Chapter 46

The Meeting

It was the middle of the city council meeting and I was beginning to think that I would literally rather watch paint dry. All I could hear was council members blabbering about who-knows-what. I knew I would have to do this all again when the project was actually finished and I was dreading it already.

I stared at a spot on the wall while adjusting my too-tight dress that I had to borrow from Olivia since Mom wouldn't let me borrow hers. Samina wasn't paying much attention to the meeting either, she seemed to be retracing the Maya Angelou poem that was always written on her arm. Before I met Samina, I thought I would never like poetry. I still didn't, but at least I had a little bit of appreciation for people like Samina who jumbled up words into something amazing, something beautiful. Candace was sitting on the other side of me. She was playing with her tight coils of hair.

Candace poked me. "What was that for?" I whispered.

"You looked like you were about to fall asleep," she said. "You have to do your speech in..." She glanced at her watch. "Five minutes. If I were you, I'd at least look over your notecards."

"Should I do that?" I asked the Magic 8 Ball.

Don't count on it.

"No, I think I'm good," I told Candace, even though I was seriously nervous. What if I screwed up? What if all I accomplished was making a big fool of myself in front of the City Council? The demolition was tomorrow. If we failed, Barnswell would be destroyed.

"And now, Isabelle Prescott will propose a new resolution. We will vote on it immediately after their presentation," the mayor said.

I stood up and walked over to the podium.

"Good luck," Samina whispered.

All eyes were on me. The fate of the project was in my hands now and knowing my luck I would destroy any hope we had of saving Barnswell. I might as well try though. I took a deep breath, spread out my notecards, and began the speech.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the City Council, I am Isabelle Prescott, a student at Rutherford B. Hayes High School. Over the past month, Candace, Samina, and I have been holding several fundraisers in hopes of raising enough money to pay for repairs for the Barnswell Library and Historical Preservation Site."

"But that's getting demolished tomorrow!" one of the city council members shouted.

"I'm getting to that," I said. "We would like to propose that the City Council postpone the demolition until April 1st, in hopes that enough money will be raised to cancel the demolition completely and fix the maintenance problems instead of destroying the building. We have raised over thirty thousand dollars already. We believe it is an important measure to take because Barnswell is more than just a library. Barnswell is a site that is important to the community. It is almost one hundred years old and several events that have shaped our town's history happened there. For example, the first city council meeting was at Barnswell. I believe that we should put this piece of our town's history over maitenance issues and vote to give us more time to raise the money necessary to fix the building. Thank you."

I stepped down from the podium. "Thank you Isabelle," the mayor said. "And now for the vote. All in favor of postponing the resolution, say aye."

Every single council member stood up and said "aye." I smiled. That was it. The demolition had been postponed! There was no stopping us now.

"That settles it. The demolition will be postponed until April 1st."

"Yes!" Samina shouted. Samina, Candace, and I got up and walked outside.

"I can't believe it!" Candace said. "We did it!"

"Your speech was fantastic," Samina said.

"Thank you," I said. "But the battle's not over yet. We still have to raise the rest of that money."

"I know," Samina said. "But we have a while to do that."

"True," I said. "I can't believe it," I said. "It was unanimous!"

We all cheered and did a group hug. I was still in shock. How did I manage to convince the entire city council that this was a good idea? Whatever. I did it. That was all that mattered.