Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (58)

When Vito Falcone and Front Desk Diane finally arrived, we took a group photo, all eight of us with our arms around one another. I was standing on the far left, next to Jack. When it was over, he gave me a fatherly squeeze on the shoulder.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Fine,” I said. “Never better.”

A few minutes before showtime, we walked as a group from the Green Room to the auditorium. I lagged behind, keeping out of the fray, but Kyle detached himself from the pack, and waited for me by the backstage door, arms folded indignantly across his chest.

“What did you do to my car?” he asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I held his gaze for a moment or two. “But sometimes people reap what they sow.”

“Goddammit, Tracy.” He stared at me in wounded disbelief, as if he were the injured party. “I thought we were friends.”

“That’s funny,” I told him. “I made the exact same mistake.”





Lily Chu


My role at the ceremony was simple: I had to present the bronze plaque to Front Desk Diane. That was it. Just smile and hand it to her. Nate was doing the same thing for Vito Falcone. That was the only reason we were up onstage.

The Superintendent got up first and gave a big shout-out to Kyle Dorfman, who was the “driving force” behind the brand-new Green Meadow High School Hall of Fame, the institution we were about to inaugurate.

“Thank you, Kyle, for your creative vision and extraordinary generosity. We wouldn’t be here tonight without you.”

Mr. Dorfman pressed his hands together and bowed to the audience. He was on the other side of the podium from me—the all-male side—between Nate and Vito Falcone. Dr. Bramwell’s empty chair was over there too.

“And now,” he said, “I’d like to hand over the reins to our Assistant Principal, Tracy Flick.”

Dr. Flick got up and walked to the podium. She didn’t stop to thank the Superintendent or shake his hand; she just brushed right past him, like he wasn’t there. She looked good in her little black dress, nothing like her usual wardrobe.

I wish I could tell you what she said, but I was too focused on the reserved seats in the first row, where Clem was sitting between my parents. It was weird to see the three of them like that, almost like they were the family and I was the one who was separate. I wanted to look at Clem, but my eyes kept drifting over to my mother. It was like her face was a magnet, tugging on my guilty conscience.

I’d snuck into Clem’s room the night before. I waited until one in the morning, and then I tiptoed across the hall, holding my breath. I shut the door so it didn’t even click, and then I slipped into bed next to Clem. Neither of us made a sound. We just snuggled—I mean, we did some stuff, but very quietly—and then I tiptoed out an hour later, and there was my mom, standing in the hall, looking right at me. We stared at each other for a few seconds, and then she went back into her bedroom, and I went into mine.

I thought I’d be in trouble in the morning, but she didn’t say a word. We ate breakfast together, the way we always did, and it felt like any other day, except that now she knew. It was right there between us, the secret I’d been hiding for so long.

I gave her a small, apologetic smile from the stage, and she gave me a smaller, not very happy smile in return, and I was okay with that, because I could see that she still loved me, and would love me no matter what.





Tracy Flick


I didn’t thank Buzz or acknowledge any of the Board Members or politicians in the audience, not even the Mayor. None of that mattered anymore. I just stood there until I had everyone’s attention, and then I recited “Ozymandias,” a poem I’d memorized for the occasion.


I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert….



I’d first read it back in high school, and it had made a huge impression on me, though not a positive one. Quite the opposite. I found it depressing, and even a little upsetting, because I valued fame and power—I believed in them—and I thought those things would save me.


“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!”



More recently, however, I’d come to find the poem oddly comforting, because I’d learned from bitter experience that there was no justice in the world, and that I would never get what I deserved. My mother had been wrong: fame wasn’t a reward for your hard work. It was a lottery, pure dumb luck, and it didn’t matter anyway, not in the long run. That was the whole point of the poem. There’s no such thing as immortality; all our striving is in vain. In the end, we’ll all be forgotten, every single one of us, the winners and the losers alike.


… Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.



I didn’t say that in my speech, though. It wasn’t appropriate for the occasion. What I said was that the poem was undeniably true, but that it wasn’t the whole truth. I said that we live in human time, not geological time, and that we have a duty as humans to honor the people among us who’ve performed great deeds. I said that was why we were here tonight, to pay tribute to two exceptional graduates of Green Meadow High School, individuals who have inspired us with their talent and their generosity of spirit.