“Okay,” she says, “what do we have to do to win this thing?”
“We’re not going to win.” It’s going to be hard enough just to finish our project. And there are over three hundred people in our grade, so that’s at least a hundred and fifty projects to beat. So I need to stop worrying, because winning is something that I don’t have to worry about. Fortunately. There’s no way I’m riding in the air in a hunk of heavy metal all the way to Toronto. I start down the hall toward my locker.
Meg scurries after me and loops her arm through mine. “Don’t be such an Eeyore. Come on, we can totally win. What do we have to do?”
I glance at her. Her gaze is on me instead of on what’s ahead of us. Mr. Carter let us out a bit early, so it’s not the between-classes rush yet, but still. Apparently she trusts that her arm through mine is enough to guide her safely through these halls.
I’m sure she knows we won’t win. I’m sure she knows LotSCON tickets are probably already sold out. But she’s staring at me like she’s hungry for it—like she’s desperate to finally conquer something. She deserves to conquer something. And she will. Even if we won’t win, we can at least get an A.
“Dude, get out of your head and talk to me,” Meg says. “What’s the plan?”
I roll my eyes at her. “Well, we’ve got to actually finish the testing first. We still need ten more people.”
“Okay. Easy.” Meg beats me to my locker and starts entering my combination.
“And you have to be passing all your courses.” She deserves to conquer more than just science.
Meg’s head jolts up from the lock to stare at me. “You’re lying. That’s not a thing.”
“It is. It’s a requirement. Mr. Carter said.”
It might just be the way the skin around her eyes sags, but Meg’s eyes seem to flash with darkness. Like in the X-Men movies when a character’s eyes flash with yellow to reveal she’s really Mystique in disguise, except this color suggests powerlessness, not superpowers.
I was right. She’s sick of feeling like she can’t win. “I’ll help you,” I say. I haven’t told Meg, but I’ve been researching homework techniques for teens with ADHD. I’ve figured out that she avoids homework at lunch because there’s too much going on, not because she’s slacking. She’s definitely not slacking. She works hard and gets a ton done—when her brain’s not getting in the way.
The darkness vanishes so quickly that I wonder if I imagined it. “Okay, well, I’m only failing math,” Meg says. “I think there might be a test coming up or something.” She grimaces, then scares away the frown with an excited little hop. “I can’t wait until we’re at LotSCON! It’s going to be epic!”
I thought my heart had been returned to its place in my chest, but I was wrong. It’s still crashed and crumpled and heavy in the bottom of my stomach. Meg does know that winning is a super long shot, right? That it’s basically impossible? She has to know. And she knows I wouldn’t go even if we won—which we won’t—right? I’ve told her I don’t fly. Haven’t I?
Before I can think through whether I have, Meg breaks into my thoughts. “Okay, so now do we just invite people to my house for testing, or what? I’d suggest a big testing party, but I know parties aren’t your thing.”
Of course she knows that. Meg gets me. She knows all my fears, so of course she knows about my fear of planes. She’s just fantasizing, like she does about Legs all the time. I push my worries away and explain to Meg how I’ve been using the library computers, and how we’re limited to two people per lunch period in order to fit in the cooldown periods between tests, and also how I’ve run out of people to ask.
“Well, that’s easy,” Meg says. “Hey, you two!” she calls out to two girls who have just passed us. They spin around to look at us with matching what-in-the-world-do-you-want expressions.
“Us?” the one girl says. She has one of those shoulder bags instead of a backpack, and the weight of it makes her stand a little crooked. I think I recognize both of them from my English class.
“How would you like to play video games? And eat sugar? For science!” Meg wiggles her hands near her face in an “It’s so magical” kind of gesture, as if science is some kind of voodoo and not, well, science.
The crooked girl giggles. “Um, what?”
The other one smiles. They’re definitely in my English class.
Meg’s voice returns to its normal non-exaggerated-but-still-excited tenor. “We need a few more subjects for our science project. You guys free?”
“What, like, right now? We have class.”
“Tomorrow at lunch,” Meg says. “In the library.”
“You can’t eat lunch first, though,” I say, jumping in. “It’ll mess up the results.”
“So, you up for it?” Meg asks them confidently. She can definitely conquer this.
Shoulder-bag girl—their apparent spokesperson—shrugs. “Sounds more fun than sitting around in the caf.”
MEG
FINISHING THE TESTING IS EASY-PEASY. ON TUESDAY, WE TEST OUR BRAND-NEW friends, Emily and Kayla, who, it turns out, know Kat from English. On Wednesday, I grab Chris from my math class and Fatima, who I’ve known since like birth, and Kat asks Chris if he can write down my math homework in my planner every class, which is kind of embarrassing, but also good because I’m not letting something as stupid as math keep me from meeting LumberLegs.
Then these two guys in the library wonder what all the laughter is about, so we schedule them in for Thursday. One has a birthmark just under his eye, toward his cheekbone, which is adorably distracting, but I’ve sworn off all guys except LumberLegs, so I just smile at him and that’s it.
On the weekend we enter all our results so far into some spreadsheets, and then on Tuesday I ask Bridget and Louis in geography. It turns out Louis has band practice at lunch, but Bridget brings her friends, and Louis shows up on Thursday with his friend.
Every day after school, we meet in the quietest back corner of the library and do our math homework. Kat’s idea. Her notes make a lot more sense than mine. Her notes make sense, period. And she doesn’t let me leave until I’m done.
Except on Friday, when we go for ice cream even though it’s minus twenty out, because we’re done testing, and we deserve a celebration.
In a booth, Kat stops licking her scoop of chocolate and studies me as I take a bite of my bubble gum ice cream. “You realize there’s going to be more than a hundred and fifty other projects, right?” she says. “That winning is almost impossible?”
“Of course,” I say. That’s what makes it so epic. The girl with ADHD and the girl with panic attacks—like the hobbits setting across Mordor to Mount Doom, no one will see us coming.
Until they lose. Because we are definitely going to win.
We are definitely going to LotSCON.
KAT