Chapter 2
After high school I planned to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My father wanted me to go to Harvard or Princeton like some of the sons of other congressmen did, but with my grades it wasn’t possible. Not that I was a bad student. I just didn’t focus on my studies, and my grades weren’t exactly up to snuff for the Ivy Leagues. By my senior year it was pretty much touch and go whether I’d even get accepted at UNC, and this was my father’s alma mater, a place where he could pull some strings. During one of his few weekends home, my father came up with the plan to put me over the top. I’d just finished my first week of school and we were sitting down for dinner. He was home for three days on account of Labor Day weekend. “I think you should run for student body president,” he said. “You’ll be graduating in June, and I think it would look good on your record. Your mother thinks so, too, by the way.”
My mother nodded as she chewed a mouthful of peas. She didn’t speak much when my father had the floor, though she winked at me. Sometimes I think my mother liked to see me squirm, even though she was sweet.
“I don’t think I’d have a chance at winning,” I said. Though I was probably the richest kid in school, I was by no means the most popular. That honor belonged to Eric Hunter, my best friend. He could throw a baseball at almost ninety miles an hour, and he’d led the football team to back-to-back state titles as the star quarterback. He was a stud. Even his name sounded cool.
“Of course you can win,” my father said quickly. “We Carters always win.”
That’s another one of the reasons I didn’t like spending time with my father. During those few times he was home, I think he wanted to mold me into a miniature version of himself. Since I’d grown up pretty much without him, I’d come to resent having him around. This was the first conversation we’d had in weeks. He rarely talked to me on the phone.
“But what if I don’t want to?”
My father put down his fork, a bite of his pork chop still on the tines. He looked at me crossly, giving me the once-over. He was wearing a suit even though it was over eighty degrees in the house, and it made him even more intimidating. My father always wore a suit, by the way.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that it would be a good idea.”
I knew that when he talked that way the issue was settled. That’s the way it was in my family. My father’s word was law. But the fact was, even after I agreed, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to waste my afternoons meeting with teachers after school — after school! — every week for the rest of the year, dreaming up themes for school dances or trying to decide what colors the streamers should be. That’s really all the class presidents did, at least back when I was in high school. It wasn’t like students had the power to actually decide anything meaningful.
But then again, I knew my father had a point. If I wanted to go to UNC, I had to do something. I didn’t play football or basketball, I didn’t play an instrument, I wasn’t in the chess club or the bowling club or anything else. I didn’t excel in the classroom-hell, I didn’t excel at much of anything. Growing despondent, I started listing the things I actually could do, but to be honest, there really wasn’t that much. I could tie eight different types of sailing knots, I could walk barefoot across hot asphalt farther than anyone I knew, I could balance a pencil vertically on my finger for thirty seconds . . . but I didn’t think that any of those things would really stand out on a college application. So there I was, lying in bed all night long, slowly coming to the sinking realization that I was a loser. Thanks, Dad.
The next morning I went to the principal’s office and added my name to the list of candidates. There were two other people running — John Foreman and Maggie Brown. Now, John didn’t stand a chance, I knew that right off. He was the kind of guy who’d pick lint off your clothes while he talked to you. But he was a good student. He sat in the front row and raised his hand every time the teacher asked a question. If he was called to give the answer, he would almost always give the right one, and he’d turn his head from side to side with a smug look on his face, as if proving how superior his intellect was when compared with those of the other peons in the room. Eric and I used to shoot spitballs at him when the teacher’s back was turned.
Maggie Brown was another matter. She was a good student as well. She’d served on the student council for the first three years and had been the junior class president the year before. The only real strike against her was the fact that she wasn’t very attractive, and she’d put on twenty pounds that summer. I knew that not a single guy would vote for her.
After seeing the competition, I figured that I might have a chance after all. My entire future was on the line here, so I formulated my strategy. Eric was the first to agree.
“Sure, I’ll get all the guys on the team to vote for you, no problem. If that’s what you really want.”
“How about their girlfriends, too?” I asked.
That was pretty much my entire campaign. Of course, I went to the debates like I was supposed to, and I passed out those dorky “What I’ll do if I’m elected president” fliers, but in the end it was Eric Hunter who probably got me where I needed to be. Beaufort High School had only about four hundred students, so getting the athletic vote was critical, and most of the jocks didn’t give a hoot who they voted for anyway. In the end it worked out just the way I planned.
I was voted student body president with a fairly large majority of the vote. I had no idea what trouble it would eventually lead me to.
When I was a junior I went steady with a girl named Angela Clark. She was my first real girlfriend, though it lasted for only a few months. Just before school let out for the summer, she dumped me for a guy named Lew who was twenty years old and worked as a mechanic in his father’s garage. His primary attribute, as far as I could tell, was that he had a really nice car. He always wore a white T-shirt with a pack of Camels folded into the sleeve, and he’d lean against the hood of his Thunderbird, looking back and forth, saying things like “Hey, baby” whenever a girl walked by. He was a real winner, if you know what I mean.
Well, anyway, the homecoming dance was coming up, and because of the whole Angela situation, I still didn’t have a date. Everyone on the student council had to attend — it was mandatory. I had to help decorate the gym and clean up the next day — and besides, it was usually a pretty good time. I called a couple of girls I knew, but they already had dates, so I called a few more. They had dates, too. By the final week the pickings were getting pretty slim. The pool was down to the kinds of girls who had thick glasses and talked with lisps. Beaufort was never exactly a hotbed for beauties anyway, but then again I had to find somebody. I didn’t want to go to the dance without a date — what would that look like? I’d be the only student body president ever to attend the homecoming dance alone. I’d end up being the guy scooping punch all night long or mopping up the barf in the bathroom. That’s what people without dates usually did.