Effortless

Nineteen

"This is terrifying." I whispered to myself as I entered the large building.

One could see how big the building was from the outside, but once inside it seemed even larger than before. There were what seemed to be hundreds of different rooms just on the first floor. It was intimidating, to say the least.

We had met up with our principal at the front of the building since she took her own vehicle. She got to skip an entire day of work to go watch her two top students compete against top students from other schools. Honestly, I would have chosen work over coming to the competition. Competing against others was entertaining, but watching someone compete against others was not.

Mrs. Montgomery walked with Javier and I to the room that we needed to be in. Well, it was more her leading the way and us following. We needed to be in the room that was on the opposite side of the building which was unfortunate because we were running a little late.

Javier looked around, he appeared to be thinking about something. "How long do you think this will last?"

I shrugged. I was too busy with my own thoughts to pay much attention to him. I was nervous and I did not like the feeling. I was fidgeting with my fingers as we walked. It was a subconscious act, though I didn't stop when I noticed it.

"Do you think these other kids are actually smart?" Javier asked. He was walking closer to me now because it was loud in the building. "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. It was taking a while to find the room that we needed to be inside and sat in in less than five minutes. She waved her hand at us obnoxiously; she was signaling us to move faster because we were walking too far behind her. We sped up for a second and then slowed back down.

"I don't know." I mumbled as I watched the tiles on the floor whoosh past as I walked over them.

Javi eyed me before smirking. "You nervous?"

"What? No." I quickly lied with a scoff. I stuffed my hands into my pockets to refrain from fidgeting. "Shut up."

He lightly chuckled, though I couldn't figure out what was funny. "Well, if you were nervous, then I'd say that you don't have to be. We are the two smartest people in our grade, even Mrs. Montgomery said so."

"Yeah, and so is everybody we're competing against." I said with frustration. "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 that we had with each other were hostile. We had never had to work together before because we were too busy competing against each other. He was naive to believe that we could all of a sudden work together and win.

"Hush before your negativity rubs off on me." He spoke in a joking tone but he really meant what he had said.

"It's stupid to get your hopes up for something that will probably go south." I muttered under my breath.

He didn't hear what I had said under my breath, he was instead responding to my earlier statement. "That's 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 an angry look. She gritted her teeth and waved her hand for us to catch up with her. Javier and I sped up.