Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (62)

I must have watched that video twenty or thirty times, but it didn’t help as much as I thought it would. I still can’t tell you why I did that—why I crawled over to a person I barely knew, got between him and a crazed gunman, and shielded him with my body, as if he were my own child—except to say that that’s me, that’s who I am, that’s how I’ve tried to live my life. Going where I’m needed, doing what I can to make things better, trying to be of service.

Before you get inducted into the Hall of Fame, they give you an advance look at the inscription on your plaque to make sure you like it. Here’s what mine will say: Dr. Tracy Flick. Educator, Administrator, Friend, and Guide. Fearless Leader with a Big Heart. A True Hero and an Inspiration to Us All.

After I read those words, I sat at my desk and wept. And then I signed off on the approval form, because I was so touched by the praise, and because it was impossible to ask for more.





Acknowledgments


I’m grateful to so many people for their help with this book—Kathy Belden, Nan Graham, Sylvie Rabineau, Michael Taeckens, Albert Berger, and Ron Yerxa, among others. Special thanks to Maria Massie, my wonderful agent and friend, who knew Tracy Flick from the very beginning, almost thirty years ago now. And to Mary, Luke, Nina, and Jeremy, who were the best pandemic companions anyone could have asked for.





More from the Author





   Mrs. Fletcher





Read on for an excerpt from Tom Perrotta’s novel

ELECTION





MR. M




ALL I EVER WANTED to do was teach. I never had to struggle like other people with the question of what to do with my life. My only dream was to sit on the edge of my desk in front of a room full of curious kids and talk about the world

The election that turned me into a car salesman took place in the spring of 1992, when Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill were still fresh in everyone’s mind, and Gennifer Flowers was the momentary star of tabloids and talk shows. All year long my junior Current Events class returned again and again to a single theme, what the media liked to call “the Character Issue”: How are private virtue and public responsibility intertwined? Can you be an adulterer and a good President? A sex-ual pervert and an effective, impartial member of the judiciary? It’s fair to say that these questions interested me more than my students. Like most American adoles-cents, the kids at Winwood High didn’t pay too much attention to the Supreme Court or the race for the White House. Their concerns were narrower-school, sports, sex, the unforgiving politics of the hallway and locker room.

But we also had the Glen Ridge rape case to discuss. My students were fascinated by this sad and sordid story, and it became the nexus where their concerns linked up with those of the larger democracy. The case had not yet gone to trial at that point, but the kids at Winwood knew the details inside and out. A group of high school athletes-the golden boys of Glen Ridge-had been charged with luring a retarded girl into a basement, forcing her to commit a variety of sexual acts, and then penetrating her vagina with a broomstick and a base-ball bat. None of the defendants denied the event had occurred. Their defense was that the girl had consented.

We had developmentally disabled kids at Winwood, and we had football heroes, too; the gap between them was immense, almost medieval. It wasn’t too hard to imagine how a lonely, mildly retarded girl might con-sider it a privilege of sorts to be molested and applauded by the jock royalty of her little world. They were the ones with the power of conferring recognition and ac-ceptance. If they saw you, you existed.

Given the similarities between Winwood and Glen Ridge-we were only separated by a couple of exits on the Parkway-it didn’t really surprise me that the overwhelming majority of my class, girls included, sided with the defendants and their right to a good time. If a girl, even a retarded girl, was dumb enough to join a troop of red-blooded boys in a basement, then who could blame the boys for taking advantage of this windfall?

I had my own opinion of the defendants-I wanted to see them convicted and sent to prison, where they could find out for themselves what it meant to be scared and weak and lonely-but I kept it to myself in the classroom, opting instead for the more neutral roles of moderator and devil’s advocate.

“They were strong and she was weak,” I pointed out. “So don’t the strong have a responsibility not to hurt or humiliate the weak?”

Lisa Flanagan ventured the first response. She was exactly the kind of kid I was trying to reach, a smart, unhappy girl who wanted nothing more than to be ac-cepted by the jock/cheerleader aristocracy at Winwood and had no idea-how could she?-of how relieved she was going to be to find a different world in college, more charitable standards of value.

“Mr. M.,” she said helpfully, as if cluing me in to the true nature of the world, “that’s not how it works. The strong take what they want.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Might makes right, Lisa? Is that what you’re try-ing to tell me?” I pointed at Dino Mikulski, the ster-oid monster in our midst, a 285-pound brick of zits and muscle who already had major college football coaches drooling over their playbooks. “If you’re correct in your analysis, then I move that Dino be declared President of the United States. I have no doubt that he could take George Bush in a fair fight and therefore deserves to be our leader.”