Chapter 39: Back in Action

Tuesday, September 20, 1983

Nothing had changed about the posters. Jess’s plan was surely more subtle. I didn’t expect a word of it to reach my ears (unless it was via Jess or Angie) until the Homecoming dance.

Trish would, hopefully, keep going under the assumption that the socialites would vote for her and the sheep would follow suit. The socialites, most likely, knew differently, but Trish probably had them following her instead of their own intuition.

My day was consumed with classes (including two tests), play practice, and some warm-ups in Debate. In a way, it felt like just yesterday that Cammie and I were at Northwestern, but it’d been over a month since we’d competed. That felt like a bit too long of a time.

I’d decided to pass on Humorous Interp for the moment. I wasn’t necessarily done with it, but I didn’t have time to craft my performance into something State-worthy and also do the work required for the play. Too many things; not enough time.

The Study Group crew headed to Gene’s after school. I’d seen Mike a few times since we’d stopped going and he’d given me puzzled looks twice. I had no idea if anyone had told him we were now meeting at Gene’s, but he had to know we weren’t coming back to his house.

He hadn’t spoken to me since the Labor Day party, though. Perhaps that would change after Homecoming.

Curtis was in Washington schmoozing with the Senate Judiciary Committee. He would be an appellate judge within the next week if all went well.

I’d known several judges during my first life, but none well, and none of them were at the Circuit Court level. Our ripples almost certainly had nothing to do with Curtis being considered for the position, but very likely had a lot to do with him being alive to take it. Prom might have been the big, flashy, ‘celebrity’ ripple, but it was an open question whether a letter written as a kindness to a friend might create the bigger impact in the long term.

No one but us (and Curtis himself) would ever know what we’d done for him, while Prom was a matter of public record. In a way, it reflected the lesson Professor Danforth had tried to teach everyone: character matters, and you never know what might come of actions that seem minor at the time.

Where might it end? Not only might some Fifth Circuit decisions differ, but Curtis would have a string of clerks. Undoubtedly, many of those clerks would be different people than the ones some other judge might have chosen. They, in turn, would go off and have careers. Some of them might become judges themselves.

One little change...

None of that was going to be clear anytime soon, though. In the meantime, we had tests to study for, so that’s what we did. I think every one of us had at least a bit of senioritis, but (so far) it was in check. None of us wanted a last-minute screwup. Perhaps even more importantly, none of us wanted to let anyone else in the group down.

Friday, September 23, 1983

Tournament day was here. Finally!

Cammie and I had settled on our eyewitness testimony case for now, with polygraphs and statutory rape as our primary backups. I still had a love/hate relationship with the statutory rape case. It meant more to me emotionally and would make a real difference, but it was quite possibly beyond the scope of the topic (‘extra topical’ in Debater-speak). Who knew if we would actually use it?

Having qualified last week, Sue and Amit were taking the week off. Linda wasn’t here, nor was Sam. They wouldn’t get many fall Fridays off from cheerleading. Last week had been an exception.

That left CX as Cammie and me, Angie and Gene, Anne and Megan, Bree and Crystal, and Natasha and Penny.

All of the CXers except Angie, plus Eric, made up the Extemp roster. Sucked for the new kids, but they’d have a lot of chances, and we were making sure they got practice in class, too. Angie was out because she was doing both Dramatic and Humorous, and four events is just too many.

In LD, we had no contention for the moment. Everyone who’d gone to Clear Lake was competing here as well.

In Drama, we had three Duo teams, like last week, but with Jas and Carole here and Sam and James out. Leslie and Darren sat out in Humorous with Jas, Paige, and Angie competing. In Dramatic we had room for everyone, even with Angie adding Dramatic to her events this year. She and Paige were toying with Duo, too, but didn’t want to start at this tournament. If they did Duo, though, Gene would have to change partners, or they would have to compete in Duo at tournaments Gene skipped.

Today’s tournament was at Cypress-Fairbanks, which isn’t all that far from Memorial, even given 1983 freeways. We all piled in cars and headed off. Meg was staying back to watch those who weren’t going. She would come join us once school let out.

They’d get a substitute when we went on out-of-town trips, but the current system worked well for now.

The tournament was ... well ... a tournament. Nothing fancy, nothing unexpected. Cammie and I plowed through our rounds, and I’d have been stunned if we hadn’t won both. Extemp was ... Extemp. Much of the magic was gone for me, but it was good to put in the work. I certainly wanted to qualify, anyway.

Without Humorous, it felt like I had a lot more time. I spent a fair bit of that reading lines with some of the other Drama kids. ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was really weighing on my mind. Somehow it just felt a lot harder than a musical, and I wanted to do well. Not professional actor well, but dedicated amateur well, at least. Jess needed someone to play against, for one thing. For another thing, the show just doesn’t work if Mr. Darcy isn’t a compelling character. He’s tricky to get right, and I wanted to get him right.

Cy-Fair managed to mostly run on time, so we got home at a reasonable hour, thankfully.

Saturday, September 24, 1983

Saturday morning was pretty much a continuation of Friday night. Cammie and I were pretty certain we’d won both of our morning rounds, and that it wasn’t close.

I wasn’t all that surprised. Cy-Fair isn’t the toughest tournament in the world, and the level of competition at Northwestern had been much higher. Even in a power-matched third or fourth round, there were likely only a few teams here that were a serious threat, and most of those were from Memorial.

Bellaire wasn’t here, or I’d have listed Dave as one of those to worry about.

They’d brought in some fairly decent pizza for lunch. There’s always a risk of getting some on your clothes, but that’s true of a lot of lunch options, and pizza was pretty manageable.

Cammie and Paige headed to the posting sheets as soon as they were put up.

When they came back, Paige said, “For those of you who are new, we did this a lot last year. We’ll have to split the job with some other people, but when we’re here, watch out!”

Everyone chuckled at that.

“Okay! Drama! First, in Duo, everyone’s still going. Next, Dramatic, where Sierra and Gordon are out. Sorry, y’all, and congrats, Sandy! Finally, Humorous, where Sandy and Carla are out. Congrats, Sierra and Gordon!”

That seemed like a pretty good result to me. The new kids were reliably breaking.

Cammie got up, and said, “In CX, we’re all in except for Natasha and Penny. In LD, everyone broke. Congratulations, Danny and Lori! Danny, you have to debate Jaya, so maybe condolences are in order. Finally, in Extemp, Crystal and Penny are out. Congratulations, Natasha!”

We were definitely doing a better job of mentoring. As much as I’d have liked Natasha and Penny to have broken, we already had half the remaining CX teams. We had five out of eight LDers, too.

As before, so again. We were going to be hated.

Our quarterfinals round was just like the others. We faced off with a team from Humble that ... well ... I’m not sure how they broke over Natasha and Penny. Maybe it was just the luck of the draw. If they’d gotten an easier power-matched opponent, that would do it.

I was self-aware enough to recognize that I’d picked up a touch of arrogance. It was probably justified, but it was still arrogance. We were pre-qualified for ToC, had done well there, had won Northwestern’s tournament, and made State semifinals last year. We should do well at Cy-Fair.

Still, there’s a difference between a reasonable guess and an expectation. I was okay with ‘expecting’ to do well only because I knew we wouldn’t take State and ToC for granted. The only importance Cy-Fair had for us was getting to State.

No sense messing with success. Cammie reported first once they’d posted the breaks.

“Okay! It’s tough, so get going! In CX, Steve and I, along with Anne and Megan, are still going.”

Well, that kinda sucked for Angie and Gene (and Bree and Crystal, too), but they’d have more chances.

“In Extemp, me, along with Steve, Gene, Anne, Bree, and — congrats — Natasha!”

Semis at her second tournament. Not bad at all!

“Finally, in LD, we have Jaya, Janice, and Eric. Eric, you get to debate Jaya this time.”

Eric groaned good-naturedly.

Cammie gave a little curtsy, then sat. Paige hopped up, and said, “In Duo ... still all of us! In Dramatic, Sandy’s out. In Humorous, Sara and Gordon are out. Congrats, Sierra!”

Two more rounds (hopefully!) to go.

I chatted quickly with Angie and Gene. Their opponents, who we would debate next, were a boy/girl team from Lamar. Gene thought they were really good. Angie was somewhere more between good and lucky. They were running polygraphs, which we knew pretty well.

Semifinals was much more interesting, as predicted. Both Pam Nugent and Jeff Zimmer seemed nice when we introduced ourselves. I wasn’t sure if I was surprised that they knew who we were, at least by reputation. Half of the teams we’d debated had known about Janet and Lizzie, but Pam and Jeff knew about the newspaper articles, too.

They were polite enough about it, but it made me aware of my failure to consider that other teams (and judges!) might know who I was. It was highly likely that no one else competing here had been covered in the national press, after all.

The round itself was good. It was definitely the toughest we’d had here, and in line with some of the middle-weight rounds at Northwestern. We felt like we’d won, but I wasn’t so sure we’d have felt that way without the work we’d done at Northwestern.

We talked to them a bit more after the round. It turned out they’d been to UT’s summer program and knew Janice a bit. Janice probably hadn’t been paying attention to CX since she was competing in LD. We promised to say hi to her from them.

Paige went first this time.

“Okay, everyone! In Duo, we have ... all three! Yes!”

Everyone cheered.

“In Dramatic, it’ll be Sheila, Lexi, and Jas. Sorry, Angie, and also sorry, me.”

Angie and Paige hugged, which got another cheer.

“And, in Humorous, we’ve got me, Angie, and Jas. Sorry, Lexi, Carole, and Sierra.”

Even with the eliminations, everyone who’d made it to semis was in finals in something, at least. Not bad.

Cammie took over, saying, “It’s going to be one of those tournaments. In CX, it’s me and Steve versus Anne and Megan. Two qualifications down!”

That got an even bigger cheer.

“In LD, we’ve got Jaya versus Janice. Congratulations, Janice, on qualifying. Eric, fingers crossed!”

Someone would be working out the points between Eric and whoever Janice had beaten to determine the second qualifier.

“Finally, in Extemp, we have Steve, Anne, and Bree.”

That left Cammie out, along with Gene and Natasha. Unfortunate, but they had lots of time.