Girl Wonder Read online

  At the last minute, I decided to call home. I needed to hear my mom’s voice before I faced the sharks. As luck would (not) have it, it was my dad who answered the phone.

  “Debate isn’t an activity for lightweights. This is the missing ingredient for you and the colleges. How are you holding up?” he said.

  “I’m nervous,” I admitted. “I can barely breathe.”

  “That’s natural. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”

  This wasn’t exactly the reassurance I had hoped for. I’d wanted him to tell me that he was proud of me and that he knew I was up to the challenge (since I didn’t know this myself ). Instead, my dad wished me luck, and we hung up.

  The opposing team was composed of twin Asian girls from a school in Portland, who wore matching navy blue suits, matching buns, and matching smug expressions. They kept staring at Amanda and me and whispering in another language. We were in a biology lab of some kind. Our audience—besides the judge—comprised of dead animals floating in jars of formaldehyde.

  Their skin looked like it would squeak if you touched it. I felt like I owed them a good performance today.

  Amanda was dressed in a formfitting lime-green dress that showed off her boobs. Our judge looked a lot like Jesus, with long hair, a long beard, and those funny leather sandals. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Amanda.

  “He wants you,” I whispered.

  “Do you think he’s high?” Amanda asked.

  “Jesus would never smoke pot,” I said.

  When we flipped for sides, Amanda and I won the coin toss and chose to argue from the negative point of view. As Twin One read her affirmative case—something about biofuels and tax credits—we “flowed” the points of her proposal onto yellow legal pads.

  After this speech, Amanda rose for the first three-minute cross-examination period. Her recent interest notwithstanding, from the start I’d sensed that debate, for Amanda, wasn’t going to be the most serious of endeavors. Unlike me, she didn’t need to pad her college résumé. She got good grades without trying. And even if she got straight D’s, all her parents had to do to get her into the school of her choice was donate a museum or something. Debate simply provided her with a nice escape from house arrest. I doubted Amanda would flop in an embarrassing way—that wasn’t her style. She would simply make a mockery of the rest of us for caring.

  This I was prepared for.

  What I was not prepared for was for her to be dazzling.

  Watching her interrogate Twin One was like watching a hard-nosed lawyer in a legal thriller manipulating a murder confession out of the defense. But unlike an actor, she was working without a script. Unlike a real attorney, she had no real-life practice. She was all improvisation, but her performance was flawless. She was having fun too. She reminded me of a cat toying with its prey. Twin One now looked anything but smug. I almost felt sorry for her.

  “I think that went well,” Amanda whispered when she sat down.

  I gaped at her. How could any one person be so freaking competent? It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

  As first negative speaker, my job was to present disadvantages to the affirmative’s case that would explain how implementing the affirmative’s plan would ultimately lead to the end of the world or nuclear war or something even worse.

  But some key circuit in my brain was shorting. Though I had sheets of evidence opposing the affirmative’s case in front of me, I had no idea how to synthesize the information. I couldn’t think off the cuff. I couldn’t seem to make my mouth form words.

  “Just a second,” I muttered, flipping through my papers. Glancing at the timer, I saw that I’d used one minute of my allotted eight. I sipped some water, cracked my neck, and cleared my throat—hoping that these physical actions might somehow dislodge my voice and thoughts.

  Two minutes.

  My arms and legs went numb. My vision blurred. My legs quivered like Jell-O.

  Amanda coughed purposefully. I glanced at the timer. Three minutes used. Five minutes left. Time would pass in a blink if I only had five minutes left to live. Now, five minutes was an eternity.

  Amanda scribbled something on a Post-it note. Argue solvency!

  More circuits were shorting. Solvency. That meant something, right? What?

  Four minutes. WHAT DID SOLVENCY MEAN?

  Another Post-it note, this one underlined twice. SAY SOMETHING!

  “The resolution is not…” My voice trembled. “Solvency is a word that means—” I cleared my throat. “Biofuels are bad because…” I massaged my temples with my fingers.

  Jesus blinked at me dispassionately.

  Let me pass out, I prayed. What was that old saying? God helps those who help themselves? I closed my eyes and swayed a little, gathering up my nerve. It was time to fake a faint.

  Suddenly, something was slammed in front of me. I opened my eyes. It was a script. While I’d stood there paralyzed, Amanda had written me a script on note cards, tying together the pages and pages of evidence about why biofuels were the Antichrist. Things I knew. The stuff I wanted to say.

  Because of Amanda we won. In spite of me we won. Jesus awarded Amanda the highest number of speaker points. The twins refused to look me in the eye when they shook my hand. They saw me as a fraud.

  I saw myself as something worse—a parasite. “I’m sorry,” I said to Amanda, after it was all over, my voice cracking a little.

  Amanda shrugged. “You’ll get better in time. It’s just nerves. No big deal.”

  Jesus stopped me as I was walking out the door. “It’s really brave what you’re doing,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He tugged his beard. “It can’t be easy…well, you know.”

  What was he suggesting? That it couldn’t be easy not being Amanda? That it couldn’t be easy having a sudden onset of a speech impediment?

  The rest of the day went more or less the same. In every round I was too nervous to talk. We made it through the tournament because Amanda kept feeding me things to say and writing out the words for me on note cards. And because she was more than good enough for both of us, we kept winning and winning and winning. With every round we won, I felt like more and more like a loser.

  Mr. Peterson called a team meeting at the end of that first afternoon. He made a huge fuss over Amanda and me, and passed around our trophies for everyone to see. Neal congratulated me. “Guess you’ve taught Munger a thing or two,” he said. “Hope it wasn’t too painful.”

  Amanda left the room without speaking to me.

  I approached Mr. Peterson afterward. “Can I talk to you a second?”

  “You’re talking to me now,” he said in this jovial way that made me think he’d gotten an early start on his vodka.

  I lowered my voice. “I’m not sure policy is my thing.”

  He peered at me over his glasses. “Your thing? Can you be a little more specific?”

  “I get really stressed out,” I blurted. Suddenly, the tears I’d been holding back all day burst through the dam. Unfazed, Mr. Peterson handed me a tissue. When I finally regained control, I said, “I might be more suited for something that doesn’t require you to think on your feet. Like humorous interpretation or original oratory. Or maybe I could be the team manager.”

  Mr. Peterson smiled wryly. “Don’t you think you’re being a little melodramatic? You won today, after all.”

  “Amanda won. I’m holding her back. I don’t want this to ruin our friendship.”

  “I hear everything around here,” he said. “I know how it went for you today. I understand more than you think. It sounds to me like you didn’t do your homework and that Amanda had to argue for the both of you. Debate involves work. It’s not something you can just put on a college résumé and forget. I’ll consider moving you after I see some effort.”

  He stopped me as I was walking out the door. “You’re right about something. These debate partnership issues can affect friendships.”

  There
was a party that night at the student union. The room was decorated with streamers, balloons, and Christmas lights. There was cake, fruit punch, and a platter of cubed cheese. A giant disco ball spun lights across an empty dance floor. No kid would be caught dead dancing to the boy band stuff the DJ was playing.

  I felt like a trespasser and kept to the margins, where no one could see me. I hadn’t earned the right to celebrate. I didn’t belong here.

  Amanda was gesticulating before some kids that we’d beaten earlier in the day. Whatever she was saying was cracking them up. She didn’t seem concerned that I wasn’t around.

  When no one was looking, I slipped out a side door.

  It was a strange evening. Though it was cold outside, the ground looked like it was steaming. The trees smelled sweet and earthy and made me miss being a kid. I used to love making forts, piling leaves high in a circular wall, hunching down low in the middle, spying on the neighborhood. Back then I liked being on the fringes. From a distance you could tell what was really going on. Now I just felt left out and confused.

  One thing was all too clear to me: no amount of desire or effort was going to make me a better debater. All I could hope for was a miracle.

  Hugging my arms to my chest, I watched my breath smoke the air. A few students drifted in and out of the dorms and cafeteria. No one gave me a second glance. I hoped they thought I was one of them. At the same time, the thought that in less than a year I was supposed to be heading off to college froze me more than the weather. I was so screwed.

  I sat down beneath a cedar tree and closed my eyes, hoping I would just melt into the earth.

  “You look like a wood sprite,” a voice said—a voice that melted the chill away. Neal crouched down beside me and tapped out a cigarette from a pack of Dunhills.

  “That’s the kind Amanda smokes,” I observed.

  “I know. She gave them to me.” He laughed. “She told me to quit wasting my time with the plebeian brands.”

  His face was just inches away from mine and almost too beautiful to take. Something about his expression made me ache. I was probably too plebeian for him as well. I peeled off a string of bark from the tree and started demolishing it with one hand. Silent tears dripped down my face.

  I was glad he didn’t ask me what was wrong. What would I have said? Nothing? Everything? Me?

  He stubbed out his cigarette and held out his hand. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  We walked across the commons, past the academic buildings and dorms, into a neighborhood of fraternity houses and Victorian fixer-uppers. When we turned up the walkway of one of these, Neal let go of my hand. I wiped my eyes on my sweater. Some guys were sitting on the porch, drinking hunch punch from Mason jars. One of them lifted his glass when he saw us.

  “Neal,” he said.

  Shit. It was Jesus the judge. Praying that he wouldn’t remember me, I tugged my hair out of its ponytail and shook it around my face. After handing us each a glass of punch, Jesus led us inside the house. Neal looked back at me as we clambered up the rickety stairs. “Michael was a senior at Shady Grove when I was a freshman,” he explained. “Now he relives the glory days by judging high school debate tournaments. How pathetic is that?”

  Michael/Jesus grinned at him from the top of the landing. “Does your girlfriend know what a fuck-face you are?”

  Girlfriend? He thought I was Neal’s girlfriend?

  I held my breath waiting for Neal to correct him.

  He didn’t. Did that mean—?

  Michael led us to his room. A purple lava lamp illuminated an enormous terrarium. Piled high like a stack of pancakes was the largest snake I’d ever seen. “Her name is Baby,” Michael informed us. He was studying me in a way that told me that although he recognized me, he wasn’t sure from where.

  “A snake?” Neal shook his head. “You’re demented, dude.”

  He flipped through Michael’s CDs and popped in a Bob Marley disk. Michael retrieved a bong from under his bed. When he passed it to me, I inhaled like I’d done this a thousand times. I’d watched Amanda enough to know what to do.

  Neal seemed taken aback when I coughed and coughed, like he’d expected better of me. “Pot always does this to me,” I said. “I think I might have asthma.”

  Sometime later, maybe half an hour and two hits later, Michael took Baby out of her tank. She coiled around his arm and seemed to like it when he stroked her head. I watched with widened eyes. The pot was really starting to work. I felt numb and happy, dreamy and alert.

  “You can hold her,” he said, handing her over to me. “She’s a python. They’re not poisonous.”

  The width of her surprised me, as did the cool, silky texture of her skin. This was crazy. I was high as a kite and holding a snake. I couldn’t stop laughing when she pooped on my wrist. I excused myself to the bathroom to wash it off.

  Practice speaking in front of a mirror.

  “You’re very high, Charlotte Locke,” I announced.

  It can’t be easy…well, you know.

  “Feel yourself forming words,” I said, drawling out the words.

  You’ll get better in time.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Neal. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Peachy keen,” I said, opening the door and stumbling out.

  Baby was now draped around Michael’s neck. Her tongue flickered at his ear.

  “She has a nice aura,” I said. “Snakes are the bomb.”

  “She’s really messed up,” Michael said to Neal.

  I wasn’t sure whether he meant the snake or me. I didn’t care. Time had lost all sense of meaning. Nothing mattered. Everything was A-okay. I wrapped my arms around my middle. My organs hurt from laughing so much.

  Baby was back in her terrarium. It was just Neal and me in the room. I had no idea how long we’d been there. Had I fallen asleep? Was it time for another hit off the bong?

  “Where’d Michael go?” I asked.

  “He went to a party.”

  “So are we in deep dog shit with Mr. Peterson?” I asked.

  He patted his cell phone. “Diego’s covering for us. No worries.”

  He was lying on top of Michael’s platform bed, fiddling with a Magic 8 Ball.

  “What are you asking it?” I asked.

  “If you should come up here.”

  “What does it say?” I tried to keep my tone casual.

  The water sloshed as he shook it. “‘Ask again later.’ I guess that’s that.”

  “Oh.” I bit my lip.

  He patted the bed. “It’s a stupid piece of plastic. What are you waiting for?”

  Climbing up, I banged my shin. The pot had made me clumsy. “That was dumb,” I muttered.

  Neal traced his fingers over the scrape. “Is this dumb?” he asked. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t blink. Every molecule in my body was on high alert. “You’re a funny girl,” he said. Then he was kissing me.

  Within minutes we were both panting. I couldn’t get enough of him. With my tongue I explored ever inch of his mouth, as he did with mine. We were sealed together as tightly as two stickers. When we finally broke apart and I tried to tell him how much I liked him, he put a finger to my lips.

  Slowly, assuredly, he lifted off my shirt and unfastened the hooks of my bra. I didn’t protest. Who knew it would feel so good to be naked before a boy? When I helped Neal remove his sweater I was surprised to discover that he smelled a little of BO. I didn’t mind, though. It was such a human thing.

  And then…

  “Hold on a sec,” Neal said. He leapt down from the bed and started riffling through drawers. “Michael’s gotta have a condom here somewhere.”

  A condom?

  Shit. We were moving kind of fast, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we might actually have sex. Was this what I wanted? Now? I rubbed my brow, trying to think.

  Not that I wasn’t enjoying…this. But had I led Neal on?

  Was I a tease? Would Neal be pissed if I said n
o?

  “Found one!” he exclaimed triumphantly just as I was on the verge of saying something coy about saving some stuff for later.

  I bit back my words as he climbed up.

  Roaming each other’s torsos with our hands, we kissed some more. Though Neal’s build wasn’t the stocky kind, his muscles were well developed from playing lacrosse. He gasped when I rubbed my hand over the rise at his crotch, which at once gave me this sense of power and made me ache even more for him. Off came our jeans. Our socks. Our underwear. Neal touched me in a slow deliberate way that made me spin.

  How had he gotten so experienced? Were these things he’d learned from those prissy private school girls?

  We’d moved past the point where sex was a rational decision. It was something we were hurtling toward. I didn’t plan to tell Neal this was my first time. But when he entered me, I let out a cry of pain.

  He pulled back. “You’re a virgin?”

  “It’s totally no big deal,” I stammered.

  He studied me with red-rimmed eyes.

  “It’s a technicality,” I whispered, pulling him close.

  And then he was all the way inside me.

  Luckily, his eyes were closed so he couldn’t see how hard I was clenching my teeth. It hurt a ton more than I was expecting, though there was a good feeling behind it too that left me wanting more. I ground my hips against his like I’d seen actors do in movies. Neal moaned, which I took to be a sign that I was better at sex than debate.

  Oddly, though we were literally joined, I’d felt closer to him when we were just making out. I sensed that he was off in some other world now, somewhere beyond my grasp.

  Afterward, while he slept, I cradled his head in my arms. His hair curled around his ears like vines. He looked like some fairy-tale prince. Though a part of me wanted to get dressed—I felt hollowed-out, sore, and self-conscious about my nakedness—I wanted to savor every second with him. Waking him up, I sensed, would spoil things.

  Staring at the ceiling—dotted with a tiny array of fake glow-in-the-dark stars—I contemplated what had just happened. My thoughts whirled round and round.

  I sucked at debate.

  Neal liked me.