NOT SURE what happened between Tammy and Lisa. They'd been best friends for a couple of years, but then they had a falling-out. When I asked Tammy about it, she screamed. I mean it. She threw back her head, opened her mouth, and shrieked. She couldn't have wailed any louder or more convincingly if a man in a hockey mask had attacked her with a meat cleaver. Mom came rushing downstairs like a maniac, holding the toilet bowl scrubber out in front of her like the Olympic torch, her right arm sheathed in an elbow-length orange rubber glove.
“Jesus,” she told me. “I thought you were killing her.”
Tammy likes nothing better than to persecute me and manipulate Mom. Now that she'd accomplished both goals in one fell swoop, a smile of angelic satisfaction spread across her face.
“Mom,” she said, “would you kindly tell this asshole to get out of my face?”
Mom sighed, and I felt sorry for her, a tired-looking woman with a dead marriage who couldn't even clean the bathroom in peace.
“Tammy, do you have to use that word?”
“For him it's a compliment.”
“Hey,” I said. “Excuse me for living.”
“Gladly,” she said. “Just let me know when you get a life.”
LISA FLANAGAN
I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW how I let it happen. It was like this huge mistake I couldn't stop making. I used to walk home thinking, That's not me. That's not who I am.
We were watching Oprah the day it started, this thing about women with implants. Mr. and Mrs. Warren were at work, and I guess Paul was at football practice. I remember gazing down the front of my shirt, shaking my head.
“I wish mine were bigger.”
“Let me see.”
“What?”
“Let me see. I'll give you an honest opinion.”
Tammy and I had spent a lot of time together, slept over each other's houses, sometimes in the same bed. We'd seen each other with our tops off. It didn't make sense for me to be so nervous. I pulled the front of my shirt up over my face so she could look. She was smiling when I let it back down.
“You're okay.”
“You think?”
She shrugged. “That bra doesn't do a lot for you.”
“It's my mom's idea. She thinks it'll give me some shape. A little support. I keep telling her there's nothing to support.”
“I don't mean that. It's just so plain.”
“Who cares? Nobody sees it.”
She peered at me through her glasses, her mouth puckering into this flirty little pout.
“Somebody might.”
“Tammy,” I said, my voice trailing off in a weird giggle
“Wait here,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
She was gone for a couple of minutes. I tried to watch the show but I was too distracted.
“Close your eyes,” she called from the bedroom.
“Come on, Tammy. Don't play games.”
“I mean it. No cheating. Close your eyes.”
I did what I was told. Tammy was younger, but she was always the one in charge.
“Okay,” she said. “You can open them.”
You have to understand that she isn't really that pretty. She's kind of mousy, and her body gets lost inside those huge sweatshirts she wears (they used to be Paul's, and some of them hang past her knees). Her hair is nice, brown with red-gold highlights, but she does it all wrong, this misplaced ponytail rising like a fountain from the top of her head.
“What do you think?”
Her hair was down and the glasses were gone. I knew from swimming that she had a cute figure, but the red silk heightened everything. Her skin seemed to glow.
“Wow,” I said.
“I know.” She bit her lip and looked bashful. “I stole it.”
She turned around. The slip was so short it didn't really cover her butt. I couldn't believe I was looking at Tammy.
“Go in my room,” she told me. “There's something for you on the bed.”
The thing I found there looked like a transparent bathing suit, filmy black and weightless. Slipping into it was like climbing into someone else's skin.
“Turn around,” she said from the doorway.
No one had ever looked at me like that.
“You're so pretty,” she said.
My body felt hot, like there was this tiny sun burning in my chest, giving off light and energy.
PAUL WARREN
YOU WOULDN'T exactly call Lisa “cute.” She's sarcastic-looking and her hair's too short. She's almost totally flat-chested and hardly ever wears makeup. Until she became my unofficial campaign manager, it never even occurred to me to think of her as a potential girlfriend. She was more the sisterly type, someone to tease and goof around with. But something changed between us that day in the cafeteria, when she glanced up at me while signing the petition.
“Paul,” she said, “I think you'll make a great President.”
It was kind of informal at first. We chatted in the hallway, ate lunch together, discussed various strategies for defeating Tracy. Then she asked me to come home with her one afternoon.
On her own initiative, she'd designed five sample campaign posters, each one featuring a pastel portrait of me, along with a slogan she wanted me to consider.
—A WINNER FOR WINWOOD
—A CHOICE, FOR A CHANGE
—THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB
—TRUE LEADERSHIP
—PAUL POWER
The portraits were all slightly different. In one I wore a shirt and tie, in another my football jersey. “PAUL POWER,” my personal favorite, was designed like a baseball card. Here I was grinning; there I seemed to be gazing into the distance. In every version, though, I had these deep violet eyes and a superhero jaw. Lisa saw me the way I saw myself in daydreams.
“Earth to Paul.” She waved a sheet of paper in front of my face.
“What's
