I nodded, but it wasn’t enough for my rival.
“Okay?” he stressed as his hand squeezed my shoulder once again. His tone was stern and demanding, no room for debate.He was awaiting my confirmation, meanwhile, all I could think about was his touch.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, satisfied. After that, he turned on his playlist to drown out the silence the rest of the car ride.
That was probably a good time to bring up that I did not have his phone number in the event that I needed to call him for help. I ended up not bringing it up because we had each other’s social media so that would have to be enough. Besides, it wasn’t like I was ever going to take him up on his offer.
Fifteen
Eli
“This is terrifying,” I whispered to myself as I took small steps to enter the large building.
Javier put his hands on his hips as took in the complexities of the building. “Have you never been to a convention center before?”
“I’ve never had a reason to go to one.”
One could see how big the building was from the outside, but once inside it seemed even larger than before. I had no doubt that there were at least a hundred rooms on each floor, maybe even more. That was how long the building was. Standing inside of it, I was surrounded by white walls with massive floor-to-ceiling windows arranged in a pattern, a grey, marbled floor that stretched so far down the convention center faded into the distance, and a ceiling so far above my head that it was at least three stories high. It was intimidating, to say the least.
We had met up with Principal Montgomery at the front of the building since she took her own vehicle to get here. She was lucky that she got to skip an entire day of work to go watch her top two students compete against top students from other schools. Though, I would have chosen work over coming to the competition. Competing against others was entertaining but watching people compete against others was not.
Our school Principal walked alongside Javier and I to find the room that we needed to be in. Well, it was more her leading the way and us following. The section that was holding Thinkfast: Valedictous Duo's happened to be on the opposite side of the building from where we were. It was unfortunate since we were running a bit behind, and the thousands of people in the convention center that we had to weave through did not help.
Javier’s bluish-green eyes scanned the room. "How long do you think this will last?"
I shrugged, too busy with my own thoughts to pay much attention to him. I fidgeted with my fingers by my waist as we walked. It was a subconscious act, though I didn’t stop when I noticed it.
"Do you think these other people are actually smart?" Javier asked, his arm brushing against mine as he leaned in to speak to me. “I mean, the subject is history which isn’t difficult at all. It’s just memorization. If the others can’t keep up then the rest of this thing will be a breeze.”
Mrs. Montgomery sped up her pace again. We had less than five minutes to make it there and we were struggling to find it. She waved her hand at us obnoxiously, signaling us to move faster because we were walking too far behind her. We quickened our pace.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled as my eyes focused on the tiles on the floor that whooshed past as I walked over them.
Javier eyed me before smirking. “You nervous?”
"What? No." I scoffed and stuffed my hands into my pockets. Then, more quietly and with a tiny grin I muttered, "Shut up."
His silver earrings glistened against the light shining through the large windows as he chuckled softly. "Well, if you were nervous, then I'd say that you don't have to be. We are twoof the smartest people in our class, even Mrs. Montgomery said so."
"Yeah, and so is everybody we're competing against," I grumbled as my hands flailed outward. "And those people probably haven’t been at each other's throats since their freshman year like we have. What makes you think that we're even going to get past the first round?"
My recently conflicting feelings for Javier did not change the fact that we hadn’t been the nicest to each other over the years. Majority of the conversations we had were unfriendly, hostile, and competitive. We never had the chance to see if we could be compatible working together because we were too busy competing against each other. He was naive to believe that we could all of a sudden put aside our differences and years of difficulties to pull out the dub for our school.
"Hush before your negativity rubs off on me," he spoke in a joking tone but there was seriousness behind his words.
It’s stupid to get your hopes up when you know nothing will ever go your way.
Javier pointed a finger in the air. “Maybe that is the exact reason why we'll win. Our rivalry is what sets us apart from the rest of everyone else."
I sometimes hated his confidence and optimism. It was annoying.
Our principal whipped around once again and gave us a look of warning. She gritted her teeth and waved her hand again to non-verbally tell us to move faster. We sped up again to the point where we were practically jogging.
We eventually found the room after lots of aimless wandering. When we entered we were met with a large space that had multiple tables lined in a ‘L’ shape. There were two chairs per table, and each table was labeled with the school’s name and the team members.
There were only two tables left empty, one of which had our school's name on it. Our principal whispered at us to go take a seat. We walked across the eerily quiet space while everyone’s eyes followed us.
