by Katie Nelson
Garrett’s phone rang, and as he pulled it out of his pocket, he bumped my shoulder. “This isn’t over.” The phone pressed to his ear, he stalked away.
Tomas shook his head. “Such a letdown,” he muttered.
I balled up my napkin and threw it on my tray. I wasn’t going to sit around and take any more of this. I hadn’t asked for the Duke as my partner. And I wasn’t going to apologize for being good. They’d have to get over themselves.
As I slid my chair back, I saw Kelsey and Peyton walking toward me. “Hang on,” Kelsey said, pulling out the chair next to me.
Peyton stood by her side, arms crossed in front of her, glaring down at me. “Do you expect us to put up with your diva act all year? Because we won’t. Just because you were the state champ last year doesn’t make you some kind of king.”
I stood up and grabbed my tray. “I’m not sticking around for this.”
Kelsey grabbed my forearm. “Tanner, wait.” Her hand was cold, but I couldn’t walk away, not yet. Not from her. My tray hit the table with a thud, and I looked at her, wanting her to see me. To see that I hadn’t asked for any of this. That I hated how unfair it all was.
“What?” I snapped.
“Tell us. Was this part of your deal with Watterson? That you’d get the top seed and the Duke as your partner?”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “Is that what Watterson said?”
“No. It’s what Garrett said.”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, fighting the urge to slash his tires. Or key his car.
“Well?” Kelsey asked.
“No.” I dropped back into my seat. “There was no deal with Watterson. He told me I’d have to work as hard as everyone else.” Harder, actually. Watterson had been pretty blunt last summer. Sitting in my living room, he’d predicted how this would go down. I didn’t believe him at the time. “And, for the record, he told me I’d be partners with Shari Prasad.”
Kelsey smiled. Peyton and Tomas exchanged a look, then burst out laughing.
“What?” I asked.
Shaking her head, Kelsey answered, “Guess Garrett got what he deserved then.”
Another inside joke. “Whatever. I don’t need to know.”
Tomas threw his wadded up napkin at me. “No. It’s funny. See, Shari was an international student. From India. She and Garrett hooked up last spring. Somehow, her dad found out and freaked. He transferred her to an all-girls school in Connecticut to get her away from him.”
Peyton sat down and leaned across the table. “Garrett was such a jerk. I feel bad for Shari. Have you seen her Instagram? They wear those hideous uniforms and have to go to chapel and stuff. I wouldn’t last ten minutes at a school like that.”
Kelsey nodded. “Yeah. That would suck. I’m glad Garrett’s stuck with Josh. I hope they lose every round.”
“Who’s going to lose every round? Not us, I hope.”
The Duke was walking toward us, carrying a greasy, brown paper bag, his sunglasses hanging from the V-neck of his T-shirt. Our dress code at Bannerman was business casual, which I interpreted as a polo shirt or wrinkled button-down and khakis, but the Duke always looked like he’d stepped out of an Abercrombie ad. Peyton sat up straighter. As I looked around the dining hall, I realized there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t watching him, even the adults. Smiling, the Duke took the chair next to Tomas and began tearing open the paper bag.
“Want one?” he asked, pushing the bag toward me.
I shook my head, but both Tomas and Kelsey reached in and pulled out thick french fries.
“Mmm. Still hot.” Kelsey licked her fingers.
Breaking apart a huge chunk of fried fish, the Duke began to talk. “Listen, mate. Don’t worry about Garrett. He’ll get over it.” As he took a bite, I could feel Peyton leaning in, getting closer to him, as if that battered cod was some kind of tractor beam she was powerless to resist. I glanced at Kelsey to see if she was falling for it, too. She was digging in her pocket for something and didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m not worried about Garrett,” I said. “And why do you call everyone mate? You’re not even British.”
He grinned and took another bite of fish. “Just something that I picked up over there. Most people find it charming.”
Clearly I was not most people. “We should probably meet up, go over case ideas, figure out how we want to divide the research up. I got a fair amount done over the summer, and the affirmative case I’m working on is pretty solid—”
“Whoa, there.” The Duke held up his hands. “It’s the first week.”
Tomas and Peyton laughed.
“You heard Watterson,” I said. “We only have a couple of weeks before practice rounds.”
He chomped on a fry, completely unconcerned. “We’ve got plans tonight,” he said, staring at Peyton, who was twirling a strand of hair around her finger.
“Where?” I asked.
“The beach,” Peyton replied, though her eyes were locked with the Duke’s.
“You guys all have passes to leave campus?”
They laughed. “There are ways to get around that.” Peyton said. “The teachers have faculty summit tonight. The RAs are doing room checks.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. “But the parking lot gates are locked at seven.”
“Minor technicality.”
“What about your phones?”
For a minute, nobody responded. The school was using some new student security program this year. They had fingerprint scanners on all the doors and GPS tracking installed on our phones, as well as our student parking permits. At any time, with just a few keystrokes, they could see where any of us were. It was a little Big Brother, but it made the parents feel like their children were safe.
Tomas glanced around the table. “There are ways to get around everything. Even that.”
I wanted to argue, but I wondered if he was right.
Kelsey was staring out the window. “You in, Cinco?” Tomas asked her.
She shrugged. “Sure. But I’m not riding with Garrett.”
Of course Garrett was going. Even if they’d invited me, I wouldn’t go. Not worth it. If we got caught, we’d be expelled. Sneaking out was a zero-tolerance offense. But it would have been nice to be invited. I slid my chair away from the table and stood. “I’ve got stuff to do. I’ll catch you guys tomorrow.”
I took my time dumping my trash and setting my tray on the conveyor belt that led to the kitchen. Even though I knew it was stupid—that nothing was going to happen—I couldn’t help but listen for my name. For footsteps coming up behind me. Someone asking me to come, telling me how much fun it would be.
Instead, when I finally slung my backpack over my shoulder and glanced back at the table, they were talking and eating the last of the Duke’s fries, oblivious.
I went back to my room and spent the night listening to Huang snore.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS MY FIRST FRIDAY night at Bannerman, and I was sitting in the library.
I hadn’t been invited to anything: not the Halo tournament that had gone down in the common room, not working on homework together, not even watching a movie in someone else’s room. I was sure they were all out doing something amazing right then. Some of the boarders got passes to spend the weekend with the day students. Some went home to see their families. Others must have been hanging out somewhere else on campus. Clearly, they weren’t doing homework, as the stacks were deserted.
Everyone was talking about the Duke’s, which was coming up next weekend. The freshmen and sophomores were whining that they couldn’t go because Bannerman rules said they weren’t allowed off campus. The day students were all going—they didn’t have to worry about getting around curfew—and they wouldn’t shut up about how epic it was going to be. Everyone was speculating about what band would play, if any celebrities would show, if the police would have to break the whole thing up. Even Abby had texted a few times, asking if I was going. I’d replied th
at I didn’t know. It was the truth.
The Duke had blown me off every time I tried to arrange a meet-up to work. I was almost ready to tell Garrett he could have him as a partner. Instead, I dropped my backpack onto the dark table, wandered over to the reference computers, and started my search.
There was a lot we could find on the Internet, but the good stuff—the case studies, the congressional testimony, and actual budget numbers—was harder to come by. But when you found it, it was gold. I could still remember the look on Tran’s face last spring when, in the final round at State, I’d pulled out a report that NASA had presented to Congress showing that his whole case wouldn’t work. He was screwed and he knew it. We won the round five–zero.
It was tedious work. I tried skimming abstracts to narrow my search. After finding a dozen that looked promising, I printed the page and went to ask the librarian where to find the Congressional Record archives. He barely glanced at my list before pointing to the opposite wall. “Over there. Behind the fish.”
I shouldered my backpack and wandered “over there.” Encased in a long glass tank were four freakishly large fish, their eyes bulging as they swam through a forest of funky plants. Next to the tank a sign read, THESE FISH AREN’T SHY. THEY’RE JUST BEING KOI. I shuddered as a white fish squirmed past me, its whiskers brushing up against the glass.
“If you’re looking for a date, that one’s a boy. Thought you should know.”
I spun around and saw Kelsey, arms full of books, leaning against the shelf.
I smiled. I was surprised to see her, but not disappointed. “I hope it’s a guy. That thing has more facial hair than I could ever grow.”
“True.” She nodded, her eyes lingering on my face.
“I thought you’d be out tonight with Garrett and Tomas and those guys.” As soon as I said it, I realized how desperate I sounded. Like I was keeping tabs on her social life.
She shrugged and headed over to a table in the back, already cluttered with her laptop and tablet, as well as her notebooks and papers and stacks of more books. Glancing over her shoulder, she checked to see if I was following. “I’ve got cases to work on, too,” she said, setting the books on the table. “Even if you guys do think Lincoln/Douglas is a lesser form of debate.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.” I stood there, clutching the papers in my hand, my backpack heavy on my shoulders. I couldn’t figure her out. Was she mad at me? Or just indifferent? She flipped open one of the books, ran her finger down the table of contents, and then asked, “So you going to stand there all night?”
“I don’t want to bug you. You sure there’s room here?”
She shoved some books to the side. “You’re skinny.”
I pulled out the heavy chair and sat down. I’d spent plenty of time in libraries, but Bannerman’s was something else. Decorated to resemble a living room, it had long leather sofas, recliners, and armchairs arranged around a natural-gas fireplace, as well as bean bags, yoga mats, huge floor pillows, and a couple of treadmill desks.
I picked up the book closest to me. “The Collected Works of Henry David Thoreau. Anything good in there?”
“You’ve never read his essay on civil disobedience? It’s pretty much the basis for my whole affirmative case.”
“Oh, right.” She probably thought I was completely illiterate. “The resolution is something about civil disobedience being justified in a democracy?”
She rolled her eyes. “Something like that.”
“See, I wasn’t totally asleep in class.”
She didn’t seem impressed, and went back to her reading.
I spent the next two hours looking up articles. After watching me wander around for fifteen minutes, Kelsey got up and helped. “Most of the stuff you need is in the digital archives,” she said, pointing to the computers behind the fish tank. “We have hard copies of some things, but it’s mostly reference materials that don’t go out of date—dictionaries, atlases, that kind of stuff. If you want something from a smaller publisher, like a university press, you’ll have to talk Walt into ordering it for you.”
She showed me where the medical journals were shelved, which periodicals could be downloaded directly to my laptop, and how to request an issue of the Congressional Record. Then we sat across the table from each other later, scanning articles and transferring files to our laptops, highlighting and annotating, and having as much fun as a couple of nerds in a library could have on a Friday night.
I almost jumped out of my chair when my phone rang. Sam was FaceTiming me. Kelsey nodded, so I answered.
Sam and I talked every night before he went to bed. I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. I guess time flies in the library. I tried to keep my voice down, but if Sam was difficult to understand in person, it was even harder over the phone. His speech was slow and he accented each syllable, which meant it took a while for him to get a thought out. And sometimes he wasn’t so great at remembering to hold the phone still. I only caught half of the story he told me—something that happened on Ellen involving a dog or maybe it was a frog. Hard to tell. Finally, he asked me a question. “So what’s up, man?”
“Not much. I’m at the library. Pretty pathetic, huh?”
“Are there any babes there?”
My face flushed. I was sure Kelsey had heard him, but didn’t know if she’d understood what he’d said. I glanced over at her, then looked at my laptop. “Yeah, I’m here with a girl named Kelsey. She’s in a couple of my classes.”
Sam started making kissing noises. I couldn’t look at her. “Okay, I’m gonna hang up now. Go to bed, Sam.”
He started protesting. He wanted to see Kelsey.
I shook my head. Sam’s face was moving in and out of focus, but he was grinning from ear to ear. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope!” He high-fived the air and I high-fived back. “Where’s the babe?” he asked suspiciously. It wasn’t enough that I was spending my Friday night in the library; my own brother thought I was making up girls, too. He knew me too well. I rolled my eyes and turned the screen to face Kelsey.
“This is my brother, Sam.”
She waved. “Nice to meet you.”
I turned the phone back toward me. “Okay, Sam, now you need to go to bed.”
“Give Kelsey a kiss good night for me,” he said, then burst out laughing.
I ended the call and wanted to die. This was worse than the time he touched the clerk’s hair at the grocery store. Worse than the time he whistled at the girls at the bus stop. Ducking my head, I unzipped my backpack and stuffed my phone inside. When I finally looked up, Kelsey had her elbow on the table, hand resting on her chin, and she was staring at me.
“I’m a babe, huh?”
I wanted to drown myself in the fish tank. “He says that about any girl that’s remotely attractive.”
“Oh, so I’m only remotely attractive?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Hello. I mean, look at you…. You’re …”
She shook her head and gave me a little smile. “It’s okay. I’m just messing with you. I won’t expect you to kiss me good night, either.”
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean anything. It’s … with Sam …” What had happened to me? I couldn’t form a complete sentence. If she didn’t hate me before, she definitely would now. Or worse, she’d laugh at me and think I was stupid.
Kelsey leaned across the table. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “It’s fine. I think it’s sweet. He obviously really looks up to you.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t trust myself not to screw things up worse. For a second, I held my breath while her thin fingers held onto mine, and wondered if she could feel the jolt of energy that I got from her touch. I flexed my fingers, giving her a tiny squeeze back. She smiled, but pulled away.
We stayed in the library for another half hour. When we’d cleaned everything up and walked out the door, she yawned
and told me how exhausted she was. I took the hint.
The quad was empty when I walked back to my room. In the darkness, everything looked the same: same flat tile roofs, same tan stucco, same security lights reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows. There was absolutely no graffiti or trash anywhere. There weren’t any skateboarders crashing across the parking lot. The basketball court, though lit, was deserted. In place of butcher paper banners advertising student council elections, the common rooms and the dining hall had flat-screen TVs that played PowerPoint slideshows and videos.
Bannerman didn’t feel like a high school. This didn’t feel like my life.
I wondered if it ever would.
CHAPTER SIX
I SAW KELSEY AROUND CAMPUS, but she didn’t talk to me again until a week later.
We were waiting for class to start, same as always. She came and sat on top of the table, facing me, her legs crossed. “You ready?”
I had my affirmative case spread out on the table. Flipping the corners of the pages with my thumb, I nodded. “Yeah. I’m not afraid to read. I know I can defend this. Unlike some people….” I nodded toward the other side of the room where Tran had his laptop plugged in, the screen tilted down so it was barely visible.
Kelsey rolled her eyes. “He acts like he has the nuclear launch codes or something.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Watterson is making us do mock rounds on Monday. I’ll beat him then.”
Kelsey kicked my chair. “Now I kinda want to go help Tran. Someone needs to knock that cocky smile off your face.”
The door opened and the Duke walked in, trailed by his entourage. At least they had the good sense to notice they were late, and didn’t make a scene. The Duke dropped his backpack on the floor. He moved behind Kelsey and started massaging her shoulders.
“Change your mind? Want to become a real debater? Join us? I’ll ditch Tanner if you need a partner.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
I bit my lip, watching them and trying not to care. The Duke flirted with anything in a skirt. But in that moment, I wondered if he knew. Could tell that I liked her?