Chapter 52: Friends and Frenemies

Saturday, November 5, 1983

They arranged breakfast for us at the student center. By the time we’d finished and were heading off to compete, the place was already packed with football fans. I’m sure Dad was very jealous of my being here. He’d want to go to the game, not sit through debate rounds, though.

I was rather amused, personally. Michigan’s opponent this weekend was Purdue. I’d spent many a Saturday watching Purdue football games during my time there.

Our first round of the day was against a team from Indianapolis. It might have been our toughest round so far, but I still thought we’d won. I found it amusing that we hadn’t really felt pressed so far.

They offered lunch when we got back. It felt too soon after breakfast to eat again, but meal scheduling was always awkward. I wound up passing on eating for now, and so did most of the others.

We got an update on Memorial football during lunch. We’d played Spring Branch (soon to close, alas, though almost no one knew that yet) and crushed them 42-3. That left Memorial undefeated in district play and hosting the Bi-District game next weekend versus Madison. Madison had a reputation for being a tough team, but then so did Memorial. Of course, any team we played from here on would be tough.

More people come over looking for me. They tended to shake hands, or sometimes just made mention of my ‘fame.’ I figured word had gotten out. Maybe Ann and Debra had said something, or maybe someone else had figured it out, but my fame was catching up to me, at least a bit.

Cammie, Jas, Angie, and Paige all had a great time with it, of course. If I’d had a giant ego, I was certain they would’ve taken care of it.

Within an hour, a few of the organizers came out and put up postings. As always, Cammie and Paige headed off to find out where we stood.

Paige led things off today.

“Everyone! Pay attention! In Duo, we have...” She stopped, paused, then threw her arms out. “Everyone!”

Jas giggled a bit.

“In Humorous, we have me, Sara, Jasmine, Angie, Marsha, plus — and congrats — Sandy and Jessica!”

That got a little applause.

“In Dramatic, we have me again, Jasmine, Angie, Sheila, Lexi, and Jessica!”

A little bird was telling me that Jess was on to something with Drama. Oh, lots of kids do well who would never make it in Hollywood, but she was picking up tournament skills quickly. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a validation.

Paige sat down and Cammie got up.

“In CX, we have Steve and me, Angie and Gene, Amit and Sue, and Anne and Megan.”

That left Linda and Darla and Natasha and Penny out, but I wasn’t completely surprised by that.

“In LD we’ve got Jaya, Janice, Eric, Lori, and Danny.”

Danny and Lori were surprises, but pleasant ones.

“And, in Extemp, we have me, Amit, Steve, Angie, Sue, Linda, Megan, and Jaya.”

A bit fewer than I’d expected, but hopefully we’d do well.

I went to my Extemp round, did my thing, and headed off to meet Cammie. In a way, Extemp really should have been my priority, since I was qualified for ToC in CX already, but I didn’t particularly care. I was more than ‘good enough’ at Extemp for my purposes, and I was never going to be as good as Amit.

Maybe in a third go-round? Perish the thought!

In any case, for this go-round, it was at most a nice-to-have.

Cammie grinned a bit when I met her.

“Something up?” I said.

She nodded. “Ann and Debra were playing you.”

I did a bit of a double-take. “What?”

“They’re not gay. I did some digging. My gaydar was completely not hitting on them. Admittedly, they could be as deep in the closet as Mel and me, but the evidence seems to be that they knew you by reputation and figured it would either throw you off your game or get them some sympathy.”

“Well, there’s a surprise,” I said.

“You’re a nice guy who’s got a reputation for being a nice guy. People are going to try to take advantage of that.”

“That was a fairly ... um, aggressive? ... way to do it.”

“What, and you’re going to tell everyone that Ann and Debra are gay? They’re covered. The worst case is what’s happening now: someone tells you they were playing you. You’re not going to retaliate.”

“I’m not even sure how I’d retaliate.”

“Call them dykes or whatever. Trash them to people from their school. Whatever.”

“Okay, fine. I’m not going to retaliate.”

“I like you being a nice guy and a soft touch. This is a pretty gentle lesson in people taking advantage of you.”

“It probably won’t be the last time.”

She chuckled. “I’m sure it won’t.”

There was little danger of my being overly nice to our Octofinals opponents. We’d last seen Ava Benedict and Paul Kimball of Glenbrook North in the finals round at Northwestern. I doubted Ava had forgiven us yet. Paul was harder to read.

We exchanged relatively perfunctory handshakes and asked each other, ‘How’ve you been?’ without really expecting substantive responses.

This round still had only a single judge. That was hardly uncommon. We’d have three for Quarterfinals and beyond.

Ava and Paul were the affirmative this time, which saved us any angst over which case to run. Their case started off with a discussion of police procedures being out of control in a way that both resulted in abuses and lost prosecutions. I’d never heard anything like it, and I started out thinking it was extra-topical.

It took almost half of their affirmative before they shifted to talking about changes to the Exclusionary Rule and Miranda warnings. Apparently, their thesis was that, if the criminal courts made changes in how the Exclusionary Rule functioned, and refused to accept the Miranda warnings without modification, police procedures would change and we’d live in a policing utopia.

That, we could counter. We argued topicality, of course, because why wouldn’t we? We also used most of our arguments about making changes to the Exclusionary Rule, stressing the likelihood of unintended consequences.

As I’d expected, they were smooth, polished, and in command of their material, but so were we.

We shook hands after the round, then headed off.

Cammie looked at me as we walked.

“They’re really not going to like us now,” she said.

“You’re that confident?”

“I am. We won that one.”

“I’m not quite as confident,” I said.

“They knew it. You could hear it in her closing argument. She knew we’d covered all the bases.”

“Works for me.”

“Be confident! We’ve got this!”

“I defer to you.”

“Wise boy!”

Cammie had a big grin when she came back from reading the postings. I figured that meant she was right.

“Okay, everyone. Good news all around. In CX, we have Steve and me, Angie and Gene, and Anne and Megan.”

That kinda sucked for Amit and Sue, and put me on notice about whoever had beaten them. In my mind, Cammie and I were Memorial’s best team, but Amit and Sue could beat us on any given day.

“In LD, we’ve got Jaya, Eric, and Lori.”

Very cool for Lori!

“Finally, in Extemp, we have me, Amit, Steve, Sue, and Jaya.”

She swapped places with Paige, who said, “In Duo, we still have everyone. In Humorous, we’ve got me, Jas, and Angie.”

They got a little round of applause.

“Finally, in Dramatic, we have me, Jas, Sheila, and Jessica!”

That got more applause. Jess was out of Humorous but still going strong in Dramatic. It’d been worth skipping cheerleading for, definitely.

After Extemp, we got right to our quarterfinals CX round. Our opponents were from just a few miles away from our previous opponents. They hailed from Glenbrook South and knew Paul and Ava well. I got the feeling they didn’t particularly like them, either.

We went affirmative and ran our eyewitness testimony case. It was the first time we’d run it at this tournament and I could tell they weren’t ready for it. I don’t know if they’d have been ready for any particular case, though. Very few teams spent much time at all scouting other teams unless they were likely to run into the same people over and over.

I was more confident about this round than the previous one. We still didn’t need this win, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have it.

The structure of ToC qualifying might have given us incentive to bail out. CX Bids were given for making it to certain rounds. For Michigan, it was semifinals. It didn’t matter if other teams were already qualified — you only got a bid if you made it to semis. Had we been against a Memorial team in quarters, dropping out would make perfect sense.

After this, it wouldn’t matter. If we met a Memorial team in semis or finals, they’d have already won their ToC bid and we could compete without worrying that we would cost them anything.

When Cammie and I made it back to our tables, I found a very interesting group deep in conversation: Angie, Jas, Jess, and Laura. Laura, of course, ‘knew’ Jess from her first life, but Jess would have had no idea who Laura was.

I was surprised Paige wasn’t in the group, but she seemed to be busy with Lexi and Sheila. They were performing their duo cutting, it looked like, with Paige serving as judge and critic.

I took a few steps toward Laura, but she spotted me and gave me a tiny shake of her head. She didn’t look peeved, just as if I might mess up their girl talk (that’s how I took it, anyway).

Cammie, of course, spotted it, too. She stepped in close and quietly said, “Questions! So many questions!”

I nodded. “In this case, for me, too.”

“Jas was ready to kill her. At two different points, even! Now, look at them!”

“Neither ever meant anything bad.”

“I know, but...” she said, then sighed. “I guess all I really do know is that these are all good people. That’s a lot, really.”

“It is.”

She sighed, then turned and hugged me. “If you’d told me back when we met that I’d wind up friends with the head cheerleader — the Homecoming Queen, for goodness sake! — and the Homecoming King, and ... just ... all of these people, I’d have said you were nuts! I was ... well, besides the obvious little issue, I was a nerd. A cute nerd, but a nerd. Yes, I know you feel the same way. You’ve said that. It’s still just ... that’s the flip side of all of the questions. My life is in a much better place than I ever thought it would be.”

“You’re going to do great things, Cammie Clarke. Anything I’ve done to help with that is my pleasure.”

“Because you really are a nice guy, through and through.”

“I suppose I’ll accept that label willingly.”

“You’re lucky Jasmine doesn’t prefer the bad-boy type, like Max.”

I rolled my eyes. “Max was too bad. Besides, I can be ... bad ... when I need to!” I grinned and wiggled my eyebrows at her.

“Jerk!” she said, then gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

“Talk about your mixed messages!” I said, grinning.

“We can’t let guys run around thinking they actually know anything,” she said, then turned away, going over to talk to Anne and Megan.

Paige led off, of course.

“Guys, this is getting boring. In Duo, we still have everyone! In Humorous, we’ve still got me, Jas, and Angie. And, in Dramatic, we’ve still got me, Jas, Sheila, and Jessica.”

Everyone clapped for that. They should, too.

Jas and Carole were previously qualified, of course, and so was Angie in Humorous. The rest all had one ToC bid now, and three more tournaments to get a second.

Cammie got up.

“We’re less boring but still busy. In CX we have Steve and me along with Anne and Megan.”

Sucked for Angie, and more for Gene, but they had three more chances, and Angie was going, anyway.

“In LD, we’ve still got Jaya, Eric, and Lori.”

Seriously? Three of the final four in LD? Since ToC didn’t do LD this tournament was far less stacked with top LDers, but that was still ridiculous.

“Finally, in Extemp, we have me, Amit, Steve, and Sue.”

Everyone applauded again, and then we all got busy.

Cammie came right over. “Curious about who we’re debating against?”

“Always, assuming I know them.”

“Oh, you know them. One of them was just talking to your sister.”

“Laura? Cool!”

“It’d better be cool! I’m not having a round like that one at Hockaday!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

Angie walked with me to my Extemp semis.

“We had an interesting conversation,” she said.

“I noticed!”

She chuckled. “Laura and Jas were catching up when Jess and I got back from Dramatic. I was hanging with her before her round. Believe me, this is not a fluke. That girl has serious skills!”

“I’ve known that for a year and a half, at least.”

“You have, haven’t you? Anyway, so, the one thing Jess doesn’t have — that she totally could have — is a big ego. She wants to go over everything and loves receiving coaching.”

“Part of why she’s fitting in so easily.”

“Yeah. I worried just a bit, at first, but she’s a great fit with the rest of us. Anyway, when we got back, we joined Laura and Jas. Laura seemed tentative about Jess at first, but it was easy to pass that off as Laura meeting someone after having gotten to know Jas and me under interesting circumstances at Northwestern. Anyway, somehow in there the two of them got to talking, and just watching that was fascinating. They have nothing in common except you, and Jess has no way of knowing they’ve got you in common, plus that really wasn’t you anyway, but ... well... anyway, they hit it off. I wasn’t expecting that!”

“You do know that, under other circumstances, that was a terrifying group? My girlfriend, my sister, my ex-girlfriend who still says she loves me, and my ex-ex-girlfriend who wanted to murder me for a while.”

Angie started giggling, but that turned into full-blown laughter that stopped us walking for a bit.

“That’s quite the characterization! I have to agree with everyone else — you’ve gotten dangerously good at telling the truth in ridiculous ways! More seriously, I think — along with my girlfriend, plus that Debate partner of yours, and probably a few others — we’re all people who are likely to still be in each other’s lives for a really long time.”

I nodded. “I really hope so.”

“It’d be a huge surprise to me if we weren’t. Cammie is the most likely to vanish, but I think our ties are too deep.”

“Not Jess?”

She shook her head. “Jess is like Dad. Well ... a proto-Dad. She really gets that friends are important, and she makes friends everywhere she goes. With so many friends in our little group, she’ll stay in touch. That, and I have this feeling we’ll have other reasons to stay in touch.”

“Business?”

“And advocacy. If we’re pushing something, what better than to get a Hollywood star and her A-list friends on board?”

“You have a point there.”

“Of course I do!”

We’d gotten to the room where I’d be competing, so Angie gave me a quick hug and said, “Okay, bro. Go kick ass!”

“Thanks, sis! Break a leg in Humorous!”

“Will do!”

Who knows if I kicked ass in Extemp or not? Not me. Maybe, maybe not. I was preoccupied with our CX round, anyway.

Cammie and I didn’t talk much on the way over. Anything we might have said related all too much to things that we had probably already talked about too often at this tournament. I was completely sympathetic to her confusion about Laura. The whole thing was confusing.

Most people could just ignore it. Steve and Laura got sideways, which caused a near-miss accident, after which it took Laura a while to get over it, but eventually they figured out it was all a silly mistake, made up, and became friendly. Check, check, and check on the facts.

Cammie couldn’t. She’d seen that Hockaday meeting, she knew more of what Laura had said than many people did, and she knew there was far more to me than met the eye. I’d essentially told Cammie that the strangeness with Laura was related to my own strangeness.