Free Election by Tom Perrotta

before the election, the one morning of the year Walt Hendricks needed to see me first thing. He'd worked himself into a minor frenzy waiting for me to show up.
    “Goddammit Jim, where the hell were you? We've got ourselves a fucking problem.”
    “What's that?”
    Walt took a sip of coffee and grimaced like it was vinegar. His green and yellow plaid sportcoat was not available in any store.
    “It's this election of yours. What's-her-name was just in here sobbing. God, I hate that shit.”
    “What's-her-name? ”
    “You know. The flat-chested one. Paul's girlfriend.”
    “Lisa Flanagan.”
    “That's it.” Walt's face grew mournful as he cupped his flabby pectorals. “Flat as a board, Jim.”
    “She was crying?”
    He twisted the top off a bottle of Tylenol, shook three extra-strength Caplets into his palm, and swallowed them without the aid of liquid.
    “Hope they're laced with cyanide,” he muttered. “Put me out of my misery.”
    “What was she crying about?”
    His hands turned in vague spirals around his ears, as if the whole thing were too complicated for words.
    “Something about Paul's posters. She came in this morning and they were gone. Someone ripped them off the walls.”
    The phone rang on his desk. He lifted the receiver, then slammed it back down in its cradle.
    “See?” he told me. “This is what I do with my fucking life. I'm barely in here two minutes and already I have to suspend someone. What's with these kids anyway? Nobody used to rip posters off the walls.”
    “So what do you want me to do?”
    He cocked his head and stared at me as though I were a complete imbecile.
    “Get to the bottom of it. Tell me who I have to discipline. What's-her-name thinks it was Flick, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Paul's little bitch of a sister.”

TRACY FLICK
     
    OKAY, SO I lost my head and ripped a couple of posters. From the way people reacted, you would have thought I'd murdered Paul Warren and stuffed the dismembered pieces of his body into my locker.
    Mr. M. called me out of study hall for a one-on-one interrogation in his classroom. I'm surprised he didn't have a tape recorder and one of those blinding spotlights shining on my face.
    “I guess you know why you're here.”
    “Aren't you supposed to read me my rights?”
    “Very funny.” He made a few preliminary squiggles on a piece of scratch paper, then looked up. “Did you doit?”
    In a perfect world, I could've just confessed:
Yes, I ripped the first one by accident and it felt so good that I decided to rip the rest. It was stupid and I'm sorry.
But it wasn't a perfect world, and I wasn't about to get myself suspended the day before the election.
    “Are you accusing me?”
    He closed his eyes and sat there for a few seconds without speaking, like he'd forgotten all about me. Mr. M. wasn't as cute as Jack, but he had nice eyelashes and thick curly hair.
    “No one is accusing you of anything, Tracy. I'm just asking you a simple question.”
    “Well, the answer is no.”
    His smile was patronizing, as if he'd fully expected me to lie.
    “Frankly,” he said, “I find that hard to believe.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it looks like the posters were defaced over the weekend. That means the perpetrator had to have access to the building on Saturday or Sunday.”
    My face got hot. Mr. M. was a friend of Jack's, and I had this uncomfortable feeling he knew everything about me.
    “How would I get in on the weekend?”
    He shrugged like Columbo. “Who knows, Tracy. Maybe it wasn't you. Maybe it was one of the janitors. I guess I could call them in for questioning.”
    My stomach hurt and I started to get scared. I tried to imagine what my mother might do in this situation.
    “Can I make a phone call?”
    “Why?”
    “I need to talk to my lawyer.”
    That startled him. He gave me a look like I was from another planet.
    “Your
lawyer?”
    “My mother's a legal secretary. Her boss handles all our litigation.”
    “Whoa, Tracy.”