Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (39)

“You bastard,” she said. “You put her in the Hall of Fame?”





- 21 - Lily Chu




My parents let me go to Wesleyan for the weekend. I presented it to them as a “college visit,” and that was true enough—Wesleyan was one of the many schools I had applied to, and it had moved up on my list since Cornell rejected my Early Decision app in December.

“It’s very highly ranked,” I assured them over dinner. “I mean, it’s not technically an Ivy, but it’s really close. And I can stay with my friend from Girls’ Code Camp. It’s all worked out.”

My mother studied me a little too closely. She’d been doing that a lot lately. “Which friend is this?”

“Clem. I told you about Clem.”

“What’s her last name?”

“Clemmons.”

“Clem Clemmons?”

“No. Her first name’s Amelia, but she prefers Clem.”

I wanted to use the right pronouns, but this didn’t seem like the best time. My parents were pretty strict, and neither one of them spoke English as their first language. There were a lot of reasons they weren’t going to like the singular form of they/them.

“Where will you sleep?” my father asked.

“There’s a couch in the living room. Clem has two other roommates.”

“Girls?”

I nodded, and my father gave me a stern look.

“No drinking,” he said.

“No drinking,” I promised.

“And no frat parties.”

“You really don’t have to worry about that.”

It would have been a lot faster to drive to Middletown, but my parents didn’t think I had enough highway experience, so I had to take a train to Penn Station, a cab to Grand Central, and then another train to New Haven. Clem borrowed a car from a friend and met me at the station.

We hadn’t seen each other in person for six months, and I was a little scared when I entered the terminal, like maybe the magic would be gone, and we wouldn’t know what to say to each other, or how to act. But then I spotted them—they were standing by the benches, holding a bouquet of flowers, with the sweetest crooked smile on their face—and we didn’t even say hello. We just started making out right there, in front of all those people, and that kind of set the tone for the whole weekend.





Nate Cleary


I haven’t seen a lot of famous people in real life. I was with my dad once in New York City—I was maybe ten years old—and he stopped in his tracks, spun around, and said, Holy shit, that’s Annette Bening! I could tell it was a big deal, though I’d never even heard the name before. A few years after that, I spotted Vince Vaughn in an airport; he was just standing there, talking on the phone. He was hard to miss, because he’s really tall. On a school trip to DC my junior year, I had to step aside to make way for Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who was exiting the men’s room at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. That was the weirdest, because I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d gotten there a minute earlier, I might’ve found myself standing next to Dr. Gupta at a urinal, though I guess it’s possible that he uses a stall for privacy, even when he pees. That’s what I would do if I ever became famous.

My point is this: it takes a second or two before you realize you’re looking at a celebrity. At first, it just feels normal, like, Hey, I know you, but then you’re like, Wait, do I? And then it hits you, this delayed jolt of adrenaline that tells you something special just occurred, something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

That’s what happened to me in Starbucks. It was a Tuesday night, and there were maybe like ten people in there, including a blond girl working on a laptop. I gave her a quick glance as I headed towards the counter, and then I stopped in my tracks and looked again.

Holy shit, I thought. That’s Kelly Harbaugh!





Lily Chu


I liked what I saw of Wesleyan, though I didn’t see as much of it as I probably should have. Mostly we stayed in Clem’s room, tangled together on that skinny little bed, though we did go to the dining hall for Saturday brunch, and to an off-campus party that night. They introduced me to some of their friends—This is my girlfriend, Lily—and we danced for a little while, but we decided to skip out early, because the weekend was flying by so fast and we wanted to make the most of every single minute.

We stayed up talking the whole night, filling in the details of our life stories, every little thing we could think of. It was so amazing to be reunited—to be able to kiss them again, to feel their arms around me, to run my hand over their stubbly hair—but it was sad too, because our time was almost up, and we were just getting started.

“This is too good,” Clem told me. “I don’t want to go back to FaceTime.”

“Me neither.”

“When can you visit again?”

“Probably not for a while. My mom’s already suspicious.”

Clem knew I needed to keep our relationship a secret. They’d been in the exact same position when they were my age.

“Maybe I could visit you,” they said. “Over my spring break. I could come for a whole week if you want.”

“Oh God,” I said. “That would be so weird.”