I wasn’t a hundred percent when September rolled around, but I went back to work anyway. I wouldn’t have missed that first day for the world. An honor guard of kids and teachers and custodians and cafeteria workers lined up outside the main entrance, and they all applauded as I limped into the building. The first thing I saw was a big, hand-lettered banner taped to the wall.
WE LOVE YOU, PRINCIPAL FLICK!
That’s right: Principal Flick.
Everything changed after I got shot. The Board passed a resolution commending me for my heroism and grace under pressure, Larry Holleran withdrew his candidacy, and that was that. It’s going pretty well. I’ve made it very clear that there’s a new sheriff in town, and that mediocrity won’t be tolerated, not on my watch. It helped that the football team had a great season, thanks to Marcus Turner. We won seven and only lost three, and even made it to the playoffs for the first time in years. Nobody’s complaining about Skippy Martino anymore.
Oh, and guess what else? I got elected to the Hall of Fame. They had to change the rules to include people who worked at the school, not just graduates, but that wasn’t a problem, because they wanted to make Jack Weede eligible as well. That was sad, Jack dying so suddenly, a massive heart attack just a couple of months before his retirement.
A big part of my job has been helping the kids to process their grief and move towards healing. We hired a full-time counselor, and the kids have come up with some rituals of their own. They’ve turned Vito’s old locker into a kind of shrine. They leave flowers for him sometimes, birthday cards, bags of candy on Halloween, a Christmas stocking with his name on it. In November, a woman named Paige Ellmann came to see it. She said she knew Vito from Florida, and that they’d dated for a little while before his death. I took a picture of her standing next to the plaque, and she took one of me. She hugged me before she left.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “That was so brave what you did that night. I’m glad he had someone to comfort him at the end. He was such a lovely man. I miss him every day.”
“I wish I could have done more,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
It’s always a little awkward when people tell me how brave I was, because I can’t remember much about what happened that night. The doctors say it’s traumatic amnesia, very common among victims of accidents and violent crimes.
A lot of people in the audience took videos, though. You can probably find some of them on the internet, not that I’d recommend it. I clicked on a few, but only because I wanted to fill the holes in my memory. Most of the footage was shaky and out of focus, but there was one video that held still and caught it all.
You can see the shooter moving down the aisle, shouting at Vito and raising his gun, and you can see Jack trying to stand up, his face contorted with pain. And then Vito gets shot—the first bullet knocks him right off his chair—and everyone panics. Diane and Lily flee to the left, Buzz and Kyle and Nate to the right. I don’t fault them for that. They did the sensible thing and tried to save themselves. Only Vito and Jack and I remained onstage—Vito on his back, still moving a little, and Jack flat on his face, utterly motionless. I don’t know why I didn’t try to help him; he was right next to me. I must have known he was dead, though I didn’t check for a pulse or anything. I didn’t even look at him. I just went straight to Vito.
You can see it on the video.
I get down on my hands and knees, and I crawl over to him, which also means I’m crawling towards the killer, who keeps yelling at me to get out of the way, because he doesn’t want to hurt me. But I keep going, and try to help Vito, but there’s not much I can do.
At this point, you can see our School Resource Officer, Allison Fitzpatrick, coming down the side aisle. When she gets near the stage, she draws her own weapon and takes a few precious seconds to position herself in a two-handed crouch. The killer takes advantage of that brief hesitation to fire again, and those are the shots that hit me, and a split second later, Allison pulls the trigger and he goes down. It’s over.
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.