with all the other schools to show how much we knew.

2. The most important magazine in the whole wide world, Executive, Jr., was going to be at the conference. The magazine was doing workshops on leadership skills for business success, and offering tips for kids who wanted to start their own businesses. (I WAS ALREADY A BUSINESSWOMAN! And this could help me make my business even BIGGER!)

3. Our school had participated in this trip for twenty years and NO WAY would I be the first president of the whole sixth grade who FAILED. No way!

4. All of the class presidents had to give a speech. The winning speech would earn $1,000 for that school.

5. MOST IMPORTANT: Getting out of town would give me much-needed time with my girls!!!

So, as you can see, I had A LOT riding on this trip. And time was running out.

The whole thing started that one day. The day the museum lady came to our school…