"Okay. I'm not complaining or anything, but seriously. Why do we get out of school for this?"
"Because it is the state tournament," Jake Berenson explained patiently as he doodled on the condensation that had formed on the windows of the bus. "If the basketball team was in the state tournament, we would go to it."
"And you'd complain about how you could outdunk any of those guys."
"Right you are."
"Okay, but why are we, you and me, specifically going-" Marco abruptly shot off another question. "And what are you writing on the window?"
"Nothing!" Jake said a little too defensively, smearing it off.
"Same as your IQ," Jake's cousin Rachel remarked cuttingly, sliding into the seat across from them.
"Comments like that aren't going to help your run for prom queen," Marco smirked at her.
"I'm not running." She tossed her hair. "Hurry up, Cassie…"
"Why not?" Jake asked sympathetically.
"Oh, because everyone's going to vote for An-drew and there is no way I'm dancing with that jerk."
Cassie came panting onto the bus, lugging a briefcase with her. The debate coach followed a few seconds later. "Everybody here?" he asked, counting heads. "Yep, we're good."
The bus driver started the engine and Cassie sat down. Instead of propping her case open and sifting through her papers, she dug into her pocket. After pulling a penny out, she flipped it repeatedly, noting the result every time it landed. She ran through several hundred repetitions of this before finally making an errant flip that hit Marco on the head.
"Practicing?" Rachel asked, trying to hide a grin.
Cassie nodded seriously. "If there's any way I can get neg, I want it."
"Neg?" Rachel narrowed her eyes.
"She wants to be on the side against the resolution," Jake explained.
Cassie nodded sagely. "Yeah, I-how did you know that?"
He shrugged innocently. "Went on the debate website."
"And why, pray tell, were you on the debate website?" Marco asked, rolling his eyes.
"To learn about, um, debate."
"What better reason?" Rachel grinned, having a very good guess as to why Jake wanted to learn about debate. "So…Cassie. Didn't you win sectionals by being for the resolution?"
She nodded, smiling at the memory of victory. But her smile was quickly inverted. "It's just so much easier when I actually agree with what I'm arguing for. Otherwise I get this feeling of…I don't know. Betrayal, I guess."
"What's the resolution?" Marco flicked the coin off his seat.
"Resolved: that techniques of torture are sometimes required to obtain information," Cassie rattled off. She was familiarized, perhaps overly, with the phrase.
"Um…"
"A resolution," Cassie explained, "is what we're debating."
"We? As in-"
"Not us," Jake punched him teasingly. "Unless you'd like to take Cassie's place and compete against the smartest kids in the state?"
"Think I'll let her go ahead with it."
"Sounds good."
"So you need to practice?" Rachel asked. "Let's say someone was like part of a big conspiracy thing, and you needed to find out what they were gonna do, but they wouldn't tell you."
"How would I be aware they were part of a plot?"
"They'd bragged about it."
"Why?"
"You're the people person, you tell me?"
Cassie shook her head. "Logic, Rachel."
"Maybe they were trying to throw you off the trail? And lied to say something was going on that wasn't?" Marco asked.
"Then I wouldn't need to extract information."
"But you couldn't know that it was a red herring," Jake reminded her.
She bit her lip. "True, but…is it worth the risk?"
"When Jake gets employed at Guantanamo Bay, he'll let you know," Marco joked.
"How many people would be threatened by this plot?" Jake asked seriously.
"Jake!" Cassie exclaimed. "You can't quantify life!"
"That's why I'm not working at Guantanamo Bay."
Cassie raised her eyebrows but sat back in her seat.
"Hey, c'mon," Rachel urged her. "If you can't outargue my cousin, how do you expect to win at state?"
"I don't want to wear myself out before we actually start."
"Yeah, 'cuz debate is so demanding," Marco sarcastically said.
Cassie laughed. "It is!"
"Can't handle the pressure, Marco?" Jake got in a little dig.
"Nope. Any kind of pressure. Who's insane enough to torture people?" he mused darkly.
"Oh, I don't know, I bet Rachel here would do well."
"I'd confess information after sitting through tapes of gymnastics competitions."
"Just for that you're first on the list," Rachel smiled.
"Jake! Hide me! Give me the draft-dodging forms or something!" Marco mock-screamed.
"I thought you wanted to spend long periods of time in my company?"
Marco put a finger to his chin and mulled over that while Cassie spoke. "It's a crime to dodge the draft, isn't it?"
"If the government's screwed up to need a draft, are they really going to hunt you down?"
Cassie shrugged. "Marco would probably just file as a conscientious objector."
"Is there a reason you know all this stuff?" Jake asked, looking almost concerned.
She patted her briefcase. "Have to be well-read."
"Yeah, but this isn't even relevant."
"So? I know things."
By this time Marco had removed his hand from his chin. "Way too many, perhaps."
"It all depends on perspective."
"What doesn't? If we all had the same perspective, there wouldn't be any prisoners to torture."
"But there wouldn't be any state championships for debate either," Rachel pointed out.
Cassie looked serious. "Sometimes we have to argue for things we don't believe in."
"What do you like about debate anyhow?" Jake wondered. "Besides the fact that you're like the best in the district."
Cassie slid back into her seat, mulling over that for most of the rest of the ride.
Finally, Rachel picked up the coin and tossed it to her. "Any thoughts?"
"It's tails down," Marco observed.
Rachel chucked it down the narrow aisle.
"Way to put a damper on things, Marco," Jake congratulated dryly.
Marco made a slight bow. "I do my best."
They filed off the bus. A teacher ushered Jake, Rachel, and Marco towards the auditorium, where they would hang out until the debate was ready to start. Cassie had an assigned area to organize herself in, but wandered elsewhere, lost in a fog of thought.
Luckily for her, a sympathetic-appearing boy spotted her. "Hey, you in the debate?"
Startled, she turned to stare at him. He was wearing a grubby outfit that almost seemed to be a parody of the traditional debate suit-fitting all the guidelines while managing to make him look like a dork more than a debate geek. "Yeah?"
"Hurry it up." He guided her towards the stage.
"This your school?"
"Mmhmm. This year, at least. I move around a lot."
She nodded and ducked in just in time to get her notes together. Clearing her mind, she fought her way through the preliminaries. The stage's glare made it impossible for her to see her friends in the audience, but their comments still echoed through her head. Although it seemed like it was confusing her, trying to juggle their own multiple perspectives led her to advance.
It was late in the evening when she took the stage for the final. As she walked towards the center to shake hands with her opponent, she tried to stifle her surprise that it was the dork from earlier. She took his hand gently but shook it with strength. "Cassie-"
She was about to introduce herself by last name, but it took just enough time leaving her mouth that he assumed she had finished. "Tobias."