Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (8)

“That was wrong,” Vito said. “I was responsible for you. I shouldn’t have abandoned you like that.”

Esteban shrugged, like it was water under the bridge.

“No harm, no foul. My pops came and got me.”

“Yeah, but you were just a kid. And it was a mean thing to do. To humiliate you like that in front of the team. I have an anger problem, and it was wrong of me to take it out on you.”

“It did feel kinda harsh at the time,” Esteban conceded. “But, hey, you know what? I never forgot to cover the tight end again.”

“No, you didn’t. You turned into a great linebacker, and a good man. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, Coach. That means a lot.” Esteban studied Vito for a moment, like he was trying to figure something out. “You, uh… want to come in and have a beer or something?”

“That’s okay,” Vito told him. “I’ll leave you to your family. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry for what I did. I failed you, and I failed a lot of other people, and I’m gonna try to be a better person in the future.”

“Okay.” Esteban nodded, still a little off balance. “I appreciate that.”

They shook hands and Vito headed down the steps and out to the street. He got in his car and shut his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them, he felt a little better, a little lighter in his soul. He reached for the clipboard on the passenger seat and crossed one more name off the list.





- 5 - Tracy Flick




The beginning of the school year was always a shock to the system, a headlong plunge into an icy pool. A lot of my colleagues couldn’t stop whining about the end of summer, begging for one more week on the beach, one last cookout at the lake house. I pretended to agree, but I was secretly glad to be back in my element, reinhabiting my professional self, the only one that felt truly real to me. I’ve never been a big fan of vacations.

A lot of my job was routine and bureaucratic, but September was always loose and chaotic, mostly in a good way. The hallways were filled with fresh faces and a manic air of possibility; the whole social order had been reshuffled. New fires kept popping up, and I was the person with the extinguisher. That had always been the case, but it was doubly true now that Jack had announced his retirement. I wanted people to see Tracy Flick taking charge, solving problems, acting as the incumbent.

There were the usual scheduling mishaps, the calls from irate parents who wanted their kids switched to a higher-level class, or an easier class, or the exact same class with a different instructor. I fielded questions about peanut allergies and bus routes and locker assignments, checked in with new teachers to see how they were holding up, and offered tough love to kids who’d gotten cut from the varsity. There were conferences about IEPs, unfounded rumors about all-gender restrooms, and the inevitable complaints about the cafeteria food, along with unhelpful suggestions for how to improve it. Our hapless football coach, Skippy Martino, was upset about the strict new concussion protocol, claiming that two of his best players had been unnecessarily sidelined during the second half of our season opener, leading to a narrow defeat in a game we should have won. I’d chaired the task force that had designed the new protocol, so Skippy didn’t get a lot of sympathy from me.

The one problem I didn’t see coming was Bridget Dean’s nipples. Bridget was a tenured biology teacher, one of the mainstays of our somewhat shaky Science Department. The kids didn’t love her—they complained about her voice, a hypnotic monotone that made them want to lay their heads on their desks and drift away—but no one had ever questioned her competence, not even last spring, when she’d handled a difficult divorce like a true professional.

Though only in her midthirties, Bridget had always seemed a little matronly—mousy hair, frumpy clothes, unfashionable eyewear—but she’d transformed herself over the summer. She’d come back blond and twenty pounds lighter, with whiter teeth, better posture, and an unfamiliar bounce in her step. The glasses were gone, and she’d bought herself a whole new wardrobe to highlight her tanned and toned yoga body. All that would have been fine—teachers were people too, as we liked to say—if not for the nipple situation. She wore a bra, but for some reason her nipples were always disconcertingly visible through the fabric of whatever blouse or dress she had on, which had not been the case in the past. Everybody noticed. You could track the disturbance as she walked down the hall—the raised eyebrows, the sidelong glances, the smirks of amusement and boyish arousal. I could only imagine what was happening in her classroom.

Jack let a week go by before raising the subject.

“Excuse me, Tracy.” He stood in the doorway and cycled through a series of apologetic expressions, the way he always did before delegating an unpleasant task. “Could you maybe have a word with Bridget? About the, uh… dress code?”

“There’s not a dress code for teachers,” I reminded him. “It’s just appropriate professional attire.”

“Correct.” He wasn’t interested in the technicalities. “Just tell her to maybe… tone it down a bit, would you?”

“It’s kind of a delicate subject.”

Jack nodded; he was well aware of this. Avoiding trouble was his superpower.

“I’m sure you’ll be very diplomatic,” he told me.