The Beginning of Everything(35)

Luke and Sam drifted back from their round ten minutes later, since team debates always take slightly longer. By the time they reached the table, we were clustered around Austin’s iPad watching ridiculous YouTube videos and taking turns showing our favorites.

The second round posted, and once again, Cassidy darted off to retrieve my room number. I guessed that she was trying to be helpful, but it was a little much. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, though. So I dutifully accepted my Post-it and trotted off to debate one of the Rancho guys, this scrawny freshman with a Blackberry clipped to his belt, as though he was already running a company. The enemy, I thought, realizing that I was starting to develop a sense of team loyalty.

We wound up debating the merits of free market economics, which definitely wasn’t my strong suit, and I argued pro again. I thought I’d managed to present the argument okay, but the moment that freshman adjusted his belt, straightened his tie, and shot me a look like he expected me to suck it, I knew I was done for. He filleted me.

It was so frustrating, knowing that, if we were on a tennis court, I could’ve killed him with my backhand, slicing it to land short and watching him run like hell. But this was debate, and my superpowers were nonexistent. I almost wished he’d debated Cassidy in her ridiculous Harry Potter costume, so she could’ve wiped the smirk off his muggle face.





16


“BEFORE I GIVE you kids the room keys, here are the rules,” Ms. Weng said, hell-bent on humiliating us in the bustling hotel lobby. “Rooms are single sex. If I find out otherwise, you’re off the team. You can eat dinner in the hotel restaurant or the shopping center across the street. If you go to the shopping center, you’re back here by eight. No leaving the hotel at night, and no smoking, I don’t care if you’re old enough to buy cigarettes. We’ll meet back here at seven forty-five tomorrow morning to check out. Any room charges are your responsibility. Everyone got it?”

We muttered that we did, and she made us all take her phone number before she handed Toby the envelopes with our keys.

“I’m in Room Two thirty-nine,” she called as we all headed toward the elevator. “If there’s an emergency.”

Cassidy laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth.

“Sorry,” she said, “but one of those jerks from Rancho invited me to get shit faced in their room tonight. They said to come by Room Two thirty-seven.”

The hilarity of what was going to happen hit us all full force.

“Poor Ms. Weng,” Toby said sadly. “However will she read her salacious romance novel in the bathtub in peace with those hooligans playing Beer Pong in the next room?”

“Dude,” I said, wincing. “Mental picture.”

“Naw, seriously, that’s what she does,” Austin told me. “It’s why she agreed to coach debate. Weng lives with her parents, man. She’d advise the wrestling team if it came with a free hotel room once a month.”

“She always asks at the front desk if the room has a tub,” Toby said. “The first one of us to laugh loses fifty points.”

“What are the points for?” I finally asked.

I thought it was a valid question, but apparently not, since everyone stared at me, horrified.

“Oh, Ezra,” Cassidy said sadly, “now you’ve gone and lost all of yours.”

“Is it possible to have negative points?” I asked as the elevator doors opened, depositing us on the fourth floor.

“I’m not permitted to explain the rules of the game,” Toby said. “Nor to acknowledge whether or not we’re playing one. Come on, team. Move out!”

We had two rooms next to each other. The guys trooped into one, and the girls headed into the other.

“Um,” I said, surveying the two double beds and trying not to point out the obvious, that there were five of us.

And then Luke opened a door that I’d initially taken for a closet, but which actually opened into the girls’ room.

“Hi,” Phoebe said as she and Cassidy trooped through and joined us.

That was when I realized: No one intended to keep single-sex sleeping arrangements.

“Everyone ready to get dinner?” Toby asked.

“We’re not going to change?” I looked down at my suit.

“Nope,” Phoebe said, grinning. “Rite of passage. Team dinner in our team uniforms. And it’s your problem if you spill.”

“She says that,” Luke confided, “but really, she’ll iron everyone’s shirts in the morning if we ask nicely.”

“I will not!” Phoebe picked up a pillow and threw it at him.

The shopping center across from the Hyatt wasn’t bad, although I felt self-conscious about the seven of us in our suits. Well, six of us in suits, and one in a Hogwarts uniform. We wound up at the Cheesecake Factory, which I thought was an odd choice, when there was a Denny’s and a Burger King. It wasn’t something we talked about, but I knew Toby never had much cash.

“Who wants appetizers?” Toby asked cheerfully, cracking open the giant menu. He caught my expression and started laughing. “Dinner’s on Faulkner.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. “Even tennis doesn’t pull that on the new guys.”

“Relax.” Toby flashed a credit card. “It’s coming out of our team budget. Which, technically, you approved last April. Rather generously, I might add.”