On Monday, everything was different.
Word spread of my ascension to varsity—I don’t know how people at Eaganville communicated, by owl perhaps, but the world had changed. Teachers smiled at me. People I didn’t know came up to me to tell me how great I was. It was like I had acquired a golden glow that followed me everywhere I went.
Logan sidled up to me on the way to lunch. “Yeah, you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“The rush of fame. The heady concoction of power and glory. Feel it.” He actually clenched his fists.
“That’s kinda weird, Logan.”
He gave me a rakish glance. “This is just the beginning, Sydney. If you’re varsity, the world is your oyster. And by world I actually mean this school, so not actually the world, to be completely clear. This school is your oyster.”
“What does that even mean?”
“That means you get to crack it open, pour some hot sauce on it, and slurp it down.” He thought about that for half a second. “Your stock just went up. Now, I don’t have to tell you that higher status is more important for males than females as far as mating is concerned, so you won’t just be able to snap your fingers and have any boy you like—unlike myself, who can claim any of the lower-status females. If I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
Man, even when this kid was being nice to you, he was obnoxious as hell.
“I think you’re overstating the appeal of the speech team.”
“Am I?” We walked right past the cafeteria, heading for the teachers’ lounge. “Come on in.”
He opened the door like a bellman, ushering me into the lounge. This place had apparently been an old study of some kind. There was wood paneling. Multiple couches. Tables with actual chairs. There was a goddamn coffeemaker. On one counter there were several hot dishes covered in tinfoil with the words take some and then a smiley face.
I noticed the actual teachers immediately, who were trying to ignore the kids in their midst like a group of lions trained to ignore antelope. They didn’t even look in our direction.
Hanson and Andrew were already at the table the speech team had claimed for their own. Hanson opened his arms in greeting, calling me over.
“There she is!”
“Here I am, I guess,” I said, sitting down and opening my sack lunch.
“I heard you kicked some serious ass,” he said, his lips forming a permanent charming smirk and his dimples flashing handsomely. Even his breath smelled sweet.
“Thanks.”
He’s evil, he’s evil, he’s evil reverberated through my mind. But really cute. But evil but cute but evil.
He looked over at me like a movie star. “I remember my first tournament. I was nervous as hell. So kudos.” He said kudos. He was a person who said kudos.
“I will accept those kudos,” I said, “and return them to you with additional kudos.” I waved my hand like I was presenting a waterfowl to a king. “How was your performance?”
“It was awesome,” he said. “Three people were so offended they got up and left during the middle of my speech. One of them was like, ‘I didn’t come here to watch God hump Satan in the garden!’ That’s not even what I was doing—God was sensuously massaging Satan, that was it. It got a little heated, of course, but there was no humping. They didn’t even stick around for my Adam-and-Eve-and-all-the-animals bit.”
I have to admit, Hanson’s HI kind of appealed to me.
“What did your parents think of that? I’m kind of worried my mom will show up to mine and be like, ‘I didn’t raise you to do heroin like that!’”
“She prefers you to smoke it instead of mainlining?” he joked.
“Absolutely. My mom has strict standards of heroin usage. It was one of our first mother-daughter talks.”
“I bet. Nah, my parents are cool. They don’t give a shit. My grandma, though, crazy religious, like born-again, all that. Pretty sure if she saw my piece, she’d die of heart failure on the spot.”
“Or kill you.”
“I’d be in the middle of my piece and this old lady with a walker leaps from the stands to strangle me? I mean, that might happen anyway. Or she’d leave like really slowly.”
I released my wilted turkey sandwich from its zip-locked prison. Talking with Hanson was actually kind of fun, even if he was the devil incarnate. Or the devil being given an inappropriate back rub by the Father.
He looked at my pathetic excuse for a meal. “If you don’t want your lunch, I’m sure you can raid the food some of the parents brought for the teachers,” he said, gesturing to the tinfoiled casseroles in the back. “Sometimes we order pizza, too.”
“Nice. Who brought the wine?”
Hanson chuckled. “We’re not allowed to do that anymore. It’s a whole thing.”
“It’s bullshit, honestly,” said Andrew, cutting in.
Taryn and Milo joined us a few minutes later, and Anesh swept in just after that, shutting the door on a girl mid-argument. I nearly gasped when Taryn took out actual silverware.
“Damn,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s nothing,” she said, pointing to a door in the back. “There’s even a faculty bathroom. You wouldn’t believe how clean and peaceful that toilet is.” She opened a notebook that said Love and set it next to her on the table, writing notes in loopy green ink.
“This is really great,” I said, trying to calibrate my ass-kicking and ass-kissing.
I must become one of you. Act like I own the place. Stop the humility bullshit.
I made my way over to the casserole zone and scooped some onto a real plate. There was a little sign that said FOR TEACHERS ONLY that I casually ignored.
“Where’s Blaize?” I asked when I got back to the table.
Logan shook his head. “Demoted.”
“For only making semis at one meet?”
“Not our call,” said Logan. “But only one person in each category gets to be varsity. So when you got promoted…” He made a whistling sound.
“And you’re banished from the teachers’ lounge? Harsh.”
“It’s motivational. At any point you could be dropped. At any point your star could fall. One day you’re up”—he smiled wistfully, looking over at Taryn’s notebook—“the next day you’re down. The challenge is to stay up. Right, Milo?”
“What?” he said.
Even the teachers treated me differently. Mr. Papadakis approached me at the beginning of class and leaned over my desk, still reflexively flinching from me a little bit.
“Hey, I know you had a busy weekend, so take your time on that paper due tomorrow,” he said.
“There’s a paper due tomorrow?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s on the syllabus. We’re examining symbolism in The Scarlet Letter.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t even cracked open The Scarlet Letter. We’d been talking about it for the last ten days, and I’d managed to keep afloat in class discussions by calling out the shitty sexism of the novel I hadn’t read. “Um… things are really tough right now—with the team, and my home life and…”
“You know what?” He leaned in. “I don’t normally do this, but… how about we just let this one slide? I know that you’ve been really invested in class discussions about The Scarlet Letter, so I deeply, deeply appreciate your contributions to class. So—you know what? I’m cool, you’re cool, I don’t need to see that paper.” He winked.
The sunlit glory of the day ended right after school. “All right, troops,” said Coach Sparks in practice. “I see you guys celebrating like you won Nationals. This was a pissant, tiny tournament with NONE of our serious competitors. There wasn’t anybody at that meet that should have held a candle to any one of you. So I don’t understand why you’re whooping and hollering and carrying on like you just won State. You didn’t win crap.” He picked up the plaque we received for the highest-scoring team. “Here’s what I think of this.” He tossed it in the garbage.
Sparks pointed at Logan and Anesh. “You guys got smoked in the final round, so I’d wipe that grin off your face, if I were you. You lost to a team from Dundas. DUNDAS. There are about forty kids in that school, and half of them don’t know how to read and you still LOST to them. You think that’s good enough? You were garbage.” He jabbed a finger at Taryn and Milo, who were canoodling. “You only won because the other team got DQ’d for propping.”
I looked around, the question “What is propping?” dying on my lips, since apparently everyone else knew what he was talking about. (Later I learned that propping meant using a prop, which was illegal.)
“Your pops were off, your spider sucked, and Smaug sounded like a goat. NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH.”
I noticed Blaize sitting near the back, head down. She looked like she hadn’t slept all weekend. Sparks seemed like he didn’t even notice her. Instead, he leveled his gaze at Hanson, the golden boy.
Oh shit, is he gonna criticize Hanson?
“Mediocre. I saw your performance: mediocre. You wanna repeat as National Champion? Get your ass to work. That goes for all of you: Back to work.”
The team exhaled as he released us from his steely gaze. We had taken home five trophies, and it wasn’t anywhere near good enough. So much for reveling in victory.
From the hallway, I watched as Blaize stayed in the room after everyone else had cleared out. She tried to approach Sparks again, but he deliberately looked at his phone for a moment before saying in a low whisper, “I don’t have anything to say to you until you prove you’re worthy to be spoken to.” Without waiting for a response, he walked out of the room right past me.
Gingerly, I crept back in. She was pacing in the back, underneath the shelves of trophies, going over her lines in double speed, like she was Judy Garland on amphetamines. (I mean, from what I gather, Judy Garland actually took amphetamines, but Blaize wasn’t supposed to be on them during the routine.)
“You all right?”
She stopped and wiped her nose, turning away from me. “I’m fine.”
“I thought you did a good job in the tournament, by the way.”
She scoffed. “Okay.”
“I mean it. You were kicking ass until you forgot your line.”
“It was so stupid. I never forget that line. I never forget any lines. And then… you know, you screw up one time, and then it’s ‘sorry Blaize you’re out.’”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand again and laughed bitterly. “Three years. I’ve spent three years on this team—like every waking moment of my life has been spent doing this. I went to Nats, and I forget one line and it’s like…”
“I know.”
She looked down at me with bloodshot eyes. “And you come in, and you’re the new golden child, so congratulations. Awesome. I mean it. Enjoy your time on the top.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“No, it’s true. This is what he does. He doesn’t need two people specializing in DI, so why not just keep one?” She took a deep breath. “It’s not your fault. I’m not mad at you, it’s just the way things are. So now he wants me to fight like hell to get my varsity spot back. I’m gonna have to suck up to him even more.”
“I didn’t suck up to him,” I said, trying to defend myself.
“No, I know you were good. Honestly. But… this whole team… it’s so…” She searched for the word she wanted. “Toxic.”
“Yeah.”
“I should quit. I should walk away. If he’s gonna throw me in the garbage like that plaque…”
“Don’t quit,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I have something to tell you.”