Girl Wonder (13 page)

I
t was winter in substance if not in fact. Sometime in mid-November the rain set in, moving over the landscape in great quavering sheets. If you lived in Washington, you inevitably became a student of precipitation. You learned to differentiate between a fine mist and a medium drizzle. You contemplated the great fat drops that blew in from the Pacific and that sometimes smelled of fish. You began to realize that there were subtle variations to the colors of the clouds. The sky, in fact, began to seem like a living, breathing thing. Some days the weather felt personal. Most days the weather felt Biblical.

Out here you learned how to put a positive spin on negative weather. The Saturday before Thanksgiving, all the ski resorts in the state opened. The forecasters were going nuts. “What a winter it's going to be for skiers and snowboarders!”

As usual, my brother had lucked out. Snowboarding was a go.

Every Saturday now, James Henry, Milton, and a bunch of the other brilliant kids from the Barclay School would ride the ski bus up to Stevens Pass. Here they learned, competed, and generally had a blast.

My brother—according to my brother—was a natural at snowboarding. “And you should see Milton!” he exclaimed one night at dinner. “He's unbelievable. He could probably go pro.”

“Lucky him,” I said.

“I'll probably be able to go pro in a few years,” James Henry added.

“Lucky you.”

Lucky lucky everyone.

Unfortunately for me, they didn't have lessons to help you navigate the kind of wilderness that I was braving. Debate. Shady Grove. Amanda. Neal. All I could do was stumble around blindly and hope for the best.

Hope
is a four-letter word.

In November, we went to two more debate tournaments—both as hellish for me as Whitman. At my second tournament, I started to develop a stutter. At my third tournament, my hands and legs trembled in every round. But because Amanda was such a force, and because Amanda overcompensated for my incompetence, and because Amanda was so
lucky lucky lucky
, we kept winning and winning and winning.

At debate practice sessions I saw the other students shake their heads and wince when it was my turn to speak. A couple of times Mr. Peterson tried to work with me one-on-one. He'd give me a topic, say, for example, solar energy, and then he'd ask me to list its pros and cons. Simple. Easy.

Except that it was impossible.

“I do see that you're trying,” he said. “But you need to relax. You need to breathe.”

Amanda had no problems fighting off our blood-hungry opponents. She feasted on teams all across the northwest. The competition nicknamed her the Terminator. Her voice was her weapon, and what a weapon it was. So much of what she said was off-the-cuff bullshit. Like, for example, the time she argued that drilling for oil in the Arctic would trigger massive earthquakes that would ultimately cause the North Pole to melt, killing off Santa and Rudolph and otherwise destroying the world. And maybe Mars too, come to think of it. Who knew what she really believed about anything? But with policy debate, you had to take your own personal feelings out of the equation—while, at the same time, sounding utterly convinced of whatever point you were arguing. This was Amanda's genius.

“It's a game,” Mr. Peterson reminded me. “It's just a game.”

“It's a game,” Neal said. “Winner takes all.”

“It's a game,” Amanda said. “You have to play to win.”

But during the debate rounds, when the opposing team members sounded so deadly serious as they attacked point by point your every last argument, it was hard to remember this. It was hard to remember this during the cross-examination period, when you were being questioned so harshly that you began to feel like the collapse of the entire world might well be your fault if you conceded your point.

Every time we went into a round I felt dizzy with responsibility, so dizzy that I couldn't follow through with the steps I needed to take—such as arguing, such as linking together evidence, such as finding the holes in the other team's case, such as speaking in full sentences, such as breathing—to hold up the structure of the debate.

I told myself that Amanda actually came to enjoy the added challenge of having me for a partner. Making up for my flubs upped the stakes of the game and became a test of her ability to prevail against impossible odds.

Me. The impossible odd.

To compensate for my incompetence, I was now doing the lion's share of our research, filling our file boxes with brilliant evidence that I'd found on Google or in articles from
Scientific American
.

“I'm not totally worthless,” I joked—feeling totally worthless.

“No way. We've got a good system going,” Amanda assured me.

But at a team meeting right before the Christmas holidays, when Mr. Peterson announced that he'd be switching me to dramatic interpretation after the New Year, I realized that she'd finally said something to him about me.

Who could fault her? We both knew I was holding her back.

Truth be told, I was relieved. But why, I wondered, hadn't she said anything to me about it? Mr. Peterson went on to talk about other team changes, such as Diego wanting to switch to Lincoln-Douglas. Then he dropped the bomb.

“Neal and Amanda will be our new policy dynamo.”

So. This was why she hadn't said anything.

Mr. Peterson beamed at Neal and Amanda from behind the lectern. “I think we have a real shot at winning Nationals this year,” he said.

In spite of my dismay, I made sure to be the first to congratulate them. Amanda hugged me. “Oh, Char! I was worried you'd be upset. It's nothing personal. You know that, right?”

A couple of our teammates were watching this exchange, not bothering to mask their curiosity. The only way to keep my dignity was to own up to my shortcomings. “We both knew this was coming,” I said, blowing my hair out of my eyes. “You deserve a better partner. Someone who knows how to argue without tripping over her tongue.”

“That's not why—”

Neal gripped my shoulders in a big-brotherly way—you'd never have guessed what we'd been doing in the backseat of his car right before this meeting. “So can we count on you to help with research?”

I forced a laugh. “Sure. If you pay me.”

“We can work something out,” he said, giving me a knowing wink.

Amanda was fiddling with her necklace, acting like there was some flaw in the design that she'd never noticed before. You could tell, however, that she was paying close attention to the look I was giving Neal, that she—for lack of a better phrase—smelled a rat.

As I was leaving the room, Mr. Peterson stopped me. “I know this is hard for you,” he said. “Not everyone can do debate. George Bush, for example. And he still got to be president.”

I didn't thank him for the encouragement. Me and George Bush. What a pair.

I made it to the bathroom before breaking down. Amanda followed me—blithely unaware that she was part of the problem. She was leaning against the sink when I came out of my stall, applying a fresh coat of ruby gloss to her mouth. Her lips were as moist as roses in the morning—unlike mine, which were perpetually chapped.

She fished a packet of Kleenex from of her purse and handed me a couple. “Blow it off, Char. Everyone knows that Peterson plays favorites. I got lucky.”

Lucky.

“You could find another way to impress the colleges,” she said.

I splashed cold water on my face. “Yeah. Like maybe I'll join the math bowl.” I was not about to quit debate—my one ticket to the upper echelons of Shady Grove.

“I need a cigarette,” she said. “Want to come outside with me?”

I snapped my fingers. “That's it. I'll start a smoking club. Then I can be president of something. That'll look good on my résumé.”

“You'll probably have to start smoking first.” She dabbed a lash out of her eye. “Let's go have ourselves a meeting.”

She dragged me out to the woods that bordered the edge of Shady Grove's campus. It was raining, but the trees provided shelter. We shared a slightly damp stump that made up part of an old campfire ring. The moisture brought out the crystal flecks in the rocks. Amanda lit two cigarettes, then handed one to me. “Here,” she said. “Everyone's got to start somewhere.”

I pretended not to notice the lipstick smear on the filter, though it kind of grossed me out. But not as much as inhaling the thing did. It was like spraying a can of grit into my lungs. Amanda cackled as I coughed and coughed. “It gets easier,” she said. “Trust me.”

Rain dripped down through the branches, a strangely soothing sound. I waited until I'd smoked half my cigarette before commenting on her new partnership with Neal.

“You two will be great,” I said.
Fanfuckingtastic
, I didn't add.

“Char—I know,” she said.

“You know you'll be great?”

She looked at me pointedly. “I
know
. I know about you and Neal.”

I swallowed. “Neal didn't want me to say anything.”

“It's written all over your face.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “I guess you're not a virgin anymore?”

“You thought I was a virgin?”

“Duh. You were like the queen of virgins when we first met.” With a stick, I began demolishing the charred remains of a log. “If there's ever stuff you want to ask me—” she offered.

The air smelled bad, like garbage. Somewhere nearby, there was a dump. Amanda pulled a Twix out of her purse and offered me half. I shook my head. I hadn't been hungry since I'd started seeing Neal. My clothes were getting baggy. In bed at night, when I traced my fingers over the contours of my body, I could feel the outline of my ribs.

A crow swooped down and landed on a nearby log. It watched us with its beady eyes, and cocked its head as if trying to understand our silence. Amanda tossed it a chunk of Twix, and it flew off with a strand of caramel dangling from its beak like a worm.

“Are you guys like boyfriend-girlfriend now?” she asked.

“Neal's never said…I don't know. I think so. What do you think?”

“Why does he want to keep it a secret?”

I frowned. “He says it makes things more exciting.”

It was raining harder now. I had to hold my notebook over my head to stay dry.

“Hmm.” Amanda fiddled with a thread that was unraveling at the hem of her miniskirt. “If you want my opinion,” she finally said, “I think it's weird.”

It was Sunday. Christmas was less than a week away. Miraculously, my family was all up at the same time, congregating in the kitchen. Mom was grading papers, humming Christmas carols and drinking something called kombucha that looked and tasted nasty but was supposed to be some kind of miracle cure for everything. Dad was reading the
New York Times
. He'd just gotten a new pair of glasses and was very proud of them. He made a point of cleaning them every five minutes. James Henry was making blueberry pancakes, his one cooking specialty. He only made them on very special occasions. The very special occasion this time was that he was being considered for a full scholarship for a summer school program at Columbia. We were heading to New York for Presidents' Day weekend so that James Henry could interview with the admissions committee in person.

“Can we go to MOMA when we're there?” I asked.

“We could look at some colleges,” Dad suggested.

“Sounds like a blast,” I muttered.

Dad poured himself another cup of coffee. “Any word on your SAT scores? You retook the test last month, right?”

I pretended to.

“Not yet. I mean, no word yet on my scores.”

“Have you picked a safety school?” James Henry asked.

“I'm considering my options.”

“Oh, hey—look at this.” Dad handed me a section of the paper. “There's an article here about fuel cells. I thought maybe you could use it for debate.”

“Uh—I'm not…Thanks.” I pretended to glance over the article.

Hearing something in my voice, Mom glanced up from the essay she was grading. “How come you never have your friends over? I'd like to meet Amanda. And that guy you whisper about on the phone?”

“His name is Neal,” James Henry said, flipping a pancake into the air.

I shot him a look. “You need more chores if you have time to eavesdrop.”

“You have a boyfriend?” Dad asked.

I glared at my brother. “You have syrup on your chin. And no, he's not my boyfriend.”

“I think it's nice that Charlotte has made some friends,” Mom said absently, frowning over something one of her students had written.

That afternoon, on a whim, I biked over to Amanda's. No one answered when I rang. The house was so big that the Mungers seldom heard their doorbell. The door was open so I let myself in. I guessed when you were as rich as they were, you didn't have to care about theft. I found Amanda upstairs with Neal. They were sitting on the floor of her bedroom surrounded by corn chips, empty soda cans, and stacks and stacks of research. Apparently they weren't wasting any time when it came to their partnership. “It's the holidays,” I said. “You guys need to get a life.”