Chapter 6: Preliminaries

Monday, July 19, 1982

One last week to go before heading home. Should I have done things differently? More of something? Less of something else? Should I have gone for it with Gail? Or, done more with Henry or Christopher? Tried harder with Wesley?

I gave a mental shrug. Even if some of those were true, it was too late now. This week was for Cammie and me. Sync up, kick ass. As before, it really didn’t matter if we won the tournament. It didn’t even matter if we broke — the institute tournament was structured to give every team the same number of rounds, except for the last round. There were six prelim rounds — three Monday, three Tuesday. Half the teams would break, half would not. Winners would compete in regular brackets starting with octofinals; losers would keep going, with a random draw each round.

Yes, that meant it was possible that we could have a single ‘big loser.’ We probably wouldn’t, though. But any tournament meant winners and losers.

Of course, we’d get far more feedback from the judges than at the usual tournament. That was important — the goal was still self-improvement, not racking up wins. Comparatively few were here with their regular partners, which gave Cammie and me a leg up. But, for both of us, the real leg up was the practice time on this year’s topic, not doing a bit better in our rounds.

I’d happily leave here winless if it meant we’d gain the insight and experience we’d need to make State finals this year. Of course ... I’d even more happily win this tournament and State, too. Hey — it’s nice to have something to aspire to!

Angie made it to breakfast, limping but looking like she was doing a bit better.

“How’s the ankle, sis?” I said, hugging her, being careful of her crutch.

“It’s better. Really, it is. I’m not even faking it,” she said with a bit of a giggle. “But I can’t dance. I can’t even walk all that well. I’ll do my song and the chorus numbers and that’s it.”

“Sucks.”

She shrugged. “Might be that it’s the best time of the year for it. I’m not doing a tournament or even classes. Sure, it’s a long way to the cafeteria, but Cammie’s been fetching me stuff and the staff would have if she hadn’t been.”

Cammie smiled. “Happy to help. That’s what we do — we’re a team.”

“More than a team,” I said, hugging her. “Friends. Best friends, even.”

“That,” she said. “Definitely that.”

“Too ... much ... sugar ... dying...” Angie said.

“Shut it, wench!” Cammie said with a grin. “You and Steve are the definition of sappy.”

“Eh.” Angie gave a deep sigh. “I suppose that’s true.”

I chuckled. “Okay. Breakfast time. Cammie and I have to compete and Angie has to...”

“Whack people with my crutch if I don’t like them.”

“Hmm,” Cammie said. “Can I get away with that at school?”

“No!” Angie and I said together.

The rest of the day was, pretty much, almost a regular Debate tournament. Oh, the rooms were bigger, maybe a little fancier, and the judges were much better, and we had more time between rounds, but it felt like a tournament. We checked round postings, trudged to a room, ran our case or tried to knock down theirs, got feedback from the judge, then trudged off to the next room. Like a real tournament, the judges would hold the actual decision back for later.

In other words: it was boring and fun and exciting and exasperating and annoying and amusing and tedious and a lot of other things, all rolled into an experience we loved.

Our case was — surprisingly, maybe — holding up well. No one seemed to be able to do a lot of damage to us if we could counter their big, generic arguments like ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ or ‘Constitutional Crisis.’ Everyone here knew those were factually absurd; everyone knew you’d lose to them if you didn’t have good counters. We did (mostly, anyway).

We’d tweaked it, of course, considerably. We were cutting arms sales to a subset of the Middle East. Enough to be ‘significant,’ at least by the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of ‘significant,’ but limited and focused. It was clear that most teams weren’t really prepared for it and didn’t have good evidence tailored to the region.

Part of me really, really, really wanted to figure out a way to bring up the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and all of the trouble that funneling weapons to them would cause. Two big problems: the scope of our involvement with them wasn’t well known at all in 1982, and the consequences were currently nearly unthinkable. That we were, right now, sowing the seeds of the worst terrorist attack in US history was something I couldn’t even hint at. No one would believe me. If someone else had mentioned it in 1982, I would have thought it just another loony, overblown negative argument.

“How’d your day go?” Angie asked as we met for dinner, her limp maybe a trifle better than this morning.

Before I could answer, Gail announced her presence by hugging and kissing me. Not even a polite kiss, either. Nope, this was one that’d get me a warning at school. It got me a stern look from one of the grad students.

Cammie rolled her eyes. “Steve’s just got a lot better, apparently. How do you even manage? You’re on your way to getting P.D.A. warnings here, too?”

“Does he get a lot of those?” Gail asked.

“You have no idea. It even got brought up before the school board,” Cammie said, smirking.

“Big brother is a legend,” Angie said.

I’m sure I was a few shades redder by this point.

“School board?” Gail said. “Huh? How...?”

Angie snickered. “The losing side in our student council race claimed they should disqualify big brother due to all his ‘morals violations.’ That worked out to kissing too many girls too many times.”

“He is a good kisser,” Gail said, smirking. “I can see why that might happen.”

“I’m right here,” I said, trying to sound more exasperated than I actually was. In truth, while embarrassing, the whole thing was rather amusing, too.

“Okay,” Angie said. “Enough distractions over Steve’s love life. How’d your day go?”

“They won’t tell us until tomorrow,” Cammie said. Then she grinned. “We went 3-0.”

“That obvious?” Angie asked.

“I think we could’ve lost the middle one,” I said.

“Oh, please. Seriously, anyone who thinks their Indonesia case survived all the evidence we had should be in gradual school, not graduate school.”

That drew a laugh from everyone.

Gail shook her head. “You Debaters...” Then she stopped, bit her lip, and shook her head. “I was going to say you’re all ... nit-picky. Then I remembered the argument today over whose version of ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’ was the best. Good lord!”

“Mine,” Angie said. “Argument ended.”

Gail rolled her eyes, then winked. “Actually, I agree with you. But Ellie is absolutely convinced hers was best, and so’s Susanna.”

“Ellie’s only claim to fame is that Brett is a better partner than Denny,” Angie said. “But he’s not enough better. And Susanna doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I, at least, have one.”

Cammie giggled. “Enough! I demand dinner!”

We made our way through the line, chuckling and cutting up. When we sat, Angie demanded we rehash some of the rounds, and I demanded Angie and Gail rehash part of their day, which got them singing. I threw Angie for a loop when she started into ‘People Will Say We’re In Love’. I knew she was working on it and had studied the male lyrics and done a bit of practicing.

When we finished, we both blushed at the impromptu applause from several surrounding tables.

Gail blinked. “Damn! To hell with Brett! Why are you on the Debate side of the program, anyway?”

I shrugged. “Some of that was chemistry with Angie. We’ve sung together enough now...”

Cammie shook her head. “Hrmph. Fine, but no. You’re both just really good, and it doesn’t take working with each other to bring it out.”

“Okay, then, I have Debate tournaments all fall, but I won’t have a musical to perform until May, which is after State, even.”

Gail smiled. “That is a good argument for your priorities, I guess.”

“I plan to sponge off all their hard work,” Angie said with a wink.

“Speaking of sponging off hard work,” Cammie said, “I want you to dust off your affirmative from last week, Steve.”

“Huh? What about ours?”

“Everyone knows what we’re running. If we make semis or finals, I want to trot out something different. It might suck, but it’ll surprise the heck out of whoever we go up against.”

“I ... can do that. It’s in good shape. I have a few tweaks that’ll help. We can’t run it if we hit Christopher, though.”

“Agreed. That’d be wrong.”

“See?” Gail said. “That, right there. That’s why I like Drama better. The source material is the source material. Maybe you can tweak it a little, and you can interpret the hell out of it, but you’re not expecting someone to sing ‘Tomorrow’ and they get up and sing ‘Cabaret’ instead.”

“Might make a really interesting version of ‘Annie’, though,” Angie said, grinning.

“Besides,” I said, “Sometimes that tweaking is more than a little. I mean, I can recognize ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in ‘West Side Story’, but...”

“Fine. Extreme example!”

“Agreed.”

We grinned at each other.

Gail rolled her eyes. “I’m still right!”

“Dunno ... I bet we could pastiche together something pretty awesome by grabbing songs out of a bunch of musicals,” I said.

“Gah! Sacrilege!” Gail replied, giggling.

We broke up around 6:30pm to head back. I didn’t have anything until my call with Jasmine, but walking the girls back would be fun.

Apparently the girls decided it’d be more fun if they gave Gail and me a bit of space, so we wound up a bit behind them, holding hands.