Random Acts of Trust (16 page)

Her eyes were wild. “Go to prom with me,” she demanded. It felt like a cross examination.

“Hell, yes,” I said, “especially if you kiss me again.”

“You guys want Joe Ross to win?” Erin hissed, skittering in on weak ankles, her stilettos skating on the linoleum. She moved her wrist in a circle and flashed wide, wild eyes at me. “You can make out any time. Right now you’re late!”

She wobbled out, only to be replaced by my coach, Mr. Feehan. “Sam!” he barked, eyes flitting to Amy. Mr. Feehan looked like a barrel-chested wrestling coach, with red-Irish hair and pale skin freckled in every place possible. “Get to your assignment! They’re looking for you! You too, Amy.”

And with that, my future began and ended, though I didn’t know it.

Amy

I once added up how many debates I had done so far, and it came to about 200. You do four debates in an average tournament. I’m in sixteen or so tournaments a year, and you multiply that by three and you get...well, my brain was scrambled, and the math didn’t much matter, but it was more than 200. Here I stood as the affirmative, which meant that I had to defend the resolution. In Lincoln-Douglas debate everyone debates the same topic, which changes throughout the year, and it tends to be a value proposition. Our topic was “When in conflict, the rights of the majority ought to supersede those of the minority.”

Typical debate fare.

It sounds about as boring as watching paint dry, right? Except for us, this was
pure joy
. If you were assigned the affirmative, you had to defend that proposition. My job was to go in there like a shark and say that no matter what, when in conflict, the rights of the majority ought to supersede the rights of the minority. Majority rule should prevail. Period. End of story. And defend that point to the death, like a pundit on Fox News or MSNBC who sticks to his guns no matter what the evidence.

My opponent had to defend the negative, meaning he had to
disprove
that statement. He or she had to convince the judge that majority rights weren’t always more important that minority rights.

Sounds easy, except that you had to convince yourself, to the core, that whichever side you argued was absolutely true. And in another debate, you would have to totally convince yourself of the opposite.

For weeks I had sat down with my coach after school, every day, sometimes in the morning, too, before school, banging out value propositions, finding philosophers and political scientists and theorists who supported the idea. Of course, I had to create a negative case, too, because I never knew which side I would defend. You typically go in and defend either side twice in a tournament.

The tournament to go to national competition was different. I didn’t know what I would end up defending and I didn’t know how many debates I would be engaged in that day because they took us all the way to the top until they had three winners. And that was that. It was like a Geek Celebrity Death Match except the stakes were higher.

At least they were to us.

I felt great at the end of this first debate, but the problem was that I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t think, because the steady drumbeat of Sam’s name was behind every word that came out of my mouth. Cutting myself off emotionally was the only option I had—because otherwise I was a whirling dervish of feeling, and in debate, that was like a gazelle getting a deep scratch and bleeding around a pack of lions.

Had I really asked him to go to prom? Had he really said yes? How was that possible?
I came out of the round after shaking hands with my opponent, reading his defeat in his eyes, and shifted all of my attention to that thumping roar inside me. I needed to find Sam, I needed to know that the kiss we had just shared was real—that it wasn’t going away, that it wasn’t ephemeral or something he’d done on a whim.

Finding truth in everything had become my singular pursuit over the past few years, and that included that kiss.

Sam

The blood pumped through my body like the most intense beat ever. It never varied.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Loud and hard, like a bass drum, with a searing edge of a snare, right around the fringe of the sound. It made me win—until it didn’t. The best debater in the entire region, the girl we knew would end up being number one, was Talia Sheridan. So far, she was undefeated, the only person in the entire tournament undefeated, and everyone had just assumed that of course she’d be number one and the rest of us would fight for the table scraps.

It was funny how being so wired for Amy made all of my normal anxiety seem like a joke. When your body’s on fire, and every nerve ending pulses with its own score, who gives a shit about the minority and majority rights? The resolution was important, it was everything, in fact, as my coaches and my dad kept pounding into me. But it paled when I caught a glimpse of that long, brown hair, her sweet skin, the way she was so animated talking to her friends.

I walked into the cafeteria and halted at the threshold. My stomach was churning. The room felt like it would spin if I gave it a long enough stare, and everything in my mind was pure, unadulterated chaos.

Boom, boom, boom.

Amy, Amy, Amy
.

We had about fifteen minutes before they’d announce the pairings, and if Talia won, which was pretty much a given, then it was all about the power of opponent, and how many debates we’d lost. I didn’t know how Amy had done in this last round. The pairing sheets were pulled down already, so I had to ask her. Thank God I had to ask her, that meant breaking through what we’d just gone through. That meant reaching out, touching her, kissing her. My fingers itched to play. She would be the best instrument of my life if she would let me. My mind wandered as I stood there, and then suddenly she appeared, as if conjured by some sort of magic that lust taps into. Except, it wasn’t just lust – if it were that, I could have handled it. This was a chord that ran so deep inside me, I couldn’t find the beginning of the sound.

Amy
. Her name triggered a flash of emotion that slid through my body from toe to head, but settled in between. Thank God for suit jackets.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked softly. Her voice was like a caress, like a stroke, as if her hand had reached down into me and taken me.

Something in her half-lidded eyes told me that for as sweet, and gentle, and smart as she was, something was waiting to be unleashed. I wanted to be the one to open that door. Maybe we could open each other’s doors and find the treasures inside. She reached over and took my hand, not palm to palm, the way you hold a friend’s hand, or a little kid’s, but interlacing the fingers like a promise of bodies entwined, all in the form of a simple hand. She didn’t have to drag me, I went willingly, and we went into a classroom. She was a little shaky in those high heels, but damn, the lines of her calves, the way it made her hips sway, made me feel like a man. They made me feel a lot of things that were new and old all at once.

“I meant what I said,” she said, bold now, her eyes blazing, “will you go to prom with me?”

We didn’t go to the same school, and at my school I wasn’t planning to go to prom. It seemed like a stupid ritual that a bunch of us had decided to forgo in favor of just hanging out, getting drunk, and then going to after-prom parties. But for Amy? “Yes,” I said, so quickly the word came out of me a grunt, “yes, of course.”

The tux, the limo, the flowers, the dinner, the ritual and the silliness, all started to make sense as I stared into her eyes, and then something inside me just rose up and I leaned down to take her mouth, which she gave freely. The resolution, the question of majority rights versus minority rights, the pairings, the tournament itself, all melted away as her hands, the same fingers that had intertwined with mine, wrapped around my back and my own embraced her, our lips hungry, our mouths making invitations that I hoped to God would be extended till the end of time.

“Hey,” a voice barked.
Ross. We pulled apart. He shot us a
what the fuck?
look.

“How can you make out at a time like this? The pairings were just announced.”

“What do you mean?”

“Talia took number one, she was the only one undefeated, but there are four people, two debates, to square off for spots two and three. I’m not one of ‘em, obviously,” he said, bitter, “but you two are.”

Amy looked at me, eyes wide. “Oh! Sam, Sam, Sam!” She started jumping up and down in those spiked high heels, boobs bouncing hypnotically. I could stare at those all day. “We did it, we did it.”

Ross cut us off. “Don’t get too excited,” he said, “you two are squaring off.”

Her face went slack and based on the way my muscles felt, mine must have, too. We both came to a dead halt, her hands frozen on my forearms. I just stared at him, horrified, unable to look at her eyes. “What?” we both said in unison.

“It’s you two against each other. Only
one
of you is going to Nationals.”

Now I turned, a magnet pulling me to her face. Ross disappeared, probably off to feed the gossip mill and tell them about what he’d found. I didn’t give a shit. My mouth went dry, my body froze.

“Oh, Sam,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

I could handle anything but this. Not Amy crying. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” I said, my voice feeling like it came from an echo chamber. All I could do was reach for her and pull her into my arms. She smelled so sweet, and her body was so lush.

She said something muffled into my chest, and I felt her face wiggling against my shoulder. She pulled back. “I don’t know what to do.”

My Dad’s voice echoed inside my head. ‘
You come home a winner. You come home a winner.’
What if that meant something other than what my dad thought? I could mind fuck her right now, and it would be easy. She wanted me, she invited me to prom, I wanted her back and I wanted all of this just as much as she did. I could string her along, I could make an allusion to not dating her if I lost, – she was that ripe. I had that much power. It was sickening.

The only way someone has that kind of power is if you give it to them. Maybe Amy was giving it to me out of a totally different sense than I gave it to my father. I just had too much chaos in my mind to know. Some core of decency sprang up and then, with a clarity I didn’t know I possessed, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

I pulled her back from me, hands on her shoulders. Everything turned into a pinpoint. My hands on her, the soft swell of her body, my tight legs, my stomach in knots, the air between us was like its own little atmosphere of excitement, and confusion, and wanting.
“You’re going in there, and I’m going in there, and we’re going to do our best. Nobody’s pulling any punches, nobody’s holding back. Do you hear me?”

Relief. That’s what showed in her eyes.
Relief
. “Yes,” she whispered.

I pulled back and got on my neutral debate face, which wasn’t all that different from my regular face. I extended my hand, she took it, smiling, wiping her tears away with the other.

“May the best man win.”

“Woman!” she interjected.

“May the best debater win.”

Amy

We walked like we were part of a funeral procession, out of that classroom, our hands clasped, Sam taking the lead. The pairing sheet was taped in front of the cafeteria, and I felt people clapping me on the back, heard my name said a thousand times, saw my coach’s face as he spoke to me, animated and joyful, and then concerned and intense. The cacophony around me was like a cloud or a pillow full of voices, and faces, and people. What grounded me was the feel of Sam’s hand in mine, and then he slowly, finger by finger, inch of skin by inch, let go, leaving me floating in a soup of overwhelm. He faded off into the crowd, one last look at me with a sad smile.

The voices went from being muffled sounds to specific words. My name, the resolution, ‘oh my God’ over and over. I heard girls saying “oh my God” and “what if?” But I had to beat Sam.
Sam. What did this mean? What would this do? Would he hate me if I won? Would I hate him if he won?

He was so laid back and mellow in some ways, but I’d faced him before in a debate. He was sharp. Not in that weaselly way that Joe Ross could be, but sharp like a hunter, who could sit for days fully camouflaged and utterly silent, waiting for that one perfect moment to pounce and win. That was Sam’s style. I’d seen it over the years and learned to adapt. My own strategy against him was to match it, stay calm and cool, not aggressive, and absolutely use no sarcasm. Smile, fake as much confidence as I could, and meet him, mature mind to mature mind, with analysis, facts and the superior argument.

Different voices told me that I was on the affirmative, and that was my stronger case. I knew that Sam was weaker in the negative. It made me sick to my stomach that I was thinking about him this way.

Two weeks ago, I would have reveled in it. I’d have been torn, but I’d have known that this was about the superior mind and who, under controlled conditions, could come out the victor. Now? Who won in this scenario? It felt Pyrrhic; it felt impossible. For the first time in all my years of debating, in all my years of speech, even, I thought about throwing a debate.