It turns out that Mrs. Wanda Patino, principal of Woodbrook Elementary School, is not a big fan of mold.

“In the basement of my school?” she said after I’d given her my Amazing Mold presentation, complete with illustrations and fun facts. “You want to grow mold in the basement of my school?”

“Well, it’s kind of everybody’s school,” I pointed out. “And Mr. Reid said it would be okay.”

“You want to grow mold in the basement of my school?” she asked again.

Scientifically speaking, this conversation was starting to get a little boring.

“It’s a science project,” I told her. “It’s educational. It’s probably the most educational thing any kid will do in this school all year. And our school would be the only school around for miles with its own mold museum. You might win an award for Most Scientific Principal or something.”

Mrs. Patino just shook her head. I could tell I was not doing a very good job of convincing her of the wonderful-ness of mold.

“Mac, I’m impressed by your initiative here,” she said after about two more minutes of head shaking. “But there are health codes we have to think about. Under the wrong conditions mold can be a very dangerous thing.”

“You’re thinking about a different kind of mold,” I insisted. “The kind that gets inside buildings and makes people sick. That’s not the kind of mold I’m growing. Most of the molds I’m growing are slime molds. And they’re all in covered containers.”

“I’m sorry, Mac,” Mrs. Patino said. She stood up and walked around to the front of her desk. “But I think I’d have a hard time convincing the school superintendent that your mold museum was anything but a health hazard.”

I knew there wasn’t any use in arguing anymore. You can always tell with adults. When they’re finished with a topic once and for all, they get this little smile on their face like, I win, and no offense, but there’s nothing you can do about it, so now I’m going to go eat some disgusting snack like green olives with pimentos stuck in them, if you don’t mind.

When I got out of Mrs. Patino’s office, lunch was almost over, and everybody in my class was on the playground. After I put my posters and my mold samples back in Mrs. Tuttle’s room, I went outside and found Ben over by the jungle gym, planting some sticks in the ground.

“You can’t make trees grow that way, you know,” I told him.

“I’m not growing trees,” he said. “I’m visualizing.”

“Visualizing what?”

“This scene I’m trying to draw in ‘Derek the Destroyer Meets the Amazon Volleyball Players.’ The amazons are chasing Derek through the jungle, and there’s going to be this trap where a net falls down from some trees. Anyway, for some reason I’ve been having a hard time visualizing how the trap works.”

I sat down next to Ben. I was visualizing my hard work flushed down the toilet. I was visualizing a whole bunch of mold all dressed up with no place to go. In a few short days I had created a universe of mold—blue mold, green mold, snowy white mold, and speckled black mold—and for what? Instead of going into a museum to be admired by millions—or at least by the entire fourth grade of Woodbrook Elementary School— it would go into the trash.

Well, not the slime mold. The slime mold was staying in my room.

“Hey, Mac, didn’t we have a deal?”

I looked up. Aretha was standing in front of me. She had her hand on her hip.

“If I recall correctly, you owe me some penicillin mold,” she went on. “My troop meets tomorrow. It would be nice to be able to make the penicillin before then so I can get my badge.”

I couldn’t believe it. In all the excitement of the last few days, the big speech and the big presentation and now the big, huge, disappointing letdown of no mold museum, I’d forgotten all about the penicillium mold growing in our bathroom closet.

“I can bring what I have tomorrow,” I told her. “You know it’s not going to be like some pink bubble-gum-tasting stuff in a childproof bottle, right? I mean, I grew the mold. I don’t exactly know how to squeeze out the mold juice and turn it into medicine. I guess that would be your part of the process.”

“Mold juice?” Aretha said. “Nobody ever said anything about mold juice.”

“That’s what penicillin comes from,” I said. “Mold juice.”

“I don’t know if the Girl Scouts will like that,” Aretha said.

“If they’re like everybody else, they’ll hate it,” I said. “They’ll find it disgusting and gross and a health hazard. But it’s just mold. It’s part of nature’s recycling project. You can use it for medicine or for blue cheese. What could be so wrong with it?”

“I love blue cheese,” Aretha said. “At least, I love blue cheese salad dressing.”

“It’s mold,” I said with a sigh. “Just good old misunderstood mold.”

Aretha looked at me. “Let me guess. Mrs. Patino said no to your mold museum idea.”

I nodded.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me that,” Ben said. “That’s really stinkazoid.”

“She said mold is a health hazard,” I said.

“Blue cheese is a health hazard?” Aretha folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t think so.”

Then she turned to Ben. “Maybe we should make this part of our campaign. ‘A vote for Ben and Aretha is a vote for mold!’ If we get elected, we could get everybody to sign a petition, and then Mrs. Patino would have to let Mac have his mold museum.”

“Um,” Ben said. He cleared his throat. “Um, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Aretha eyed him suspiciously. “You have a problem with mold too?”

“Uh, no, that’s not it,” Ben said. “It’s just that I’ve decided not to run for president.”

“What? Why not?”

Ben looked at his sticks. “Because I think you should be president. You’d do a lot better job than I would.”

“But I don’t want to be president,” Aretha said. “I don’t even want to be vice president. All I want is twenty merit badges by December.”

“If you didn’t want to be vice president, why did you agree to run on my ticket?” Ben asked.

“Because I didn’t think you would win, quite frankly,” Aretha said. “Besides, I needed some help making penicillin, remember?”

“But now I probably am going to win,” Ben said. “Only, the only reason I’m probably going to win is because of you. When you and I made that speech, everybody saw that you’re, like, a leader or something. I’m just an artist.”

“I do have natural leadership abilities, it’s true,” Aretha admitted. “But I do not have political drive. The only time I really got excited about the election was when we made that speech together. Then it didn’t seem like politics. It seemed like fun.”

“It’s like Ben has the drive and you have the skills,” I said. “And together you make a team that people want to vote for.”

“We do make a good team,” Aretha agreed. “It’s not something I would have predicted, but I have to admit it’s a fact. And I guess after we made that speech, I did start to feel like being vice president would be interesting. Although, frankly, I would make a better president than vice president. Ben’s right about that.”

A flash went off in my head. “So why don’t you switch?” I asked.

“Switch what?” Ben asked.

“Why doesn’t Aretha run for president and you run for vice president? Because Aretha would be a great president, which everybody knew the minute you guys started making your speech, including Aretha. But you’d make a good vice president, Ben. You’re the one who would bring creativity and energy to your administration.”

Ben and Aretha looked at each other. They nodded.

A switch. What a brilliant concept.

Really, sometimes I amaze myself with my own geniosity.