I have been dreaming about this day forever.
I turned fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen by blowing out birthday candles, thinking of this room, this hotel, this tournament.
And we lost because I forgot where I was.
THIRD ROUND
Madeline Sinclair and Samantha McCoy, Hanover High School, Hanover, NH
vs.
Grace Kuti and Skyler Temple, Hartford Preparatory Academy, Hartford, CT
Hanover High School: 14 Hartford Preparatory Academy: 19
You know, sometimes it’s good to be reminded that you’re just a weak sack of floppy bones in a polyester pantsuit who talks to herself on a tiny laptop computer in a hotel bathtub.
You are not actually the star debater of the East Coast, you are not “the team to beat,” you are not the valedictorian, you are not a Future Anyone, you are not a strong young woman, and in fact, you remind yourself of the same pubescent girl you always were, wearing your huge glasses. You are reminded specifically of that day you were sitting at the kitchen table with a gallon of chocolate milk from the general store in Strafford, reading a fat Terry Goodkind book, drinking glass after glass of milk while you read for hours, until it’s time for dinner but you don’t want to stop reading, but there’s not enough room for everyone to sit down, they say, and they get annoyed, and they send you outside with your lukewarm half gallon of chocolate milk, your one pleasure in the world. And at first you think to yourself, wow, you finished a fantasy novel and drank an entire gallon of chocolate milk in one sitting. Good for you.
And then you realize everyone else is inside, being normal, and even your family can’t stand you, and you are completely and utterly alone.
These other losers, the ones who got knocked out, the ones you strode past feeling like a million bucks, they’re going to go home and move on to the next thing. They’re going to come back next year, or they’ll graduate, like Maddie, and they’ll look back and say, well, it was just a bad weekend.
I thought that’s what I’d be saying, too, just six months ago.
But now I have to worry if this, the shittiest weekend of my life, my ultimate failure, is actually going to be the best weekend I can remember.
What if this is just the beginning of a series of failures?
What if this is all I am?
What if this is it?
FUCK IT
When I heard the door close and Maddie’s and Pat’s voices fade down the hallway, I came back here, to my bed, and kept the lights off. We leave tomorrow morning.
Maddie had left me alone, except briefly asking me to dinner, so I think I’m in the clear. As in, though my mom had told Pat about NPC before we left for the tournament, Pat had not told Maddie.
As in, to Maddie, the episode earlier was just a breakdown. The thing is—and, Future Sam, I have had some time to think this through while snotting on myself for the entire day—this was not a fluke meant for both Maddie and me. It was part of a bigger fluke. A huge, blank, stinking hand of cards that, if I’m not careful, will last the rest of my life. But that’s not Maddie’s fault. She deserves to know that none of this, in any way, was meant to happen to her.
And Christ, if humans supposedly know how time works, how can it be possible to blow four years of work in thirty seconds? It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.
SERIOUSLY, FUCK THIS
I wish we were riding home in a limo—not for the glamour, but so Maddie and I could sit on opposite ends. I’m writing this with the screen facing away from Maddie, in the car home.
On the elevator ride down to the pool, I had rehearsed how I would tell her why I forgot everything, and that I was sorry, and if we could do it over again, I would not have even tried to go to the tournament. I would have let Alex Conway have my spot so that Maddie could have won.
I found her in the hot tub, wearing a sports bra and basketball shorts. Other debaters laughed and splashed one another across the room in the pool. I sat next to her and put my feet in the boiling water. My face felt crusted like a salt lick. Her face was red, too, and her hair was flat and slick. She didn’t speak.
“Well,” I said. “It’s over.”
She tried to smile at me. “Yeah. We did our best.”
I jumped on this. “Actually, no, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, it’s just…” Maddie’s face scrunched up, trying to keep her cool. “Now is not the best time. Can we not get into this?”
“Let me say one thing. Actually, a couple of things. You were amazing. I messed up.” I took a deep breath. “When we were talking the other night, before the tournament began—actually, before the party—I should have told you something really important that I found out about myself recently. Actually—god, I’m saying ‘actually’ a lot.”