Election (10 page)

MY MOTHER GOT UP
at five in the morning and helped me ice the two hundred cupcakes we'd baked the night before. I planned on handing them out at the main entrance, along with a smile and a gentle reminder of who to vote for. (There were nine hundred plus students at Win wood, but two hundred strained the limits of our kitchen and our patience. I just hoped that none of the people who missed out would hold it against me.)

I was queasy from the chocolate air and not enough sleep, but my mother seemed happy and well rested, like there was nothing in the world she'd rather be doing before sunrise than icing cupcakes to advance my career. She hummed as she frosted, pausing for occasional sips of coffee.

Besides me, my mother didn't have much of a life. She hadn't dated anyone in years and didn't even seem to be looking anymore. She rarely bought new clothes
for herself and we didn't travel except to visit colleges and museums. Her only real hobby was writing fan letters to successful women, asking if they had any advice for her “college-bound daughter.” We'd received lots of nice responses from people like Pat Schroeder, Anna Quindlen, and Connie Chung, telling me to study hard and dream big dreams, etc. She kept the letters in a file folder, and I sometimes caught her flipping through them with a faraway look in her eyes.

“Mom,” I said, “I think I'm going to lose today.”

She spread the icing with a smooth swirling motion, finishing with an elegant flourish. She poked a toothpick into the summit of the cupcake, then set it carefully inside the cardboard box.

“No you won't, honey. This time tomorrow you'll be President.”

She was always serenely confident of my success, and it never failed to cheer me up.

“You think so?”

She dipped a finger into the icing bowl, then stuck it in her mouth.

“I know so. Tracy Flick's a winner.”

When we were done—the cupcakes filled six boxes—I hurried to shower and get dressed. For luck, I wore my boldest red dress, the one that makes people stare.

It's funny to me that I have a reputation as a sexpot,
because I hardly ever feel sexy. My hair is dull and my face is so bland that I stare into the mirror sometimes and feel like bursting into tears. But I have a good body, and in that dress I start to feel like the person everyone seems to think I am, a daring girl with no apologies for anything.

My mother was standing by the refrigerator in jeans and a cardigan, still licking chocolate off her fingers. She'd gotten her boss's permission to start work an hour later than usual.

“Wowee,” she said. “You look scrumptious.

” I spun in a circle, happy to be admired.

“Come on,” she said. “Cupcakes are in the car.”

As a precaution, we got to school at seven fifteen, a good half hour before the early birds would start showing up. (I wasn't about to let either of the Warrens beat me to a prime spot by the side entrance.) We'd set up the card table and unpacked two of the boxes when Mr. M.'s car pulled into the teachers’ lot over by the temporary classrooms.

I kept my eyes down, pretending to straighten a row of cupcakes, and didn't look up until my mother nudged me with her elbow. Mr. M. was about twenty feet away, a red gym bag in his hand, examining us with an expression of horror and revulsion I doubt I'll ever forget. It was shocking to see him so wild-eyed and disheveled, shirt rumpled and untucked, shoelaces
untied. He looked like he'd spent the night in a bus station.

UNTIL I SAW THEM
there, standing by that table full of goodies, I swear to God I'd forgotten all about the election. Tracy's red dress brought it all flooding back to me—her lies and threats, Tammy's suspension, the logistical nightmare I was about to face when all I wanted was to curl up under my desk and sleep the day away. I was well aware of the fact that I had not yet showered or combed my hair, and was in no mood to make small talk with Barbara Flick. Tracy smelled blood. I could see it in her smile.

“Mr. M.,” she said. “Looks like you could use a cupcake.”

“
ATTENTION!
” The word exploded from the intercom speaker, garbled by static and strange gobbling noises. It sounded like someone was trying to eat the microphone. “This is your Vice-Principal speaking!”

A brief riot erupted in my homeroom, as it always did when Mr. Hendricks addressed the school. Wads of paper bounced off the wall near the speaker. Some kids pretended to tear out their hair; others made crosses with their fingers and hissed as though fending off a vampire. Shrieks of mock terror filled the air.

“Oh no!”

“Coffee Man!”

“Hide the Cremora!”

The humor of this ritual eluded me under the best of circumstances, and I happened just then to be suffering from a brutal stomachache, a wriggling knot of pain that
made me wonder if the stress of the election had given me an ulcer. I shared a moment of sympathetic eye contact with Mrs. Jardine, who shook her head mournfully at the front of the room, waiting for the outburst to run its course.

“People,” she said. “This is for
your
benefit.”

Mr. Hendricks cleared his throat with a gross hawking sound, like a cat choking up a hair ball.

“As you know, this is a landmark day for Winwood High, and it … ah … behooves me to inform you of an important change affecting today's election. Effective this morning, you have only two choices for President. Due to disciplinary proceedings of a confidential nature, Tammy Warren has withdrawn from the race. I'd like to wish the best of luck to our two remaining candidates, Paul Warren and Tracy Flick.”

Every face in the room was a question aimed at me. I didn't know what Tammy had done, but I was pretty sure the Warrens had teamed up to pull a fast one at my expense. My stomach hurt so bad it just about killed me to smile.

THE LOGISTICS
of a high school election are no laughing matter. At the same time you're educating
your students about democracy, you're working to safeguard the process against fraud. It's sad but true: given half a chance, most kids will cheat to win. They're a lot like adults in this respect.

The voting was scheduled to take place outside the cafeteria during fourth, fifth, and sixth period. We had it down to a science. To obtain a ballot, a student would present an ID and sign a register, at which point his or her name would be crossed out on a master list. The ballot would be filled out immediately in our mock voting booth and dropped into a locked, slotted box. The votes would be counted during seventh period, the winner announced during eighth period assembly.

Walt called me into his office immediately after homeroom. He was smiling grimly, dressed in a blue polyester suit apparently meant to simulate denim. In the center of his desk was a fat manila envelope marked “BALLOTS.”

“Jim,” he said, “I've got a little project for you.”

Due to an unusual outbreak of competence in the front office, the ballots had been prepared a week in advance and locked in a secure filing cabinet. Walt had retrieved them that morning only to realize that we'd been betrayed by our own efficiency—Tammy's name appeared on each and every one of them.

“We've got to get rid of her,” he said. “It's a nightmare to count these things as it is.”

“You want me to type up a new one?”

Walt didn't answer right away. He poked his pinky in his ear and swirled it around with a thoroughness that made me look away.

“I'd hate to waste the paper. We're way the fuck over budget as it is.” He examined his pinky for a second or two, then renewed his excavation. “I swear to Christ, people must wipe their butts with letterhead around here.”

There were 750 sequentially numbered ballots. While my students caught up with their reading during first and second period, I sat at my desk with a Magic Marker, blacking out Tammy's name with the diligence of an FBI censor. It was tedious, mind-numbing, idiot labor, just what the doctor ordered. I only wished the ledger of my own life could be so easily set aright, with a series of fat black lines drawn neatly through my sins and errors.

“SUSPENDED” WAS
a good word for the way I felt. In between. Nowhere. I had abandoned one part of my life and not yet begun another. I had jumped up and not come down, except in fantasies.

I was possessed by a vision of myself as a Catholic
schoolgirl, Dana's best friend and secret love. In the Immaculate Mary of my mind, we held hands and skipped down the hallway in matching uniforms, causing no consternation among the smiling nuns and shyly beautiful French girls who watched us pass. (For some reason, many of our imaginary schoolmates were French, with heart-shaped faces and silky hair. Their lips were full and pouty and they spoke English with just the slightest trace of an accent.)

Shortly after ten o'clock I got on my bike and rode through the empty streets into the corny, Colonial-style business district of West Plains. The morning was damp and cool, the sky a bright pearly gray. The world seemed to tremble on the edge of spring, and I pedaled as hard as I could, as if I could somehow speed its arrival.

Bells jingled as I walked through the front door of the Little Sally Ann Shop, the store Dana had told me about. Behind the counter, a gray-haired woman with reading glasses pinching the tip of her nose smiled and put down her knitting. She didn't seem surprised to see a girl my age wander in in the middle of a school day.

“Yes, dear?”

I told her that my family had just relocated from California and that I would soon begin classes at Immaculate Mary. Naturally, I was curious about the uniforms.

“Of course,” she said. “Come with me.”

The skirt was lightweight gray wool, pleated and soft, the blouse stark white with a sweet rounded collar. I'd remembered to wear my own knee socks and saddle shoes, a souvenir from an ill-advised tryout for the jayvee cheerleading squad freshman year.

Smiling at the transformation, I stood before the three-paneled mirror in my new outfit, studying myself from every angle. I looked good. I'll be happy now, I remember thinking. Everything will be better.

“You'll like it at Immaculate,” the saleslady told me. “The public schools around here are going down the toilet.”

“Oh please,” I told her, twisting my hips to flare the skirt. “You don't have to tell
me.”

YOU SEE
these pictures all the time, the grinning politician emerging from behind the curtain, flashing a thumbs-up to TV land, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world: in the privacy of the booth, with a clean conscience and boundless optimism, this man has just pulled the lever next to his own name.

I never gave it a second thought until Larry DiBono handed me my ballot that afternoon. I ducked into the goofy “voting booth” they rigged up every year—it was
really just a wooden desk surrounded by a wraparound shower curtain—uncapped my pen, and was overcome with disgust. All at once, the idea of voting for myself seemed utterly repugnant. It was selfish and unfair, like a defendant sitting on his own jury, or an author reviewing his own book.

If I can't win this thing without my own vote, I told myself, then I probably don't deserve to be President. I scrawled “None of the Above” across the bottom of the ballot, folded the paper in half, and slipped it into the box.

LARRY DIBONO DROPPED
the ballot box on top of my desk. We had thirty-five minutes to tabulate 641 votes, and I was tired. Tired the way you might expect a person to be who had spent the night in his car. Tired the way you get when you know you haven't even begun to face up to the gravity of a bad situation. I scowled at the box.

“Maybe we should just get some lighter fluid and torch the thing,” I said. “Save us a lot of trouble.”

Larry laughed uneasily, more startled than amused. Being an election monitor was not something he took lightly.

“You want me to look for Mr. Hendricks?” he asked.

We'd already wasted ten valuable minutes waiting for Walt outside the cafeteria. The regulations stipulated that three people had to be present at all times during the handling of the ballots—the SGA President, the faculty advisor, and the Vice-Principal.

“I'll go find him,” I said. “In the meantime, why don't you get started on your count.”

Larry hesitated, unable to conceal his discomfort. He was a straight arrow who believed in following rules, but he was also a brownnoser who derived great pleasure from obeying orders. As usual, the brownnoser won out.

“Are you sure it's okay?”

“Sure,” I said, handing him the key to the box. “Just don't light any matches.”

I can still remember how good it felt to step into the hallway, as if my body had somehow sensed the danger packed inside that box of votes. The feeling of freedom—of reprieve—was so intense that I had to stop myself from breaking into a run, sprinting like a fugitive down that gleaming tunnel of lockers and linoleum and Tracy for President, bursting through glass doors into the safety of the hazy afternoon.

Instead of running away, I permitted myself to indulge in the cheap luxury of hope. Maybe Sherry's come
to her senses, I thought. Maybe she misses me and wants to get together. After all, you can't expect a situation as complicated as ours to fall into place without a hitch, etc. It's painful to look back on a moment like that, to watch yourself play the dual role of con man and dupe, gulping down the snake oil you've just brewed for your own consumption.

Ducking into the phone booth around the corner from Walt's office, I reached into my pocket and fished out a handful of change, including several quarters. This struck me as a good omen, because I almost never have quarters on hand when I need them. My fingers trembled as I pushed the buttons.