Chapter 114: Champions

Monday, April 25, 1983

Another day, same routine. Up at seven-thirty, breakfast at eight-thirty. The only difference was that we moved our bags from our rooms to the motel’s storage room, since we’d be leaving after we were done.

The Student Center itself was much busier with university students, but the dining area was significantly more empty. I figured most schools hadn’t bothered and were either sightseeing or heading home. Either that, or they were just going to have breakfast a bit later.

For our part, we ate, then waited until round time.

Our opponents in semifinals turned out to be Matthew Brenner and Seymour Zweig. Both of them were quiet to the point of near rudeness, barely returning our greetings and pausing only a second for perfunctory handshakes. The whole thing didn’t surprise me. Stereotypes are stereotypes, but the Bronx Sci kids that I’d met had mostly been similar. It was a great school, but the Debate program seemed to attract kids who might be amazing debaters but would never fit in at Memorial.

That, or I’d just gotten a bad sample. That was entirely possible. I’d never even been in New York this go-round, after all, and even in the previous one had only met Bronx Sci debaters twice, neither time in the city.

Thinking about it, I decided to play up our communication skills. It was a toss-up. A semi-finals judge at ToC was pretty much guaranteed to be a good, solid Debate judge, up on the technical aspects of Debate, able to follow someone speaking very quickly and not lose track of arguments, and quite possibly as good at recording the ‘flow’ as any of us were. That argued in favor of just doing my best as a speed demon, didn’t it?

But the Bronx Sci guys were probably better at that game than I was. Why not emphasize persuasion and rhetoric, since that was a differentiator? We might lose, but we’d look good doing it, instead of following them into a round that emphasized my least favorite part of Debate.

I whispered my plan to Cammie. She nodded and smiled, looking like she’d probably had the same idea and guessed that’s what I’d do. We knew each other very well, after all. Spending hundreds of hours together and competing at tournament after tournament will do that. You see the good side of people and the not-so-good. You see them ebullient, and you see them downcast, full of energy or exhausted, and so forth. That Cammie and I loved each other (not that way, of course) reinforced that we were both a good pairing and also good people. Neither of us would’ve put up with the other if we weren’t.

It was very hard to get a feel for the judge, I’m sure by design. My ‘rhetorical’ approach to the opening affirmative is only slightly different from my ‘technical’ approach, so perhaps the Bronx Sci people didn’t see the difference. They likely spotted it during cross-exam, where my answers were wordier and more nuanced than the average. If they were sharp — and they should be — they’d realize we were in semifinals at ToC and therefore should be assumed to be pretty well skilled. I’d seen Bronx Sci teams miss that before, though, and I certainly wouldn’t mind if these two did.

It was hard to tell. Their first rebuttal was a speed-demon speech that hurt my hand a little just trying to keep up with note-taking. Cammie was furiously grabbing note-cards with one hand while writing on her flow-sheet with the other. She was better at that than I was, though I could manage it, too. We all could.

One thing (the best thing, I think) that we could do that many teams couldn’t was that Cammie and I could always follow each other’s flow-sheets. All that practice, again. That meant that, if Cammie missed anything grabbing note cards, she’d know I’d have it waiting, and right where to find it. I was never able to follow Gene’s notes in my first go-round, not even a little.

His cross-exam answers were slower and more thought-out than I expected. Perhaps they were able to go at both speeds, too? It’d be interesting.

The round ebbed and flowed. They never landed any overwhelming blows to our case, in my opinion, but we never knocked all of their arguments out, either. They tried to make the standard negative argument that any winning negative argument meant you must vote negative, but I didn’t think they did a very good job with it.

In the end ... probably a toss-up. I was okay with that, just as I’d been in similar rounds. We were in semifinals at almost certainly the toughest tournament I’d ever been to, after all. Any of the four teams remaining (definitely including us) ought to be damn good, and two damn good teams facing off should usually result in something of a toss-up.

It won’t, because people have good days and bad days, lucky rounds and unlucky rounds, and so forth. But, in theory at least, it should.

We headed back to the Student Center to wait. And wait, and wait a bit more. Apparently, a judge for Duo Acting had run late and thrown everything off. Jas and Carole were a bit steamed about it when they got back, but a steamy kiss settled Jas down. I refrained from giving Carole one, though.

The posting sheets finally came out. I looked at the one remaining line, and ... nope. We’d lost. It was the Bronx Sci guys against a team from California.

Oh well. All good things must end, and we had another year.

Sue dropped out, but Amit was still going in Extemp. Jas and Carole made finals, as did Angie, but not Sheila. Four out of twelve in finals at ToC was nothing to be ashamed of, though.

Duo was closed, and we’d all seen Angie do her piece, so we went to watch the Extemp finals. Watching Amit reminded me of watching Ted a couple of years ago. He was that good, and possibly even better. That might’ve been the British accent, though. Americans are generally suckers for a British accent.

A couple of others were very good, too, but anything below third would be highway robbery in my opinion. Amit would’ve been at the top of my ballot, and it wasn’t just bias saying that. Isn’t familiarity supposed to breed contempt, anyway?

Those of us still there gathered back in the Student Center for the final presentation. It went about how those things usually go: a mix of elation, confusion, and shrugs. If you know nothing about a team, it’s hard to care how they did, though maybe you feel some happiness if they’re clearly over the moon.

Jas and Carole placed third, which thrilled them. We buried them in hugs when they came back from picking up their trophy, which was pretty nice. I was pretty sure Meg had a place to carry those back.

Given that Cammie and I were arguably third, too, it seemed rather appropriate.

Angie placed second, netting a somewhat nicer trophy. To her credit (I thought, anyway) she acted like she’d been there, elated but in control of herself. She, too, was buried in hugs.

The Bronx Sci guys beat the California guys in Debate finals. I wasn’t sure if either of them were juniors. We might, or might not, have seen the last of them. Who knew?

Amit’s name was, I thought, the last name called in the presentation. He won Extemp, and his trophy was bigger than the third and second place trophies combined. Our collection was growing!

More hugs, of course, plenty more.

I was wrong about names, though. ToC gave awards for best presenter in Drama. Jas got another third, Angie got another second, and one of the winning Duo pair won first.

More hugs.

Then he got to the award for best speaker in Debate. I supposed it was similar to the award I’d won at State, but just for this tournament. That should have clued me in, but it didn’t.

Chelsea placed third, which wasn’t a particular surprise to me. I’d seen her speak often enough to know how good she was.

A plainly startled Janet placed second. I was pretty sure that meant she’d dropped the Valley Girl routine entirely.

Then he said something and ... wait? That’s me! I walked up in a daze and accepted my giant trophy. I didn’t miss the slightly disdainful looks of the Bronx Sci guys on my way back. Let them think it was a consolation prize. In the long term, this meant more than any tournament victory. The goal of all of this was to be a better speaker, and being the best speaker out of many of the best Debaters in the country was ... big. Really big!

More hugs, plus another kiss that meant my name was going on some list, somewhere, and we were done. The director thanked us all for coming, offered hope that those of us who weren’t seniors would be back next year, encouraged the seniors to consider Kentucky, and that was that.

Meg immediately made us all gather up and got another coach to take several pictures of us with our trophies. We’d picked up more of them than any other school, in the end. It wasn’t enough to get us hated on the national level, but we were on the national radar now, and would stay there at least one more year.

We didn’t even get speeches out of Meg and Steffie this time. We knew how they felt, and they knew we knew. It would’ve been ... redundant. Instead, we got hugs.

As we were wrapping up, I made a point of going over to Janet and Lizzie.

“Last tournament together,” I said.

Janet blinked. “Fuck! I ... knew that ... but I didn’t want to think about it.”

Lizzie nodded, then softly said, “I was thinking about it, but I didn’t want to bring anyone else down.”

I hugged Janet, and then Lizzie hugged me.

“Thanks for all you’ve done for me, and for us,” Lizzie said. “Not just with council, but ... council included. It’s more than that, more than Debate.”

“I told him,” Janet said.

Lizzie nodded. “I know. I needed to say it, too.”

“Thanks for being yourselves,” I said. “The world needs people who are themselves. And thanks for welcoming the rest of us and never looking down on us.”

Lizzie chuffed out a laugh. “I could say the same, but you know that.”

“I do.”

“Come visit us in California,” Janet said. “Oh, not right away, but when you get a chance. It’s a long way, and we won’t be there until August, anyway, but...”

“But we’d love the company,” Lizzie said.

“We’ll take you up on that, most likely,” I said. “We’ll probably do some traveling between senior year and college.”

“Meaning you, Jasmine, Angie, and Paige?” Janet said.

“Looks like. A year to go, though,” I said.

She nodded. “I once thought that was forever. Yet, here we are, together and moving on.”

“Still a month of class,” Lizzie said. “And next weekend.”

“Next weekend,” Janet said, smiling enigmatically.