Sudden Superhero

3. The Academic Bowl

THREE DAYS. That was the amount of time I gave myself to fix whatever was going on with me. Mom made me stay home from school the first day, so I spent that time staring at the syringe and trying to figure out what it had read. Okay, maybe I didn't spend the whole day doing that...I was also watching Netflix and talking to Rory on the roof.

I went to school on the second day. Ben asked me if I was okay, and I said yes, and he let the matter drop, thankfully. Dana avoided me.

Day three: also uneventful. I ran the mile by myself and waited to see if I would feel sick again, and when I didn't, I climbed up the rope and climbed down. Nothing happened.

My conclusion: I was okay. I must not have been in good health that day, and the run and the fall from the rope made me feel a little sick. That was all.

Today was Academic Bowl day. After school, I would be going to support Ben and his team. He'd worked so hard, and I'd spent many nights at his place helping him study. I even made a sign that said "Go Wilson Terriers!" with glitter and shiny stickers and everything. I loved being the supportive friend.

When the bell rang for lunch, I went up to the library, where Ben and the rest of his team were cramming in some last-minute studying. Fei, whose strongest subject was physics, was solving a coupled motion problem on the whiteboard, and I could barely follow her hand because she was writing so fast.

Kevin, the history geek, greeted me with a nod when I sat down at the table. He offered me an oatmeal-raisin cookie, and I took one, appreciating the high sugar content. Across from me was Ayomikun, whose specialty was geography. As soon as I finished my cookie, she asked me where the city of Cusco was.

"Cusco," I repeated. Like the llama?  "Uh, South America?"

"Close enough." She pointed to Cusco in the atlas book she was flipping through.

"Peru," I said, nodding. "Got it."

It was our little starting ritual. Every time I showed up to help them study or to just talk to them, one of them would quiz me. Ayomikun's questions were the hardest because I was terrible at geography, but I was okay with everything else. They knew that, and since they were sadistic, they usually had Ayomikun do the ritual.

The team advisor, Mr. Johnson, entered the library and greeted us with a smile. He set down his preparation binder just as Fei finished her problem and capped her marker. Ayomikun closed her atlas, and Kevin once again offered up his cookies.

He was an incredible baker, and being the son of a baker, I could appreciate well-cooked food, so of course I took another one. Everyone chewed as Mr. Johnson explained the day's event. The bus would be taking the team to Canary High, where the district competition was being held. They would study now, they would study on the bus, and they were probably going to study every second they had free.

He finished talking, took one of Kevin's cookies, and held it up in a toast. "To the Terriers!" he exclaimed, and we all repeated him.

I flipped through the study guide Ben handed to me and read off the questions for him to answer. He got every single one right, but he was still worried out of his mind. The competition wasn't solely about intelligence: it was also about thinking under pressure, and even though he had plenty of practice, it was still scary.

"You'll be great," I assured him, flipping to the last page.

"You always say that," Ben replied, his knee bouncing up and down nervously.

I lowered the paper to look at him over the edge. "And you always do well when I say that, don't you?"

He opened his mouth to argue, but the bell rang. I handed him the guide, thanked Kevin for the cookies, and ran off to Spanish. I used to take French, but I had decided within the first week that I simply could not understand which letters to pronounce and which to skip, so I switched to Spanish.