Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (40)

“We don’t have to sleep in the same bed or anything. We can just say we’re friends.”

I wanted them to visit, to show them around Green Meadow, to hold hands and make out in Monroe Park. But I couldn’t quite imagine Clem and my parents under the same roof.

“They think you’re a girl named Amelia,” I said.

“That’s okay,” they told me. “My parents think the exact same thing.”





Nate Cleary


I had to walk right past Kelly to get to my table.

“Nate?” she said. “Is that you?”

I did that little dance where you stop short and blink a couple of times, and pretend you didn’t recognize the person.

“Oh, wow. Kelly. Hey. How’s it going?”

“Not bad.” She bobbed her head from side to side. “I’m taking some time off from school. Just moved back home with my parents. What are you, a senior now?”

“Yeah. It’s my last semester.”

“Fun times.”

“I wish. I don’t know where I’m going to college, and I’m way behind on my thesis. It’s pretty stressful.”

She was dressed super casual—Uggs, plaid pajama pants, a big Rutgers hoodie—but she had a full coat of makeup on her face, and pink polish on her fingernails.

“You need to chill,” she said. “You were always kind of a worrier. Even back in summer camp.”

“You remember that?”

“How could I forget? We were the chicken fight champs.” She nodded at the empty chair across from her. “Wanna sit down?”

It felt a little unreal, as if Vince Vaughn had invited me to hang out with him in the first-class lounge.

“You sure?”

She gave me a look, like, Don’t be a weirdo, dude.

So I sat and we started talking about people we knew, the colleges I applied to, stuff like that. I’d always thought of her as so much older than me, so much more together, but it didn’t feel that way anymore. It felt like we were pretty much in the same place in our lives—stuck in Green Meadow, waiting for the next thing to happen—except I also knew that we weren’t, and finally I couldn’t help myself.

“Just so you know,” I said. “I’m a big fan of your videos.”

She was surprised that I even knew about them—I didn’t look like someone who watched a lot of makeup tutorials—so I had to explain the whole Hall of Fame thing: Kyle, the Committee, Vito Falcone, Front Desk Diane. It was all news to her. She didn’t even know she’d been nominated, and was deeply relieved to hear that she hadn’t been chosen. When I asked why, she looked at me like I was a fool.

“Do you ever read the comments?”

“Some of them,” I said. “People really like you.”

“There are so many creeps out there.” She hunched her shoulders and gave a little shudder of disgust. “Soooo many creeps. I don’t want them to know my real name. I don’t want them coming to my house.”

For a second or two, I thought about mentioning that I’d voted against her, like maybe she’d be grateful for that, or think it was funny, but then I reconsidered. There was no point in dredging up the past, confessing to a stupid grudge I’d been holding since freshman year. That was a long time ago. We were both different people now.

“I don’t care about the makeup,” I said. “I just like the way you whisper. And that thing you do with your fingernails. That’s pretty cool too.”

“This?” She did a little TapTapTap for me on the tabletop. “That’s my signature.”

I wanted to tell her that I liked the way she licked her lips too, but that seemed like it might be edging into the creep zone, so I kept it to myself, which turned out to be the right move. We talked until closing time, and then she wrote her cell number on the back of my hand, and told me to text her if I ever felt like hanging out.





- 22 - Tracy Flick




For several days after my interview, I was dogged by a feeling of unease, a sense—a premonition almost—that in spite of all my hard work and meticulous preparation, I might be headed for another defeat. Why else would Buzz have treated me like an adversary? I’d assumed he was on my side, not only because he liked me and respected my work, but because Kyle and the Board were on my side, and Buzz supposedly followed their lead: He doesn’t wipe his ass without Board approval. Either Kyle was wrong about that, or Buzz knew something I didn’t about the Board’s actual preferences.

I got so anxious I called Kyle at home—something I’d never done before—to let him know what had happened and feel him out about my prospects. He didn’t seem too concerned.

“Buzz is a prickly character,” he said. “He likes to make a big show of independence before he falls in line. It’s the only way he can salvage some self-respect.”

“So there’s nothing going on that I need to…?”

“Stop worrying, Tracy. Everything’s fine.”

“Okay. Phew.” I felt my abs loosen a little. “I mean, for him to accuse me of elitism—it’s so unfair. I was raised by a single mom. We had nothing. I went to college on a scholarship. I worked and scraped for everything I ever got. I’m the exact opposite of an elitist.”