The fallout from the meet was immediate. Andrew didn’t ride home with us. Neither did Blaize. She decided to go home with Thomas afterward. I hadn’t realized it, but his parents had come to the performance. They were sitting in the back during his speech, crying.
I found Blaize before the finals rounds—she was outside in the cold, ready to escape.
“I’m quitting the team,” she said to me. “There’s no way I’m going back now. You’re going to have to be the one to carry the torch to Nationals.”
I held on to her. A cold wind stung my ears. “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?”
“I thought it would be a big distraction. I didn’t want it messing you up.”
I bit my lip. I messed up anyway. “Thanks. But now what am I going to do? You’re the only person on the team who isn’t a dick.”
“It’s not like I’m moving to Siberia, I’m just not gonna be on the team anymore. Sparks will find out I engineered the whole Thomas thing. He’s going to try to burn down my future anyway. He’ll put in calls to every college admissions officer he knows. We have to take him out at Nationals.”
“You’re still going to help?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’re going to need to keep fighting from the inside. But you can’t be seen with me now. You still need to lead the resistance.”
The bus ride home was ugly. We had another collection of trophies (Hanson had won HI, Taryn and Milo took first in duo, Anesh and Logan placed third), but there was nothing to show for two main events. Everyone had heard about what had happened to Andrew. I had the footage on my phone just in case and was prepared to upload it to YouTube in the event he resurfaced. But word of the live performance had spread, and he was nowhere to be found. Thomas had asked me not to upload it unless it was necessary. (Besides, since my voice was on that recording, it would’ve been pretty clear I was involved. I marveled at how smart Blaize was to take Andrew out before other varsity members might’ve been in the audience.)
A dark cloud loomed over Sparks in the front of the bus. He didn’t say a word as we all took our seats. Even the junior varsity kids in the back were subdued. Everyone stared out the windows or checked their phones on the long, silent ride home.
Round One to the Good Guys, and no one seemed to think I was behind it.
Still, it felt awful to be on that bus.
Andrew didn’t come back to the team. He barely came back to school. He was there for two or three days the next week and then vanished, perhaps returning to the public school in Ohio from whence he came, according to Thomas.
His place was taken by a girl named Chantal, who was a French foreign exchange student doing an OO about socialism and wind power and veganism. Chantal had shaved both sides of her head and kept the rest of her hair long and orange, like a loosely curled fluffy tail. She had a nose ring, a tattoo on her shoulder that said “The Yankee Clipper” for some reason, and gave no fucks about anything. Sparks announced that she was going to be elevated to varsity—doors would open, the faculty bathroom was now hers. I half expected to be dropped down to JV, but he ignored me for the moment.
I was pretty sure Chantal was going to be my new friend, until I talked to her.
“I’ve noticed your style,” she said.
“Yeah, and I love what you’re doing with all this,” I said, gesturing to her homemade outfit.
“Right.” She stared at me. “Why do you assume my comment was a positive comment?”
“Because… I thought it was?”
“Interesting.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“That’s an interesting assumption to make, that’s all. That says a lot about you.”
“That I think… people are being nice to me?”
“Almost everything you say is a question.”
I had the sinking suspicion I was losing this conversation. I didn’t even know a person could lose a conversation until just now.
“So… um… what do you think of America?”
“Another question.” She shook her head like she had just witnessed a burger being eaten by an American. “Sad.”
I backed away slowly. The rest of the team had already split up to work on their pieces, but I found Rani in the back of the common room poring over her laptop with Anesh. Sarah was nowhere to be seen.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, sidling up to her.
Rani eyed me suspiciously. “Nothing.”
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
Anesh looked concerned.
“Girl talk. You wouldn’t understand. You probably don’t want to understand. Ignorance is bliss. Just stay in your own little male bubble, it’s cool.”
Rani followed me into the hall, full of early-teenager attitude.
“What.”
“What’s going on with Anesh?”
“He’s just helping me with some research. Jesus.”
“And what’s going on with Sarah?”
“We hadn’t finaled at any tournaments. None. Closest we came was semis, which is like basically losing. Coach suggested I get a new partner who matches my skills.”
“Anesh?”
“No. He’s with Logan. There’s a junior named Olaf who is dropping his partner, too, so we’re gonna team up. It’s cool. This was a necessary thing. Sarah was like—I mean, she’s fun and all, but that’s not what debate is about. Olaf wants to win.”
“Look, Rani, you can’t ditch your friends just ’cause they’re not good at speech.”
Rani rolled her eyes like I was a parent. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a dick move.”
“That’s something you complain about when you lose.”
I tried to mentally squeeze my brain back into shape. Oh my God, this child. “It’s better to be a decent person than a winner.”
“Is it?”
I blinked. “Yes.”
“Are we done? ’Cause Anesh is great at finding sources. Plus, he’s super hot.”
My heart shrank to the size of a grape and I gasped for air. “Ew. He’s like a virus.”
“No.”
“I’m not marrying him. I just like to look at something nice. God. You’re not my mom.” She headed back into the room.
It didn’t help things that Luke spent the next two weeks moving in, one tiny carload at a time. For a single guy, he had an astonishing amount of stuff, most of it brightly colored and made out of some kind of neoprene plastic. There was an inexhaustible supply of protein powder tubs, which proliferated in our kitchen like toxic waste canisters. He owned a lot of spandex, and soon the entire place smelled like the lavender body wash that he scrubbed all over himself all the time, without ever pausing.
Luke owned eight yoga mats, which he stacked behind the television like rubbery firewood, and rotated between doing pull-ups in the kitchen and doing pull-ups in Mom’s bedroom. I couldn’t even bring myself to call it “their” bedroom. I retreated to my room most evenings and busied myself texting puppy gifs to Elijah to block out the sounds of exercise. At least I hoped they were the sounds of exercise.
None of that seemed to help me in the next two speech tournaments, where I lost in the quarterfinals in one, and in the semis in another. The rest of the team, despite the constant squabbling unleashed by my poisonous suggestions, was still chugging along toward an eventual National Championship. It was all falling apart. I hadn’t been dropped from the varsity roster, but Sparks spent less and less time paying attention to me. My end was near.
I needed to win something, and I needed to win it soon.
I had one last chance before the State tournament, so I vowed to focus on nothing but making The Heroin Diaries brilliant. Nothing would distract me this time.
Still, the e-mail from my dad that just said I miss you nearly split my heart in half.