CHAPTER 11

I called Charlie, and then Daniel, right away. We couldn’t believe Maryam’s sneaky plot!

“She’s such a I said.

“Yeah, she’s a said Daniel.

“Charlie said she was an            I giggled.

And then we laughed so hard at our alternative swear words that we forgot all about how annoying Maryam was.

I guess it wasn’t too bad anyway, because it meant more money for the mosque, but I still didn’t want to lose. I wanted us to make way more money than Maryam and her friends ever could! After all, she was doing it for and we were actually doing it to save the mosque. Mom and Dad always say that the reason why you’re doing something is super important, because you could be doing something good for the wrong reasons, like just getting people to say that you’re .  But even if you’re doing something that you think isn’t that fantastic but it’s for a great reason, then that’s better. I thought about that, and decided that Allah would be on our side. Though then I wondered if He would approve of taking sides . . . Well, if He did,

We knew we had to work really hard to make sure Maryam’s friends wouldn’t win. We spent every lunchtime and every recess during the whole week planning our talent contest and the things we’d sell. Mrs. Hutchinson was helping us a lot. We chose her to be on the panel of judges, along with Mr. McLeary and the three of us. She said that she’d see which of the school board members wanted to be on the panel, too.

That Thursday, when we got the date from Mr. McLeary for when we could use the auditorium, Mrs. Hutchinson spoke to the whole school about it so that kids would know and could start to plan what their talent would be. Then she made Charlie, Daniel and me stand up, because we were the organizers.

“Sheesh,” Daniel whispered,

We all did. Especially because now that everyone knew, kids kept coming up to us on the playground to tell us, or even show us, what their talents were. Like there was this second-grade kid who knew Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham by heart, and he literally went through it without blinking. And there was this other kid in fourth grade who could do a

“Are we allowed to enter, too?” asked Charlie.

“Hmmm, good question,” I said. “I guess we could, but we ARE judges, so maybe it wouldn’t be fair . . .”

“What if me and Charlie entered and you were a judge, Omar?” said Daniel.

“Sure,” I said.

“Thank you, thank you, Sam-I-Am,” said Charlie with a grin. “I’m going to do something with my double joints!”

“I’m going to sing!” said Daniel.

I’m not sure that Charlie and I are ever going to run out of surprises when it comes to Daniel.

I wondered what my talent could be. Once, my mom told me that my smile was so real and happy that I could make anyone do anything with it. I imagined performing this talent at the contest, the whole crowd with my smile and then making everyone do wacky things, like pat their heads and rub their tummies at the same time while sticking their tongues out. It would be so funny. And then I decided that if it worked on Mr. McLeary, I would super definitely get him to change the school lunch to

every day (except Fridays, when it would be fish ’n’ chips!).

The best part was designing the tickets. Mrs. Hutchinson said that we could draw them and then the school would print them out and sell them to parents at the end of the day.

Here’s what we came up with (I drew the kid juggling):

OK, the prizes weren’t great, but we didn’t really have money to buy better ones and Mr. McLeary kindly offered those. We were pretty sure would pick the dictionary, but we didn’t feel like we could say that to Mr. McLeary.

I couldn’t wait for the weekend, when Charlie and Daniel would be coming over to make lots of stuff to sell on the day. But, as you might have guessed,