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Chapter 246: In the Running

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Sam shimmied into one of her grandma's old skirts, gifted to her for the occasion. It was weighed down, nay, covered, nay, encrusted with pins that read VOTE in all caps. A relevant sentiment.

Since, well. They were voting today. Everyone in town. It'd take a week or more to tally, what with having to do everything by hand and make sure no one voted twice by going to a different station, but the vote itself was happening today.

And Sam was voting.

She gave her reflection a smile. If the so-called governing body of Amity Park was going to use her as an information source, they should have been aware that she'd have a price. That price, in this case, was votes for all teens. After all, Danny had been fourteen when he started protecting Amity Park, and teenagers would definitely be affected by the decisions made. Potentially more than the adults, even. The ghosts had agreed, which Sam would have felt a bit smugger about if she didn't know ghosts had some weird cultural hang ups about children that she was most certainly taking advantage of.

Regardless, the humans had then realized it gave them a greater voting advantage, and then they'd agreed as well.

Would some people pressure their kids into voting the same way they did? Probably. But given how word had spread regarding liminality, and who would benefit first from that, fewer people would cave than usual. At least, that was Sam's assessment of the situation.

Clacking slightly, Sam walked out into the hallway and jangled down the stairs, being loud on purpose. Her mother made a face when she saw her, but it was a different face than what she usually made when she saw Sam's clothing choices, so Sam's return face was similarly toned down.

"Out to campaign, dear?"

"Just want to make sure that everyone knows they can vote," said Sam.

"That's good of you." She looked down at papers on the table with an air of distraction, hands pulling back her hair. "That's good of you. Sam?"

Sam paused with one hand on the door. "Yeah?"

"Once you have power… don't let people take it away from you, okay, sweetie? Even if they care about you. You've got to keep it."

"Okay, sure," said Sam, feeling unsettled.

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It was bright and warm outside, the greenhouse effect of the shield continuing to counter the winter weather that had to be happening outside it. The sidewalks were springy with vines, and perhaps a little crumbly. Sam frowned. She hadn't ever really thought of the infrastructure damage plants could do, even after Undergrowth.

After all, Undergrowth was an exception, an outlier. Not something that would happen normally. But even normal plants growing on a concrete surface would burrow into it, weaken it, eventually destroy it, if allowed to continue.

On the other hand, certain kinds of ivy were supposed to grow on buildings, so…

She didn't have enough background knowledge. Probably someone here in town did, maybe even several someones, but that didn't mean they were paying attention, which was another issue altogether.

Stop.

Don't borrow trouble. She had things and a task to do today. The city wasn't going to disintegrate overnight. Probably. Ghosts were involved, after all. It had more or less disintegrated overnight before.

She swallowed. The current precarious situation was not good for her mental health. Or anyone's probably. At least the years of ghost attacks had sort of prepared them for living with this kind of stress. Inasmuch as anyone could be prepared.

Thoughts still churning, despite her best efforts, Sam arrived at the rendezvous point. Mikey and Ricky were already there. Paulina and Dash arrived soon after. Before long, their entire class was there, along with a variety of other Casper High students.

"Alright!" shouted Sam, climbing up on a nearby fire hydrant. No one had soapboxes anymore, after all. "Mikey, Ricky, and the twins are passing out assignments, so we don't go through the same neighborhood twice! Once you get yours, you can head out! Remember to stay with your buddies and keep your phones on! Stay in surface Amity unless you're specifically on the spatial anomaly team! Fishing you out if you get stuck is way harder without Danny! Everyone got it?"

There was a ragged sort of cheer.

"Then let's do this!"

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"Hello, ma'am," said Sam, smiling up at a woman with too many eyes, "we're just here to remind you of the election today and answer any questions you have about the ballot or where to vote."

Sam was of course, on the spatial anomaly team. Along with Danny and Tucker, she had mapped most of the stable ones prior to the GIW invasion. Although, there were a lot of new ones that weren't on their map.

Most of the inhabitants of the spatial anomalies, aka shortcuts, aka dimensional pockets, aka weird zones, were ghosts, although the odd human had managed to wind up living in them.

"Ah," said the woman, blinking, "thank you. I was just preparing to leave, actually." She stared at Sam for a painfully long second.

"Well, then, we'll leave you to it!"

Sadly, human or ghost, the inherent awkwardness of going door-to-door to promote something was the same. Ghosts were much better at giving off 'go away and get out of my face' vibes, although humans were better at masking that they were thinking 'I'm saying whatever it takes to make you go away.'

She reached the sidewalk again and sighed. "How many more do we have to go on this road?" she asked Kwan, her partner.

"Uh, ten?" he said, with the air of someone who was guesstimating.

Sam was fine with guesstimating.

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There were several vital items on the Amity Park special ballot.

First and most important was this:

Should Amity Park secede from the United States of America?

The possible answers to this were a simple yes or no.

Beneath that, it was asked, If Amity Park secedes from the United States, should it join the Ghost Zone under the rule of King Phantom?

The next question was, If Amity Park remains a part of the United States, should it send representatives to the White House with those of the Ghost Zone?

The others continued in the same vein.

If Amity Park becomes an independent country, what form of government should it take? If Amity Park becomes part of the Ghost Zone politically, should it request that it be brought into the Ghost Zone physically? If Amity Park sends representatives to the White House, who should they be? If Amity Park sends representatives to the Ghost King, who should they be?

The next section was about leadership. Who would be mayor? Who would be on the city council? How should things be arranged and organized?

And, perhaps of greatest importance, what would they call their country, their state, their province, their city, their cities, because Elmerton was under the shield, too, when or if they broke away from the United States?

The polling lines stretched back several blocks from each station—In some cases, they also stretched up, ghosts hovering in place and making room for landbound humans. Several people had brought musical instruments with them, to entertain (or possibly annoy, given skill levels). It was loud. Noisy. Hotter than it really should have been, because large groups of people generated heat. The sky glittered, droplets of ectoplasm flaring in waves of emotional energy. Cultists and other groups formed color-coordinated blocks, streamers, and constellations on the ground.

Once again, Sam was captivated by a scene that could only occur here, in Amity Park. Nowhere else.

She'd be voting to secede, of course. Honestly, given other circumstances, she'd be voting to stay out of the Ghost Zone, too, big government was untrustworthy, no matter who was theoretically in charge. But Sam was figuring out when to be idealistic and when to be practical.

This was a time to be practical. Nice as independent city-states were in theory, Amity Park wouldn't survive on its own. Especially not after angering a powerful neighbor.

Not that Sam expected full independence to be a particularly popular option, all things considered. She was glad the ballot was structured so as to avoid plurality; a series of branching paths, rather than a confluence of many roads.

Sam shook her head. Too poetic. No delusions of grandeur allowed here.

It really was amazing, though. All the movies she'd watched suggested that at this point the town would be postapocalyptic chaos, but everyone was holding together. People weren't attacking each other in the streets.

(Now, Hannah swore that the ghosts had started a fight club in the sewers, which wasn't outside the realm of credibility, but the source was Hannah, so…)

The line moved forward slowly.

"Hey," said Hannah, standing in line behind her. "When do you think they'll be done with the count?"

"I don't know," said Sam. "A couple weeks? This is a lot to count by hand…"

"Do you think we'll get to the front of the line before dark?"

Sam bit her lip and leaned out of the line. Several dozen people were between her and a sharp corner that took it out of sight.

"Honestly?" she asked. "I have no idea."

"Who are you voting for as representatives?"

"That's the first one you're asking me about?" asked Sam, surprised. "Not the secession?"

"It's pretty obvious what you're going to choose for that, Sam."

Sam nodded. "What about you?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know who I'm going to vote for."

A non-answer. But, then, so was Sam's.

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A week later, Sam stared, shocked, at Principal, now Mayor, Ishiyama. "What do you mean I won? Won what?"

"An election—"

"I wasn't even running!"