LITMIR.BIZ

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at it for a couple of seconds, trying to catch my breath, feeling like someone had my head underwater and was holding it down. I knew we had to stop before something awful happened.

      My solution was clean and dramatic. That spring, I joined the track team. Instead of spending my afternoons with Tammy, I occupied myself by running laps around the football field. I was cold to her at school and said I was busy when she called me at night. Eventually she got the message.

      I liked running and turned out to be pretty good at it. The sunshine cheered me up and so did the fresh air and camaraderie of belonging to a team. Slowly, I started to feel like a normal person again, out of danger. Except sometimes, running in a meet, I had this creepy feeling she was chasing me, that I'd glance over my shoulder and see her bearing down, gaining with every stride.

      TAMMY WARREN

      I SAT in the bleachers and watched her run. She seemed so far away from that perspective, a total stranger, talking and laughing with her teammates, pretending not to notice me. They'd hug each other after crossing the finish line, three or four girls linked together in a private circle, sealed off from the world.

      I felt so bad and weird that I actually made an appointment with the school psychologist. She's pretty, maybe thirty years old, with really great taste in clothes—silk scarves, Italian shoes, some kind of subtle perfume (most of the other women teachers smell like they're wearing Wizard room deodorizer). I remember walking into her office and wanting to be her, to skip ahead ten or twelve years to a time when I'd be poised and elegant and totally in control of my life.

      “This is all strictly confidential,” she told me. “Feel free to say whatever's on your mind.”

      “I'm in love.”

      Just blurting it out was such a relief, I immediately burst into tears. She pushed a box of Kleenex across the table and watched me with a sympathetic expression.

      “Take your time,” she said, pausing for a second to admire her enormous diamond engagement ring. “When you're ready, you can tell me all about him.”

      That's when I realized how impossible it was, my whole life. Talking about it wasn't going to change anything. I thanked her for her time, and got a pass back to study hall.

      PAUL WARREN

      MY EX-GIRLFRIEND WAS a kisser. I went out with her a whole year and never even unhooked her bra. She was perfectly happy to make out for three hours at a stretch, but if I so much as tried to untuck her shirt, everything came crashing to a halt.

      “Paul,” she'd say in this shocked voice, like I'd just whipped out a pair of handcuffs. “What are you doing!”

      I guess that's why I was so amazed when Lisa started unbuttoning my shirt after just a few minutes of kissing. Her mother was at work, and I realized pretty quickly that she wasn't fooling around. Her face was hot and she was breathing in these hard little gulps. She took my hand and pulled me toward her bedroom.

      “Are you sure?” I asked.

      She said yes. She fumbled for something in her dresser drawer and told me she'd be right back.

      Time seemed to expand while I waited for her, but I felt totally focused, totally connected to the moment, the way I did sometimes on the football field.

      “Close your eyes,” she said from the hallway.

      TAMMY WARREN

      I FOLLOWED THEM to her house. I sat on my bike by the mailbox and waited.

      Now I knew how Mom felt the day she found out about Dad and Sarah Stiller. It was a complete coincidence. She'd taken off the afternoon to drive me to the eye doctor. On the way home, we happened to pass the Arrowhead Motel just as Dad walked out of the office.

      Mom pulled into the parking lot of Giant Carpet, just in time for us to watch them slipping into room 16. Dad held his hand on her big butt and glanced furtively from side to side like a criminal. He looked so pathetic, a potbellied guy in a tweed rain hat, about to do the nasty.

      Our original plan was to wait there until he came out, but Mom changed her mind after a few minutes, maybe because of me, I don't know. We drove home and she cooked dinner, just like any other night. Dad got home at six-fifteen, kissed her on the cheek, asked me about school. They stayed together three more miserable months.

      I didn't chicken out like Mom. I forced myself to stay and watch. Two hours passed before Paul finally emerged from Lisa's house, blinking like the sun hurt his eyes, but by that time, I'd already decided to run for President.

       3

      MR. M.

      THE CANDIDATE ASSEMBLY usually ranks as one of the duller rituals of the high school calendar, full of the windy rhetoric of commencement, but without the sense of festivity and true accomplishment that makes the excesses of graduation speakers so forgivable, and sometimes even touching.

      I knew better than most people how little to expect because I had read and approved all the speeches in advance in my capacity as SGA advisor. I'm told that this custom of prior review dates back to the early seventies, when an honor student shocked the Administration by running on a pro-marijuana platform, and received a standing ovation.

      “A joint in every locker!” he was supposed to have pledged. “Two buds in every bong!”

      The speeches of 1992 looked to be nowhere near as interesting. Tracy Flick focused on herself, of course, her many talents and accomplishments, her proven ability to lead. Paul outlined a misty vision of a new kind of school, a cooperative, productive place without cliques or outcasts, an oasis of learning where students were equals in one another's eyes and teachers functioned as guides and helpers rather than narrow-minded disciplinarians. It was inspiring enough, but utterly beyond anything he had the power to achieve as SGA President.

      Tammy was the wild card. On the morning of the Assembly, she submitted a woefully unfinished draft for my approval. It began with some interesting remarks about the school not meeting the needs of ordinary students, the ones who weren't academic or athletic superstars, but then it just fizzled out. The language was tentative and disconnected, and I remember thinking as I read it that she was in way over her head.

      “Tammy?” I said. “Are you sure you want to do this? You can always try again next year.”

      She studied me through her glasses, and I thought for a second that she was ready to back out. But then she shook her head.

      “No,” she said. “I better go through with it. I think it'll be good for me.”

      Up to that moment, I'd been baffled by her candidacy, unable to see what an anonymous sophomore had to gain from competing head-to-head with an older brother who was a star athlete and one of the most popular kids in the school. But now I saw—or imagined—that she was doing it as a personal challenge, a way to move out of Paul's shadow and emerge as an individual in her own right. I knew the feeling, having spent my own adolescence locked in psychological combat with an older brother whose charmed existence always seemed to diminish my own.

      “Can you finish this by seventh period?”

      She nodded. “I'll work on it during lunch and study hall.”

      “Okay.” I initialed the draft and slid it across the desk. “It's up to you.”

      TRACY FLICK

      I THOUGHT TAMMY WAS a dweeby sophomore with some kind of weird death wish. From my perspective, she didn't alter the dynamic of the election at all. It was still me against Paul. Competence vs. Popularity. Qualified vs. Unqualified. Tammy was just a distraction.

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