Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (43)

“You want to come with me?” he asked, surprising both of them.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “I would love that.”





- 24 - Kyle Dorfman




I’ll admit it.

I made a mistake back in August when I told Tracy she was a shoo-in for the Principal job. I was laser focused on getting her support for the Hall of Fame, and it’s possible I wasn’t as careful with my language as I should have been. She was in a strong position, there was no doubt about that, but it wasn’t a done deal, and I shouldn’t have suggested that it was.

The thing is, a job search like that can take on a life of its own. There was a lot of enthusiasm for Tracy at the beginning of the process, but it turned out to be weak and qualified. Everyone respected her, but no one loved her. Aside from me, no one even liked her that much. She had no champions, no one who was willing to go to the mat on her behalf, to insist that she was the one and only.

There was an undercurrent in all of the Board’s deliberations, unspoken but clearly present: Maybe it doesn’t have to be her; maybe we can do better. Maybe there’s a challenger out there, a fresh face who might be a little more inspiring, a little more creative and unpredictable. Someone who could shake things up, get us moving in a new direction. I knew this because I felt it strongly myself. Disruption was my brand; mavericks were my people.

The problem was, we didn’t have a lot of mavericks applying to be Principal of GMHS. Most of the candidates were veteran educators, careerists who had worked their way through the ranks and were looking to step up to the top job. They were fine as far as they went, but there was no reason to prefer any of them to Tracy.

Angela Vargas was her only competition. Dr. Vargas was a rising star, a thirty-two-year-old charter school administrator from Paterson with a stellar résumé—Columbia Teachers College, Fulbright Scholar, fluent in Spanish and conversant in Arabic—and a sheaf of over-the-top recommendations. She was full of big ideas in her first-round interview, advocating for girls-only STEM classes and a later start to the school day, and she provoked strong reactions from the Board. Kitty Valvanos thought she was by far the most impressive candidate we’d seen, while Ricky Pizzoli accused the rest of us of going easy on her in the Q&A because she was a woman of color. This angered Charisse Turner, who pointed out that Ricky had never once complained about any of the white people who’d been given passes over the years.

I wasn’t as enthusiastic as some of my colleagues. Having spent my professional life in Silicon Valley, I had reservations about the single-sex classes—I thought they would backfire on our female students, leaving them ill-prepared for the male-dominated tech world—but I was open to persuasion, eager to hear more. Unfortunately, Dr. Vargas withdrew from the process the day before her second-round interview, informing us via email that she’d accepted a position with a prestigious private foundation that paid twice what we were offering.

So that was that. By the end of February, Tracy was back on top. We’d done our due diligence, considered all the viable alternatives, and ended up right where we started, with our very own highly capable, perfectly acceptable Assistant Principal.

And then I got a call from Buzz Bramwell on a Thursday night, asking if I was free for dinner on Saturday.

“Just you,” he said. “Not your spouse. There’s some confidential business we need to discuss.”





Tracy Flick


I have to give Marissa credit for tenacity. If I were her, I would have given up, but she reached out for the third time on the Friday after Valentine’s Day.

“Hey there,” she said. “It’s your favorite stalker.”

“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

I was happy to hear her voice. I’d been having a rough week—anxiety about the job search, difficulty meditating, winter malaise, you name it. Also, my nose had been bleeding, something that hadn’t happened since college, when it had been really bad. I’d gotten both nostrils cauterized senior year, and that had solved the problem—permanently, I thought. But in the past few days, out of nowhere, it had started up again with a vengeance. At the office. In my car. At the dinner table. I’d be going about my business, and my nose would erupt. It was gross and embarrassing.

“Do you have a cold?” she asked. “You sound a little congested.”

“No. I’ve got a wad of toilet paper shoved up my left nostril. Bloody nose.”

“Ugh. My son Ike gets those. You should swab some Vaseline inside your nasal passages. That helps sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know all the tricks.”

“Do you have a humidifier?”

“I used to. It broke last year.”

“I think we have an extra. Let me check the basement.”

“You really don’t have to do that.”

She was quiet for a second or two, letting me know that we were done with the nosebleed portion of the conversation.

“So listen,” she said, already sounding a little doubtful. “I know it’s last minute, but Kyle’s going out tomorrow, and the boys have a sleepover, so I’m on my own again, if you’re…”

She left it there, more of a vague hope than an invitation. I felt that familiar reflex kicking in—just say no and be left alone—but I ignored it. I was tired of being left alone.