Margie Kelly Breaks the Dress Code

by Bridget Farr

  “But it’s not that short,” I say, confidence flowing up my spine like mercury in a thermometer. “I just have long legs, so it looks short.”

  “And yet the school handbook says differently.”

  “But you don’t follow all the school handbook rules. You let people chew gum, and that’s not allowed. Why did you care so much about my skirt?”

  “I don’t care about your clothing choices,” she says, taking another swig of her Diet Coke. “I care about the learning that happens in my classroom. When people are out of dress code, it disrupts other people’s learning.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” I say, squeezing my hands into fists. “No one cared about my skirt. You hadn’t even started teaching yet. The only person’s learning that was disrupted was mine.”

  Ms. Scott glances at her clock. “Disagreeing with the dress code, Margaret, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t apply to you. Those are the rules.”

  “But they shouldn’t be.”

  “Margie,” Ms. Scott says, setting her hands in her lap and giving me that all-knowing teacher look. “I get it. I used to be like you—worried about my hair and my clothes. Constantly trying to impress other people, the boys I liked. But that’s not what matters. What you know matters. What you can do with your brain matters.”

  “But I wasn’t worried about those things. I just really like the skirt.” I still do. It gives me the same boost of confidence I felt walking into Live Oak on the first day. “And isn’t the school saying my brain doesn’t matter if wearing this skirt means I have to spend the day in ISS, where I don’t learn anything?”

  “You’ll understand better when you’re older,” Ms. Scott says, grabbing her red pen. “Until then, you’ll just have to accept things the way they are.”

  For now. She doesn’t know the plans we have for our next meeting with Mr. Franklin. Jamiya found a sample dress code from a school in Oregon. There, kids can wear anything as long as it covers all their private body parts and doesn’t have offensive words or images of drugs, alcohol, or violence. We’re hoping he might adopt the code for our school and maybe the entire school district. Ms. Scott’s body-shaming rules might be the way it is now, but not for long.

  I smile as I walk out of her classroom, knowing that our school will change, even if Ms. Scott doesn’t.

  The entire Quiz Bowl team huddles around the two practice tables while Marcus paces in front like a football coach at halftime. Daniela sits next to Jamiya, and I pull up a chair so I’m nearby. It still stings that I don’t have a real seat at the table, but next year. Next year.

  “This is it,” Marcus says, slamming his hand down next to a buzzer. “Go time. We get a second chance with Cactus Canyon—”

  “And with Wonder Boy, the team of one from Austin Day School,” Mikey adds. Everyone groans. No one can stand that four of our players got crushed by one single brain. An enormous brain, but still, just one.

  “Exactly!” Marcus continues. “This is our chance to regain dominance on the Central Texas Quiz Bowl stage and to qualify for nationals. We want to start the official season with a win! We want people to know they need to watch out for Live Oak Quiz Bowl.”

  Beside me, Jamiya snaps a photo on her phone. I bet her caption for Instagram will make our huddle seem less desperate. Daniela turns and offers me a handful of Skittles. I scoop out the purple and reds and hand them back to her. She smiles.

  “We can. Not. Lose,” Marcus says, his look so intimidating that Xavier practically slides under the table.

  “Enough speeches!” Mr. Shao calls from his desk. He’s snacking on a really brown banana that looks like it would be 100 percent mush. “You all have an actual chance of winning this season, so let’s spend time preparing for tomorrow.”

  Marcus walks back to the podium and pulls out a clipboard. Mikey sits on the edge of a table. “Today we have to practice strategically. No questions we already know. No categories we’re familiar with. We’ve got to practice to win. Do we know who they’re going to play for their A team?”

  “It’s the same four boys in all their Insta stories for the past week,” Jamiya says, holding her phone out to show Mikey. He nods.

  “Should be the same as our scrimmage,” Marcus says.

  “It is,” Jamiya and Mikey answer.

  “Then we need to mix it up,” Marcus says, setting the clipboard down on the podium and pointing to Elman. “You’re out, dude. And you, too, Jamiya.”

  “Excuse me?” she says, setting her phone on her lap. “If we’re out, you two are. You were part of the team that lost.”

  Marcus shakes his head as if she’s a sweet little darling. “You know Mikey and I are always on the team. We know everything.”

  “Not everything,” I say, and all heads turn to me. Daniela’s mouth drops open, and I whisper, “Trust me.”

  The Kings are right. They know more answers than I can imagine. But they don’t know everything. I reach into my backpack and grab my notebook with the audit from the scrimmage. I also grab my phone, quickly opening Instagram and the Cactus Canyon Quiz Bowl feed. I show the picture to Jamiya. “These guys are the A team, right?”

  She nods. Mikey and Marcus edge closer, and all the other boys lean in. I give my phone to Daniela. “Hold this up for me, please.”

  I flip to the right page in my notebook and point at the first Cactus Canyon student, an Asian boy with a toothy smile. “He’s their pop culture guy. He knew all contemporary music, but also movies and a bit of political trivia. Not important policies or anything, but silly things that made the news. Like President Obama wearing a tan suit. This kid”—I point to a bulky white boy who looks like he could already play high school football—“knew all their chemistry and biology, plus a ton about literature. He answered every poetry or theater question.” Marcus nods while Jamiya follows along on her phone. “The boy in the cougar T-shirt had geography and history, and the one whose face is sort of cut off knew everything else. He’s like Everything But the… ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s.”

  I sit back in my chair, feeling my face flush. Daniela hands back my phone and gives my hand a squeeze.

  “Okay, Dress Code,” Mikey says. “Who do we need?”

  “I need a minute.” Everyone sighs, but Daniela puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “Ignore them. Do you really know all this?”

  I smile. “I had to keep myself busy somehow as an alternate.”

  “Planning a protest wasn’t enough?”

  I laugh, ripping out a page and handing it to Daniela. “Will you help me?”

  While the boys around us go back to video games on their phones, Jamiya scoots over a chair so she can watch over Daniela’s shoulder.

  “What is all that?” she asks, and I hold up a finger while I scan pages.

  “Okay,” I tell Daniela, finally finding the right page. “List the names of everyone on the team.” One by one I list the strengths of each person. Marcus and Mikey each have seven true strengths (I’m not listing any lucky answers), but most of the other boys only have three or four. We get to Jamiya, and I list “world religions, chemistry lab techniques, African American civil rights leaders, and general music and dance.”

  “Add Brexit and political symbols,” Jamiya says with a smile. “I’ve been studying those for the past two weeks.”

  “I can do yours,” I say to Daniela, taking the pencil from her and listing the many categories my best friend knows by heart. She is meant to be a Quiz Bowl Queen. I show her the list and she nods.

  “You’re down to forty-five minutes and you haven’t done a single round, gentlemen,” Mr. Shao calls.

  “And ladies,” Jamiya shouts with a smirk. Daniela gives her a high five.

  “We’re on it, Mr. Shao!” Marcus says before turning to me. “Let’s go, Dress Code.”

  “I’m ready.” I stand up, smoothing my skirt down and holding the paper in front of me like an acceptance speech.

  “To beat Cactus Canyon, we’
ll need Mikey and Marcus.” They shrug like “obviously.” “Jamiya.” She nods, crossing her arms over her chest. “And Daniela.”

  “You’re just saying that because she’s your best friend,” Xavier cries, setting his phone down on the table with the video game characters still bouncing around.

  “I’m not. She knows nine major categories, and honestly”—I turn to Marcus and Mikey—“if she wasn’t in sixth grade and wasn’t a girl, she would have been on the A team all along. This has been the boys club for a while, but that’s got to stop. Didn’t you see what we, the girls of Live Oak, accomplished this week?”

  “Hey, I marched,” Xavier pipes up.

  “Whether you’re doing it on purpose or not, you don’t always give the girls on the team an equal shot. We’re going to keep losing if we don’t use all the assets we have.”

  “Might be worth it to listen to her,” Mr. Shao says, spinning around in his chair, the banana peel now stacked on some papers beside him. He gives me a thumbs-up before popping his headphones over his ears, and I wonder how much he’s been paying attention while we all thought he wasn’t listening.

  I point to Daniela. “She studies way more than anyone.” I put a hand up. “Except you, Mikey. And she knows math better than anyone in the room.”

  “Math is my category,” Elman says, and I sigh.

  “Are you going to let me finish?”

  “Everyone, hush up!” Marcus says, leaning against the desk. “So you’re saying we’re unfair to the girls on the team?”

  “You have been.”

  Mikey turns to Jamiya. “Do you think that’s true?”

  She pauses. “Honestly, yes. I know you did a lot this year to get more representation for black and brown kids on the team, and that’s awesome, seriously, but there are only three girls on this team, and ten boys. We’re doing something wrong if our numbers are so uneven.”

  “Maybe girls just don’t want to be on Quiz Bowl,” Elman says, and a few others echo his feeling.

  Jamiya sighs as I answer. “They won’t want to be part of Quiz Bowl if they feel like it’s a place girls aren’t welcome.”

  Mikey nods. “I get that. We can do better.”

  “But can we talk about this after practice?” Marcus says, shifting his feet. “You girls don’t want to lose, either.”

  “Of course not, but this conversation is far from over.”

  “Understood, Dress Code.”

  Jamiya and I give him a look. “Understood, Margie,” he says. “Back to teams: we need me, Mikey, Jamiya, and Daniela?”

  “Yes. To beat Cactus Canyon. But to beat Mateo from Austin Day School you need Mikey, Jamiya, Daniela, and”—I take a deep breath—“me.”

  Shouts of “No!” and “Seriously?” fill the room.

  “You?” Jamiya asks, and I nod.

  “I couldn’t believe we lost to a team of one, so I’ve been watching all the old YouTube videos of his matches. His mom posts them on the Austin Day School channel. She even has practice sessions filmed and these ‘Are you smarter than a sixth grader?’ episodes. I know how he plays. He’s quick to buzz in on the topics he doesn’t know well, but he actually buzzes in slowly when he’s confident. Like he has all the time in the world. I think I can help us beat him.”

  And I mean that. I can help, but I can’t do it alone.

  Marcus and Mikey look at each other, sharing some sort of twin mind reading that I don’t understand. Marcus shrugs and grabs his clipboard.

  “Well, let’s see what you got then, Margie.”

  Chapter 28

  The lights on the auditorium stage are bright, just the way I always hoped they would be. Behind a podium is the adult moderator, flipping through a stack of questions we’ll soon have to answer. Three tournament officials, including the director, are seated at a table just below the stage. Dad’s out there in the audience somewhere. Grandma Colleen, too, but I don’t look into the crowd because I can’t risk the distraction.

  At the far end of the table, Mikey leans back in his chair, his arms crossed behind his head, as if he’s not as terrified as the rest of us. Jamiya and Daniela mouth answers to themselves, running through different lists of facts in hopes that my predictions were right and we crammed the correct Need to Know lists.

  Across from us, Mateo of Austin Day School sits chatting with his mom, who keeps pulling out little bags full of food. First, he ate strawberries. Then some pretzels. Now he’s drinking Gatorade like we’re under the hot Texas sun and not an over-air-conditioned auditorium. I adjust the bow Jamiya gave me, pulling my ponytail tighter.

  “Good luck today!” Mateo calls from his table, and we all mutter “Thanks.” Even though he could crush us again, I can’t be mad at him. He seems really nice. And he’s kind of cute.

  The moderator takes a sip from a plastic water bottle beside the microphone on the podium and leans forward.

  “Good afternoon, contestants. We’re ready to begin our second match of this season opener.” The crowd cheers, and someone shouts “Go, Lions!” I really wish I could see Dad giving me a thumbs-up. We beat Cactus Canyon in the first match, but now it’s my turn. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for since I started middle school.

  “Contestants,” the moderator says, turning her head to look at both teams. “You’ve been made aware of the rules during the previous match, so we’re going to begin straightaway. We also have to be out of here by five o’clock.” The parents in the audience laugh. She turns to us.

  “Live Oak Middle, are you ready?”

  “Yes,” we all answer, Daniela’s voice barely a squeak.

  “Austin Day School, are you ready?”

  “Yes!” Mateo says, his shoulders back, his hands crossed on the table like he’s waiting to speak in front of the United Nations.

  “Okay,” she says. “Nine minutes on the clock, and here’s toss-up one.”

  I can barely keep up with the moderator, who is reading so fast she stumbles over some of the words. Didn’t she practice? We did.

  Mateo buzzes in before I can really understand what’s happening. Focus, Margie. The second toss-up comes: “Represented by the Greek letter phi, this irrational number reflects—”

  Buzz. The judge nods at Daniela. “The golden ratio.”

  “Correct. Fifteen points.”

  Yes! Before the power mark! Now for the bonus questions. “According to legend, this city was founded by twin brothers who argued over an auspicious location for its creation. For ten points, name this city—”

  Jamiya buzzes in. “Rome.”

  “Correct. Ten points.” Yes! I’m so glad we made her the captain for this round.

  The second asks which god was their father. I picture the page in my Greek and Roman mythology book Dad got me for Christmas in fourth grade, when I was obsessed.

  “Ares,” Daniela whispers, and I shake my head. That’s the Greek name.

  “Mars,” I call to Jamiya, and she buzzes in.

  “Correct.” I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “As infants, Romulus and Remus were placed into a basket and sent down the Tiber River and discovered by one of these animals.”

  “A wolf,” Mikey whispers, and Jamiya repeats it.

  “Correct. That’s thirty on the bonus.”

  The crowd breaks into applause, and I turn when Dad yells, “Go get ’em, Margie!” I scan the shadowed faces but can’t see him.

  Our celebration doesn’t last long because Mateo beats us on the next two toss-ups and then we lose five points when Jamiya incorrectly answers a question about the Nobel Prize. Mikey leans down the table. “Relax. We got this. Remember the buzzer.”

  We all nod. We had practiced with both types of buzzers, the one you hold in your hand and the one that lies flat on the table. We tried different techniques for buzzing in, timing ourselves to the millisecond, knowing that to beat Mateo every moment would count. I squeeze the buzzer in my hand, resting my thumb on the bright-red button.

&
nbsp; “Toss-up number three,” the moderator says. “Another math question.”

  Mateo smiles, knowing math is one of his best subjects. I pat Daniela’s shoulder with my free hand. He’s not the only one with kick-butt math skills.

  “Pencil and paper ready. Alexander needs to determine the equation for a line passing through point (-7,-4) with slope m=5. By solving first for the y-intercept, he computes—for ten points—what equation representing this line?”

  Buzz. Daniela’s buzzer lights up.

  “y = 5x + 31.”

  “Correct. And here’s your bonus.” I stare above Mateo’s head, giving my brain space to listen as the moderator asks us about the Burgess formation. We get the first and second questions about its composition correct (“fossils” and “shale”), but misidentify its location (Canada, not Alaska), leaving us down fifty points.

  “Some slang terms for this offense include ‘wagging’ in Britain or ‘playing hooky’ in the United States. A result of compulsory education laws, what offense—”

  Mateo beats us to the buzzer. “Truancy.”

  “That is correct.” His mom and family cheer, and he beams. There’s no way that boy has been truant once in his life. Though people probably thought I wasn’t a rule breaker, either, and here I am, #codebreaker.

  We lose the next few toss-ups, and I can feel this win pulling away from us. I don’t dare look in the audience where Marcus is sitting, not participating. I convinced them that we, the girls, could do this. That we were the only ones who could take down Mateo, but the first half is almost over and we’re still down by almost a hundred and fifty points.

  Finally, the timer beeps and the moderator calls the end of the first half. During our three-minute break, we pull our chairs closer to Mikey. He rubs a hand across his face, his cool dissipating like dry ice.

  “How is he still beating us?”

  “He hasn’t answered a single toss-up wrong,” Daniela says with a sigh.

  “It’s actually a good thing that he’s winning by so many points,” I argue.