Thomas leaned on the table and stared at me.
“You seem like a nice person,” he said. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Well, I had a peer counseling session with Logan, and he said I wasn’t hot enough for Speech and Debate, so—”
Lakshmi interrupted me. “Are you fucking kidding?!”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’re so hot. I would totally do you.”
“Thanks. That means a lot.”
She laughed and raised her Chardonnay tipsily.
“I basically said I was the LeBron James of speech at my last school and that I was joining the team just to piss him off. I’m not gonna do it, guys. It was a joke. I have no idea what speech even is.”
Elijah nodded. “Logan sucks. They all suck. And it’s like—I was on the team, all right, the whole culture is toxic. And Coach Sparks is the worst; he’s like the boss demon in charge of it. He’s practically satanic.”
“Don’t get me started on him,” I said.
“You know him?”
Do I tell them? “I’m aware of his work. I’ve had encounters with him before.”
“Yeah, well, he’s the reason I quit. And he’s the reason I can’t…” He trailed off, biting his lip. “He ruins people, all right? I had a scholarship lined up with the U of M for next year—he called them up and they canceled it. He blackballed me.”
“He can do that?” I said.
“He runs the school. He’s more powerful than the principal. And if you cross him…”
Lakshmi set her glass down. “My little sister, Rani, is on the team.”
“Shit.”
“She’s JV this year, but she’s competitive, so she’s gonna be varsity eventually. And then she’s gonna like… turn into one of those sons-of-bitches.”
“The varsity squad,” said Elijah, “is the worst. They’re like seven Voldemorts.”
Thomas objected. “You can’t have seven Voldemorts. That doesn’t make any sense. They’re Death Eaters, at most.”
“They are fucking Voldemorts.”
“The entire term ‘Voldemorts’ is nonsense.”
“Okay, he’s a Voldemort, and everyone else is a Death Eater.”
“Fine, they’re supervillains, then. Like the Legion of Doom or the Sinister Seven.”
“The Sinister Seven isn’t a thing,” added Thomas.
Lakshmi slammed her fist on the table. “Can you two shut up and stop nerding out for a second? I don’t give a shit who they are, someone needs to take them out.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment.
“Like murder?” asked Elijah, hesitatingly.
“No!”
“’Cause Sydney’s dad probably knows a guy.”
“My dad’s in prison for tax evasion, he definitely does not know a guy.”
Lakshmi sighed. “No, I mean just—get him fired, destroy their grip on the school… something like that.”
“Man,” said Elijah. “I would pay good money to some other speech team to take them down. Just destroy them in open combat. Cheat if they have to. The whole varsity squad and Sparks.”
Silence descended on the table.
I cocked an eyebrow.
One person can ruin a whole team.
“No one can beat them from the outside,” I said. “But what if I could beat them from the inside?”
Lakshmi looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s no way,” said Elijah. “They’re better than you. Plus, they all do different events. How could you beat all of them?”
“No no no,” said Thomas. “I get it. You don’t have to beat all of them. You could just be the bad apple that spoils the bunch. They wouldn’t even know it was coming from you—the evil is inside the house.”
Tabb arrived at the table. “What’s up, peeps?” he said, and nodded his head ever so slightly. “Just wanted to let you know that I can give you the check at any time, and there’s no rush, but if you guys are done then—”
“We’re not done,” said Lakshmi. “I’m gonna get a bottle of wine.”
Tabb shook his head. “Look, guys, I know you think that you’re cool as hell or whatever—”
Lakshmi narrowed her eyes. “Tabb, I like you. But what if I told you that I was really seventeen and you had mistakenly served me alcohol because you couldn’t tell the difference between two Indian people? And furthermore, what if I went to your manager and said that you had served someone who was underage, even though you’ve been trained explicitly not to do that? How do you think that would reflect on you?”
Tabb’s mouth disappeared into a tiny slit. “What are your demands?” he said.
“First, I’m gonna need you to clear these plates. Then, we need a fresh paper tablecloth and some sharpened crayons. Finally, a dessert menu for everyone and a bottle of your house white.”
He locked eyes with her for a moment. “Very well, Najima.”
We all leaned in with our crayons, looking at the paper tablecloth.
“First,” said Lakshmi. “We write down what we want to happen, then we plan to make that a reality. But let me say this: What we do here tonight, no one breathes a word of it. This is officially a pact now. We are a secret organization dedicated to one thing and one thing only: the humiliation and destruction of the Eaganville Speech and Debate team.”
We raised our glasses of cheap white wine, clinked them together, and drank.
“Can I just say right now,” I said, “that we are probably doomed to failure.”
“We’re not doing this because it’s easy,” Elijah said. “We’re doing this because it’s hard. John F. Kennedy said that about mooning.”
“He said that about going to the moon, not mooning,” groaned Thomas.
“I’m pretty sure it was mooning, and I’m pretty sure mooning should be a part of our plan.” He scrawled MOONING on the paper.
“This is about winning and losing,” said Thomas. “These guys have been winning because they’ve been the biggest assholes on the block. We’re the plucky underdogs. And the plucky underdogs always win.”
“In the movies,” said Lakshmi.
“They’re the overdogs,” said Thomas. “And they’ve been humping the shit out of everything for too long around here. And I say it’s about time the humping ends.”
“That was beautiful,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“All right,” said Elijah. “We’re going to use the principles of improv to make this reality. ‘Yes, And.’ We brainstorm. No idea is a bad idea, and then we decide on a plan.”
An hour later, we had scrawled our basic principles in crayon.
WHAT WE WANT:
JUSTICE (from Thomas)
DEATH TO THE PATRIARCHY (Lakshmi, obviously)
SAVE RANI FROM THE PATRIARCHY (Lakshmi again)
COACH SPARKS FIRED (from Elijah)
REVENGE (me)
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE:
PUBLIC HUMILIATION
COMPLETE DEFEAT OF ALL VARSITY MEMBERS
PROBABLY SOMEBODY CRYING
ANDREW CHEN LOSING COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP
MOONING
STEP 1: Sydney joins the team as a secret agent, pretending to be good at speech.
STEP 2: Sydney infiltrates the Sinister Seven.
STEP 3: Somebody does Something.
STEP 4: Everyone on the team loses, publicly.
STEP 5: Coach Sparks is fired.
STEP 6: World peace and happiness.
“I know,” said Thomas. “We Fleetwood Mac these sons-of-bitches.”
“I don’t know what that is,” said Lakshmi.
“Fleetwood Mac was a band in the seventies or something. I think,” said Thomas.
Elijah raised a hand. “Eighties.”
“Maybe they were in the seventies and eighties.”
“Pretty sure it was eighties.”
“I’ll google it,” said Elijah, taking out his phone. You can probably see now why this was taking us hours. The wine was not helping us think or brainstorm any better.
“It doesn’t matter when they were!” cried Thomas. “The point is: They were a band, and then everybody in the band started sleeping with everyone else in the band, and they all cheated on each other, and then the whole thing imploded.”
“So you want me to hook up with everyone on the team?” I said. “’Cause I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna do that.”
“Or you get all of them to hook up with each other. Love drugs,” said Thomas. “That’s how it works in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“That’s like the seventh Shakespeare reference you’ve made in the last hour,” growled Lakshmi. “Can you stop it with that, please?”
Thomas gasped. “Shakespeare is helpful in all situations. I can’t help it if you can’t understand the language.”
“I understand the language, it’s just stupid to think that Julius Caesar has anything to do with this!”
“Um… wrong!”
“We are not stabbing anyone thirty-eight times!”
“Twenty-three times. Get it right.”
Lakshmi put her hands on the table. “I’ve watched The Bachelor, so I know a shit-ton about personal conflict. All you need to do is lie to them, set up a situation where only one person wins, and let them start stabbing each other in the back. You’re like a secret agent, you infiltrate them, and you just start talking shit behind everybody’s back—”
“That’s obvious,” said Elijah. “And they’ll see right through that. The only thing they respect is speech and debate skill. In order to get them to trust you, you have to be good.”
“I’m really good at talking.”
“I think you should start on the interp side, honestly. Debate requires you to actually do research and know facts.”
“What’s interp?” I asked.
Elijah went pale. “We’re doomed.”
“No, what is it?”
“Interpretation. Like competitive acting. With a whole bunch of specific rules. How the hell are you going to be on the team if you don’t know anything?”
“Sorry; I had other things to do with my time in my last school, like not being weird.”
He rubbed his head. “This is never going to work.”
Lakshmi punched him in the shoulder. “Yes, it is. You can coach her. And besides, sending Sydney in as a sleeper agent is only part of the plan. The rest of us have to do our part.”
“What is our part?” asked Thomas.
She tapped the Somebody does something step of the plan. “That’s our part. And, Sydney, remember: Save my sister’s brain.”
“Got it.”
Thomas chipped in. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And then destroy them from the inside.”
We clinked our glasses together again.
“I just want to say,” said Lakshmi, folding up our tablecloth for safekeeping, “this has been my favorite high school dance ever.”