Charisse smiled proudly. “He’s been recruited by so many private schools. Full scholarships, all kinds of perks. But he wants to stay right here in Green Meadow.”
“He’s a great student,” Buzz added. “A real scholar-athlete.”
Larry nodded judiciously. “Well, I’ll see what I can do with him. I’m sure he’s got some bad habits he needs to unlearn.” He yanked his thumb at Vito. “I know this one did. He showed up freshman year, thinking he was hot shit, that he had nothing to learn from anyone. But I disabused him of that notion pretty quickly, didn’t I, Vito?”
Vito didn’t answer. He was hunched over on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring into the fire.
“Didn’t I?” Larry repeated, a little louder.
Vito blinked a few times, like he was waking from a trance.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can you repeat the question?”
Tracy Flick
Kyle wasn’t answering his phone, so I drove to his house. And then I got there and saw all those cars and the lights on the roof and heard the voices wafting down. It hurt to be excluded like that. Schemed against. Disrespected.
It wasn’t right.
Marissa was surprised to see me at the door.
“Tracy.” Her face was full of concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m here for the party,” I told her.
She said something else, but I was already past her, on my way up to the roof.
Kyle Dorfman
She came charging out of the elevator, fists clenched, leading with her chin.
“What’s going on here?” she demanded. “What’s this all about?”
“Whoa, Tracy.” I stood up, raised my hands in a calming gesture. “Take it easy.”
She stopped near the Ping-Pong table. She was breathing hard through her nose, almost vibrating with rage.
“Do you think I’m a piece of garbage?” she asked. “You think you can just crumple me up and toss me in a trash can? Is that what you think?”
“What? No. What are you talking about?”
She smiled in a way that worried me.
“You’re a liar, Kyle. A liar and a cheater and a backstabber.”
“Dr. Flick.” Buzz’s voice was clipped and cautionary. “If I were you, I’d watch my mouth.”
“Watch my mouth?” she snapped. “Watch my mouth? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Buzz was shocked. We all were.
“I’m the Superintendent of Schools,” he replied. “I’m your boss, in case you forgot, or maybe you’re too drunk to care.”
“I’m not drunk,” she said, though she didn’t sound a hundred percent sober, either. “I see what you’re doing here. And I won’t allow it.”
“What?” I said. “What does that even mean?”
She stared at me for a long moment, clenching and unclenching her fists.
“You heard me,” she said. “I won’t allow it.”
And then she turned and stormed back to the elevator.
Tracy Flick
It was so lame, something a child would say.
I won’t allow it.
The truth was the opposite, of course.
They would do whatever they wanted. And they would crush me, the way they always did.
I wasn’t crying when I got downstairs, but I was close. Marissa was waiting for me, that look of pity unchanged on her face. She reached for my arm, but I swatted it away.
I rushed out the door, hurrying down the curving path to the driveway. I stopped and stared at Kyle’s Tesla—even in the dark it was glossy and obscenely red—and I couldn’t help thinking how good it would feel to take a baseball bat to the windshield, to watch it dissolve in a cascade of sparkling shards, how good it would feel, just once in my life, to be the perpetrator, the one who did the damage.
But I didn’t have a baseball bat, so I just kicked the driver’s side door as hard as I could. To my astonishment, the metal gave way beneath my foot—you could hear it crumple—leaving a small but very conspicuous dent in the shiny surface. I was all set to do it again, but the alarm went off, and it was really loud—almost deafening—so I decided to leave well enough alone.
- 29 - Jack Weede
I had trouble getting to sleep, but that wasn’t unusual. It had been that way ever since my heart attack. I think some part of me was always scared that I wasn’t going to wake up in the morning.
I watched an episode of Seinfeld and a bit of Jimmy Fallon, an interview with a Scandinavian actress I’d never heard of. They just kept coming, these young people, wave after wave of them, beautiful and full of energy, hungry for the world. It gets to be too much after a while.
I must have dozed off on the couch because that was where I woke up. I was aware of a faint clicking sound, and then another one, and another after that. I got up and opened the front door.
Diane was standing on my lawn, gazing up at my bedroom window on the second floor. She was wearing the same coat as before, but she had a nightgown under it instead of a dress.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What does it look like?” She leaned back and tossed another pebble. “I’m trying to wake you up.”
PART FIVE: Dead Woman Walking
- 30 -
Glenn thought it would be a bigger deal. You hear about a “red carpet” and you can’t help thinking fancy hotels, gowns and tuxes, a hundred flashbulbs popping at the same time. But it was just the side entrance of Green Meadow High School on a drab March evening, the doors you would use if you took the bus, not even the main entrance with the portico.
They did have a carpet; it was more maroon than red, maybe thirty feet long, shimmery and slightly wrinkled, a little narrower than the sidewalk it covered. A velvet rope ran along one side, and Glenn was standing on a patch of grass behind the barrier, along with a small crowd of fans and well-wishers. Some of them were there for Vito—a couple of guys in Dolphins jerseys with FALCONE written across the back, and three middle-aged women in cheerleader outfits, not bad-looking, actually, though their cartwheel days were over—but there were also a fair number of high school students wearing T-shirts and holding signs that read TEAM DIANE, in honor of the school secretary. Glenn remembered her fondly from his student days; she was young and pretty back then, barely out of high school herself, and she’d always smiled and waved when she saw him. He was flattered for a while, until he realized that she smiled and waved at everyone. That was her thing—being nice to the whole world—and she’d ridden that horse all the way into the Hall of Fame.
Good for her, he thought. At least she’s a decent person.
There was a woman cop on duty, wandering in and out of the school building, checking out the spectators, making sure everyone was behaving themselves and staying off the red carpet. She was short and thickly built, almost egg-shaped in her protective vest, her reddish hair tucked up under her hat. She was probably the School Resource Officer, because she seemed to know a lot of the kids by name, and was comfortable joking around with them.
She was saying something into her shoulder radio—Glenn couldn’t quite make out the words—when one of the cheerleader ladies tapped him on the back.
“Excuse me?” She nodded at the yearbook in Glenn’s hand. “Were you Class of ’94?”