“Yes, Lily?” Principal Weede gave me a sweet smile. “What’s on your mind?”
“I was wondering about Reggie Morrison.”
His smile disappeared. “What about him?”
“Um, I know the nomination came in late, but I did some research, and it’s true—all the articles say he was just as good as Vito Falcone. They were both All-State and they both got big college scholarships. And Reggie scored more touchdowns. He still holds the school record. So it seems like it’s only fair—”
“Reggie never made it to the NFL,” Nate pointed out.
“I know,” I said. “But when they were here—”
“Reggie’s a little… controversial,” Principal Weede told me. “I don’t know if you know this, but he assaulted a police officer.”
“The cop was off duty,” I said. “And the charges were dropped, right?”
“It was a big mess, Lily.” Principal Weede checked with Mr. Dorfman. “I really don’t think we want to revisit all that, do we?”
“Not this year,” Mr. Dorfman agreed. “I think we should probably stick to our list.”
I glanced at Dr. Flick, hoping for a little support, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“All right,” I said. “Whatever.”
Tracy Flick
That was the last thing we needed, two football players instead of one.
Kyle Dorfman
I really didn’t care about the second person. We had Vito in the bag and that was all that mattered. The second person was a footnote. But I also didn’t want to sit there for the rest of the afternoon.
“I hate to say it,” I said, “but it’s gotta be Keezer. Whisper Girl’s too weird, the Vietnam kid’s dead, and no one gives a crap about the writer, so we’re just gonna have to bite the bullet.”
Jack Weede
I’d met Matt Keezer a few times—he was one of those unavoidable people in Green Meadow—and I couldn’t stand him. You couldn’t talk to the guy for five minutes without hearing about his luxury box at MetLife Stadium, or his vintage Porsche convertible. And I hated his stupid billboards; they always featured his smarmy face and a little thought bubble that said something like Life’s too short to drive a boring car or Get a new lease on summer. Matt Keezer was one bullet I was not going to bite. I was just about to say so when Diane poked her head into the room, the way she always did when I had a meeting that looked like it might run a little long.
“Ten-minute warning,” she said, and I couldn’t believe how blind I’d been.
Tracy Flick
At first I didn’t understand what Jack was up to.
“Ms. Blankenship,” he said. “How long have you worked here?”
“Too long,” she said. “Twenty-eight years.”
“Wow.” Jack gave a little whistle of surprise, though he was well aware of Diane’s work history. “You must have been young when you started.”
“I was twenty. Fresh out of community college.”
“And you’re a graduate of GMHS, correct?”
Diane shot me a puzzled glance, but all I could do was shrug.
“That’s right,” she said. “Class of 1986.”
“And you saved a student’s life? When was that, 2004?”
Diane tugged on her sweater, straightening the wrinkled snowflake.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” She was blushing under our collective scrutiny. “He got stung by a bee in gym class, and I guess he had a bad reaction. The nurse was out that day, so… I just jabbed him with an EpiPen. Anyone could’ve done it.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully, letting that sink in for a bit.
“I’ve never saved anyone’s life.” He glanced around the room, checking in with each member of the Committee. “Have any of you ever done that?”
We all shook our heads.
“Thank you, Ms. Blankenship.” Jack beamed at her—it was a sweet, boyish smile, full of affection—and I loved him in that moment. “That’ll be all for now.”
When Diane left, he nominated her, and we took a vote. My hand was the first in the air, but only by a fraction of a second, and it didn’t matter anyway, because the Committee was unanimous.
We’d found our second person.
PART THREE: The Overwhelming Favorite
- 18 -
Glenn Keeler needed to keep busy. That was what he always said when people asked how he managed it, working all week at his handyman business （GlennWillDoIt.com）， and then volunteering his nights and weekends as an Auxiliary Police Officer, doing the thankless jobs the full-timers preferred to avoid: traffic duty, parade security, that kind of thing. Guarding a downed power line until the utility company arrived, the live wire thrashing around on the street like an angry snake, spitting out sparks. Escorting a funeral procession to the cemetery. Filling in on the graveyard shift when someone got sick at the last minute. It was all okay with Glenn.
I like to keep busy, he would say. And I don’t need a lot of sleep.
He hated hanging around his condo at night, no one to talk to, nothing to do but stress eat, watch Fox News, and listen to the chatter on the scanner. Then it would be bedtime, and he’d be all revved up with nowhere to go. Sometimes, when his insomnia got really bad, he’d get in his Explorer and drive around for a few hours, cruising up and down the quiet streets, keeping an eye on things. The Grover PD only deployed two cars overnight, and he knew how lazy the younger guys could get. They’d idle for hours in the Wendy’s parking lot, shooting the shit through their open windows, leaving the town unprotected.
It wasn’t the same, patrolling in a civilian vehicle, calling in suspicious activity instead of intervening directly. But he could do it if he had to. That was why he kept a portable strobe unit mounted on his dashboard. He’d flashed it a few times, mostly at people he knew, just for fun, but once or twice with strangers whose driving he didn’t like. They’d pulled right over, no hesitation whatsoever. And they’d been very respectful when he asked for their license and registration.
I’m sorry, Officer. I’ll be more careful next time.
One of these days he’d get someone who wasn’t so polite, some mouthy asshole with a bad attitude. And that would be fine with Glenn too, a whole different kind of fun.
* * *
Tonight was a low-stress assignment, crowd control at a basketball game between Grover and Green Meadow, Glenn’s alma mater. The kids could get a little rowdy on the weekends, but he wasn’t expecting any trouble on a Tuesday night. In any event, there wasn’t much of a crowd—a hundred at most—because no one was expecting much of a game. The Grover Pirates were one of the best teams in the county, and the Larks were one of the worst, which was par for the course, because Green Meadow pretty much sucked at everything these days.
Glenn made a slow circuit of the bleachers before the opening tip-off, making eye contact with as many spectators as possible, scouting out potential troublemakers, letting everyone know he was on the job. They all registered his presence, even the ones who pretended not to. It was a universal truth: a cop walks by, people notice.
He would never say it out loud, but this was the real reason he did the job—this feeling he got, wearing the uniform in public. Normally, Glenn wasn’t much to look at, an overweight middle-aged man, a little shorter than average, not much of an athlete. In a department full of bodybuilders, ex-Marines, and black belts, he was the fat guy, the one who couldn’t run a mile or do twenty push-ups to save his life, which was the reason he’d never graduated from the Academy. Luckily, the standards for the Auxiliary were a little more forgiving.