Читать книгу Election - Том Перротта - Страница 12

YOU ONLY NEED a hundred signatures to put yourself on the ballot. I'd accumulated eighty-something my first half hour in the cafeteria when Tracy came charging up to my table in those amazing black jeans.

“Who put you up to this?” she demanded.

Tracy's kind of short and moon-faced, but something about her gets me all flustered. It's pretty simple, really: she's got this ass. Just ask any guy at Winwood.

Conversations stop every time she walks down the hall. She wore these cut-offs last spring that people still talk about.

“What?”

“I asked you a simple question, Paul. Or do you expect me to believe that you just woke up this morning and decided to run for President?”

“I've been thinking about it for a long time.”

She shook her head and smiled with pure contempt. I felt like I'd turned into a pane of glass.

“You're not a good liar, Paul.”

She surprised me then by plucking the pen out of my hand and signing the petition.

“I've been working toward this for three years,” she said, dotting the in her last name with her trademark star, “and if you think you can just jump in at the last minute and take it away from me, you're sorely mistaken.”

It's funny. She was trying to show me she wasn't scared, but the message I got was exactly the opposite. For the first time, I actually believed I might be able to win.

“Well,” I said, reclaiming my pen from her sweaty fingers, “I guess we'll just have to let the voters decide.”