SO IT BEGINS
At the Sheraton after our first round, Maddie is highlighting while I give my eyes a rest. Bass pounds from the speakers. She is hunched over on the floor, next to three stacks two feet high full of economic analyses and the names of obscure bills and percentage signs. Just a few more to go and we’ll be ready for bed. We both wear our complimentary white Sheraton robes. Our suits hang in the corner.
A momentary silence as the song ends.
“Deutschland, Deutschland! Again!” she shouts, lifting her pink highlighter.
“Again?”
“Again!”
We’ve been playing the same track on repeat for the last hour over the portable speakers Maddie brought. It’s basically three driving, heavy notes under voices of indiscernible genders screaming in German. It motivates us. Well, it motivates Maddie, and because it motivates Maddie, it motivates me. It’s our tradition.
Her mom, who’s in the connected room next door, has learned to bring earplugs.
Three years, twenty-plus tournaments. Thirteen first-place titles, four second-place. When everything is highlighted, and when the clock hits nine a.m., there’s nothing more we can do. This is it.
Last year we watched the outgoing seniors and I clenched my fists in anticipation, talking about how I wouldn’t make the same mistakes, how I would spend the next year honing on slower speech, on evidence organization, what I would wear.
And now it’s just hours away. Our reputation, our reasons for getting scholarships, the countless iterations of “sorry, I can’t come,” now packed into a twin double.
Stuart texted me. Good luck!
I said “Thanks!” and turned my phone off.
If I didn’t, he might start a conversation with me, and then I wouldn’t be able to stop imagining him writing an entire novella on my naked body.
Which would be distracting.
Okay, I had to go splash water on my face in the bathroom and say aloud to my reflection, “Sammie, now is not the time for you to be a lover. Now is the time for you to be a warrior.”
Well, the highlighters are out of ink. Maddie and I chugged a couple of glasses of tap water, tucked into our parallel beds, and turned on some shitty TV.
As we turned off the lamps, Maddie said, “Sammie.”
“I’m super stressed.”
As she said this, I realized I was grinding my teeth. “Me too.”
Her voice sounded different than normal, a little higher, a little softer. “It’s okay if we don’t win, right?”
I sighed. “I don’t even want to think about that.”
“Me neither,” she said quickly. “But I was thinking about what you said the other day, about cutting your losses.”
“Yeah?”
“Like, even when we’ve gotten second or third before, it was like, ‘Whatever, that was a fluke. We just need to get to Nationals.’ I mean, even you would say stuff like that, and you hate losing.”
“It’s true.” I would say, Whatever, this doesn’t matter. Nationals is what matters.
“We didn’t really decide to cut our losses by coming here, did we?”
I held my breath, staring at the ceiling. “What do you mean?”
“We put all our eggs in one basket.”
I was quiet. She continued.
“This year has been weird. I…” She blew out a breath. “I feel like I can do a lot of the things I do because I usually go after stuff that I know I can do. I can act and run QU and make out with people not just because I want to, but because I know I can. You know? And lately this year, I’ve actually started to want things. And not just things that depend on me being able to be good at them. I want bigger things that have nothing to do with me.”
I believed her, though I was surprised. I knew why I wanted this, but never really thought Maddie was as wrapped up in this world as I was. Then I remembered the other day at practice, her jacket over her head. Last week, inviting me to places even though she didn’t have to. We were in this together.
“I’ve noticed that,” I said.
“Yeah?”
I swallowed. I hoped this is what she was talking about. I hoped I wasn’t going to sound stupid. “You used to make fun of me for being so invested in debate. Even when you were super good at it. But now you’re as crazy about it as I am.”
She laughed, almost her regular cackle, and I joined in, and there’s something about laughing on your back that makes you keep going long after anything is funny. It’s like something solid from your back and shoulder and chest is being released in the air to dissolve.
After the laughter faded, it got quiet again. We could hear the elevators whoosh.
“I actually want Stacia,” Maddie said quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself. “Not just because… whatever.”
“I know what you mean,” I said after a while. “I actually want to win. Not just because I’m competitive. It doesn’t even have to do with anyone else. I just want it for me. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” Maddie said. “I want it, too.”
Soon after that, she fell asleep. I can almost see all the stuff we laughed about hanging in the air, rising, moving elsewhere through the walls, and I think I’ll sleep, too.