I had to run to get to the office in time for announcements. My eyes were burning because I was so tired, my lungs heaved from the run, and I felt like any moment, someone would notice the tiny bulge in my pocket and I'd get caught. It was a rush.
I kind of loved it.
After I did the announcements, I walked slowly toward our classroom on the far end of the world. I knew there was a water fountain at the end of the hallway, and I knew that was where I'd take my first pill. After all, I'd need a bit of time for it to kick in. I was already a little shaky in anticipation of the energy I knew would be coursing through my body momentarily.
I leaned over the water fountain and took a drink. I had just reached my hand in my pocket when I heard his voice.
"You can't ignore me forever, you know."
I turned back, and there he was. Mason wasn't wearing the dark jeans and t-shirt that made my heart race. He wasn't even wearing a polo shirt. He was wearing a dark suit. Why was he wearing a suit?
"You can't keep bothering me forever," I said, but there was no force to it, no anger left in me. Now go away so I can take this pill, you idiot.
"You threw away my note." His voice was flat.
"I didn't try to hide that."
"Why?" his voice cracked. I'd known Mason for four weeks today. It felt like a lifetime, but it wasn't actually very long. He was always so confident, so cocky, so sure of himself. This guy, standing here with uncertainty in his eyes, I didn't know this guy.
I sighed, too tired to fight with him anymore.
"What do you want Mason? I'll give you two minutes, and then I just want you to leave me alone."
"Two minutes," he muttered under his breath. "I don't want two minutes. Two hours probably wouldn't be enough." But then he straightened, and he said, "I'll take it. Two minutes."
"You just wasted fifteen seconds," I said. "Better get on with it."
"I was afraid," he said. "You thought I didn't know whether I liked you or your sister. I'm so sorry I put you through that, but you need to know it wasn't about you at all, or Hope either. It was about me."
"Well that's refreshing," I said. "And not at all cliché. It's not you, it’s me. Really?" I tried to walk past him, but he took a step to the side to block my path.
He shook his head. "That's not two minutes, and I'm not done yet."
I sighed, but I stopped walking.
"I know it's cliché, and I know you don't want to hear it. I know it's all too late, but from the very moment I saw you, I've wanted to ask you out. I've wanted to kiss you. I see you, Angelica. You’re brilliant and vulnerable, confident and unsure, funny and cutting, loyal and infuriatingly driven. I see all of you, and you're stunning. I can't look away, even when you’re mad at me."
I look down at the dirty floor tiles because I can't breathe and I can't look at him, because what if I did, and then I believed his cheesy lines? I can't do it, not again.
"Liking your sister, asking her out, it was easy. Like everything in my life has always been easy. I knew she'd say yes. I knew she wouldn't ask me to do anything I didn't already want to do. I knew I could swim, and she'd cheer. I could complain about my parents, or the move, or anything at all and she'd smile and say something trivial. I'm not trying to belittle your sister, because she's a really great girl, and a talented swimmer, but Hope isn't you, she’s not even close."
"No," I said. "She isn't much like me. I think we’ve established that." I tried to walk past him again and when he reached out for me, I wanted to scream. Because I'm not Hope. I'll never be simple or uncomplicated or easy, or just bubbly and fun and energetic. I’m not my sister. "It's been two minutes. Please let me go."
He pulled back like I'd burned him. "You scared me, Lacy, because from the second we met, I couldn't imagine how I'd survive if you left. You changed my life that very first day. You told me I could do something, and then you showed me how, and you stepped back and watched while I did it. Instead of taking the credit, you cheered me on. Instead of showing off, you built me up. I've never had anyone do that, not ever."
I looked up at him this time, and his eyes burned into mine.
"I wanted to ask you out the next Monday, but I couldn't do it. What if you said no? What if you liked someone else? For all I knew, you and Drew were together.”
I laughed out loud. How could Mason know?
He shrugged. “There was obviously something intense between you two, and I was scared what. When you ditched me before the awards ceremony to go find her, and came back alone and super upset.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know, okay? The bottom line was, for the first time in my life, I was terrified I'd screw things up, and then I was angry with myself for not asking you out. When I saw Hope that afternoon, I needed something simple, a sure thing. She clearly liked me, and she was exactly the kind of girl I've dated in the past. I asked her what she was doing the next day, because I wanted...I don't know what I wanted. Sometimes people do stupid things, things they know they shouldn't do. I guess you don't, but not everyone is like you. Not all of us are perfect all the time."
I thought about the pills in my pocket. "None of us are perfect all the time."
He smiled at me, and it felt like someone had thrown open a window and the sun was shining again. "I just want another chance at all of it. Please? I have my signed permission form. I’m wearing a suit. I'm ready to do whatever you want. I’ll even debate with you and not flirt at all, if that's what you want. Just let me back in. Give me another chance to at least be your friend."
I wanted to hug him. I wanted him to spin me around and kiss me. But I couldn't do it, not yet. I kept seeing him kissing Hope. I kept thinking about how he said he liked me, but he asked her out. I couldn't quite trust him. But I could trust him enough to take him to this tournament. But this time, I had to do it right. “I want to debate with you. The recruiter couldn’t make it last week, and he’s going to be there today. I didn’t get into Yale, but he told me on the phone today he can change that. The thing is, Drew’s my partner. I won’t screw her, not if she’s here.”
I heard her voice from around the corner of the room and I wondered how much she’d already heard. “It’s fine, Lace.” Drew’s head popped around the doorframe. “I’ve been thinking about it since I saw him show up in a suit today. You can debate with him. I don’t mind. And if it can get you into Yale, even better.”
I was smiling before, but now I’m beaming at both of them. Mason grabbed my laptop bag and my clothes and carried them down the hall to the classroom. When he stepped inside, Drew followed, but I paused by the door long enough to pull the pills out of my pocket and drop them into the trashcan. I didn't need speed, not anymore. I had enough adrenaline to survive on my own.
When I walked into the classroom, Drew put her arm around me. She leaned against my ear and whispered, "I just want you to be happy, but you need to know that if he hurts you again, I'll kill him, and I don't want to hear you whining about it afterward. Fair warning."
I grinned ear to ear. "I believe you. No whining."
Mason looked from Drew back to me, and said, “See? Weird vibe.”
"It's a best friend thing," I said. "But it's fine."
He shrugged and smiled.
I spent the next twenty minutes explaining the changes I'd had to make to the case and counter plan.
"It's a brilliant solution," Mason said. "And the case is even better now."
Drew, leaning back in her chair, popped her gum. “Dude, all I can say is, I’m so glad I don’t have to try and make sense of that crap anymore.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re going to miss it.”
She leaned forward so her chair flopped back down. “Maybe a little bit. But I’ll come today and watch.”
I was almost proud of Ms. Harris when we climbed on the bus for Alief. She seemed sober, and when the bus driver cancelled, she offered to drive the bus herself. Normally I’d object, but she had a bus certification from a long time ago, and she had been sober all week. Maybe going to jail had helped her gain some clarity. I actually remember thinking that maybe I should've tried some jail time myself, instead of just wallowing.
I was an idiot.
My phone hadn't taken much of a charge before we got to school. By the time the bus came, it was bleeping at me. I motioned to Ms. Harris and told her I was going to leave it in my car to charge. She shrugged. I ran over and plugged it into my mom's car, and jogged back.
I sat next to Mason on the bus trip over, answering his questions about how my changes would impact the cases I knew other teams were running. I showed him the link quotes I'd come up with, and I went over the two revised kritiks we could run on any alternative energy plans, in addition to our counter plan. Drew sat across the aisle on the bus, chiming in with comments now and again and popping her gum.
The rest of the tournament on Friday went smoothly. Mason picked up like we'd never left off, explaining the revised and improved plan as though he'd written it himself. I relaxed more than I ever had, with prep time to spare each round now that I wasn't writing Drew's rebuttals and answering her cross examination questions for her, and wasting time recovering from her botched answers.
Mason and I won three rounds in a row, and before I knew it, we were in our last round of the day. When our judge walked in, my heart sank. Drew and I had lost with this screwball just before Christmas. He claimed to be "tabula rasa", or a "clean slate" judge, but he wasn't, not really. Before I could say anything to Mason, the guy started talking.
"My name is Mr. Kumar. I've been judging debate since before you kids were born, and I'll be judging after you've graduated from college I'm sure. I've seen debate fads come and go, and I'll be honest. I hate them. Just give me a good, solid plan, and show me your argument skills."
My friend Anastasia on the other team had made it to semis at state last year, but I didn't know her small, nervous Indian partner. They were affirmative, which meant they set the tone for the round. Her partner raised his hand and in a querulous voice asked, "What's your judging paradigm?"
"I'm tabula rasa. I say I don't like gimmicks, but if you argue them cleanly, I don't care what you use. Just give me something to sink my teeth into."
Mason glanced at me and I shrugged. At least we were negative this time. Our case was a lot more radical on the affirmative, since it didn’t really propose anything.
When Anastasia got up to read their nuclear power plan, I hesitated. Should I pull up some standard disadvantages? This was the easiest case to link to pretty drastic harms, what with Chernobyl, etc. Or did Mason and I stick with what I had prepared? I was vacillating in my head when Mr. Langston and a large, dark-skinned man I assumed was Harold Zane walked in and sat near the back of the classroom.
I tried to listen to what Anastasia was saying, but it was so hard to focus. I needed to decide what to run, but my brain was so tired it was stalling. I jotted a note down for Mason on a post it note. "What do we do? Traditional? Or anti-anthro?"
He glanced at the note and wrote back, "You're the boss. I trust you."
Great. One of the most important things in a debate round is reading the judge and I'd completely bombed that two months ago. When he had said tabula rasa in December, I'd believed him. I'd run some pretty radical kritiks at the time, and crashed and burned with them. I didn't want to make the same mistake, but I watched the judge for a moment. He was taking notes in earnest, nodding his head. It made me wonder. Was it the judge’s bias that tanked us two months ago, or was it me? Maybe I hadn't been convincing enough? He might be traditional, but if he was open at all to the concept of something new, I would deliver it this time like I couldn't have two months ago.
I handed Mason a post-it that read: We're doing it.
He nodded at me and gave me a cheesy thumbs-up.
I stood up, counter plan ready. My throat closed when I looked up at Mr. Zane, but then I glanced at Drew, sitting just behind the judge. She held up a paper with the following words written on it: Just Breathe. You've got this.
I took a single deep breath and smiled at her. She was right. I had this. I focused on our 'tabula rasa' judge and began reading. I had some of the quotes memorized, and I glanced up during those to see the Judge’s demeanor. He seemed entirely open to our bizarre approach, which was good. I tried to forget the stakes, but I couldn't quite get Mr. Zane's penetrating gaze out of my head. Even so, I nailed it during cross-examination.
When I sat down, Mason reached over and squeezed my hand under the table. He didn't let go and a zing flew through my body that woke me up entirely.
The rest of the round deteriorated into a bit of a brawl, but Mason managed to pull it back out, and sum up beautifully. We all sat in silence while we waited for the judge to say something. Anything. Most judges announce at the end who they’re voting for, and give some kind of explanation.
Mr. Tabula Rasa didn't do that. "It's been a pleasure to judge this round today. You’ve all done an excellent job of rising to my request that you debate issues, that you use good rhetoric, and showcase your speaking and reasoning abilities. You haven't made my job easy, but the best rounds don't. I look forward to seeing you all in the future."
He stood and walked out. My heart sunk. Did we lose? Had we won? Mason took my hand again, this time not bothering to keep it under the table. When I stood up, he still didn't let go. Mr. Langston and Mr. Zane approached us.
"That was a very fine round," Mr. Zane said, his deep voice booming. "You should both be quite proud. From what I understand you don’t have many resources at Brazosport, which makes that round even more impressive."
“And I’m impressed with how you reworked your case to function on the negative as a kritik,” Mr. Langston said. “And used the Open Evidence Project to bolster instead of undercut it.”
"Thanks," I said. "And thank you for coming to watch us."
Mr. Zane's smile showed a mouth full of enormous, white teeth. He could have been on a dental advertisement. "It was my pleasure. My friend Anders is almost never wrong when he tells me he's found someone worth my attention. He certainly wasn't this time."
"Thank you," Mason said, "we appreciate that."
"I'm sure you won that round," Mr. Langston said. "Unless that judge was a complete moron."
I smiled. "Thanks. I was a little worried, honestly. He said he was tabula rasa, but he hasn’t been completely progressive when we’ve seen him in the past."
"Reading judges is hard," Mr. Langston said, “but maybe the best thing you learn as a debater. I use the same skillset with juries now.”
"Exactly," Mr. Zane said. "Nicely handled, I thought."
"Lacy spent a lot of time reworking the case so it would hold up in spite of another school that set out to ruin it," Mason said. "She has a brilliant mind."
"That she does." Mr. Zane rubbed his short beard a time or two and then said, "I know Miss Vincent here has applied to Yale, and they've botched up her acceptance letter. She will likely have to submit a revised application through my office. What about you, young man? Have you finished your application to Yale yet?"
Mason shook his head. "No, sir. I was planning to attend University of Texas on a swimming scholarship."
Mr. Zane appeared to evaluate Mason's size with appreciation. "University of Texas is a fine school if swimming is what you're after. But I'd hate to break up such a promising pair of young talent. I hope you'll consider sending me an application as well. Yale has a swim team with very fine water, I’m sure. I bet they'd welcome you there, too."
"I'll think about it, sir."
"You do that," Mr. Zane said. Then he socked Mr. Langston in the arm. "You didn't tell me I was going to have to convince them to take my scholarship, you sly dog."
"I didn't know," Mr. Langston said, glancing at me. "This is the first I've heard about it."
"Oh well," Mr. Zane said. "The best ones always have other options. It takes them time to realize we're the best one." He turned to me. "And you, what else are you considering?"
"I've been accepted to Duke, Stanford and Princeton. I’m still waiting to hear back from Harvard."
He shook his head. "Of course you are. Those snobs love to make people wait. If you join their team instead of mine, I might cry."
Imagining this huge black man in plaid pants crying made me want to giggle, but I didn’t. "I can assure you sir, Yale is my top choice."
He clapped me on the arm. "I appreciate your enthusiasm. Okay, here’s our next step. I'll send you an official offer letter, contingent on your graduating with the same grades as you have now, etcetera, etcetera. Then you’ll need to resubmit your application, but this time to my office. I'll send it through the proper channels and we’ll be in business. I should warn you, I only have three full tuition scholarships to offer, and I've offered two. That means I can only offer you each a half tuition scholarship. You might qualify for financial aid, but I don't get involved in all that. Now, if your boyfriend here doesn't end up accepting my offer, we can talk. I’d prefer to keep the two of you as a team since you seem to work very well together, but I don’t want to lose you either, young lady. And if you’re as good as you say at swimming Mr. Montcellier, I might be able to coordinate with them to see if you could do both. Maybe they’d throw some money at you too. I doubt they can offer the same resources as University of Texas, but I’m sure they’d love to bring a fellow like you on."
It seemed almost strange when I walked out of that room on my own two feet instead of floating out on a cloud. Mason looked a little stunned, like he'd been smacked between the eyes. I worked very hard not to ask him whether he was considering Mr. Zane's offer.
Drew threw her arms around me the second Mr. Zane and Mr. Langston were gone. "I'm so excited," she said to me. "I knew you could do it. But now that you have, I can tell you my news! I got accepted to Yale last week."
I looked into her earnest blue eyes and realized something. "I'm such a horrible friend," I said. "And you're the best friend ever."
She looked down at her black boots. "I didn't want to tell you, not when you didn't get in. But then Mr. Zane called and I thought, it would be so cool if we both went together."
"You could've told me," I said. "I would've been happy for you."
"It wasn't fair," she said. "My mom, my grandpa, my uncles, they all went there. They care about dumb stuff like that and it wasn't fair they let me in, but not you. Your grades and SAT score were better."
I shrugged. "You still could've told me. I would've been happy for you."
"I know," she said, "I know you would’ve, but I thought maybe if I waited, we could be happy together. And look, I was right."
Drew hugged me again. I was such an idiot for taking her for granted. When I finally did let go, Mason was gone.
She and I walked to the cafeteria, but the rest of our classmates had already headed out to the bus. When we reached it, I saw Mason sitting near the back. I squeezed Drew's arm and headed for the back of the bus to see what was going on.
Mason was big enough to fill up the bench, almost entirely. He had shifted so I was looking at his back.
I shoved on him. "Hey. Let me in you big ox."
He turned toward me. "I figured you'd want to sit by Drew, your future roommate."
I reached down and grabbed his arm and pulled on it, hard. I might as well have been pulling on the bench seat. He didn't budge. "Get up, you big baby."
He stared at me, sulking for a moment. But then, he stood up and I slipped past him. I could’ve sat on the edge of the seat like I had earlier, but I had done that to talk to Drew and Mason at the same time, and it left half my butt hanging off for the entire ride. This time, I only wanted to talk to Mason.
I patted the seat next to me. "Sit."
He did.
I thought about how he’d taken my hand. Twice. "Why would I want to sit by Drew?"
He shrugged. "You seemed to have a lot to celebrate earlier."
He was pouting. Mason, my big, confident partner and world-class swimmer was pouting. I reached up and put my hand on his face. "We have a lot to celebrate."
He turned away and my hand fell back. "By my calculations, you're better off if I don't take Mr. Zane up on his offer. Full scholarship versus half."
"You big idiot. I don't care about that. I never expected any scholarship at all to Yale. My mom has saved money for our college funds. I can afford to pay half their tuition, and what I can't afford, I can take out loans for. Stop acting like a meathead and look at me."
Mason finally turned to face me. What I saw in his eyes surprised me.
"What are you nervous about?"
"I can’t go to Yale."
"Why?" I asked. "You heard Mr. Zane. They have a great swimming program. I bet you'd be their superstar. Actually, they might offer you another partial scholarship! I bet their program needs you way more than UT’s does."
"It's not about swimming."
"Then what?" The bus jolted out onto the main road, and I fell against Mason's enormous chest. He wrapped one arm around me, and pulled me back upright. He was so big and so talented, and everyone wanted him. "What could you possibly be worried about?"
"You're Yale caliber. You should’ve gotten in on your own, without debate. You got into Stanford and Princeton and Duke. And Drew, she got in too."
I shrugged. "I didn't get into Yale. They rejected me."
"You probably have perfect test scores. I heard you’re going to be the Valedictorian. It didn’t even occur to me to apply to any of those Ivy League schools."
"Mason, what are you trying to say?"
"I only applied to a handful of schools, Lacy. University of Texas, Michigan and Florida."
"What do those even have in common?" I asked.
"Texas is the number one swimming school in America. Michigan, California and Florida are next. I didn't apply anywhere on the basis of my scholastics."
"You're smart Mason, one of the smartest guys I've ever met."
He turned away again. "Not Ivy League smart. I’m jock smart. I wouldn’t survive at Yale."
"You're Ivy League smart," I said softly. "I knew that the second we met."
His head snapped back toward mine. "You believe that?"
"No," I said. "I don’t believe it. I’ve seen it, and I know it’s true."
He smiled at me then, a real smile, a warm smile. He put his arm back around me and I curled up against him. I fell asleep a few minutes later, and didn't wake up until we reached the school. Mason and I were the last two people off the bus. He carried all my stuff and his own. He walked me over to my mom's car in the bitter evening cold and loaded my bags into the back. I put the key in and turned it on, pressing the seat heater button immediately.
"Where's your dad?" I asked.
"I just texted him," Mason said. "He'll be here in like five minutes."
"Oh," I said. "Wait in here with me, then."
Mason climbed into the car next to me. It wasn't much warmer inside, but I wasn't about to drive off and leave him standing out here alone. Ms. Harris was doing better than I could ever remember, but she was already gone, and the bus had already headed for the bus barn. Such a responsible chaperone.
"What will your parents think about the Yale offer?"
Mason chuckled. "My dad will be over the moon. He’ll try and force me to take it. He's so bitter now that his baseball career is over. He thinks he wasted his time on baseball and he should’ve done something that would have left him in a better position now, at forty. He basically has to start all over. He's taking online classes to try and get a degree in graphic design. I guess it's embarrassing for him that my mom's supporting us."
"And your mom?"
"She’ll probably still want me to go to UT. It's the number one swimming program in the country. She wants an Olympic Medal more than anything. She thinks the endorsements and the accompanying fame will set me up forever. And she said I’ll be smarter than my dad was and I’ll save what I make."
I think about Mason's looks, his eloquence and I realize his mom's probably right. He'd be an idiot to go anywhere but the place that will get him closest to his gold medal.
"What do you think?"
He looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then he said, "I don't know what I think. Before today, I just assumed I'd go to University of Texas."
"What changed today?"
"I realized I don't want to be without you in a few months. I don't want to be without you, ever." I had a steering wheel, boxing me in. He sat on the other side of a gear selector from me. It was still so cold that our breath made a fog in front of us. Nothing had gone right, not since the day we met, but it didn't matter, because we were right together. Mason, the strong, absurdly gifted swimmer, and me, the nerdy, hotheaded debater.
We had so little in common, but I couldn't seem to stop moving toward him, no matter what was in the way. We were both facing forward in our seats, and I thought this had to be the worst place for a kiss in the history of ever, but he leaned toward me, and I turned toward him, and I realized I was wrong. Anywhere we were, that was the best place for a kiss. When his lips met mine, the world exploded all around me. I didn't feel the steering wheel. I didn't feel the cold. I didn't worry about Yale or the University of Texas or the distance between where we were and where I wanted us to be.
There was only Mason and me. I was filled with a joy I couldn't contain. The two of us became something more together. Unstoppable. I don't know how long we kissed, but when I finally pulled back, my seat was burning hot, and the windows were steamed instead of frosted. Even then, I didn’t want to stop, but I’d noticed something. Something insistent, something annoying.
My phone was beeping.
I felt dazed when I finally sat back in my seat. I clicked the seat heater off, and then I reached for my phone. Thirteen missed calls. Ten voicemails. Fifty text messages.
What in the world was going on?
If I could go back in time, would I want to notice those messages before Mason and I kissed? I don't know. I honestly can't say whether it would be better not to have ever had such a perfect moment, or better to have it, knowing it would be utterly ruined seconds later.
Because when I listened to my messages, that's when I found out. See, my sister Hope had gone to jail, charged with possession of drugs I had selfishly allowed to be placed in her car. But that wasn't even the worst of it. Not by a long shot.