Chapter 87: Off to State

Thursday, April 22, 1982

As planned, we were all at school by 8:45am. We loaded luggage and evidence and everything else into the big storage compartment under the bus, then got on and chose seats. As was my habit, I settled near the back. Jasmine grabbed the seat next to me. Angie and Gene took seats across the aisle. Cammie took a seat one row in front of us, with Janet and Lizzie across the aisle from her. Bree took the seat next to Cammie. Amit and Sheila settled a row up from Cammie. Sue wound up sitting with Janice. I didn’t know if that would cause crush problems or not.

We weren’t taking anyone else this year. The other schools had banded together and were sharing a school bus. With Drama, we had more kids than the rest of the district combined. The Drama kids mostly took the front of the bus, but, as noted, we were mixing more and more. With two Drama/Debate couples, of course we were. That wasn’t even counting Lexi or Mikayla, who I expected would mess with me at least a bit.

Fifteen minutes after we got rolling, ‘messing with me’ ensued. Jasmine moved to my lap, and Lexi moved into the empty aisle seat, giving me a kiss, then giving Jasmine a kiss.

“Hi!”

“Hi, yourself!” “Hey!”

Angie rolled her eyes at this. Lexi caught it, hopped up, and gave Angie a kiss on the lips, drawing a ‘woo-hoo’ from Cammie. And Bree, which was a bit of a surprise. Janet looked up from her book. “Hey! Like, what’d I miss?”

“Angie and Lexi smooching.”

“Woo-hoo!”

Lizzie added a “Cool!”

Sue looked like her hormones were giving her a workout. I felt sorry for her. Of course, I also considered pointing Lexi her way, out of sheer mischievousness.

Things settled down after that. Well, they settled down at our end of the bus. Steffie and Meg issued several directives to ‘break it up!’ to the Drama kids. Lexi whispered to me and Jasmine, “We were thinking about maybe an orgy tonight, before the tournament. I mean, Paige and me.”

“Have fun!” I said, trying to sound helpful.

Jasmine giggled. “Steffie would not be amused, and we can do that anytime at my house.”

“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing!”

Cammie turned around. “If you’re going to do that, wait until after the competition’s done. Then, what can they do? Ban you?”

“She has a point,” Jasmine said.

Poor Janice looked nervous. Not upset, just nervous. Curious? Maybe. “Would you really do that?”

“Nah,” Lexi said. “We’re just messing with Steve. Well, that was the plan. He’s hard to mess with.”

“He’d just offer to bring us some refreshments,” Jasmine giggled.

“It sort of worked,” Janice giggled. “Only, you messed with me instead of Steve!”

“As long as you’re not bothered,” Lexi grinned.

“Nah, not at all!”

Cammie got us singing after a bit. This time more people got their arms twisted, and of course we had more singers. Many people sang along with the radio, but between the Drama kids we sang more than half of ‘Brigadoon’, plus some other show tunes.

As we had in the fall, we stopped in Madisonville about 11:30, going to the same diner. Thanks to the restroom on the bus, we didn’t have the massive line this time.

We were back on the road by 12:30 and reached our motel just after 3pm. The guys helped the girls lug in their bags. As before, we decided leave the evidence on the bus. Everyone changed into nice clothes and relaxed a bit, and we were on the road at 4:30 heading to the large hotel where they held the welcoming events. They’d found a place large enough to host everyone, Debate and Drama alike, around eighteen hundred kids in total. I had a feeling the room was going to be very, very loud.

Jasmine and I reprised our Valentine’s outfits. I had my gold shirt with a red tie, and my jasmine cufflinks, of course, while she wore her red-and-gold mostly-traditional Vietnamese dress. Even with over a thousand relatively flamboyant Drama kids, we’d likely stand out.

We stuck together for a while in the crowd, but eventually Jasmine found some kids she’d competed against and, after introducing me, shooed me off to wander the room. About twenty minutes and a few brief conversations (and a bunch of stares — I hadn’t found any guys wearing gold besides me, thus far) I was just about to give up when I spotted purple hair and dreadlocks. I headed over.

“Steve! Yeah!” Karen grinned and hugged me.

“Nice to see you!” Zelle smiled, hugging me as well.

“Yeah! How’ve you been?”

“Really good, and really busy. You?”

“It’s been a good year,” Karen said with a smile.

“And busy!” Zelle added. “Seniors are supposed to slack off, but we haven’t.”

Karen looked me up and down. “That is quite the look!”

I laughed. “I match my girlfriend. She’s wearing a traditional Vietnamese red-and-gold dress. Somewhere over that way,” I said, waving in the general direction where we’d split up.

“Ah! Also in Debate?”

“Nah. Drama. My sister and I are in the spring musical, that’s part of being busy. She’s here in Extemp and CX, too.”

“Partners?”

“Nah. My partner’s a girl named Cammie Clarke. She went to State last year in Extemp.”

“Lots of girls!”

“Both our Debate and Drama classes are pretty skewed towards girls. I’m not about to complain.”

They both laughed. “I wouldn’t either!” Karen said.

“Where are you heading for college?”

“Berkeley. UT would have been good, but we had to get out of Austin.”

“Cool. I don’t know anyone there. Now, I will.” I gave them both cards. “Stay in touch.”

“Happy to!”

I wandered around, getting an awful lot of looks but no comments. I eventually found Jasmine in a knot of what had to be Drama kids, judging from the outfits.

“Hey! Here he is! Say hi, Steve.”

“Hi, Steve!” I got a playful whap for that.

I got a wave of introductions. They were from an arts magnet program in Dallas. I was never going to catch all the names.

One of the girls said, “That’s a cool outfit. You have to completely stand out among the Debate people.”

“It matches Jasmine. We wore these to the Valentine’s dance.”

“Cool! And you’re really in the musical?”

“Yeah. Chorus and understudy, and I’ll do the understudy role once, pretty much for sure.”

Jasmine grinned. “Steffie wants to stockpile talent, like I said. I’m hoping Steve will take Drama next year.”

“And I may, but I have to figure out how to square that with Debate. The core students in both are in seventh period.”

“We’ll figure something out!”

I gave Jasmine a hug and kiss, then set off again. She was clearly not done with this group. After a bit, I spotted a somewhat familiar face.

“Hey, Anthony, right?”

He turned a little, looking at me. “Steve! I remember you from a few tournaments. Bring your Phantom mask?”

“Nah. It’d be fun, but, no.”

“Cool shirt!”

“It matches my girlfriend. She’s over that way, somewhere.” I pointed.

“You and she were going to be in the musical together, right? How’s that going?”

“Pretty good. Rehearsals are up to three times a week, but we get Thursday off this week.”

He laughed. “Yeah, definitely.”

“You’re here in Extemp?”

“And CX, yeah.”

“Me, too.”

“I know your school was doing well. How many did you wind up bringing?”

“Thirty-four total. Twenty-one Debate, thirteen Drama.”

“Thirty-four? That is crazy! We brought twenty between the two and I thought we were doing well.”

“It’s been a crazy year. We have seven CX teams. The scary part is, only one’s seniors, and they’re probably the sixth or seventh best. And the other of those are juniors.”

“That’s just nuts.”

“Lucky coincidence of people. Seven of the people here weren’t on the team last year: three freshmen, four sophomores. That’d be our third, fourth, and fifth best CX teams and likely our best Extemper.”

“Yikes! We’ll watch out for you!”

“We’ll watch out for you, as well. I know your program — you’ll be tough to beat!”

“Thanks! Appreciate it!”

After a while, the hosts called everyone to sit. If I thought last year’s dinner was loud, I was wrong. More than double the number of teenagers (and many who were even more ... demonstrative) is a recipe for serious volume. After several rounds of shushing — from polite requests to tapping glasses to a shouted ‘Shut Up!’ — quiet was achieved ... mostly.

The head of the Texas Forensics Association came out and gave a speech that wasn’t much different from last year’s version. Fair and honest competition is a virtue (I’m not sure how one cheats in these events — bribe the judge?). Developing speech and communication and presentation skills is a good thing (Yes, we know that, that’s why we’re here). Working hard builds character (I think we were sold on that, too, but at least some of the crowd were likely lucky slackers). And on and on. Nothing wrong with it, but, as with last year, it felt like we were probably the wrong audience.