She had been a teacher. She became a teacher, not because of some great love of teaching, but because she figured it would be a nice professional job. She somehow became princ.i.p.al, and she somehow became the superintendent of the local school system. She did work hard, of course, but she didn"t do anything particularly spectacularly. She simply applied for the position, and she got the job.

Then, things got very strange. The local schools under her supervision were doing well. Very well. Almost too well. Maria had gotten used to the rowdy students, chaos in the cla.s.srooms, complaining teachers, and parents, and the acceptable number of high school dropouts. It was all normal. As time went on, however, less and less students were dropping out. In fact, the kids were doing really good. It wasn"t like all of them went to college, but all of them were graduating. A lot of them even made it to prestigious universities. And Maria was getting a lot of credit for it. She didn"t even do anything.

Maria figured, with all this popularity, she should run for office. She didn"t think she had a chance. Buck Wildley had the office in a griplock, and all in all, she liked being a superintendent. But a few party hacks approached her about running, and she agreed. And well, she won, to everyone"s surprise.

Maria was worried, though. She knew quite a bit about how the local government operated. She had tried to get funding for her schools, and it was nigh impossible to get the budget from last year, not to even dream about additional funding. She could see herself getting stymied at every turn, and she just knew her hair would turn white from the stress. She liked her brown hair, too.

Quite unexpectedly, the first few days of her term went well. Very well. Almost too well. Her initiative to get more funding for her school district pa.s.sed with barely a fight. This was public money we were talking about here. That sort of stuff always had a lot of opposition. But a lot of the other party"s biggest names were finding themselves in corruption charges, or major or minor scandals. A few even went bankrupt. It made no sense. Well, it helped Maria out tremendously, and her popularity just kept on going up. She didn"t even do anything.

Maria felt blessed. She wasn"t the religious type, but she had to admit something was going on up there. For her at least. She felt immensely grateful, and she developed a sense of responsibility, maybe for the first real time in her life. She knew this time was special, and she didn"t want to mess up. Heck, maybe she"ll even do a heck of a job.

Her family life was going well, too. Her husband was a CPA, and her children were just starting their careers. She hoped the public spotlight on her family wouldn"t strain them, but surprisingly, they handled it well. Maria felt very bewildered, but she wasn"t about to complain about her blessings.

"Whoever"s up there, thanks a lot."

Fred sneezed.