Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (13)

She gave me a sympathetic smile, very mom-like, which I appreciated. She had a reputation around school for being kind of a bitch, but that wasn’t my experience. She’d been really sweet last spring, when I lost the election by twenty-seven votes and had to settle for Veep, which wouldn’t look nearly as good on my applications.

The world’s not fair, she told me. And then she gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear: You’re better than they are. Don’t ever forget that.





Nate Cleary


I was thrilled to be there, sitting at the same table as Kyle Dorfman. I mean, I have no idea if those net worth numbers on the internet are true—I’m guessing probably not—but even if you chopped that figure in half, you’re still talking a shitload of money, and now Kyle and I were hanging out on a Tuesday afternoon, sharing a side order of spicy fries.

On the surface I kept it pretty chill, though. At least I was less weird about it than Lily, who kept blushing and stammering whenever he asked her a question, which was kind of surprising, because she’d always been way more mature than everybody else in our class. I mean, even back in first grade, she used to bring books to the playground and read them at the picnic table during recess, while everyone else ran around screaming like idiots and throwing wood chips in the air.

I did make one minor misstep. It happened in the middle of dessert, when Kyle finally got down to business, and asked us who we wanted to put in the Hall of Fame. I guess I should have waited for the adults to chime in, but I was feeling pretty comfortable by then, and the answer seemed so obvious I just blurted it out.

“It has to be either you or Vito Falcone, right?”

He looked a little startled when I said that, like it had never even occurred to him that he might be in the running.

“Seriously,” I said. “Did you ever look at the Green Meadow Wikipedia page? They have this section, like Notable Residents or whatever? And the two top names are Vito Falcone and Kyle Dorfman. After that it’s just a bunch of randos no one’s ever heard of.”





Jack Weede


You know how Kyle got rich?

He designed a virtual pet app called Barky. His big innovation—the thing that set his virtual pet app apart from all the other ones—was that the dog barked out its thanks whenever you remembered to feed it or take it for a walk or clean up after it took a virtual shit. For a year or so, millions of people thought that making Barky happy was a rewarding way to kill some time, and then they forgot all about it.

That’s his entire claim to fame.





Kyle Dorfman


People like to mock Barky, as if it was some stupid fad from the Dark Ages. What they forget is that there was an innovative social component to the app. We called it the Love Bank. If you did a nice thing for Barky, gave him a biscuit or a bath or a bone, you would earn Gratitude Hearts—they would float up from the dog’s head and deposit themselves in a treasure chest—and you could use these hearts as currency. You could buy more bones and biscuits, or give them as a birthday gift to a friend, or transfer them to someone you had a crush on, or bestow them on a stranger who asked for help.

That was what people got excited about. Not the cute dog. The fact that the cute dog was at the center of an economy of affection and kindness, a benevolent space where one good deed led to another. And yes, it made me a lot of money. I don’t like to say how much, because it’s a shocking amount, almost obscene. But the Hall of Fame wasn’t about me.

“Just to be clear, I’m not a candidate. It wouldn’t be ethical for a member of the Committee.” I glanced around the table. “And just for the record, if everybody else wants to go with Vito Falcone, that’s totally fine with me. More than fine. I think he’d be an awesome choice.”

“It would make a splash,” Jack agreed. “But only if you could get him to attend the ceremony. We’ve tried to bring him back a few times, but he’s always too busy. No point in honoring a guy who’s not gonna show up.”

“Do you have his contact info?”

“Check with Front Desk Diane. She’s probably got something on file.”

Lily poked her hand into the air.

“Can I ask a stupid question?” She looked a little embarrassed. “Who’s Vito Falcone?”





Nate Cleary


Lily’s parents were immigrants—I’m pretty sure they went to high school in Taiwan or someplace like that—so it made sense she’d never heard of him. My dad had grown up right here in Green Meadow, and I’d been hearing his name all my life.

“Vito Falcone was the greatest football player in the history of our town,” I told her. “His junior and senior years, the Larks were undefeated and ranked number one in the state.”

“That was a long time ago,” Principal Weede told her. “You weren’t even born yet.”

“He only played in the NFL for a couple of years,” I said. “But still, nobody from here ever made it that far in any professional sport. Not even close.”

“And he was really good-looking.” Kyle whipped out his phone and did some swiping. “Movie star handsome. He was like a young god back in the day.”

He held up the phone so we could all take a look. It was a picture from Vito’s college days at the University of Pittsburgh. He was holding a football by his ear, gazing thoughtfully into the distance, as if he were about to throw downfield.