The Art of Losing Yourself (18 page)

Stop. Turn around. It’s not too late
. These were the commands my brain gave my feet. These were the commands my feet ignored. They kept walking toward my first-period classroom, only it was the end of the day. Stupid, stupid feet. The loud chatter filtering into the hallway had me stutter stepping. It was the kind of noise created by twenty, thirty kids, easily. Yet when I reached the door, there were only seven. Six boys. One girl. Five were gathered around the table up front—talking over one another, arguing, laughing, passing around papers, and typing onto laptops.

One I recognized more than the others—Parker Zkotsky. I should have known he’d be on the debate team. He twirled a pen around his thumb with his feet crossed on top of the table. “The NSA targets the wrong people,” he practically yelled.

“We know, but that can’t be our only negative contention,” said the one
and only girl, pushing Parker’s shoes off the table. He almost toppled back in his chair, but caught himself at the last second. Everyone laughed as Parker put all four chair legs on the ground.

On the other side of the room, the two students not at the table stood on either side of Reyas. She held her chin and nodded at nothing in particular while one talked with his hands and the other pointed at a sheet of paper.

This was nothing like debate class.

In debate class, Parker, Elias, and I were the only ones who talked. Here, everyone talked. Loudly. My feet started to back-pedal, finally catching on to what my brain already knew. I didn’t belong. But before I could back-pedal out of view, Reyas looked up from her carpet, nodding. “You came!”

The room went quiet.

Reyas intercepted me at the door, pulled me into the classroom, and introduced me to everyone but Parker, whom I already knew. By the time I met the last student, I had forgotten the names of the first, second, and third.

“I’m working with my policy guys right now.” Reyas hitched her thumb toward the two boys standing off to the side. “Policy is a whole different ball game. Kids who do it are kids who’ve been doing debate since junior high. Don’t worry.” She cupped my shoulder with an alarmingly firm grip. “You won’t do policy. You’ll do public forum debate, which is the structure we follow in class. Gathering evidence. Building your case. Et cetera, et cetera.”

I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t doing anything. I was only there to get her off my back.

“Kimmy,” Reyas said.

The girl, who wore her hair in a low, tight ponytail, looked up from her laptop. Her attention flicked briefly toward my black hair, then down to my equally black boots.

Reyas motioned for her to join us, then cupped her shoulder too. We were both trapped. “This is the student I was telling you about—Gracie Fisher. I think the pair of you would make a strong team. Kim’s been doing debate since freshman year, but her partner graduated last year. Trust me, with Kimmy, you’re in excellent hands.” She looked from me to the girl. “Gracie hasn’t done debate, but don’t hold that against her, all right? This girl is brilliant at countering and refuting arguments. Just ask Parker.”

“It’s very annoying,” he said, not really looking annoyed at all.

My stomach did a reluctant flip. Parker was cute. And while he wasn’t totally my type, he was a lot closer than Elias was. I should focus on Parker. Not the star football player.

“Why don’t you introduce Gracie to this month’s resolutions? You can spend some time showing her the ropes. I need to get back to my policy boys. We have an important tournament tomorrow.” Reyas released our shoulders and left us to it.

Kimmy stared at me.

I stared at Kimmy. Unlike Elias’s honey caramel, her skin was Elmer’s glue white with a yellowish hue. I was beginning to wonder if she’d ever been outside.

“You’ve never done debate before?” she asked.

I hated the way her question stirred up feelings of inadequacy. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that Reyas went out of her way to recruit me, but I shrugged instead. “Unless you count Debate and Ethics class.”

Judging by her face, she didn’t count it. “So it’s safe to say you’ve never been to any camps either?”

“Zero camps.”

She let out a long sigh. “I think I can get you caught up if you’re as good as Reyas says.”

I raised my eyebrow.
If?

“Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into on the front end, I’m going to win state this year. Which means I need a competent, committed partner. Last year was a complete four-two screw. It was completely bogus. We didn’t even reach the out-rounds.”

“Get over it, Kimmy,” Parker called from the table.

“The judges were horrendous and you know it.” The slight tinge in her cheeks told me she was either mad at Parker or had a crush on him. “Anyway, our first tournament is in two weeks and right now, we’re building a case for this month’s resolution—The Benefits of Domestic Surveillance Outweigh the Harm. Are you familiar with the NSA?”

“Vaguely.”

“Then we have a lot of work to do.” She fished out a thick stack of papers,
bound together by a large rubber band, from the backpack hanging off her chair. “I eat, drink, and sleep research. Non-tournament Saturdays will be our biggest workdays. I hope you’re prepared to spend hours at the library.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of Vitamin D.”

Parker laughed.

Kimmy didn’t even blink. She handed over her giant stack of bound papers. It was heavier than half my textbooks. “This is called a brief. It’s our starting point for every case.”

“I know what a brief is,” I mumbled.

“Kimmy’s anal about printing the briefs out,” Parker said.

“I like to highlight.”

“And kill trees.”

“And wear red power suits,” another boy added.

She turned to face her teasers head-on. “Don’t knock the red power suit. It intimidates my opponents.”

“It intimidates us.” Parker winked at me when he said it.

Kimmy shook her head. I wanted to ask what she’d do if I didn’t stick around. I was looking for a job and hopefully helping at The Treasure Chest on Saturdays. How could I possibly offer Kimmy the kind of commitment she was looking for when I was still cautiously pursuing plan A while putting together a plan B?

“You’ll want to start reading through the brief,” she said. “I’ll keep researching while you catch up.”

Kimmy reclaimed her seat next to Parker. He slid his hand across the back of her chair. “You coming to the party tomorrow night?” he asked me.

“Maybe.”

“You should make that maybe into a yes.”

“Can we please get back to work?” Kimmy slapped Parker’s hand away from the back of her chair. “You can flirt all you want
after
practice is over.”

He smiled at me, then saluted at Kimmy.

I found a seat at one of the empty tables and flipped through the brief, reading but not comprehending the words. I was too busy eavesdropping on the fast-paced conversation up front, reluctantly stimulated by the atmosphere in the room—an odd mixture of camaraderie and antagonism. I had to push my tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep from joining in. At quarter
past four, once Reyas was finished with her policy boys, she perched on the edge of her desk and asked the team to tell me more about debate.

Talk turned to weekend tournaments—debate’s life blood, it would seem.

“The cafeteria between rounds is pandemonium,” Parker said.

“Four hundred kids talking over one another. Wrappers and food on the floor.”

“Everyone looking up last-minute information on their laptops and phones.”

“Some teams bring their own printers.”

“Some kids speed-read to the walls.”

“We like to make allies so we can figure out our opponents’ weaknesses.”

“It’s like
Survivor
,” Kimmy said. “Only smarter.”

I leaned forward in my seat, soaking up the words and painting the scene in my mind.

G
RACIE

“Idle hands are the devil’s playground.”
The pastor back in New Hope loved that saying. He would quote it to me and the other kids in the congregation after the service ended, always in the context of helping out around the house. At the time, I didn’t know what it meant. I just knew that a playground sounded much more preferable than the stiff wooden benches at church. Now, however, I get it. Because if I’d had something to do, I wouldn’t have ended up here on the dock on a Friday night, keeping an eye out for Elias.

I had no idea if my encounter with him here three weeks ago was a fluke, or if he came after every game. Part of me wanted it to be a fluke. This growing infatuation I was developing for a boy who was not only the star athlete of my new high school but also a self-proclaimed Christian needed to end. The similarities to Chris Nanning should have sent me running in the opposite direction. But another part of me wanted Elias to come. Because maybe if he came, he’d do or say something that would prove he was like every other high school boy out there and my infatuation would fizzle and die. Or maybe I just really wanted to tell someone about the debate team.

Last night, I told Ben the truth when I said I wasn’t a joiner—especially not when it involved a bunch of high expectations from Reyas and a partner as intense as Kimmy. Even so, I couldn’t deny the fact that I’d spent the last three hours in my room, highlighting and memorizing that brief, formulating so many arguments for and against domestic surveillance that I could probably take on Parker.

The dock creaked with footsteps.

I twisted around.

Sure enough, Elias stood beneath the lights. “No knife this time?”

Heat rushed into my cheeks. I turned back toward the water, feeling like the world’s most pathetic loser. It couldn’t have been any more obvious that I came here to see him. “Har, har.”

He joined me at the end of the dock. “So what’s up, Fisher, you stalking me now?”

“You wish.”

“Hey, I told you this was my dock. You knew I’d be here.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “Does this mean we’re friends?”

I wrinkled my nose.

He laughed.

The amount of pleasure this gave me set off major alarms in my head.

“Did you find a job?” he asked.

“Yes, actually. The theater on the square.” I’d received a call from the manager earlier in the evening. I was an official employee of Bay Breeze’s one and only cinema—a vintage theater that was big enough to show three movies at a time. With its chrome accents and 1960s feel, the place reminded me a lot of the motel, except without the mold and mildew. “My first shift’s tomorrow night.”

“Nicely done.”

A wave rolled in from the bay, lapping at the dock beneath us. I tucked my hands beneath my knees and looked down at our feet, which swung back and forth like pendulums over the water.

“I heard you tried out for the debate team.”

I jerked my head up. “From who?”

“Parker. He was hanging out in the high school parking lot before the game. He said you went to practice today.”

“I didn’t
try
out. I was just checking it out.”

“What did you think?”

I shrugged, wondering what Elias would say if I told him the actual truth—that deep down, the debate team sounded like fun, but even deeper down, I was afraid to put myself out there. Would the captain of the football team even understand something like that?

“Look, Gracie. I’m not a big fan of Parker, but Zkotsky aside, you’d be really great at it.”

I gave him a skeptical look.

“I’m in debate class with you, remember? Half the time, I don’t even think Reyas knows how to argue with you.”

“Yeah, but class is easy. There’s no pressure there.” The second I stood in front of a debate tournament judge next to my partner in her red power suit, I’d probably choke. And I wasn’t about to show Reyas or Kimmy or anyone else what I already knew: I was a screwup. It was my area of specialty. Elias had football. Apart from that whacked-out YouTube video, Carmen had being perfect. And I had screwing up.

“Pressure is something you get used to.”

Easy for him to say.

“My mom did debate in high school,” he said.

“Really?”

“It’s why I signed up for the class. When she was our age, she wanted to be a civil rights attorney.”

Somehow, I had a feeling that dream never came to fruition. Not many civil rights attorneys worked at places like Jake’s on the side. “And…?”

“She’s a nurse.”

“What got in her way?”

“Me.”

A mosquito landed on my knuckle. I slapped it dead. I knew all about getting in the way. “How old was she when she got pregnant?”

“Twenty. Halfway through her undergrad. Her parents were paying her way. Super proud. But then she met my dad, who can turn on the charm pretty thick when he wants to.”

So could Elias, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate the comparison.

“Anyway, one thing led to another. She let him talk her out of her convictions. She got pregnant. And her parents cut her off. School took a backseat after that.”

“They cut her off for getting pregnant?” Sounded a little archaic to me.

“Not for getting pregnant. For getting pregnant with a black man’s child.”

Even more archaic. “That’s incredibly racist.”

“Unfortunately, my dad didn’t help convince them that their racism was wrong.”

“And your grandparents now?”

“Largely uninvolved. I can count on my left hand the number of times I’ve
seen them. They’re polite enough. Kinda stiff. A little boring. I never liked visiting them as a kid.”

Same with me. I’d met my dad’s parents a few times, and while they were nice, I always felt awkward at their house. My mom’s parents were a different story. She didn’t let me see them. Ever. They tried to get involved in my life when I was younger and we lived in Texas, but Mom had forbidden it. “So your mom became a nurse?”

“She worked double shifts as a waitress so she could pay her way through nursing school and keep me fed, which wasn’t easy, seeing how much I can eat. She’s kind of heroic.” His attention shifted from the bay to me. “You remind me of her sometimes.”

I laughed. “How so?”

“Well, for one, you’re both too smart for you own good.” He gave me another nudge with his shoulder. “And you’re both tough. She had to be, being a single mom. Putting herself through college. Making a life for us. She hates asking for help, but thankfully, Pastor Zeke doesn’t need to be asked. And he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“That Pastor Zeke sounds like a decent guy.”

“He’s everything my dad isn’t.” Moonlight reflected off the dark water and cast alluring shadows along Elias’s face. It made him look ethereally beautiful, like an African Caucasian god of perfection. “Speaking of parents, how’s your mom doing?”

I shrugged. “I guess she’s still in rehab.”

“That’s good.”

“If you say so.”

“And
your
dad—where does he fit in the picture?”

I stuck my tongue in between the sliver of space between my first and second premolars. It was a spot in constant need of flossing. “He’s a military guy. Did a couple tours in Iraq after I was born. When he finally came home, he and my mom tried to make it work, but it was a no-go. They divorced and he’s remarried with a nice house, two kids, and a dog. I’m welcome there, but I don’t really fit in.”

“I’m sorry.”

A mourning dove crooned into the night—a sad, haunting sound.

It wasn’t like my dad ever beat me or my mom or anything, but they had fought. A lot. Mostly about me. I shrugged, like none of it mattered, and attempted to tuck my bangs behind my ear. They fell back into my face, but not before our gazes connected.

“You have really beautiful eyes.”

His words were like a warm egg cracked over my head. The sensation trickling over me was both unsettling and distracting.

“You shouldn’t hide them.”