Speak for Yourself Read online

  For the ’93–’94

  TRHS and Lincoln

  Academic Decathlon teams

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Technically, You Started It teaser

  Copyright

  MRS. JAMES OF LOVELACE ACADEMY

  HAS INVITED YOU TO

  LOVELACE ACADEMY’S SCHOLASTIC EXPOSITION TEAM’S GROUPHUB.

  The theme for this year is: The Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914).

  Lovelace Academy’s captain is: Skylar Collins.

  Each Scholastic Exposition is made up of two parts: the Quizposition and the Booth Expo. Together they are meant to display your understanding of this year’s theme.

  Quizposition is the exciting speed knowledge event ScholEx is known for. Teams must have enough scholars in two challenging rounds:

  Achiever (three or four students with a GPA above 3.0)

  Pathfinder (three or four students with a GPA below 3.0)

  In each round, participating scholars will accumulate points for their team. All questions are based on information provided in the attached packet covering the areas of art, music, history, science, and literature. Get those buzzer thumbs limber!

  The Booth Expo brings Achiever and Pathfinder scholars together to demonstrate an applied understanding of the knowledge they gained in studying for the Quizposition. At the competitions, six to eight participants will set up and present an interactive booth that uses multimedia to display a variety of aspects of the year’s theme. Every member of the team should be able to share their knowledge by presenting different elements of the booth through conversations with the Expo judges.

  We will be meeting Thursdays after school in room 204.

  Our first meet will be December 12 and will include a qualifying Quizposition. There you will have the opportunity to see prior State- and National-level booths. This will inspire us for our own booth, which we’ll present at Regionals in late January. Where we go from there depends on you!

  CLICK HERE TO ACCEPT THE INVITATION

  “I NEED YOU to accept Mrs. James’s invite so I can configure the GroupHub before practice tonight,” I say, loudly dropping my tray of salad onto my usual spot at the farthest table in the cafeteria. To make it seem like an excessively dramatic gesture, the sugar cookie decorated like a pumpkin jumps off and lands a foot away.

  My best friend, Mads, looks up from her all-consuming conversation with Kaden on the other side of her and hooks her thin black bangs behind her ears. “You need what?”

  Her mom finally let her dye her hair black this summer, and even though it’s November, I’m still not used to it. Her equally darkened brows are furrowed at me. Her clothes match her hair, all blackness and lace—on which she spends every penny she makes doing art commissions as the goth queen LeBrat. One of her pieces sold for almost a hundred dollars last month.

  The Mads in my brain has mousy-brown hair, a squeaky voice, and ink stains on her hands and usually the corner of her lip, too.

  The Mads in my brain doesn’t wear lace at school.

  The Mads in my brain isn’t dating Kaden.

  I should be grateful they’re not making out or something. Kaden used to be our friend. It’s been the three of us at this same table since freshman year. But the two of them started dating last spring break—making me a third wheel in my own best friendship.

  But while Mads has changed physically, Kaden is still Kaden: T-shirt, jeans, boots more suitable for a construction site than a school cafeteria. Like Mads and me and most of the school, Kaden is white, but unlike any of us, their hair has been buzzed out of existence. A choice made in ninth grade not long after they started sitting with us at the lunch table. But they’re not just Kaden. Not anymore. Now Mads and Kaden are a defined object.

  “I convinced Mrs. James we’re going to need a private group on HubBub, which I can’t get ready until there’s more people in the GroupHub. So … I need you to confirm your invitations,” I explain, sitting on the bench that is either too small or too big, but definitely digs into my legs in all the wrong ways.

  “You’re still active on that cesspool?” Kaden asks, judgment thick in their voice.

  “Oh, come off it, you’re still there, too,” I say, settling into an argument that predates even their dating. HubBub may not be the only social platform out there, but it’s by far the biggest. Nowhere else has apps, chats, and groups. It’s definitely the only one that makes it easy for individual coders to create or publish at the level of a development company. Which, I guess, is a thing I’m the only one in the whole school cares about. But still.

  “Only because this bourgeoisie manufacturing facility known as our high school has sold out to the corporate overlords of the so-called social media site that’s neither social nor media or even merely a site at this point,” they say for like the fiftieth time.

  “Corporations pay HubBub millions for access to the extra services our school gets for free,” I say. “It would be ridiculous not to take advantage of all that the HubBub platform has to offer.” Ever since Kaden discovered socialism they’ve become a real snob.

  “Platform, like they’re trying to lift us up. They only do it to turn us into drones, so addicted to their mind-numbing content that by the time we graduate we assume they’re the answer for everything,” Kaden says, leaning past Mads to glare at me. “Wake up, Skylar, this is the real world.”

  “We’ll accept later, all right, Sky?” Mads says, laying a black-gloved hand on Kaden’s arm.

  I bite back comments that, intellectually, I know would lead to a shouting match on whether capitalism has any merits in the first place. Because that’s how all our conversations go now. Instead I decide to focus on what really matters. “Please? I need at least three members to confirm before they’ll let me install my app.”

  “Of course this is about the app,” Kaden says under their breath.

  “Does this mean we’re good to go for Study Buddy?” Mads asks, perking up a little bit.

  Ever since HubBub opened up their Young Developers’ track to our school, Mads and I have been making apps. I handle the coding, and she makes the graphics. It started with a kitty puzzle game in seventh grade that used a basic template. It got five hundred downloads, which is no small feat for middle schoolers. But Study Buddy is on a whole different level. It turns class notes into flash cards for better group studying. People actually need it, and I’ll be the one who brings it to them.

  “Yeah. I got the last of the bugs worked out Friday, and your new buttons finally loaded in this weekend. The HubBub team that approves education apps is normally slow—we’re talking weeks. But since I was just addressing the edits they sent me, they put
me into the priority testing queue, so it’s already live.” I know I’m talking nerd at them, but they’re the only ones in the whole school who have half a chance of understanding what I’m saying. If I try to talk to my dad, he starts going on about what he’s working on, and my mom gets maybe half of it. She wants me to use smaller words and less detail, but the details are important.

  Plus, I got into the priority testing queue!

  Normally if you want to get an app on their site, you have to build tests into it and have it pass some quality checks. The priority queue is for big software companies with whole departments that do just testing. Before now I had to go to the “Young Developers Queue” so HubBub’s people could do quality checks for me and then give me a list of things that didn’t work so I could fix them.

  At first they just sent me instructions, but as I progressed, they began to guide me through how they do the checks so I can do them myself. The better I get, the more areas of development they open to me. Study Buddy was so good I can now develop social apps—which aren’t hard to create, they just require a new level of customer support and give me access to marketing training and a whole nightmare of unreadable reports.

  “So the bigger size did work for the buttons?” Mads asks, her lips curling into the smile that only appears when she’s been proven right, entirely missing the important part of what I just said.

  “I still prefer the original ones,” I mutter, not ready to concede the point in what is now a months-old argument.

  “I told you they were way too small, but you never listen.”

  “I can’t help that I have a lot of content to fit on a single screen.”

  “You can,” Kaden weighs in while snagging one of Mads’s Tater Tots and her attention, “since you’re the developer.” I honestly don’t know how either of them can eat the poorly fried nonsense that comes out of that cafeteria. The salad bar has the only halfway edible stuff in this place. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good Tot, but there’s nothing good about these.

  “Hey, that’s mine!” She scowls, taking one of Kaden’s grapes in revenge.

  “Can you just accept the request? I want to have everything installed before our meeting this afternoon so I can show everyone how it works.”

  “Uhhh, that’s not today,” Kaden says.

  “It’s every Thursday so it doesn’t conflict with debate prep,” I say.

  Kaden, a member of said debate team, grins at me sheepishly.

  “No!” I shout, turning in my chair. “No!” Most of the rest of the debate team is roosted two tables over like they normally are. And as usual they’re surrounded by more scraps of paper, laptops, school-issued tablets, and assorted accordion files than actual food. “You said I could have Thursdays!”

  Mads says, under her breath, “Teachers can hear you.”

  Kaden says, “The entire school can hear her.”

  But I’m already off my seat, not willing to be ignored by the one person who needs to hear me. “Every includes this Thursday!”

  Before I reach my target, my older brother, Logan, puts himself between me and the rest of his team like a particularly annoying wall. If everyone didn’t already know we’re related, they could tell by looking at us. He keeps his light brown hair short, while I keep mine in a ponytail. We also share the physique that made our dad a great offensive lineman in college, but only looks right on Logan despite neither of us being remotely good at any sport that doesn’t involve a controller. He’s one growth spurt short of six feet, while I’m still a few inches shorter. But currently he has his giant finger pressed against the middle of my forehead in a way that both Mom and Dad would definitely have a problem with if they ever saw him doing it.

  “Back to earth, nerdling.”

  “Stop it, you beast. I’m really going to kill him this time.”

  “Who’s she killing now?” Zane asks from behind the wall of jerk.

  My brother grins. “You, Captain, who else?”

  “What’d I do now?” The russet mop of Zane’s hair is visible just above my brother’s shoulder. The captain of the debate team sounds perfectly innocent even though I know he’s not.

  “He doesn’t deserve to be called a captain. He’s just a jerk who breaks promises.” I grab Logan’s finger and grin. He knows I’m strong enough now to pull it backward in a way that super hurts. But he also knows I won’t risk getting in real trouble at school. So instead he kind of twists and wraps his arm around my shoulder so we’re both facing Zane. No doubt everyone thinks we’re just particularly close family based on his big grin. No one suspects that charming, lovable Logan has me trapped in some big-brother-side-hug thing.

  “What promises?” Zane asks, eyes sparkling. He knows what I’m talking about. He always knows. He never does anything accidentally. Not breaking my beaker in our chemistry class freshman year and not scheduling his practice session on top of ours. He’s on the ScholEx team; he got the email.

  “Today is ScholEx practice.”

  “Today,” he corrects in his superior tone, “is our last chance to prep cards before the invitational.”

  “You’re going back on your promise because you’re behind on copying Google down in your notepad?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Zane says defensively.

  “Oh, right, there’s also summarizing Wikipedia. I forgot.”

  “No need to get snippy.”

  “You did promise her Thursdays,” Dom says from somewhere down the table. Dom, one of the only Black kids on the debate team, is always far more rational than his best friend, Zane. I can only see the top of his fade through the sea of paper, but I still flash my most winning smile in his direction. He’s a good person despite his terrible taste in friends.

  “See!” I say, trying once more to tug away from my brother, but he has me tight.

  “You can have next Thursday,” Zane says with a sigh. “Today is too important.”

  “I need this one.”

  “ScholEx doesn’t even have an event for weeks,” he says, as if he’s entirely forgotten that Thanksgiving is in the middle of that.

  “ScholEx has a grand total of one Pathfinder scholar. We need three … minimum,” I say.

  “Can’t you just call them C-level students instead of Pathfinder scholars?” Zane asks. “That’s what they are.”

  “Some of the most creative ScholEx students don’t achieve academically,” I say, as my captain’s handbook told me to. “No one will want to join if you scream about their grades in front of everyone, Zane.” I don’t mention that I have utterly failed to find anyone who fits in Pathfinder except Mads, and she only joined for the obvious reasons.

  “If I get you a ‘Pathfinder,’ will you back off today?” Zane asks, putting air quotes around Pathfinder with his fingers and continuing to be a really big snot about it.

  “No.”

  “Okay, how about two?”

  “You don’t know two Pathfinder scholars.”

  “Logan,” Zane says, his voice suddenly dripping with honey, “will you join another club for your sister?”

  My brother jostles me. “Will she ask nicely?”

  I squint up at him. “No, you oaf, I need people who will actually study to prove my app works.”

  “I’ll study. It’ll be fun.”

  “You don’t need the extracurriculars! Why would you join?”

  “I do so.”

  “You’re not even applying to any worthwhile colleges!”

  While Logan’s been annoying, so far he hasn’t actually hurt me, but the college jab hurts him. He lets go of my shoulder and steps away. “Ouch, dude.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. Mom has been riding him about applying early decision. She’s not wrong, but it’s not his fault he’s never had the clear vision of the future that I’ve had.

  “I mean, it’s fair, but ouch, dude.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Then you’ll let me on your n
erd team?”

  “You don’t want to be in ScholEx. It’s literally all studying.”

  “But that’s why you spent all summer making your super-study instant-knowledge app, right, nerdling?”

  I roll my eyes. “It’s still work.”

  He winks at me. “I’m joining your team, if only to keep you and Zane away from each other.”

  “I haven’t hurt him yet.”

  “Because I’m always around.”

  “Okay, fair.”

  We both look back at Zane, who is wearing his smuggest smile.

  “Deal?”

  “No,” I say. “I also need to do an orientation for my app.”

  “Monday,” Zane says.

  “Mrs. James won’t be around on Monday,” I say.

  “Not here, in the GroupHub we’re going to join. You’ve heard of it, right? It’s this magical place where you can make anything happen?”

  “You’ll accept the invite?”

  He picks up his phone. “Already done.” Then, as he unlocks his screen, he says over his shoulder, “Right, Dom?”

  I can feel my phone vibrating in my pocket and know he’s actually done it. Incredible. “One more Pathfinder, you twit.”

  “Oh, I can find you someone.”

  “You’re not perfect, you know.”

  “You have a card for that?” Zane says, clearly making some sort of hilarious debate reference because his table full of nerds laughs right on cue.

  “I hate you.”

  “You wish you hated me,” Zane says.

  “We good?” Logan asks me.

  “Only if you make up for slowing me down by winning your event this weekend.”

  “Trust me, I will,” Zane says.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.” I turn sharply on my heel and take a really deep breath, heading back to the table with Mads and Kaden, who are very specifically not looking at me.

  “Doesn’t mean I won’t win,” Zane calls after me.

  IT’S FINALLY MONDAY. The night I actually get real users for my app. It took some serious negotiating to get everyone to meet, and I had to get all my homework done so I’d have time to get everything set up. As I walk into the kitchen for supper, I say, “Logan and I have a meeting at seven.” But the words come out so fast I’m not sure they’re even words. Mom is putting the finishing touches on supper, and Dad isn’t home from work, so at least I’m not late.