Remember this, Future Sam, because so help me God and Jesus and all the other saints, it will never happen again. This morning I first looked at the clock at exactly 7:56 a.m. Maddie spiked her hair like always and I slicked my curls as tight as they could go back into a bun at the nape of my neck. We went down into the lobby and split a bagel from the continental breakfast. We went outside briefly to pose for a picture in front of the WELCOME DEBATERS sign. I remember there was a maroon Corolla idling in front of the Sheraton, just outside the sliding doors. I remember there was a man in a Carhartt jacket smoking a cigarette. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m not crazy. My brain still works. It was a poppy seed bagel with plain cream cheese, I remember that. And I remember that the carpeted halls smelled like they had just been shampooed, and the sun coming through the big windows in the lobby was so bright, people were shading their eyes with their hands. We rolled our tubs into the Paul Revere Room. The Hartford team was comprised of a sharp-faced Nigerian girl and a chubby white kid, Grace Kuti and Skyler Temple, respectively. The chairs were filled with eliminated teams and their families, some of them staring us down, some of them laughing and screwing around, relieved to be done. The lights dimmed in the huge hall and they flicked on the hot stage lights, and after the short-haired woman in dress slacks and a linen shirt welcomed everyone, there were about SEVEN SECONDS of applause. The moderator’s name was SAL GREGORY. And he had a BALD SPOT and a ROLEX WATCH. I’M CAPITALIZING EVERYTHING TO EMPHASIZE HOW DEEPLY I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. MADDIE CLEARED HER THROAT BEFORE SHE STOOD UP, AND AGAIN AFTER SHE GOT TO THE PODIUM. SHE LOOKED DOWN, AND WHEN SHE LOOKED UP, SHE SAID, “LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, ACCORDING TO A RECENT ANALYSIS FROM THE CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH, THIRTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF AMERICANS WHO GAIN THEIR SOLE SOURCE OF INCOME FROM MINIMUM-WAGE JOBS ARE BETWEEN THE AGES OF THIRTY-FIVE AND SIXTY-FOUR. LOW WAGES AREN’T JUST FOR TEENAGERS LOOKING TO EARN SPENDING MONEY. THESE PEOPLE ARE MOTHERS, FATHERS…”
I remember I had just finished second affirmative. Maddie had stepped up, given me a pat on the back as we passed each other, and I’d sat down. I remember squinting my eyes against the stage lights, and itching my calf. We were fine. Someone was talking. Everything was going perfectly fine. And somehow, then it wasn’t. It wasn’t like a moment, or a flash, it just was. It was like waking up, except I had already opened my eyes, and I was trying to remember a dream. Maddie was looking at me, and without knowing what I was doing, I kind of laughed, because it was funny that we were there, in the morning, after I was just waking up. My first thought was, What is Maddie doing here?
Then she said, “And my partner will now [something, something],” because it was sort of garbled, and then I thought, Oh, I’m at practice, and then I remember squinting at her and wondering if we were at practice, why was it so bright?
I looked across at our opponents and wondered who they were. And I looked out at the crowd, and that’s when I realized we were in the middle of Nationals, and I was supposed to be doing something, but I wasn’t sure at what point in the round we were, or which round, and I looked down at my cards, and back at Maddie, who was now standing beside me and making the stand up motion with her hand.
“Time-out,” I said.
The judges gave us thirty seconds.
“What’s up?” Maddie whispered. Her voice was clipped with annoyance.
My throat was so dry it hurt. “I don’t know where we are. I mean, I do now, but I don’t know… yeah. I don’t know where we are.”
“What the fuck? What are you talking about?”
I felt like I was blinking at five miles an hour. My fingertips started to tingle. “Just tell me if we’re at 2AR or closings.”
“What?”
“2AR or closings? Just tell me!”
“Closings! What is wrong? You look pale. Do you need water?”
“Yes.”
Maddie pushed her half-drunk bottle toward me and I drank in deep gulps.
Thirty seconds were up.
I stood. My knees shook, my hands shook, I tried to keep them tight. I knew the major points. The closing was not the problem—it was that I didn’t know what our opponents had said over the entire round, or what Maddie had just said, or even what I had just said. I took a deep breath.
I didn’t know, so I guessed.
I summarized, vague and bleak and choppy.
I didn’t even make it the full four minutes.
When I sat back down and they concluded the round, I didn’t look at Maddie.
I didn’t look at anyone.
I just went outside the hall, up the elevator to our room, locked the bathroom door, and cried. I’ve spent the last three hours sobbing so hard that Maddie’s mom knocked on the bathroom door, asking if I was choking. I messed everything up really bad. Really, really bad.