by Bridget Farr
Come on, Daniela. She spins around. A smile. Yes!
She mouths, “I’ll see you inside,” and heads into the classroom. The sinking feeling in my gut doesn’t go away as the next four boys are called. The two seventh graders make it through the door. Two sixth graders slink back down the hallway and up the stairs into the land of average knowledge.
Finally, Marcus’s finger points at me. But also at the tiny blond boy beside me, Xavier. Is he doing this because we’re the final two? Now he wants to speed up the process?
Xavier and I step toward the paper together as if our legs are tied for a three-legged race. Marcus crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the wall as we strain to read the tiny print. Kelly is never at the top of a list, so I start at the middle. It’s not there. Xavier is scanning, too, his finger sliding up and down the list of names.
Then Marcus points to the bottom of the page.
Margie Kelly. Xavier Brooks. Runoff.
We both turn toward Marcus.
He smirks. “Looks like we’re going to have a battle.”
He puts a hand on Xavier’s shoulder and moves us both through the door.
The buzzer box slips in my sweaty hands as Marcus paces back and forth between our desks. Across from me, Xavier looks like he’s ready to slide out of his seat onto the floor. His face is so pale, he’s almost translucent.
“It’s a showdown. Best two out of three,” Mikey says, hopping up to sit on the materials table at the front of the room. A stack of books cascade to the floor, but no one bothers to pick them up. Apparently Mr. Shao’s at a staff meeting and won’t be here to supervise. The room feels packed, even though there are only thirteen of us in this huge classroom. The rest of the Quiz Bowl team hovers around the sides of the desks, the newbies huddled in the corner as if they’re afraid they might lose their spot and soon be sitting with us two. Daniela stands behind me, one hand on my chair.
“You got this,” she whispers, and I close my eyes, taking a deep breath.
I don’t know if I got this.
“I’ll be the moderator,” Marcus says. “If you’re disqualified, you’re done. No second chances.”
Third chances, really, but I don’t dare correct him.
“Ready?” he asks, a smile spreading across his face. Sean, who’s been standing by the door, tosses his apple core in the trash with a clang.
“Let’s go!”
“Question one,” Marcus reads from a set of note cards he pulled from his hoodie pocket. “Occupying 3.16 percent of the night sky, this largest of the eighty-eight constellations contains three Messier objects—”
Bam! Xavier presses his buzzer, his red light burning in my eyes. “Hydra.”
“That’s correct. First point goes to Xavier.”
Daniela pats my shoulder. “Don’t worry. You know you’re working on astronomy.”
I clench my teeth, trying to shake it off. But sneaking into my head is the worry that I’d never even heard the term “Messier objects” before today. Maybe I’m not ready for middle school Quiz Bowl.
“Question two,” Marcus reads, and I close my eyes to help myself focus, not worried if I look stupid. “In one play by this Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, salesman Willy Loman fades into a series of daydreams in which he reimagines events from his past—”
I know this! I hit my buzzer, feeling confident as the red light in front of me blinks. “Arthur Miller.”
Thank you, Dad, for dragging me to summer theater every year since I was born.
“Looks like we got ourselves a tie. Whoever answers the next question correctly, welcome to Quiz Bowl.”
Mikey hops off the table, sending more books to the ground. He takes a step toward me. “Think you can handle it?”
Is that a real question? Does he want me to answer? “Ye—yes.”
Elman leans over to give Xavier a high five. “Good luck, dude.”
I get nothing. Looking around the room, the boys are all grouped together, whispering and talking, leaving Daniela and Jamiya standing together behind me. Daniela whispers, “You can do this!”
Marcus shuffles through the note cards, smiling at some, wrinkling his nose at others. He finally picks one.
“Let me see!” Sean calls from across the room.
“Nah, you gotta wait like everyone else.”
“Whatever,” Sean says, sitting back in Mr. Shao’s rolling chair. I don’t know what Mr. Shao will say if he walks in and sees we’ve taken over his classroom like this.
Marcus stops between our desks, his body at attention like a LEGO man with his legs snapped to the floor. He whips the card in front of his face. “First orchestrating a nonviolent movement to achieve legal equality for African Americans, this man later shifted his focus to economic justice, organizing the Poor People’s Campaign with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference shortly before his death.”
My finger slams on the buzzer, but it’s Xavier’s red light that glows. Xavier pumps his fist before lifting his chin proudly. “Martin Luther King.”
The room erupts into applause, all the boys coming to pat him on the back.
“Wait! That’s not right!” I shout, standing up from my seat.
“Don’t be a poor sport,” Mikey yells from his throne.
“I’m not! But you can’t accept ‘Martin Luther King’ without the ‘Junior.’ I know from fifth-grade—”
“It’s not fifth grade anymore,” someone says. My throat tightens.
“But that’s the rules! He can say ‘MLK,’ but otherwise he has to say ‘Junior.’” I remember watching the Texas Middle School Championship last year with Daniela when the Houston team almost lost the final by answering without the “Junior.”
“She’s right!” Jamiya says, her voice silencing everyone.
Marcus holds up his hand. “Your stupid cheering didn’t allow me to say, ‘Add more.’”
Daniela squeezes my shoulder. It’s not over yet. Xavier’s eyes flick between me and Marcus. Someone ruffles his blond hair.
“We’ll do one last question,” Marcus says, flipping through the stack. “And y’all need to shush!”
It’s so quiet I can hear the rustle of the cards as he shuffles. Everyone has settled closer to our chairs, so close that I can smell their body spray. Finally, Marcus lifts up a card.
“In addition to helping identify the age of the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope provided evidence that galaxies may harbor—”
“Not astronomy,” Daniela whispers, her hand slipping off my shoulder. My stomach drops. Please not astronomy. I glance at Xavier.
“—these supermassive structures—”
Boom! Xavier smacks the buzzer so hard he sends the box sailing over the edge of the table, yanking the other buzzer boxes down with it.
“Black holes!” he shouts, and the room waits, not wanting to disrupt like last time. I don’t know if he’s right or not.
Marcus smiles. “Welcome to the team, man!”
All the boys jump out of their seats, tackling Xavier as if he just ran the final touchdown to win the Super Bowl. Daniela wraps her arms around me, but no one else bothers to even tell me “Nice match.” They don’t notice as I slide out of my chair and head for my backpack at the back of the room. Daniela and Jamiya follow me, and I try to shake the stinging from my eyes, at least until I’m out of this personal black hole.
“You got robbed!” Daniela says. “You had him on Martin Luther King Jr. We know it has to have the ‘Junior.’”
“I know.”
“You still did really well,” she says, putting her hand on my back while I zip and unzip my backpack, pretending to pack up.
“Would’ve been nice to have more girls on the team,” Jamiya adds. “But at least it’s not just me anymore.”
“I’m gonna go,” I say, knowing there’s no reason for me to stay. The boys are still slapping Xavier on the back and showing each other things on their phones, so no one will notice me leave.<
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“Are you going to be okay? Will you take the late bus?”
“Yeah, I can go wait in the library.”
“Definitely try out next year,” Jamiya says before turning to the boys. “Y’all settle down so I can get a picture of the new team for Instagram.”
My heart squeezes as I think about seeing their smiling faces tonight. I started following the team’s Instagram this summer, hoping it would be me standing behind the buzzers. I grab my backpack.
“Hey, Dress Code,” Marcus calls, walking toward me. “We need an alternate. You want it?”
Backup? To these boys? To a kid who didn’t even know to add the “Junior”?
“I need to think about it.”
Marcus shrugs. “That’s fine, but let me know soon. And if you take it, you better learn your astronomy.”
Tears burn the back of my throat.
“Got it,” I say as I turn and run out the door, not stopping when Daniela calls my name.
Chapter 7
When I get home, Grandma is at the kitchen table, completing the crossword in the back of her People magazine. I take off my shoes, dropping my backpack at the door.
“How are you doing?” I ask as she scribbles an all-caps “Tom” into the boxes with her favorite blue pen. She flips back to a page of women on the red carpet, scanning the captions with her finger.
“Almost finished.”
“Wouldn’t I look great in this one?” I ask, pointing to a bright-blue dress with a deep V-neckline that goes almost to the actress’s belly button.
Grandma looks at me with horror. “Margaret!”
“Kidding!”
“You sit here and tell me what you learned at school,” Grandma says, putting her pen down as a page marker. “I’ll get you some tea.”
What did I learn at school? Well, different rules apply to boys and girls, the Quiz Bowl Kings are really dictators who need to be overthrown, and things can only get worse.
“We learned proportions in math and the parts of a story in English.” Grandma always wants details since she didn’t finish high school. Her nightstand is covered with famous biographies and a few conspiracy theory books Dad says are fine since she’s old and can’t get on the internet. “But I’m going to call my friend in my room, Grandma.”
She sighs. “Why does a young girl need her own phone?”
She says that every time she sees my phone, ever since I got it for my birthday this summer. It’s not like I have complete freedom with it: Dad put on some parental controls to track my usage, and I have to charge it in the kitchen starting at 9:00 PM so I don’t stay awake all night checking Instagram. Dad tried to explain to Grandma his reasons for getting me a phone—he’s gone for work a lot now; most kids my age have a cell phone—but she didn’t care. He stopped trying to explain. I never tried.
In my room, I change into my softest blue pajama pants and an old T-shirt from the Catholic summer camp I went to a few years ago, and flop onto the bed. For a few minutes, I just stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and wonder how everything went so wrong. Then I grab my phone and call Daniela.
“¿Bueno?” Daniela’s dad answers. I always have to call her mom or her dad’s cell phone because Daniela doesn’t have one. Her mom teaches at the dual language elementary school we went to, and she thinks technology is ruining kids’ imaginations.
“Hi, Mr. Jaimes. It’s Margie.”
“Oh, hi, Margie. Just a minute. I’ll get Daniela.”
He goes to find her, and I listen to his footsteps, picturing the house I know as well as my own: modern, white walls with lots of art and multicolored woven rugs; the red couch where we watch movies; the bright decorative pillows we once used in an epic pillow fight; sunny picture frames surrounding smiling faces (some including me).
“Hola, Margarita,” Daniela’s mom says over the sizzle of something on the stove. “Daniela casi termina en la ducha.”
“Está bien,” I say, even though I don’t catch the rest. Daniela’s mom always speaks to me in Spanish because I was in the dual language program, but I still have a hard time understanding some words. Or really long conversations. My brain gets tired trying to keep up. In the background, Daniela’s baby brother, Miguel, starts to cry.
“OK, aquí está,” Sra. Jaimes says before passing the phone to Daniela, who sounds breathless.
“Why do you sound like you were running?”
“My dad told me to hurry up since you were on the phone.” There’s a long pause as neither of us says what we’re both thinking. “I’m really sorry you didn’t make the team,” Daniela finally says.
“Me too.”
“You had it until the last question. It just had to be astronomy.”
“My worst subject.”
“Didn’t you put up the stars?”
I stare at the plastic stars, noting the constellations Dad and I put up so I could study before I went to bed. Ursa Major is right above my eyes, with Ursa Minor due north by the wall’s edge. Then Leo down to the left by the window and Gemini, Orion, and Taurus closer to the bathroom. Ms. Mackenzie gave us each a pack on the last day of school, and we both put them up in our rooms that night.
“They didn’t help.” I roll onto my side, tucking the pillow underneath my neck. “It’s just so unfair. Boys get everything at our school. They get to wear and do whatever they want. They make the rules.”
“But you heard Marcus, right?” Daniela says, the click of a closed door as she takes the phone into her room. “You can be the alternate.”
I groan.
“I know it’s not the same as actually competing—”
“I wouldn’t even be technically on the team.”
“But you’ll still get to practice, and you’ll be ready for next year when Marcus and Mikey are gone. It won’t be the same without you.”
I roll onto my back, starfishing across the bed. “What would I do every day at practice, besides listen to the boys call me Dress Code? I don’t even know if I want to be on the team anymore.”
I want to be on the team. I just don’t want to be second best. A leftover. I don’t want to be treated like I’m just a girl.
“If you do it, at least we would get to hang out. Otherwise, I’ll be at practice all the time, and we’ll never get to see each other. We only have Ms. Scott’s and Ms. Anthony’s classes together.”
I know that, too. I’m not sure how we’ll stay best friends if we only see each other three times a day.
“Please, Margie,” Daniela says, and I can picture the pleading look in her eyes. “We’ll study together so you don’t get behind for next year. We can still be the Queens of Quiz. But only if you say yes.”
The light-green plastic stars shine down at me. I didn’t learn all these darn constellations for nothing. And I can’t imagine getting through sixth grade without Daniela.
“Fine. I’ll do it. But I’ve got to get them to stop calling me Dress Code.”
“Just don’t get dress coded again! It’s not hard. You can take some style tips from me. You’ll never get dress coded in unripped jeans or basketball shorts.” Daniela laughs, the sound of her voice one of my favorite things. “Or own it!”
“Maybe.” I definitely don’t want to be known for wearing awful gym shorts. I was thinking I’d be popular for my great brain or sense of humor.
“See you at practice tomorrow,” she says. “Remember: Queens of Quiz.”
I say goodbye, wishing we actually were.
The next day Daniela pushes me through Mr. Shao’s door and into the first official Quiz Bowl team practice. Inside it smells like burnt popcorn, and most of the team is sitting around while Sean sets out the buzzer equipment. Mr. Shao is bent over his keyboard, the offending bag of popcorn on a stack of folders beside him. Elman and another seventh grader I don’t remember are on their phones, and Jamiya is taking pictures of some question packets, probably for the team account. Last night I spent ten minutes brushing my teeth because
I was staring at the perfectly happy team on Instagram. They must have taken the photo right after I left. I tried to ignore Daniela’s huge grin, wishing she looked at least a little disappointed that I wasn’t standing beside her.
“Dress Code!” Marcus calls from his perch on one of the desks. “Back to argue about our pal Martin Luther King… Junior?” All the boys laugh, and Jamiya rolls her eyes. I fight the sinking ship inside me. I will not go down.
“Just do it,” Daniela whispers from behind me, and I take a step forward.
“You said I could be an alternate. I’m here to… alternate.”
I stand tall, feeling confident today in an outfit I picked out to feel my best: skinny blue jeans, a rainbow top, and gold-sequined shoes that I found in my closet during the whole skirt-measuring incident. I am not Dress Code.
“My name’s Margie,” I say.
“Got it, Dress Code.”
“Marcus,” Mr. Shao calls as a warning, though he doesn’t look up from his computer screen.
“Excuse me. Got it, Margie,” Marcus says, stretching out my name with a grin.
“What do I do first?”
Mikey hops off his desk, handing me a stack of question sets with a smile that seems genuine. “Learn to be the best.”
I frown and Mikey continues. “You have to be ready to replace any one of us at any moment. We each have specialties. Mine are generally history and sports with a focus on Supreme Court cases and tennis, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Marcus?”
Marcus looks up from his phone. “Science and math. Right now, I’m working on animal phyla and famous mathematicians. I’m also awesome at geometry.”
“He is,” Mikey says, giving Marcus a short round of applause.
The rest of the room goes around shouting out specialties—movies, World Wars I and II, Egyptian mythology, massacres and assassinations, American politics—the list goes on, and I realize I should have been writing all this down. I’ll have to go back, member by member, and ask each one. Sixth graders José and Xavier say general areas like history and books, and of course astronomy, but Daniela just smiles. She knows I know her areas: literature (specifically historic children’s and Shakespeare), government structures and international politics, famous women in history, and basic math through algebra. She can do almost all the math problems in her head. When they say “Paper and pencil,” she just smiles.
